Nothing happened. The tiny rock struck the circle of runes, rolling to a stop.

The [Chimera] yawned, laying its head down.

Charley closed his eyes.

Then the world went white through his eyelids. He couldn’t hear, he couldn’t see, and he felt his body spin through the air. He *felt* a deep bone rattling sensation, and then almost as an afterthought an impact.

And blessedly, there was a familiar sensation.

Natural inscriptionist] reached level 8!

Skill: [Passive: Flow like water] gained!

Increased grace in movements and precision. This grace is reflected in created objects, and may now create objects with greater quality. May dodge. 

He felt better. Not great. He could breathe without feeling his diaphragm hit the sides of his ribs. His leg still felt horrible. But he could wiggle his toes.

He was lying against a wall of the cave, his head and shoulders resting on cave moss and stone. All around him, there were wavy lines of heat radiating into the room. Bits of nest were everywhere, even the ceiling. Some of them were on fire.

Charley beat absentmindedly on his chest, putting out a small wisp of smoke.

One interesting thing about leveling was that it seemed to give him a buff to his health and well being. This was in line with what he knew about the subject (re: very little). If he had to guess, he was experiencing just the healing bump from multiple levels stacked together. Gods only knew how hearty someone truly high level was. Or something. Charley cast a leery glance to the rest of the room.

Green fluid was everywhere. On the walls. A suspicious drip sound from the ceiling. Charley winced, noticing that a tooth had punctured his right shoulder. Grabbing hold of the base, he watched in vague horror as a full three inch incisor slid out of his flesh.

There was only so much horror to go around. No other evidence of the Chimera remained in the room, at least from the part of the floor Charley had been thrown too. He wasn’t especially keen on standing up, either. But hey, look at the bright side.

He could *feel* his toes.

In the middle of the Chimeric den, surrounded by blood and burning nest, an overpowering urge for a nap came over Charley.

Maybe just a short one.

“Also, I know kung fu..” he mumbled to the cave wall.

--

He woke up with a start.

The cave was cold. Whatever heat had been in here had been sucked out into the stone. The green viscera of the Chimera looked stiff and waxy, no longer fluid but a rough caking.

Chimera Soup. Despite the texture under his grasping fingers, all around him, his stomach still let him know that it didn’t sound half bad. He was thirsty.

It was inventory control time. His body seemed somewhat responsive. He cautiously propped himself into a sitting position. Flexed both his feet. Shockingly, his right leg held his weight -- stiff, sore, and he couldn’t extend it fully. But it held.

He patted himself down. He thought he had everything--“Oh. Damn.” His fingers double checked the empty holster. “Okay. I lost the knife.” He lighting in the room was atrocious, the moss that had once provided a gentle glow was charred in spots, and the green muck of the beast had spoiled the rest of it.

He had four nails, his chisel, chalk, and an empty backpack and canteen. Right now, in terms of helpfulness the chalk was in the lead, followed loosely by the backpack.

The backpack had at least softened the blow against the wall. “Come on, nails. You guys really have to start pulling your weight.” The joke was met with silence, “In ounces.”

Charley sighed.

He idea of him running his hands over a rough floor covered with Chimera parts to look for the (hopefully) not business end of a knife was unappealing. And he wasn’t sure how much time he had before something tried to investigate this room, now sans Chimera. But he had a new ability that could at least help him minorly in a combat situation.

“About time, too.”

He fingered the Chimera tooth.

New plan. Chisel or chalk? Time was an enemy: he was exhausted, dehydrated, hurt. Chalk, then. What could he do with a Chimera tooth? It was a weapon, but he didn’t know how to use one very well. “Or at all.” He admitted to himself. He took a hard look at his abilities. The only thing that jumped out at him was [Nimble hands].

So, a throwing weapon then. Because he was a decent shot. Probably. It wasn’t like he had a lot of time to practice throwing teeth. In the dark.

“Let’s not focus on the negatives. Like being eaten alive.”

No time to waste. He dropped into his [Meditative Focus].

Minimum design, just the basics here. He fingered his chalk.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He breathed out. “Let go of the anger.” Breathed again. “Let go of the pain.” He regulated his unsteady breathing, until he found a slow rhythm. “Fear.” He accessed that deep place in himself that connected him with the rest of the world. “Doubt.”

And he started to Inscript.

The source in the center. Origin. He didn’t pause after the so familiar rune, just kept flowing.

The traveler in the desert. Seek. And just a small pause, after what he knew would need to come next.

The chemical chains of life. Blood.

Charley shook himself from the trance, inspecting his work. Serviceable. The runes didn’t glow on this tool, rather they *felt* hungry. That was an altogether new sensation, he had to admit. But that wasn’t the scary part.

What was frightening about the device he had created was that the tip was turning slowly in his palm towards a small pool of Chimera viscera.

Cautiously, Charley let the tooth slowly pull his hand to touch the green fluid. And the knife began *drinking* the material.

Charley dropped the improvised knife in alarm. It was hard to make out in the light, but the knife was..absorbing the blood into its structure. He saw the runes on the surface glowing finally, a deep red. And then moments later the pool was dry. The runes faded away, leaving an auspicious three inch Chimera tooth, etched with runic lines. And completely clean of any stains.

“Well, okay then.” Charley didn’t need to think about it, “I’m going to name you Grendel.”

[Grendel. Runes: Origin, Seek, Blood. Moves independently towards flesh, and drinks blood. Temporary Enchantment.]

He fit the tooth snuggly into his belt, being careful of the blade.

What was deeply interesting, that he didn’t have time to go into, was that he hadn’t exactly intended *that* when he had crafted this one. So, intention mattered, but so did material. “And maybe even setting.” He shelved the question for now.

When he was done he cautiously got up from the floor, testing his body. It felt good.

Surprisingly good. The limp was still there, He was still hurt and cold and hungry. But he felt irrationally like he could suddenly do aerobatic silk dancing. Or walk a beam between aircraft, while they were in flight

“Gods I can get used to skills.” Even with a bum leg, having [Flow like water] was stupendous.

He took one last look around, then left the nest behind.

And when he left the room the corpse of the Chimera started to bubble and dissipate into the floor behind him, unnoticed.

--

Yea, he was lost.

He limped slowly forward, passing at each intersection and just listening. Twice, he didn’t take a tunnel because he could hear...something. He was even more tired, but his head was clear and his body was gradually clearing the paralyzation.

He paused again at a three way intersection, turning his head towards each direction.

Nothing. Nothing. Something.

A sound that was like sweet nirvana to his ears. Dripping water. His throat pulsed in a swallow at the thought.

He shambled forward. A decent sized aperture met him. And slow flow of water, barely more than a fast drip, tinkled down boulders. Green moss grew in abundance at the slanted floor here, throwing light into the water and refracting around the twenty foot room. It was beautiful.

He cautiously approached the water. And then he stopped when his [Deep Intuition] triggered. It happened so quickly that he paused with one leg still in the air. He didn’t move. He couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t hear anything. Everything looked fine.

He blinked. Wait a minute. Everything looked fine? Near water with monsters everywhere?

“Yea, right.” He stared at the water hungrily a moment, then traced its splash down.

And then he saw it. A darker green, thicker moss around a boulder about two feet across. Once he spotted it Charley squatted down, to get a different angle on the thing. As soon as he did, it wiggled.

Charley tilted his head. It looked like if a rock and a mushroom had a baby. And it didn’t cover a boulder. It was the boulder. It looked like it weighed about fifty pounds, and totally innocuous. It didn’t even wiggle fast.

Charley briefly thought about the rational response of running. Then decided his leg was killing him. “Hey there, little guy.”

This time, the creature started contracting, more quickly. A viscous fluid poured out of the thing from thousands of oscillating pores. Charley backed up slowly. The fluid seemed clear, and filled some type of thin membrane that held it in a loose sphere around a slowly collapsing in size green core.

Charley kept backing up, not making any sudden movements or turning away. The creature almost reminded him of a cell, writ large. About five by five feet, with the core getting smaller. Now it started making warbling notes, and Charley could see another two creatures start to rise in the room. If he had been deeper, he surely would have been surrounded. His [Intuition] gave one last hurrah, and he knew what they were.

[Blowfish Slimes]. Charley scowled. That information was incredibly useless to him. He swore once he had time, he was going to find out what was running this mess of a system and submit a nasty complaint to the manager.

The [Slime] in front of him stopped expanding, at an impressive seven by seven sphere. He could see that the clearish mass was a slight pink, and it bent the light.

Then it started to roll forward. “Okay, running now!”

Charley turned and booked it behind him.

--

Name: Charley Peace

Class: [Natural inscriptionist].

level: 8

Skillset:

[Runic Enchantment]

Able to inscribe runes onto objects. Permanent.

  [Corvus Enca] Level: 5. Limited to lesser effects. Limited to three runes.

[Passive: Nimble hands]

[Meditative Focus]

[Passive: Deep Intuition]

[Passive: Flow like water]

Runes known:

Spoiler: Spoiler

Origin.

Flow.

Sundering.

Growth.

Light.

Seek.

Blood.

Objects in Toolbelt:

Spoiler: Spoiler

Chisel [Fiona. Runes: Origin, Flow. Increases the likelihood of discovering new runes].

Chalk [Cheshire. Runes: Origin, Flow, Growth. Can be used to chalk temporary runes. Chalk point is everflowing.]

Throwing Tooth [Grendel. Runes: Origin, Seek, Blood. Moves independently towards flesh, and drinks blood. Temporary Enchantment.]

Four steel nails