I have written most of it now in shorthand or in full, and it's wound up so full of every damn fantasy adventure cliché that I feel like I should go back and rewrite it with "emerald orbs" and "flashing foot of blinding steel" thrown in there somewhere. And possibly a tediously-honed rat's pelvis.***
The scary thing is how much it resembles a typical Final Fantasy plot. ALL the bad, and ALL the good, hopefully! Why do we love these games... or classic Trek... or half the science fiction/fantasy out there when it's often so very predictable?
*** If you don't understand the references, read and weep. Eye of Argon, the worst fantasy fiction ever written. There can be only one.