I was in a once a week campaign for the better part of a decade. I had missed a week and came back to most of the party missing my return. It was me, one other player, and the DM. They both wanted to start. My party mate told me that they found a mummy the previous week and wanted to wait for me, party mage, before they tried to tackle it.
I decided to say screw it, I'm going in. DM told me there was a staircase down into a room. I headed down the stairs, saying something about creeping on the staircase. The DM starts describing something moving in the back of the room and I cut off the DM describing the rest of the scene by asking if I could see what it was that was moving.
"Initiative."
I told the DM I was going to hold action to see what I was fighting and what it might be doing. He informed me that it was indeed a mummy, but when it stepped into view, it started casting. Now I knew I was in trouble and my party member said he wasn't coming down. "What are you doing?" "Can I make a spellcraft roll to see what it's casting, and if so will I be able to act afterward?" DM agreed to both, I passed my roll. "Blade barrier."
Fuuuuuck... Now I know, both in and out of character, that most likely this is either a greater mummy or some form of lich. I was really hoping on the former because a lich casting a priest spell wasn't something I wanted to deal with.
"What is your action?" "Dispel magic." "Seriously? On what?" "Blade barrier. I can't do anything with that in the way." "You do know what you need, right?" "Yep. Need a twenty." The DM stood up from behind his screens and leaned over the table. My party mate was blathering on in excitement. I rolled and it came up with that glorious 20. My DM looked like I slapped him. "New round. Now what are you doing?" "Lightning bolt." "Forked or straight?" "How big's the room?" "Oh, now you want details. Are you taking time to measure it?" "Fair enough. Straight."
He sat down, made some "hmn" sounds, and after a few minutes asked me how far into the room I was. We settled that I was on the bottom step.
"Roll damage." I rolled my little pack of six siders. I want to say I was about level ten at the time. Second edition. I should have said that earlier.
"So, you cast your spell and the lightning bolt races from in front of you, passes through the greater mummy, bounces back off the stone wall behind it and through the mummy again. It stops about half a foot in front of your face. It's dead."
My buddy cheered, I grinned like an idiot, and the DM called a ten minute smoke break. He wasn't happy and I felt like my character had just starred in his own epic movie fight scene.