"Smo'dis. . . "
Smo shut his eyes tight and concentrated. He began to hum - quietly at first, but gradually louder and louder. The humming began to shake things, shake the walls of the cavern itself.
"Smo'dis. . . "
The power of mojo surged through him. He felt almost as powerful as he had remembered feeling as a humie, before his accident. Yet it was not quite as strong. Smo tried to concentrate harder, to block out all of his surroundings. He had to get stronger. He needed the power.
"Smo'dis. . . "
"GRAAAAH!!!" Smo screamed as he pounded the wall with his fist. The voice would not leave him. Who was it? Where was it coming from? Why was it haunting him? What did it want?
"Seeds. . . "
He was no longer sure if it was his own mind talking to him or some outside force. Seeds, it said. The plant monsters which had been showing up around the fort lately had seeds. He himself carried a handful in his pack, having run out of room in the Surjin hut.
"Seeds. . . "
Smo clutched his head and howled. Unsure of what the voice wanted or where it was coming from, he felt scared. Grobba nudged him gently, but it didn't help.
"Come. . . "
He opened his rock book and flipped the pages frantically. He had to find the voice, but had no idea where it was coming from. It seemed to be carried by the wind itself. . .
Wind.
Smo'dis turned to the page in his first rock book which showed a crude, nonsensical scribble that, in his mind, meant Wind City.
"Vas Rel Por," he mumbled, and stepped into the mojo hole, unsure of what he would find.
"Blue. . . "
Blue was the first thing Smo'dis saw upon stepping out of the hole. The blue of another mojo hole. Someone else was there.
"Blue. . . "
Smo quickly hid and dashed to the side of the cavern outside Wind entrance. He counted his seeds. He had three reds, one plain, and one yellow. No blue, just as he suspected. But what he didn't suspect and also noticed was that everything else in his backpack was gone. No weeds, no rags, nothing.
"Blue. . . "
"Garhh," he muttered. Without weeds or rags, he was helpless. And yet, he still needed a blue seed. Knowing that standing around would do nothing to help him, he took off into the forest, picking weeds off the ground as he went.
Finally, he had gathered about 5-10 of each weed. He was ready to find a bog creature to fight for a blue seed. And that was exactly what he did. He stepped back, warmed up a Blade Spirits spell, and launched. Soon, the battlefield consisted of blade spirits, boglings, and in the middle of it all, Smo'dis and the bog thing.
With the few weeds Smo had picked up, he managed to take down a couple of boglings. . .
However, he soon ran out. He scoured the forest gathering more, then returned to pick off the boglings that had wandered too far out of the range of their master.
Smo'dis found the bog thing wandering by itself. He had killed all of its boglings, and now was the time to finish the job. He launched a Blade Spirit spell at the bog thing, who appeared broken and unresisting.
Eventually, the beast fell. . .
Smo'dis checked its corpse. Red and plain. Nobody said hunting seeds was easy.
Smo'dis smirked.
He was a bit worried at first when he couldn't find a blue seed, but he soon came across another gang of boglings led by a bog thing (and found a stray lusk lying on the ground as well). After throwing a rock at one to get its attention, he quickly finished it off with a combo, and found the blue seed he needed.
However, he was out of Sulphurous Ash. That situation was remedied after a couple of minutes wandering the forest, and he soon found himself back at the Wind City entrance.
Smo'dis could not recall ever having been in Wind before, but once he rode out of the entrance hall and into the town, the setting became instantly clear to him. The Wargod had sent him to Wind during his first major adventure!
By instinct or, more likely, by some strange magical influence, Smo headed into the building labeled "Seat of Knowledge." Looking around, he saw humans - but they were all frozen! One was in the process of turning a page in a book, another was counting reagents, but none of them moved.
"Hurry. . . "
He could hear the instructions in his head. He arranged the seeds in a circle, then began to chant.
"Rel Ex Xen!"
Suddenly, Smo'dis felt strange. A shimmering light engulfed him. . .
And he was gone.
"Thank you. . . "
Smo'dis slowly opened his eyes to find himself face-to-giant-floating-eyeball with a shriveled old gazer.
"You. . . freed me from. . . that seal. . . I am. . . grateful. . . "
Smo'dis looked puzzled. The gazer wasn't talking, but rather projecting its thoughts into his brain.
You want. . . to know. . . who I am?"
Smo nodded dumbly.
"My name. . . is Dhazver. . . I was once. . . a mighty. . . Gazer Lord. . . "
Smo drooled.
"There was. . . a great battle. . . I was defeated. . . and sealed away. . . "
Smo gurgled and listened intently.
"I lost. . . most of. . . my powers. . . "
Smo sneezed.
"I. . . will not. . . live long. . . "
Smo looked up.
"I can. . . help you. . . with that axe. . . you carry. . . "
Dhazver's weakened body began to glow. The axe in Smo's backpack floated out, then in front of him.
"We can. . . survive. . . as one. . . "
Smo felt a strange tingling feeling as Dhazver searched the remnants of his shattered mind, extracting information as if his head was a Pez dispenser. The one piece of information that the gazer wanted most, however, was Smo's secret lobotomy technique, known only to a few privileged Surjinz.
"GRRAKH!!!" Smo'dis yelled as the floating axe quickly swiped the top off of his skull. Feeling weak, he slumped over Grobba and passed out.
Grobba prepared to defend his friend, but the gazer seemed to be able to project to him and calm him down. "He will. . . be fine. . . " Dhazver "spoke."
Then, he began to emit a strange green light. He floated towards Smo's uncovered brain. . . and actually merged with it! The gruesome spectacle did not last terribly long, and soon there was no trace of the old gazer.
"In Vas Mani. . . " and Smo's wounded head was healed.
He awoke with a terrible headache. "Urg," he mumbled. "Wut habbund? Me feel likee me wuz hit bi ash Wargod lusk. Ey Grobba, am lat uki?"
Maybe it was shock, but he hadn't quite realized that he had just managed to form three complete sentences. He was sane again - at least, as sane as a mojo orc could be. And as far as that mojo was concerned, he felt stronger than ever, feeding off of Dhazver's power as well as his own. To add to that, he once again had rational control over his thoughts. He was no longer the pitiful, weak mojokii of the clan. He had ascended. He was. . .
Mojoka.