Inside the Meadow

You back trace and locate the stream again, without encountering any goblins, wolves, or wild boar, then follow it through the woods to the edge of the meadow, then along the edge for about 50 feet at which point it turns deeper into the meadow, where after another 500 winding feet you come to a small rock outcropping, out of which flows the font of pure artesian water.

It is there that you finally run into trouble: drinking direct from the spring is a massive wild boar, standing almost as tall as you do at 6' even, and it looks up at you with beady red eyes filled with hatred and rage!

That's the first part of the bad news: the GOOD news is you saw it before it saw you, and a volley of five arrows is already airborn!

Now for the second part of the bad news: two of them just bounce off it's tough and bristly hide while the other three, though they pierce it's flesh, really only serve to piss it off!

The thing charges and gores Keishara with it's six inch long tusks, ripping open her guts and killing her instantly!

That's when things take a VERY bad turn for the giant boar. She may not have been your lover, but she was one of your NCOs and you DON'T take kindly to her being killed, in fact...

There is a flicker flash of emotion inside your head and you are filled with a sudden and intense Rage, and like Bruce Banner turning into The Incredible Hulk you charge the boar bent on either you killing it or it killing you: honoring Keishara's memory by leading from the front, just as she did. You drive your rapier straight at the boar's eye, all your weight and momentum behind this point of whetted steel and though the thing tries to toss it's head at the last second and deflect the blow you strike true and stab through eye, brain pan, brain meats, and skull on the other side! However the monster will not DIE! It yanks the rapier out of your hand and and tries to gore you too, but you nimbly dodge, though only barely, and fall back while the other four elven archers loose their second volley.

Again two skitter off into the grass but two others strike and wound, yet this abomination still is not down, and it wants YOU dead now, specifically!

You side step it's charge but it wheels like a cat and you know you cannot avoid it so again, yet you are weaponless!

Then something you read once comes back to you: in the very first days of the Jedi Order, when they were confined to a single planet without space flight, their Light-Sabers were just **** crystals attached to wooden sticks and powered by the user's own **** Energy...

You grab the crystal from your pocket and focus your MP through it, side stepping again, but getting gored in the other leg, yet being able to bring the yellow beam of energy slashing down through the boar's neck, killing it at last!

Suddenly another of those mini screens appears:

/===========================================================================================\

Medal Get: First Blood. (Your XP from kill Doubled!)

Medal Get: Price of Commanding 1. (100 XP!)

Medal Get: Vengeance Is Mine So Saith The Lord. (100 XP!)

\===========================================================================================/

Your hand it burned and blistered, and your leg bleeding freely, but you have avenged your fallen, and reclaimed your normal weapon, meanwhile securing the spring for future use! You also feel a sudden RUSH of XP, but you can't think about that now, as the blood pouring from your leg threatens to make you pass out! "Medic!" You croak and Filandariel rushes forward grabbing the bit of cloth that saved you from the wolf's bite out of your other pocket and making a tourniquet again. You meanwhile focus your 'Light Side Energy' into the wound and close off the worst of the damage, but you are still savagely mauled and bleeding slowly even through the tourniquet, you just hope you have enough time for the cool down timer on your healing ability to run down...