The Crystal of Mirroni, Dusting [great books to read txt] 📗

The Crystal of Mirroni
Prologue:
In the Dark Elf city of Ched Nesad, an Elf by the name of Stur Sha’Gel was hearing the words he had been hoping to hear for a long while.
“You are banished to be an outcast! You are lucky your father paid us not to make you a drider, at the cost of his life!”
At that, Stur shuddered. If he was a drider, he would be under the command of Lloth, which he most certainly did not want. Stur worshipped Shalah, the Lady of the Night, and that pissed Lloth off.
Stur Sha’Gel was different. He was an elf who had been born in the Underdark, but his ancestry wasn’t fully Dark Elf. His father had gone on a raid against a clan of Surface Elves, and had captured the princess of the clan. He had had Stur’s mother as a slave until she had died giving birth to him. Stur was half-surface, half-dark elf. However, his younger half-brother, Neaki, was fully Dark Elf, and he was merciless.
Neaki didn’t like Stur. Stur was faster, stronger, smarter, and had more prestige because of it. But Neaki wanted recognition in Lloth’s eyes.
The Sha’Gel House hadn’t been close to the royal seat, but they had been the highest mercenary House. The family had been smarter, stronger, quicker, and quieter than even the standards of Dark Elves. Stur had acquired those traits, and on the outside he looked like a drow, but his chemical make-up was light-elf.

“Leave Ched Nesad this very hour, Stur Sha’Gel, and send in your brother as you leave!”
And so, Stur left the city of his birth with a pack of clothing, two vials of healing potion, food, his twin scimitars, and his memories.
 
Stur Sha’Gel, the banished elf, plodded along a mostly unknown tunnel. He felt something calling him.
Suddenly he stopped and bent down and picked something up. It was a crystal. But it was a small black crystal. His eyes widened in shock. In his hand he held a crystal created by his goddess, Shalah, the Lady of the Night. The artifact was called Mirroni, and its power came from the dark, or night. The goddess had lost it and it had disappeared. It was then that Shalah had become a neutral goddess, neither good nor bad. The artifact was sentient, and it was good. It chose its wielder, and helped them along. If the crystal believed that the wielder was good enough, it had the power to open an interplanar gate, have the wielder kill somebody and then make him or her a god or goddess, of their choice of what to represent. The crystal then makes an exact replica and the original stays with the new deity, and the replica is lost to try to create another deity.
But Mirroni had to put the wielder through a series of obstacles to prove themselves worthy of being a deity.
Welcome, Stur Sha’Gel. I am indeed Mirroni and I have indeed chosen you. If you succeed, what god will you be?

“I will be Wotcher, God of the Unknown.”
Very well. Your first task is to kill a basilisk, with only your hands.

“But basilisks are among the rarest creatures in the Underdark, where would I find one?”
Right behind you.
Stur clenched his eyes shut and jumped backwards, landing on a fifty foot basilisk. A basilisk bite is poisonous, and if you looked in its eyes, you suffered instant death.
Stur didn’t think. He poked his hands into the beast’s eyes, and blinded it, then grabbed the head and pounded it against the wall until it was a bloody pulp. And quite dead.
Very good. You used only your hands to bang it on the wall, so you completed the first obstacle successfully. Nine more tasks remain. Task two, kill a drider, and eat its body.
“I can’t do that! Driders are under the shadow of Lloth, a major deity!”
Even so, you must do it.
“Very well.” And so Stur put the Mirroni in a pouch around his neck, and started off, to find a drider.
As luck would have it, Stur found a drider the very next day.
“Drider, I will release you from your torment. Stand still.”
The Drider stopped, looking at Stur hopefully. “You will? Oh, please do, she hurts me so bad that I wish my city had killed me instead!”

Text: Dusting
Publication Date: 02-23-2012

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