Golem

Garry was, of course, totally fucking right when he said that Tamaron wouldn't make us fight the strongest first. A guy who spits a few Bic lighter puffs and then gets taken down with a handgun in under thirty seconds? Please. I suspect Frank exaggerated some stuff in the books, but--I'm still not going to fucking underestimate the ingenuity of the guy who's supposed to be existence's First Enemy.

I woke up at the base hearing some sort of plinking sound hitting the wall. Like someone was throwing rocks at us. Well, guess fucking what? That was what was happening. And dumbfuck me didn't realize that I should be scared of that until it was too late. I opened the door all the way and stepped out onto the, uh, "front lawn." (Geddit because we haven't had a proper house since everyone was fucking killed/dismembered.) It's a little sandy out at our current place. But what's sand gonna fucking do? Reach up and form a hardened casing around your body, restricting your movement so a cultist will kill you? Because that's honestly what pretty much happened, minus the killing part. So yes. This...Golem guy, we'll call him, as Garry said, basically was telekinetically holding me in place with fucking sand. Whatever let him move the sand to begin with allowed him to squeeze it so tight around me that it was basically like goddamn diamonds.

I did manage to yell for help, and I won't make any pretense about it being a shining moment of heroism for me. To be fair, when your only backup might not even wake up in time to save you and themselves from being butchered, your voice isn't exactly the most stable thing in your life.

But Qom and Garry heard me, and were outside in a few minutes. Well, Qom was. A big rock--a boulder, honestly--flew through the air and knocked the door in, and I heard Garry go down. Qom is more spry in his seasoned youth, though, and he was able to make it up next to me. He saw what happened and for a second I thought he was abandoning me--he was going back into the house. But that drew Golem out from the darkness. (I can't say that Tamaron has particularly good taste in minion men. A bear? Really? I mean, I know that the person who moves rocks is expected to be big and bulky, but if the water guy has flow-y hair and the air guy is light on his feet, I'm going to be severely disappointed.)

Qom did return, though, and he had...a bucket of water. Well, it did work on getting the sand off of me, and then suddenly with another arm-whip he put my knife in my hand. Golem gave some sort of cry before Qom smacked him across the face with a bucket, and--I stabbed him in the chest.

I now understand why Garry's entry on "Ifrit" was so short. It does hurt to have to kill someone. And, there isn't really any honor in violence--no finesse. There wasn't a huge martial arts battle where I was jumping off buildings and whatnot. Qom broke the guy's nose with a metal bucket, and I stabbed him in the heart and he died. That was all.

All I have to say to Tamaron, then, is: you're fucking ripping off fucking Avatar: The Last Airbender. But I imagine that show never existed on Earth-13151518, because you fucking murdered everyone there. Moral of the story: don't prevent good TV shows from coming into being, because people from other universes might criticize your indirect rip-off.

...I may be slightly more upset than I'm letting on here.