Desert Treasure With Zacharyb
Entry posted by Merch Gwyar
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I agreed to accompany Zach as he did ‘Desert Treasure’. I missed him getting the fire diamond, as I was hiding up the top of the Slayer Tower, releasing volleys of arrows into a bloodveld. I’d had one of *those* days at work, much of which was caused by a colleague. It’s amazing how cathartic repeatedly maiming and killing a decapitated pig can be, especially if, in your mind’s eye, it is representing said colleague. For the time being, however, I was murderously employed and exhausted to the core. Zach went to Zareed alone, though we cheered him on via Canting Away, and quickly returned with the diamond.
I was there to witness the demise of Dessous and Damis, both seeming totally ineffective under the blasts from Zach’s spellbook artillery. In fact, he had such an easy time of it that he would have been forgiven for wondering what all the fuss was about with ‘Desert Treasure’. He was due some difficulty and, predictably, it was Kamil who was there to provide it.
While many people cite Damis as the nastiest Desert Treasure opponent, I had the most trouble with Kamil. Nontheless, as Zach and I packed and met CJ at Trollheim, we were all sure that he would be fine. It certainly started off very well. CJ and I watched as Zach despatched five trolls and wandered on out of the gate with a huge grin on his face. Unfortunately CJ had to leave then, but Zach and I were confident that we had the capacity to carry enough supplies between us to see this through.
Zach disappeared for a costume change, while I met him on the top of Trollheim Mountain. A final pep talk, with a bit of leaping around, and we were off. We'd only gone about five yards down the mountain, when we discovered a gravestone. As I bent to bless it, Zach exclaimed, 'It's the walking dead!' Yes, the person, whose gravestone we were securing for the next hour, was in fact standing right next to us! LOL This moment of philanthropy had drained my prayer down to 18, so I took my leave of the gentlemen and nipped off to pray at an altar. I was soon back and we continued on into the frozen wastes.
I recalled my initiatory march from the ice gates to Kamil, which seemed to have taken much longer than it did this evening, leading Zach through trolls and wolves. It couldn't have been, because it was the same route, but a huge difference in terms of knowing what was out there. I walked from the wolves, up the slope to the rock where we would encounter Kamil. I stepped into precisely the position where Kitt had stood to block the beast as I'd pwned him, but it all went wrong! Kamil arrived, walked down the other side of the rock and was attacking poor Zach before he'd even had chance to become fully cognate of the fact that we were there. Helplessly, I could only watch in horror as Kamil chased Zach around and around the rock, with my friend's life dripping away from him, until both had disappeared into the snow.
His ring of life had saved him and the post-match analysis had shown that we had made a couple of fatal errors. Firstly, I'd taken him up there before he knew we were close to the place, thus he hadn't had time to heal from the bites of wolves and ice, nor to prepare himself for battle; secondly, though Kamil had walked down to behind the rock, Zach had stepped to the left, thus drawing his nemesis right into his path. We were wiser as we met on Trollheim and trudged through the blizzard back to the slope. At the foot of it, ignoring all wolves, staved off with protect from melee, Zach did all that was needful to become fighting fit, then I led us back to the rendezvous.
This time, Kamil was blocked in a text-book fashion, dying as Zach cast fire spells over my head onto the terrible creature. I was preparing my happy dance, when the seemingly impossible happened. Zach walked straight through me, head to head with Kamil, and now faced with the full force of both melee and mage attacks, soon vanished from site, taking his foe with him. Yes, a second ring of life had done its work.
The post-match analysis, atop Trollheim Mountain, revealed that the freezing temperatures had reduced Zach's stats to the point where he could no longer cast his spell. Inevitably, his next attack came with an attempt at caving in Kamil's skull with a fire staff. An effort doomed to failure, he swore that, even after he'd run backwards, Kamil had teleported beside him. I was dubious, it looked to me like he'd been dragged. I should clarify, for those who have never faced Kamil, that this really is a terrible fight. You have to concentrate on so many different things that it's ridiculously easy to miss your mage ability plummetting below a useful level. Zach decided that, for his next meeting, he would choose a spell well below his actual level, as this would make it easier to avoid inadvertant melee attacks.
We set out again, third time lucky and all that. Again the blocking was text-book. If I'd taken a picture, it could have been superimposed over the one in the guide without too much difference. Unfortunately, before Zach could cast a single spell, Kamil teleported over me and beside him. As I stared in shock, Zach took time out from fighting for his life to shriek, 'See! I told you he could teleport!' Ok, I was wrong. 
The battle that ensued was of truly epic proportions. Face to face, they raged, hitting each other with all that they had. Time and again, I thought that Zach was dying, but he'd eat and release another volley of fire spells, until it seemed that Kamil could not survive. Before my eyes, both of them seemed on the verge of instant death, but Zach's life-line still contained the barest slither of green, while Kamil's was entirely red. Then they disappeared. Zach's ring of life acting unwelcomely this time, taking him to safety just as he had been about to deliver the killing shot.
Round four contained no post-match analysis. There had been nothing wrong with last time, other than an unexpected teleport by Kamil and one fish too few for Zach. The downside of this round was that food was at a premium. I had been returning to Edgeville between each match and my food was practically gone. Zach was eating mine, because his had also run out. I'd got to the point where, spotting a triangle sandwich on the floor of the bank, I'd scooped it up, brushed off the dirt and shoved it in my bag for later. Meanwhile, Zach had been to the GE and bought a load of cooked monkfish. He appeared in his cooking cape announcing that he had bought food. LOL
We returned to the site and this time the battle was fairly unremarkable, but for the fact that Zach won. Kamil was no more. Woot! Only now, of course, was that trek up the mountain, in ever deepening snowdrifts, in tracks which seemed to have been forged in the last Ice Age. I'd never done it directly. The time I was up there, Kitt was leading and we got lost, so I had no clear picture in my head of where we were going, just what the place we needed to find looked like. For ages, we risked frostbite up there, searching for the path, until I had the brainwave to put on the spiky boots, which allowed access further up the mountain, while Zach found the track we'd been looking for. Yes!
If I thought that it would be plain sailing hereon, in the home stretch, I was badly mistaken. The freezing air and murderous blizzard were taking their toll on our life-lines and statistics. I knew we were close, but I couldn't find the start of the icy path. On that walk alone, I drank two four-dose prayer potions, just to keep my levels above the 70 needed to bless Zach's grave should he die. My hitpoints, and Zach's, were a different story. I was down to only 28hp and just a single, grimy, triangle sandwich in my bag, when I suggested that we logged out before we died and studied maps to find some clues as to the way to go. I watched him log, then followed suit. Without the constant struggle for survival, the map in the guide could stand much closer scrutiny and so it was only half a minute later before I was IMing Zach on Sal's to say that I thought I knew the way now.
Whether he got it or not, he logged on just a heartbeat after I did and we walked on into the blinding whiteness. I saw the ice path! Woot! But I'd lost Zach. OMG! I turned, calling out into the blizzard, then spotted his green dot on the mini-map crawling towards me. We were good to go, slipping, sliding and crashing to the ground in our bid to traverse that ice-rink towards the gates and the troll child's parents. But we made it. Zach freed them with another fire spell and disappeared to collect his diamond.
Thereon, it was a simple glory to Edgeville, where I used a Sara Brew sip to at least get above 40hp (out of a potential 77) and to change to meet him in the desert. From the freeze of the North to the heatwave of the South, I'm amazed we weren't horrifically ill, but we met in high spirits at Eblis's mirror tor and made our way to the pyramid.
On the third attempt, Zach made it through the maze and into the inner sanctum, now a confirmed master of Ancient Magicks. We did dance. 
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