Chapter 17: Columns and Crashes

I make my way around the track (at a walking pace this time) and arrive at a wooden archway which has a sign hanging from chains at its top. Printed on it in a large font is “Stage 0/5”. It doesn’t get any lower then that so I guess this is the start.

Walking through the entrance I am immediately walking on a pathway which leads to a single square column, about five feet wide and long, with a ladder built from impressions in the stone. It’s about ten feet tall and once I climb it I am able to see that the only thing on top of it is a pair of posts, beyond which are several smaller columns starting about 4 feet apart. Seems simple enough.

I want to get as much out of this as possible so I back up to the edge of this first column and run as fast as I can before leaping to the next. Putting only one foot down and not stoping even for a second I push off for the next column and then the next. This is relatively easy, but the ten foot drop, gradually increasing distance between each jump and the shrinking area on which to land add a touch of danger to the mix. Perfect.

I continue jumping and jumping, now having to push myself to make it to the next jump, there is no end in sight and the burn in my legs and lungs (which had mostly gone away by the time I’d finished walking to the start. Game physics for the win!) is starting to come back. It’s getting difficult to position myself for the landing as well since the columns are starting to zigzag more and more, becoming increasingly random. There is an especially long jump coming up ahead. I put all my energy into leaping to the next platform, not thinking about anything beyond getting there. I make it, but I’m looking around for the next place to jump to and there is nothing there. Unable to stop my forward momentum I topple forwards and finally catch a glimpse of the missing column 90 degrees to my right.

With all of my frantic searching, not even once did I consider that the path might suddenly change direction. Up until now, all of the turns had been gradual and I had lost all awareness of everything that wasn’t directly in front of me and a stone pole.

BAM! All of the wind is knocked out of me and I struggle to take even the smallest of breaths. For those of you who haven’t experienced it, getting the wind knocked out of you is the scariest and worst ephemeral injury (when I say ephemeral I mean something that you can naturally heal from in a week or less. A lightly sprained ankle is ephemeral. A broken leg is most definitely not). The reason that it is so bad is because it makes you believe, 100 percent, that you are going to suffocate. That you are going to die in one of the worst ways that you can imagine and there is nothing you can do about it. I’ve had the wind knocked out of me more than half a dozen times and I can say with confidence that it never get’s any easier.

After the first few minutes of lying on my back and wheezing in and out, I get over enough of the fear to try and meditate to speed up the healing process. As soon as I do I’m brought out of it by the pain and fear, but I try again. And again. And again until I’m finally able to prevent myself from snapping out of it. As everything fades away I can, at last, think clearly without the fear clouding my mind.

The first thing that I’m able to recognize is that the meditation won’t help me heal. My perfect recall in all of it’s gloriousness means that I can remember the description of the skill word for word and it specifically says: “Meditating while sitting in a meditative position will double mana recovery and increase health recovery by 50 percent.”

Just in case you missed it, the key words there are “while siting in a meditative position”. I’m not sure what a meditative position is in Templa (though I would guess it is similar if not the same as it was in the real world), but I’m almost positive that laying on your back while splayed out in a spread eagle position doesn’t count. Still, even if it won’t help my health (which is at 21 out of 30 by the way) regenerate, it is invaluable for it’s mental clarity.

The second thing that I notice while in meditation is that there are two icons at the top of my vision to the left of the currency counters. Some people with an impressive memory (or any champions of templa) may remember that this happened once before when the Poisonous High Jumper lived up to it’s name by poisoning me. This time one of them is a terrified emoji face which seems to represent my crippling terror and the other is a yin-yang (which I know about because our PE teacher in school, may he burn in the fire pits of the demon lands, was really into Taoism (pronounce the T as a D) did nothing, but tell us about it). If I had to guess I would say that that represents my meditative mental state which is canceling out the fear.

The fear and lack of oxygen slowly fades (I can’t feel it, but I’m aware of my body and what’s going on with it. After five or so more minutes I deactivate meditation and slowly push myself to my feet. That fall hurt way more than I can deal with if I’m going to be flying and parkouring my way around Templa.

Now that I’m up, I start to slowly walk back towards the start of part one of the agility course. Since this will be a very slow trip until my health recovers enough to pick up the pace I start to think of how to deal with both the changing course and my falling problem. The course change isn’t hard to fix. After all, now that I know it’s a possibility it almost certainly won’t surprise me again, but that highlighted a bigger problem that I have. I get stuck in rhythms. The guard who’s actively changing up his pattern will be much more alert and hard to sneak past than the guard who is just doing his rounds. Therfore, in order to not get surprised like that again, I have to actively change up what I’m doing all the time. That will keep me alert.

Now obviously saying that I will constantly be alert and never fall into a pattern is much easier than actually doing it, but the first step to solving any problem is to recognize the issue and come up with a plan to deal with it. It will probably take years to master that, but if that’s the first step and every journey starts with a… Oh forget it, you know what I mean. There is no time like the present to implement this new philosophy of mine so I check my health and —seeing that it’s at 26 out of 30— start to jog while running through the poles instead of next to them. That forces me to keep my attention on the real world (or virtual one if you want to get technical) even while I’m keeping up this weird inner monologue.

On to my falling problem. Given that my future will most likely involve lots of falling either from running out of energy while falling or tripping off a cliff in one of my adventures or getting slapped into the air by one of the monsters or one of a hundred thousand other reasons so I can’t just ignore this issue without it rearing it’s ugly head at an inopportune time. Now I’m assuming that in any one of these hundred thousand examples if I could have prevented the fall I would have. Therefore I won’t focus on ways to prevent falls (though that is something I should look into). That means that I have to figure out a way to fall better. Fall better? There has to be a skill for that (since our AI gods have pretty much made a skill for everything), but how does one learn it… Oh no. No, no, no, this is going to be awful. How do you get better at something? You practice. If you want to learn to use a knife then you stab stuff a bunch. If you want to learn how to fly faster and more gracefully then you spread your wings and do it. And if you want to learn to fall without killing yourself… you fall. Crap. I may do a lot of painful stuff, but I am definitely not masochistic enough to enjoy reliving the past five minutes over and over again (has it been five? I’m not really sure, but you get the point).

“Oh look there’s the starting column again” I say out loud to the pillars and dirt around me as I dodge past the last few posts in my way. I take a deep breath at the ladder and try to think of one good reason not to climb up it just to come crashing back down. Quite a few come to mind (chiefly the pain and bodily harm that will befall me), but after another deep breath I start to climb anyway. At the end of the day I’ll be stronger for this.

Once I’m at the top I check to make sure my health has fully recovered and I guess 29 out of 30 is close enough. Teeth gritted I step off of the platform and for a stomach dropping moment I’m weightless. Then the ground hits my feet and my legs nearly crumble beneath me. I’m barely able to stay standing (if you can call this awkward squat standing), but barely is just enough. That actually wasn’t that bad. I didn’t get the wind knocked out of me which is a definite improvement. Still, not bad isn’t good. I need a way to soften the impact even more than bending my legs. Rolling has worked for me so far and I don’t see any reason that it would fail now.

I climb back up the ladder after checking my health (which is still at 29, so it either regenerated when I wasn’t looking or I’m a natural lemming) and jump off of the column again, this time even going a little bit up. I clench my stomach to prevent it from flying up into my throat and when I hit the ground I immediately roll whilst turning a bit so it doesn’t kill my spine. The jolt when I landed was still substantial, but it was enormously reduced by the roll. This is not nearly as bad as I had imagined.

Quickly climbing up the ladder once again I turn to jump once again and…AHHH. My foot snagged or I was too quick, the actual reason isn’t clear to me, but my attempted jump has sent me tumbling off the edge in a way I never intended. I want to curl up into a ball and do my best to brace for impact, but that’s not the smart move. My time slow has kicked in so I have time to watch the ground coming towards me at a surprisingly quick rate for how slowly the world is moving.

Just like when a giant boulder was hurtling down at me, as I clamp down my jaw to prevent a scream, ancient instincts begin to tug at the more modern parts of my mind. Unable to resist them, I spread my wings just enough to catch the air and increase the rate at which I’m spinning turning my previous one and a half rotations into a solid two. As my boots hit the ground I copy my roll from before and though it’s far from perfect, when I finally stop and stagger to my feet my health has only gone down by five points and I have a few new windows to open.

You have gained the skill Acrobatics. By jumping, falling, rolling and generally showing good acrobatic ability you have gained greater proficiency when performing any parkour like activities such as those listed above. This skill also increases your movement speed whilst moving in a difficult environment.

By running along a series of columns with increasingly large gaps in-between them you have increased your agility by 2 and your strength by 1.

By surviving two nasty falls without croaking your health has increased by 1 and your regeneration has increased by 1.