I ran sloppily.

I veered, I staggered, I giggled.

I tripped then stood again then fell then rose and sprinted and it’s possible I yelled wheeeeeee!

Princess wordlessly guided me through the shifting darkness to a sheltered corner of a collapsed stables where the spitbats couldn’t reach me. I hunched there, squeezing as far as possible into a cramped nook. And then, as it happened, I asked her a few questions about the nature of reality, and possibly--I shall never speak of this again--arachnid-style reproduction.

Then I tripped balls for a few hours. It was not a good time. Context matters with hallucinogens, and ‘jammed beneath a slab of stone while being hunted by giant bats trying to use you as a spittoon’ was not a reassuring context.

At least I had Princess talking me down. She sounded tired, though. Increasingly tired as the hours passed, until the exhaustion turned her voice into a whisper. And then she fell silent, asleep again. Or maybe even unconscious, that time.

Her blood helped me flush the poison, though, and the drugs. After another few hours, I felt a bit more like myself. So I chugged from a waterskin and ate some bread. Then I peeked from my hiding spot and the darkness only swirled a little. Well, swirled and hummed. And shimmered, but only a little.

At least I couldn’t sense any spitbats. Of course, I couldn’t sense the ceiling, either, so I didn’t know if they were up there, waiting for me. Well, Princess had said they were attracted to the light, so ...

Hm. Had I hallucinated that she’d said that? She was still unconscious, so didn’t weigh in, but clearly the bats had noticed the light. I wouldn’t make that mistake again, and I wouldn’t spend any time on the rooftops, either. Instead, I’d stick to the lower levels of this ornate, skewed, sunken city of stone and statue.

So I slunk unsteadily through the streets and the collapsed buildings, trying to keep overhangs above me. I walked slowly, partly because I was still adapting to using my webtouch as my primary sense but also because my head was pounding. I stayed out of sight--or out of sonar--until I reached what felt like the edge of the cavern, where this building ended and a massive stone wall began. I stopped there and breathed for a while. When the buzzing in my brain slowed, I followed the outside wall of the cavern, trying to orient myself, except it turned out it wasn’t the outside wall: just another, huger building.

So I searched for ... something ... for a while. I had no idea how long exactly: time didn’t have much meaning in the Old City even if you weren’t coming down from poisoned drugs. And I wasn’t entirely sure what I was trying to find, either. Maybe some semblance of normality.

Eventually, I crept into a building that might’ve once been a grand hall. It was a large, tilted, rectangular room with chunks of stone in the center and alcoves lining one wall. I found what felt like a massive hearth, then ducked inside and crawled to the farther corner.

Nothing moved.

The silence felt endless.

I pulled blankets from my domain, made a messy nest, then collapsed into sleep.

* * *

When I woke, there were tears on my face, though I didn’t remember why. I lay there, wrapped in blankets on the stone floor in the absolute darkness. I felt the weight of the buried Old City above me. And below me, too. Levels and levels of subterranean buildings extended downward until, I guess, the lowest ones rested on unbreakable bedrock ... or opened into the sea of mana upon which the entire island floated.

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As I drowsed, I felt the weight squeezing me. I hadn’t been here--in this world--for all that long. A few months, maybe? Three weeks? I didn’t have a clue, because my time in the Temple, my days of hunting thornspiders, had all blurred together. But it felt like a lifetime, and as I lay there I ... I guess I mourned? The loss of my old life, the loss of my friends and family, all the comforts and certainties of my home. Or maybe I just wrestled with the fear and danger of my new life.

I usually tried not to spend much time thinking--or whining--about that kind of thing, about my past and what I’d lost. Because, sadly, whining didn’t help. Still, sometimes you needed to indulge in unhelpful emotions; they were, tragically, the foundational fact of human existence.

In other words, I had a nice cry--and ten minutes later, I felt better. My mind clear, my body rested.

I asked.

She sent me the faintest ping: she was okay, but too exhausted to properly respond.

I said.

She sent me the faintest ping of satisfaction.

I said, and--

SUCCESS: You opted for the Gift of the Dream! Let’s see how that works for you.

“What?” I blurted aloud. “What?”

SUCCESS: You opted for the Gift of the Dream, so that’s what you get.

“I didn’t opt for shit, you squirrelly fuck,” I snapped. “I didn’t make a choice and you know it. Are you sulking because I threatened you with trying to bond to that Shimmershard gem?”

There was no response, but the silence definitely felt sulky.

“Prick,” I mumbled.

Still no reply, of course.

Fine. Gift of the Dream. Which one had that been? The chance to improve several traits? Yeah. Clearly the worst of the options, without any bonuses to stats. Also, completely vague. At least it was positive. I should’ve counted my blessings that Status hadn’t assigned me ‘a chance to lose several traits’ or something.

Still, I muttered unhappily as I cleaned my little nest in the hearth-like space in the empty hall. Then I wiped my hands on my shirt and checked my domain for breakfast foods. The results weren’t great. I had a little fruit and bread, but not much. I’d been feeding Tansy, Wren, and Usim, after all--and Wren ate a shocking amount. Even more than Tansy, despite being a third of her size. Apparently transforming into a Hulk-monster really worked up an appetite.

So I was lower on supplies than I liked. Not that I planned on spending much time trapped down here. Now that I was alone, I could use my smoke powers to waft upward without worrying about anyone else. I still didn’t eat, though. Just in case I’d need the food later. I was only a little hungry.

I moved to the edge of what I thought was a hearth. From there, I checked what I thought was a great hall. It still felt empty, with the exception of a giant snail or two. So I retraced my steps to the door where I’d entered, and it wasn’t where I expected.

Dammit. I’d gotten completely turned-around from being poisoned and drugged.

I listened to my websense for a time, then explored a few exits in the great hall that ended up not being exits but alcoves. Eventually, I climbed into a gap left by a row of fallen windows. I crouched there staring into the blackness, feeling a street in front of me, trying to extend my range. It might’ve worked, too. I didn’t know.

After a time, I crawled from the crumbling window-holes and picked carefully through the ruins, trying to find the edge of the cavern. My plan was to walk in a circle around the entire space. If that was even possible, if the ‘entire space’ wasn’t the size of Manhattan or something. Still, I thought I though get a sense of where I was, then figure how I’d pinpoint the spot where I’d fallen in from above.

Of course, that didn’t solve the problem of the spitbats. They were relatively low-level, but their poison had messed me up badly. Plus, if I remembered right, at least forty of them had been hunting me--and I was absolutely sure that was only a fraction of the total number.

So there were way, waaaay too many to fight. Especially when I couldn’t see anything. My webtouch was a massive help, though. Hell, it was the only thing keeping me alive in the dark. Still, it wasn’t as sharp as my vision. Plus, it didn’t extend all the way up to the ceiling, so I couldn’t gauge if my smoky self would reach any possible exit up there before I returned to solidity and fell to splat against the floor.

Which meant that I needed to find a way to stealthily climb higher in the cavern, without being swarmed by spitbats. After I got closer to the ceiling, I could develop a better exit strategy. So I’d climb the highest building, once I got a sense of the scope of this cavern, and start from there.

Except for one problem: even finding the cavern wall was proving impossible.

For hours I moved slowly through the twisted streets or hallways--interior and exterior felt the same, considering how many roofs had collapsed--of the buried city blocks. Checking my surroundings and my footing with every step. Keeping my attention on the cool, still air above me, in case a hundred bats suddenly dropped from the ceiling.

That’s probably why I missed the threat at shoulder level.