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Ch1 Ander the Skeptical

  Ander the Skeptical

  Ander was a young man raised by his grandfather. He taught him to view the world through a skeptical lens. He Learned to never take a man's words at face value. Especially if the topic was unfamiliar or the person a stranger. Always check and verify.

  He also learned to treat everyone with a modicum of respect and that actions have consequences. To quote his grandfather. “You cannot know a man's character or worth because men act and time changes everything. A little respect could be the difference between reward and death. Sometimes you get nothing and sometimes that nothing is a reward.”

  All around 9/10 for life lesson choices but a 3/10 for execution. Ander was a skeptical and paranoid man with trust issues and a hint of delusion. He was not the man his grandfather tried to raise. By comparison his grandfather was only a little paranoid. Said man opened letters with a stick and slept with a shield under the covers while Ander Slept in full plate mail.

  Ander was the gentleman of the town. Always respectful and knowledgeable. There was almost nothing he didn’t know. Only good things were said about him. He was promising.

  That’s why the goddess of light found a stick in her face. Ander had just been woken up by a ball of light telling him his chosen path was to become a priest. Between the blaring organ music and running on fumes Ander had very little to reason with. So on instinct he poked.

  Anders' sluggish mind went a little like this. Gods aren't balls of light. Balls of light don't talk. music needs instruments to play. I must be asleep. I'm tired. I'm annoyed. If I poke it’ll go away. Eight poke nine poke…If he were a little less tired maybe he would have taken a moment to remember that gods don’t just come in human form, instead of counting pokes till he fell asleep again.

  That night Ander disappeared along with his house, basement and all, compressed to a marble and thrown into the horizon. If an ultra dense marble travels at terminal velocity and levels a forest with no one around, does it make a sound? If the god of mischief saw you poking a god in the face with a stick and laughed, do you get blessed?

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  Deep under the post forest, a white marble glimmered with rainbow hue. Like the world's most tantalizing jawbreaker. It was Ander. Or was is andser, andner? Ander suffered catastrophic drain bamage and slept a hundred years.

  The land healed leaving a one hundred foot wide scar. If rumors were true, the land was hit by a curse not even a priest could dispel. A Strange murmuring scared away all the animals and even the trees. It was a sound you could not forget and in the quiet of the night the haunting sound carried.

  For one hundred years trapped underground. Not a moment did Ander stop babbling in his sleep. Unresponsive and without the need to breathe, Ander unknowingly became the tormentor of men and beast haunting their every dream.

  When Ander woke he did not panic. For him everything was filtered by cold hard logic. Or what passed for it in his mind. Ander had seen many things but this was a first. He knew he had died. And he knew who to blame.

  While Ander was a child he once saw a witch turn a man into a duck. It was the first and only time he laughed. It was also the only time he got free candy from a witch. It was also the start of a war between him and the later self proclaimed priest of beasts Duckensmarts. That Stabard!

  As funny as a post-human talking duck priest sounds. It was quite serious. Duckensmarts nearly brought the town to its knees. If it weren't for those brave knights' sacrifice. Ander wouldn’t know where he'd be. Well, buried in the ground likely.

  The honks of that night still haunt his dreams. The last he heard, Duckensmarts was in prison. If he only read the paper he might have heard of his escape and prevented this. Damn.

  While idly running his finger in circles Ander startled himself out of his throughs. A furrow formed in the rock beneath his tracing finger. Immediately Ander started to poke and poke aaand poke some more. until he rested on a pillar in a spherical chamber made from finger impressions.

  When the light hit the rock just right it became a trypophobic nightmare. With the distraction out of the way, only now did Ander examine himself. A core. Is this a blessing? A rebirth. Should I thank the mother of creation?

  In no way was Anders transformation a blessing. It was entirely accidental. Never would the mother of creation give a human and especially one of great delusion the power of a core. Oh great mother of… oooh what's that. Ander closed his metaphorical eyes and was distracted by a message in his absence of vision.

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