I waited for a few seconds, then a little clarification appeared:
The Gift of the Dark: +1 Alertness and a chance to improve a trait
The Gift of the Deep: +1 Spirit and a chance to improve a trait
The Gift of the Dream: The opportunity to improve several traits
“What’s a trait?” I said. “You mean a facet? A boon? What kind of trait? Hell, what kind of improvement?”
There was no reply.
“How am I supposed to pick if I don’t know what the options mean?” When there was still no answer, I tried to talk myself through it. “Okay, so Gift of the Deep, that’s a bonus to spirit, to mana. And maybe to what, related traits? Mana recovery? That would definitely help. That could be huge. And the Gift of the Dark? Yeah. I admit I’m in the dark.”
I sent her a flash of grumpiness. “Okay, so I could use some help with darkness. Alertness, for sure. I get ambushed way too much. Um, then the Gift of the Dream ... I have no clue. Is that spending more time with Princess while I sleep? Dream-training like she talked about?”
There was no response, not even from Princess herself, who just slept at me like a spidery brat. I rephrased the same question another five times, then demanded, then whined. Nothing helped. Well, I was in serious need of Alertness and Spirit--and, of course, improvement of every kind. I needed to get better at everything. Yet at the moment I was lost in the absolute lightless depths, so I should probably focus on the Dark.
Although maybe getting back to the surface would be easier than I expected. If I could see the ceiling, I could just retrace my steps in smoke-form. Which gave me a perfect excuse to put off making a decision. First I’d check my surroundings, then I choose one of the Gifts.
Having decided not to decide yet, I finally set fire to the wick in the lantern. I adjusted the little wheel until the light shone brighter. A yellow glow spilled across the rooftops of this underground cavern. At least across the nearest section: it was at least five blocks of an ancient city. Probably more. The buildings looked different than the ones above: they reminded of maybe ... ancient Indian buildings? With a lot of tiers and statues and columns and stupas, if stupas were Indian, which I didn’t know. Round tower-domes? Also, there were fewer, bigger buildings here instead of lots of smaller ones, and each of the big buildings seemed almost palatial or--
My senses twanged.
Something was falling from the hidden recesses of the ceiling.
Falling toward me.
I turned my gaze upward and in the dim light I couldn’t see anything but my webtouch felt more than ‘something.’ It felt somethings. Very plural. Eight or ten things--and not just falling toward me.
Flying toward me. Flapping fast, diving silently through the air. Predatorily.
INTUIT: Spitbat, Level 6
INTUIT: Spitbat, Level 7
INTUIT: Spitbat, Level 6
INTUIT: Spitbat, Level 5
Spitbats. Great. Flying rodents with bodies the size of foxes and four-foot wingspans--oh, and with a penchant for spitting, considering the name. That sounded pleasant. At least they were low level, even if they flew and lived in the dark and--
Condensation splashed my face. A single drop. Then a few more. Except it wasn’t condensation, of course. Of course it wasn’t just innocent droplets of water.
No, it was spit. Gooey, weird-smelling spit. Weirder even than you’d imagine bat saliva might smell. Sort of chemically and acrid. The wads of spit were too small for my webtouch to accurately track ... which meant my domain couldn’t seize them. I wasn’t really sure how I’d managed with the crossbow bolts. Maybe because they were familiar to me, and I knew the direction they were coming from and--
I leaped to the side--at least I tried to leap to the side. But Princess was right. It was poison. It was some kind of contact poison that tingled on my skin and seeped into my bloodstream. It acted so fast that I was already weakening, and my ‘leap’ turned into a stumble.
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My lantern clattered to the rooftop and darkness fell like a guillotine blade. Guided by webtouch, I tried to catch myself, but my foot landed on a loose shingle as more sprays of fluid pelted me. My right leg slid away from me. I fell into a painful split before into the gutter with the rushing current.
The force of the water and the sudden shock of cold made me recoil so violently that I shoved myself off the roof entirely. Which, after of a moment of screaming alarm, I realized hadn’t been completely a bad thing: as I tumbled backward, dozens of spitballs splattered against the roof where I’d been a moment earlier, and sharp bat-claws ineffectually raked the air.
Missed me, though, as I fell like a sack of Alex-scented mulch toward the invisible ground below.
Ha-ha! Look at me! I was far too clever for a bunch of flying rats! Suck it, spitbags! I chortled to myself in amusement, even as I was still falling ... because apparently there was some kind of narcotic in the spitbat saliva.
Oh, yeah, I was definitely drugged out of my skull. And that alarming realization made me giggle as Princess yapped warnings inside my head ... then I hit the ground. Which hurt. The impact didn’t damage me much considering my tough hide, but it still knocked the breath out of me, which struck me as pretty funny. I’d fallen off a roof and hit the street! So witty.
Maybe you had to be there.
The floor tilted beneath me, and not just because I was stoned out of my honey-glazed gourd. This entire section of the underground city had collapsed on an angle, so the street was angled like a hill. Which I realized when I tried to stand, and instead rolled down the slope. Wheee! My confused websenses tracked the bats following me from above, pouring into the street between two high buildings then flapping closer and spitting.
With a half-laugh, I shoved myself to my feet and scampered helter-skelter into the darkness while Princess kept yapping.
Claws scraped against my armored shoulder. Once, twice. Then other claws tore into my scalp and pain flared and I found that less humorous. Though still, frankly, a tiny bit funny. I flailed my arms clumsily above me, my motions made slow and awkward by the poison. My webtouch blurred and Princess yapped. More claws slashed from the darkness, and a rain of spitwads plastered me. Most hit my armor but a few splattered against my face and hands and hair.
A thrill--maybe of fear--touched my heart as I spun and scrambled. Then the darkness started expanding and contracting like an acid trip. My legs felt longer. And a little rubbery. Space whipped toward me so I closed my eyes ... and the darkness started flashing with strange shapes, like amoebas splitting apart and joining together. Then I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed as I fled along the alley. My breath sounded as loud as a lion’s roar. So I tried to roar. The floor was uneven. My boots slid, I slammed into a hard surface but stayed on my feet. Princess yapped, and the walls weren’t even walls anymore but carved columns and fallen arches and weird flavors. My webtouch revealed a cityscape that I didn’t understand, and waaay more than eight or ten spitbats pursuing me.
So I panicked, and sprinted face-first into a stone statue.
My nose broke.
It hurt.
I found myself suddenly on the floor, screaming and rolling as bats landed on me like a flock of vultures on a carcass. Needle-like teeth ripped into my flesh and I summoned my hatchets and laid into them wildly. Even in my poisoned state I chopped a few apart but--
I had no idea why she’d gotten so impatient all of a sudden.
Still, I was in a pretty suggestible mood, so I did what she told me. I looted a bunch of foam beads from the dead ones then poofed into smoke, which made me giggle because that was the kind of thing that vampires did, but they were the bats, not me, so I imagined them being jealous of my poofing abilities as I drifted blindly in the dark city street. I couldn’t sense much, as my webtouch was dulled from being smoke--or from being drugged, or both.
I wafted around until I eventually ran out of mana. Then my giggles started again as I fell a few feet onto another tier of the street--a lower one, somehow, I thought, though nothing made sense, what with the cool cavernous air I was tasting and the scents that flashed brilliantly in front of my eyes.
I crawled for a while, enjoying the sensation of stone on my palms, then stood and spun in circles a few times. Then I managed to resume my mad dash to anywhere-but-there as Princess yelled again. Very impolite.
I paused to scold her but she told me ‘stop furlong around!’ so I shambled off in the direction she suggested and only tripped four or ten times before I started climbing ziggurat-like steps. Why did I decide to climb? Because I’d never climbed a ziggurat before. And yes, Princess voted against that particular idea, but sometimes you need to make a command decision. After all, how many zigs do you get to--how many climbs does your zig--how does your ziggu-rate?
Ha! Rate my ziggu!
Best ziggurat ever.
And there was a great view from the top. Well, I couldn’t see anything except for a shimmer of colors inside my brain that smelled smooth and lumpy, but as it was my first ziggurat, my one and only ziggurat, it stood to reason that it was my best. Although also, if you follow me, my worst.
“I prefer to look on the bright side,” I informed Princess aloud. “Which is ironic, considering the darkness. The bright side. Darkness. Get it? But still! My optimism is unbowed, or undimmed. Is that the word for when optimism is un-somethinged? Hey! Now I’m babbling just like you!”
“We can’t afford to run?” I asked, which was a perfectly reasonable question.
And that’s when I sensed them: a whole flock of spitbats were swarming toward me. Twenty or forty of them, with more dropping from above every second. They fell in waves from recesses in the ceiling beyond my range, like TIE-fighters deploying from an, um, TIE-fighter bay, and joined the batvalanche heading to crush me.
Well, first to drench me in spit and then to eat me alive, actually. ‘Avalance’ was a bad metaphor for what they planned to--
So yeah, I ran.