As I left the others, I withdrew into myself, disconnecting from Tavi in the way I’d been learning to do. Ever since The Adversary’s last messages I’d been more aware of the differences between myself and the goblin girl.
I’d also become more aware of how sterile my thoughts had become when I wasn’t immersed in the character. What I had thought of at first as roleplaying was closer to really being Tavi than I was totally comfortable with, but at the same time I also wasn’t comfortable with the emotionless state I found myself in when I withdrew from her.
The strangest thing was that the more I withdrew into myself, the more ok with being Tavi I was.
The cool logic of this state told me that the dysphoria I was feeling in her body was meaningless. That if I let myself more fully immerse, I wouldn’t even feel that way. That at my core I was no more this body than I had been my original one. That most of my hold ups were attempts to hold onto my identity, even if those things weren’t truly integral to who I was.
In this crystalline mindset I saw my bodies as the facets of a prism, filtering who I was through them but unable to change the source.
Mechanically I took care of certain biological necessities even as I contemplated the effects of biology on my self-image. Part of the problem, I realized, was that I wasn’t sure if I liked this “true” me. I had always been calculating, but I was more manipulative than I had realized. If I were a better person I wouldn’t be deceiving - and even using - Lucus and his family.
In this state I could also admit to myself that I enjoyed being Tavi. The deeper I got into it, the more fun I had. When I’d been taunting the asshole merchant I’d felt more alive than I ever had before. Tavi lacked inhibitions and being her was like being free of a weight I didn’t know I was carrying. I both wanted and feared to take it further.
My crystalline state also lacked inhibitions, but only because it lacked all emotions. I couldn’t feel shame or fear or guilt or anger. I could just remember what they felt like. Joy and elation were lost to me as well.
Ironically it was only because of Tavi’s body that I was capable of feeling shame for the feelings that same body caused. This might be the true me, I realized, but I was incomplete in this state. I had become a symbiote, or possibly a parasite, and I needed a body to provide what I needed to truly live.
With some surprise I wandered across a stairwell. I hadn’t realized that this place had more than one floor. I wondered if Lucus had gone down here, and a quick inspection revealed that he had.
The ceiling of the stairwell had been reshaped into a quick-and-dirty set of stairs much like the ones above my head, but much more roughly crafted. Lucus’s ability to manipulate and move stone like it was made of putty was both impressive and slightly terrifying. I was going to need to get the details from him at some point.
I followed the stairs down three whole floors, where they ended with both a doorway into a room at this level, and a trapdoor in what would have been the ceiling of the original version of this building. Lucus had sealed it shut with stone, having completely covered all four sides of the trapdoor with rock.
It was obvious why - this trapdoor would have been for getting on top of the wall, or perhaps the top of a turret tower set into the wall. Either way, that door now opened onto a bottomless pit and very little else.
The room on this level was large and mostly circular, confirming for me that we were in a tower attached to the wall. Four pillars of stone held up the ceiling, or perhaps held onto the floor? Architecture in this dungeon made no sense, as I was pretty sure buildings weren’t constructed to survive the reversal of gravity, yet it didn’t seem to be an issue here.
Looking about, I saw some arrow slits in one of the walls and a door on the opposite side of the room. I idly walked over to look through one of the arrow slits, curious as to what I might be able to see from this elevation. They were at a decent height to be used as a window for me, their inverted positioning having left them closer to the floor of this room than they otherwise would have been.
Above my head, I could hear the sounds of the others moving about, having finished their discussion, yet I couldn’t bring myself to care about that at the moment. The sight through the arrow slit had managed to crack my mental fortress of solitude.
Conceptually I had understood the premise of this dungeon, a city hanging off the bottom of a world like people sometimes joked was the case in Australia. In a flat-earth cosmology, this is certainly what it would look like if the world got flipped over like a coin landing on tails instead of heads.
Yet, at the same time, that was only the start of it. I was currently standing in one of the lowest elevated places in this part of the city. Almost nothing else was more than two stories tall other than the castle off in the distance, which in the real world had been built on a rocky cliffside atop a large hill. I could now see into the distance, all the way out to the dead forest whose branches now more resembled a root system sticking out of the ground than anything else.
Below me in the distance, a black sun hung low in the pale and somehow colorless sky. At first, I thought it was a black hole, possibly explaining the odd gravity of this place. I quickly realized this was not the case however.
It was the source of the pale light, as evidenced by the shadows it cast. It also hurt to look at, much like its fiery cousin, and while its light didn’t feel hot on my skin this place wasn’t a frozen wasteland like a sunless world should be.
I went around the room, looking out each arrow slit one after the other. Through some I could see the curve of the inner city wall stretching off into the distance, and I began to see the problem we were going to encounter.
The castle we were headed to was built into the wall, but it was on an island in the middle of the river that ran through the city. The wall bridged over the river, but it looked like there was a portcullis gate that could be raised and lowered to block river access. The gate was currently in the up position, which meant it was hanging in the void below the wall on uncertain supports.
The other issue was the river itself. Even from this distance I could tell it was wrong. There was no water in it, but only because what did flow through the channel couldn’t be called water.
A line of black sludge clung to the riverbed dividing the city, defying gravity as it slowly oozed its way across the landscape. Worse, there were things in the slime, moving and wiggling in a way that reminded me of maggots swarming rotten flesh. Only the coldly analytical outlook of my crystalline mind allowed me to look at it without feeling the need to vomit.
It also kept me from jumping half-way to the ceiling as someone spoke beside me. “Quite the sight, isn’t it?” Dorian asked, bending over to look through the arrow slit next to mine.
With a mental heave I threw myself back into Tavi, letting emotions and sensations wash over me in a rush, I visibly shuddered, pulling away from the opening.
“It’s something all right. That’s where we’re going? The r-river?” I stuttered, unable to repress a gag as I thought of it again.
Dorian chuckled darkly, “Oh yes, and trust me it’s much worse up close. As long as I live, I’ll never forget the smell. Everything else around here is like a shadow of itself, even the sewer smells like the memory of a sewer from a previous age. That river though, it’s alive in a way nothing else here is.”
Lucus had also made his way down here and was now making his own circuit around the room. I looked over at him and asked, “Do you think you could make us a stone bridge over the river?”
Lucus hesitated, then slowly shook his head. “Not soon at least, it’d take way too much mana, and even with Dorian’s recovery song we’d be there for days. Granted it’d give me time for Might of Mountains to come off cooldown, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea to give up that much time in here… We only have seven more days to complete a thirty-day quest.”
I turned to look back out the window, asking something I’d been wondering about as I did. “What’s that skill do anyway? If you’ve told me before I can’t remember.”
“It removes the mana cost for my species skills for ten minutes, so long as I’m in contact with the ground. It’s very strong, but it has a three-day cooldown so it will be a while before I can use it again. Normally my stone shaping abilities are very mana intensive.”
“That’s pretty damn good considering what you can do with that. What tier are Scions anyway?”
“Scions of Stone like me are Tier 2, as are most of the other base elements. I’ve been told that at least one of them is only Tier 1, but I’m not sure which - Wood maybe? Some of the more esoteric elements, as well as most of the combined ones are Tier 3.”
Arven’s voice called out down the stairway, he didn’t speak loudly, but sounds carried in this otherwise silent world. “Come on up, we’re ready to get moving.”
Lucus, Dorian, and I filed up the stairs, and back into the wall structure. Arven was standing with Dawn and Savas next to a door that I realized must lead into the wall itself. It was one of the doors Lucus had sealed shut, though not as finally as he had the trapdoor above the void. Instead, he’d created a small lip of stone across part of the door, holding the iron banded door shut as effectively as any lock.
“Unseal this for us, then take the lead. The tunnels are cramped, but there’s enough room for two armored men to squeeze past each other going opposite directions.” Arven told Lucus.
I gave everyone the once-over and didn’t see any changes. “You guys decide not to use the pill?”
Dawn grinned at me and pulled it from a pouch on her belt. “We decided to take it with us, just in case, and if we use it, it’s my call since I can both make use of it and have one of the longest sentences to be commuted if we turned it in.”
I nodded to myself. “Makes sense to me. What do you turn into if you take it? Or do you have hidden species skills to unlock?”
Dawn’s grin got even wider. “I don’t actually know. Devilkin have a wide variety of upgrade paths, and ideally I’d like to advance down one of those first before taking something like this. We start off as a Tier 2 species but can make it all the way to Tier 5 through a series of evolutions, becoming true devils in the process if we wish. I suspect I’d unlock a hidden species skill though, given how many upgrade paths we have. There must be a good number of hidden options to support them all.”
Lucus opened the door, simply running his hand over his makeshift latch and causing it to recede into the wall. I watched his mana drain away like water being poured out of a glass as he did so, a full third of it gone in moments.
We all followed him into the tunnel, which wasn’t all that dissimilar from the sewers, but more cramped. I had plenty of room personally, but the others were going to have trouble swinging their weapons if it came to it.
Dawn and I walked together in the back, giving the others room, and I kept up the questions. “What exactly do the tiers mean beyond a general indicator of power? Basic goblin is Tier 0, which feels a little insulting, but when I evolved, I got access to a bunch of Tier 1 subspecies.”
“It’s not directly correlated to power. Rarity and flexibility also factor into it. Devilkin for example don’t have access to anything as impressive as Lucus’ abilities, but we’re fairly rare and have such a wide range of options that our tier is higher than our power would seem to indicate.
“That said, it is more common for a tier to indicate power, or at least the potential for it. Most higher tier species work more like Scion’s, with high degrees of individual personal power. However, the lower the tier of a species the more populous it tends to be, and since species tend to form communities together out of simple breeding requirements it tends to be the case that lower tiered species have larger communities.
“The goblin nations are some of the most populous in the known world, and it’s because your low tier comes with extremely fast reproduction rates. A new generation of goblins can be born every six weeks, and while your lifespan is much lower than most other species it doesn’t make your people any less of a power in the world thanks to sheer numbers.”
I reflected on that. So, the balance was political power. High tier species were individually powerful, but there weren’t as many of them. Their nations were either small or non-existent.
I wondered briefly if humans were also Tier 0 since most of the people I’d seen around here were human. Then I realized that they had to be at least Tier 1 if the gestation period for a goblin was only 6 weeks, that was kind of crazy to think about. We were probably just in a human civilization.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what’s the deal with devils and daemons? I assume devilkin are a mixed breed between devils and other species? Is there something similar with daemons?”
Dawn let out a sharp laugh at that. “I certainly hope there’s nothing similar for daemons, I can’t even imagine what that would be like. Devilkin are mixed-breeds, yes. My grandmother was a devil and my grandfather was an Elf. I'm a little weird because my father was human as well, so I have three bloodlines but obviously I took after my mother. Humans and devils are both known for their ability to crossbreed with almost anything, but I don’t think daemons even have sexes, they are drawn into the world from outside reality and have no need to reproduce.”
“Oh, I assumed that devils and daemons were related in some way?” I thought about Greebil and the cashier devil I’d seen in the Exchange, considering how different they were. The more I thought about it the less likely it seemed to me that those two could be related in any way.
“It’s a common misconception because The Lord Adversary makes heavy use of daemons in his work, but no. Devils are a true species, just not from our world, while daemons are a type of spiritual and conceptual entity similar to the gods.
“Devils come from Jira, a harsh world that has forged them into a very powerful people. Most devils have a Tier 2 or higher species, but they have many subspecies and can create devilkin by crossbreeding with most other species. The Lord Adversary created them, and most of them found outside of Jira are in his employ, which makes some people prone to distrust them since he could always call on them to host one of his holy ordeals.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “He mentioned those when I talked with him, something about needing to test society to make it stronger? Makes sense that people don’t trust you much if your god is liable to have you try to kill them at a moment’s notice though.”
“It is a professional hazard, yes. Though in truth The Lord Adversary dislikes mixing the duties of his servants like that for exactly that reason. Most servants of The Lord Adversary stick to their particular calling within his service, so an Advocate is unlikely to be asked to commit an atrocity and a mass-murderer isn’t likely to be called on to represent someone in court. It just doesn’t work out well in either direction. The clergy has to be a bit more flexible out of necessity, but even so, my situation is extremely rare as we are almost never called upon to act directly.”
Dawn glanced down at me, and I caught a considering look on her face. “Did you really speak directly to him? Not just to one of his Administrators? You spoke to The Lord Adversary himself?”
“Yeah, it was definitely him. He tried pretty hard to recruit me. Honestly, I think he might still be trying to recruit me,” I told her.
Dawn shuddered a little and lowered her voice. “I’ve heard his voice before, once, but I’ve never seen him in person. What’s he like? Do his statues do him justice? I’ve spoken with some devils who have met him and they said he’s so painfully gorgeous that mortals cannot gaze upon his true form without going insane. Is that true?”
I blinked, unprepared for this line of questioning. When I’d met The Adversary I hadn’t been female, or at all attracted to men. Dawn’s question called up those memories with new context and I found myself blushing.
The thought describing how attractive a man was in this state was mortifying. Desperate, I moved my consciousness into Tavi’s mindset, and I found myself answering her almost without being aware of what I was saying.
“Oh, he’s definitely hot but not an instant panty dropper. He’s got muscles bigger than my head, and I’d love to see him without a shirt on. I bet he’s got a killer set of abs. He’s also clearly very intelligent. I can’t decide if the clothes he was wearing made him more or less sexy though, I think he was wearing them to try and seem more relatable and down to earth, but it gave him sort of a buff nerd look which was pretty cute.” I clicked my teeth together to shut myself up as the urge to indulge in girl-talk railed against my self-control.
Dawn shook her head but was still smiling, “I thought they might be exaggerating a bit, but maybe less than I thought… Still, strong, handsome, intelligent… That sounds like someone else we know.” She pointedly raised an eyebrow and nodded at our friends walking a little way’s ahead of us. “Are you and Lucus a couple? I felt like I was getting mixed signals there.”
I mentally sighed, then let Tavi take over completely, throwing myself into her mindset as totally as I’d earlier withdrawn into my crystalline mind. It was the only way I was going to survive this conversation.
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“Ugh! I don’t even know! He makes these moon eyes when he looks at me but he won't so much as touch me! I don’t get it!” I complained.
Vaguely I noticed that I was walking differently now. It was subtle but for the first time I felt completely at ease in my own skin. Dawn held a hand over her mouth to suppress a laugh, then lowered her voice to respond. “Boys can be strange in how they express their feelings, and I find they often miss even the most obvious hints. Have you tried asking him how he feels about you?”
“If I did, I don’t remember.” I said, continuing to speak at my normal volume, uncaring of who overheard us. “It’s obvious though.”
“Is it? What if he’s looking for more than just a casual relationship?” Dawn asked.
In the back of my mind I knew I’d already decided something like this was the case, but right now I was actually having trouble understanding why it was a problem. What had seemed so clear earlier was somehow now a muddled mess in my brain. I knew Dawn was right, but I couldn’t make the logic work in my own head anymore. It just seemed like such a non-issue.
“Ladies, we’re about to hit the next guard post.” Arven called back to us, sparing me from answering.
“Finally, some sort of action.” I muttered to Dawn, who chuckled as she walked up to join the others. I pulled out my lever and primed the crossbow. I wasn’t sure if you could damage the thing by leaving it drawn too long so I’d left it unloaded until now.
It occurred to me that I’d unlocked a skill earlier when I’d shot that burning arrow, and I opened up my menu to take a look.
> Burning Bolts
>
> Active Skill (Tier 1)
>
> Prerequisites: Intelligence (15), Willpower (15)
>
> Rank: 0 / 5
>
> PP: 0 / 2
>
> Activation Cost: Mana (Medium)
>
> Activation Type: Instant
>
> Cooldown: N/A
>
> Conjures a bolt of pure fire and hurls it at a target doing normal spell damage plus 5% per rank in this skill and potentially setting it on fire. Alternatively, you can enchant a piece of ammunition or thrown weapon with fiery energy for half the normal mana cost. When used in this way the energy dissipates from the item when it makes contact with a solid surface, causing the weapon to do both its normal damage and the damage of this spell.
That seemed cool, I didn’t really have much use for my mana currently, so this seemed like a good option. I mentally moved some points into it only to be met with a new prompt.
> System Alert
>
> Skill prerequisite not met.
>
> You do not meet the prerequisites “Intelligence (15)” and “Wisdom (15)” for the skill “Burning Bolts” - you may bypass these prerequisites by expending a rank of Innovator each, however you do not currently have any purchased ranks of Innovator available.
I dismissed the message and went to check on my stats. I had a 13 in both Intelligence and Wisdom. I didn’t have enough Trailblazer points to rank up my attributes twice each, but I had a better idea. My base score in each attribute was 10, so if I maxed my rank in Dual Nature I’d end up with a 50% bonus to all my attributes and meet both prerequisites. I’d be lying to myself if I said I wasn’t planning to max that skill out eventually anyway, it was too good not to, so why not do it now?
I’d been being overly cautious with my progression points, and now I was sitting on over a hundred unspent points. It was time to fix that. I took 20 Valerian points and used them to buy the last two ranks in Dual Nature. All my stats shot up at once and I waggled my ears happily as I felt the changes kick in.
Dawn looked back at me with a confused expression on her face, and I realized she must have noticed something change in the party interface. I gave her a huge toothy grin and a wink, then mouthed the word “secrets” at her. She rolled her eyes at me, but then turned back to pay attention to whatever the boys were doing. It looked like Savas was picking the lock on a door.
I wrapped up by putting two points from Trailblazer into Burning Bolts, purchasing the skill and adding it to my Trailblazer class. Blaze, burning… It just made sense to put it there, and it even had exactly enough points.
I slotted in a bolt and put a finger on it, activating my new skill. The bolt began to glow with a hot red light, but it was dim enough that Dawn’s light overpowered it easily, so nobody turned around to look at what I’d done.
Dorian had resumed his sound dampening chant, and Lucus pushed the door open. The room was nearly identical to the one we’d left from in the other guard post. It was also depressingly empty. Lucus stepped into the room, quickly followed by Arven and Savas who went to check the next door.
Grumbling, I lowered my crossbow, only to raise it again moments later as my danger sense triggered and a shadow slipped in through the open doorway, slinking along the ceiling towards me, Dawn, and Dorian.
“No you don’t,” I told the ghoul silently, grinning ear to ear.
I launched my burning bolt at the Nightstalker on the ceiling. It streaked through the air like a firework and took the ghoul right in the eye, dropping it from the ceiling in front of Dorian who backpedaled in a panic.
The ghoul spasmed on the ground for a moment, obviously hurt but far from out of commission. It soundlessly climbed to its feet, flames tickling its eye socket. Then I realized we had a problem. Dorian hadn’t stopped his chant, and in the next room I could see Lucus and the others fighting skeletons that had come through the door Savas had opened. They hadn’t noticed the ghoul flanker hitting their back line.
A thrill ran through me, and my grin got wider. This was going to be fun.
I dropped my crossbow. It was going to take too long to reload. I drew my dagger instead and ran forward past my two friends. It was my job to protect the back lines, and I wasn’t going to let them down. As I ran, I cast Burning Bolts again, this time on my dagger - throwing it ahead of me and embedding it in the ghoul’s torso.
Now weaponless I charged the ghoul. It was slightly off balance from the dagger sticking out of its waist and I used that to my advantage, dodging a swipe of its claws as I dropped and rolled between its legs, reaching up with my long arms and yanking the dagger out as I dropped about half a meter to the ceiling of the room beyond.
The ghoul turned to face me, dropping to all fours, and launching itself at me in a blur of shadow. Pain tore through me as the ghoul’s claws sank into me and locked us into a deadly embrace. I felt my limbs starting to go numb from the poison, but I rammed my dagger into its back before I lost my grip.
Desperate, I activated Devour Essence, targeting the soul of the Nightstalker we’d killed earlier. The shadows deepened around us and the ghoul paused its attacks, confused. Then I realized that I had probably stopped showing up on its Lifesense ability. At the same time, feeling returned to my limbs and I felt much of the pain from my wounds fade into the background.
Your passive skill “Undeath” has negated “Paralytic Poison” (Bane, Tier 2)
I activated Shank, driving my claws into the ghoul and shaking it out of its shock. The next few seconds were a flurry of claws and teeth as the ghoul and I tore each other to shreds. It bit me in the neck, and I immediately returned the favor, spamming shank with my claws until my stamina bar was empty. Neither of us bled, but he was on fire and my HP was dangerously low.
I looked up to see Dawn charging at us, her staff raised and glowing with the same holy light she’d used on the Bonecrusher. If my mouth hadn’t been full of rotting ghoul flesh I would have grinned. This thing didn’t know what was about to hit it. I dug my claws in deeper and tried to hold it still as Dawn brought down her staff… Hitting me directly on the head.
You have been afflicted with “Smite!” (Spell, Tier 2).
“Smite!” deals double damage due to your undead nature!
Your passive skill “Essential” has triggered. Damage from “Smite!” negated!
Negated damage has been converted into health, mana, and stamina.
New Achievement! “I am Invincible!”
I let out an involuntary giggle as Dawn’s attack bounced off me like I was made of rubber. She stumbled and fell on her butt, blinking in surprise at the apparent total lack of effect. On the other hand, I was now maxed out on all three of my resource pools. The hideous wounds I’d been suffering from moments ago were gone, and the only hint they had ever been there were my ripped and torn clothes.
I should really ask her to hit me more often.
It was obvious she couldn’t see me in the roiling darkness and had taken a gamble on the ghoul being the bigger target. I didn’t hesitate to take advantage of my newly full resource pools. The ghoul’s claws and teeth had been forced out of my body by the rapid regeneration, and I used the momentary freedom to slip out from under it.
We were next to the wall and I scampered up it using the ghoul’s Spiderclimb skill, then dropped onto its back, grabbing it by the neck and hanging off it. This time though, I dug in my claws, using Shank several times as I did so, and when I had a good grip I bent my neck forward at an unnatural angle and ripped the ghoul’s throat out with my teeth. I’d been dying to bite something for a while now and it felt great to get it out of my system.
The ghoul was obviously caught off guard by this sudden flurry of attacks, but I didn’t let up. I kept one arm wrapped around its chest, claws embedded in its ribcage for support. I raised my other hand and held it to the back of the ghoul’s head, casting Burning Bolt directly into the back of its head. Again, and again, and again.
On the third bolt, the ghoul’s head exploded in a shower of gore.
Souleater: You have captured the spirit of Nightstalker Ghoul (Tier 3, Undead).
New Achievement: “Let me solo it”
Congratulations, you have received enough XP to become a Level 12 Goblin!
Congratulations, you have received enough XP to become a Level 4 Trailblazer!
I spit out a wad of ghoul flesh and deactivated Devour Essence, the shadows peeling back from both our bodies as the skill ended. Apparently two souls of the same type of creature were conceptually similar enough to fit into the same spot in my soul-space. That was pretty convenient. I had a feeling that Undeath skill had done a lot to balance the scales in that fight and I was glad to have it recharged.
I looked up to see everyone staring at me. Dorian was still maintaining the silence effect, but the others had finished off the skeletons that had come piling out of the far room. It looked like there were a few cuts and bruises between them, but they didn’t look any worse for wear. I lifted my ears in question, wondering what their problem was.
Arven just shook his head and turned back to the room they’d just cleared. I fished my dagger out of the Nightstalker’s back and wiped it off on the ghoul’s tattered scraps of clothing. Dorian was holding my crossbow, but before I took it back from him I got out the canteen of water I’d been given as part of my supplies and rinsed my mouth out.
The taste of rotten ghoul flesh wasn’t as bad as I thought it should be, but it wasn’t pleasant either. It also gave me an excuse to spit on its corpse. Damn thing didn’t even drop any loot.
I finally noticed that there’d been another casualty in the fight. The nice leather vest I’d been wearing was a tattered ruin. My shirt and chest bindings had been reduced to useless rags that were in the process of unraveling.
There were surprisingly few bloodstains, probably because I’d stopped being able to bleed shortly into the fight, but at least now I understood why all the boys were staring at me. I sighed and peeled the remnants of my old clothing off, then I kicked the ghoul corpse in annoyance. I had really liked that vest.
Dawn had made it back to her feet by now and had pulled some cloth out of her pack, she handed it to me and I used it to wipe my face, then I handed it back to her with a silent thanks. She shook her head and tugged on her own shirt and then motioned to me.
Belatedly I realized she’d handed me a spare shirt, and I pulled it on. It was far too big for me, but I managed to tuck it into my pants to keep it from being too much of an impediment to movement.
We swept the rest of the rooms in this guard post without any issues. The skeletons were a bit dangerous, especially the ones with bows or crossbows, but we were coordinated enough that they didn’t pose too much trouble.
Savas got hit in the shoulder with a crossbow bolt at one point, but Dawn was able to take care of him easily enough. I was still riding the high from the fight with the Nightstalker so the skeleton fights were pretty boring, but overall I was pleased. Something in the back of my head was telling me I needed to be more careful now–that my safety net was gone–but it was hard to care about that when I was having so much fun.
When we were done clearing the place out Arven asked Lucus to seal the doors other than the one we’d come through. This was apparently as far as we were going today, and he wanted to secure the building before we made our way back to the dungeon entrance.
When I asked about it, Dorian told me the group had started its current run the day before, clearing out the sewers we’d passed through on the way here. The sewers were always dangerous though, things would wander around in them, and so even though they’d cleared out a wide area there was no telling what might show up.
The plan was to secure these guard outposts along the wall one at a time, making our way to the castle. The next guard post in the line was the river gate, and there was another on the opposite side. They had never made it past there in previous attempts because it was so dangerous to cross the river. Arven told me he was only rarely able to convince groups to even try, and for most groups it was essentially impossible.
Now though, we couldn't afford not to try.
Arven set up a cache of extra gear and climbing tools in one of the holding cells. This too was standard practice, we'd be bringing in even more supplies tomorrow and we were expected to leave some behind, it would be necessary for making sure we had enough gear to expand our range of exploration each day.
Some groups apparently would rig up ropes and grappling hooks over to nearby buildings in order to search for loot, tying them off on parts of the buildings themselves and using them to climb back into the sewers afterwards. Doing this always sacrificed the ropes as they couldn't be untied once secured and nobody was willing to pendulum back and forth on a rope above the void.
Anything we left behind would be fine until the dungeon reset at the end of the week - so long as nothing got into it. Tomorrow we'd be loading up on extra food and water as well and would add it to the cache, where it would serve as lunch and dinner on our way out the following day. Dawn would also be leaving the Infusion pill here for now, putting off our need to make a decision on its use.
I wasn’t having as good a time as I had been earlier. My cramps debuff had come back, and while a quick chat with Dawn got things fixed again, she let me know that all her healing was doing was pushing things back.
Holy magic effectively undid damage, and this was a natural process that needed to happen. Nature magic could speed it up or ease the process somewhat but nothing Dawn was aware of could completely stop it short of constant healing. Dawn herself used her magic to control the timing of her periods but had to suffer through them just like everyone else.
My annoyance and discomfort at all this had an upside. I hadn’t exactly lost control of myself, but I had let myself get carried away. Being uncomfortable in my own body slowly brought me back to myself, separating my consciousness from Tavi’s thought patterns.
Looking back on it I was more than a little appalled at some of the things I’d done, not the least of which was making permanent build decisions on a whim. It’d worked out, sure, but “whimsical” was not a term I ever wanted to apply to my build.
It was disturbing, and I was going to need to be very careful about this. What I was doing went a lot further than simple roleplaying. There were physical changes to my neural pathways. It was almost like letting someone else do my thinking for me or making decisions while on a mind-altering substance.
I knew that the brain was malleable and could be retrained over time, so I suspected that the divide between Tavi and myself would blur and fade over time if I kept pushing at it. The problem was, I was finding Tavi to be way too fun and was getting caught up in what should have been an act.
The other side of the coin had been my fight with the Nightstalker. I could not have won that fight if I’d been myself, or even a hybrid of myself and Tavi in that moment. Tavi was an adrenaline junkie, I’d realized, and she had instincts to fight with tooth and claw that I just didn’t have.
In my current state of mind I tried to shy away from the very idea of ripping something's throat out with my teeth, but as Tavi I’d done it without hesitation. It made me really think about the fact that in most fantasy scenarios goblins were monsters just as much as any undead, and I had to wonder about the greater goblin society and how different it was from city life in a human majority area.
These two events were tied together in my mind. I was reluctant to just be Tavi most or all of the time, but there were definite benefits and they made me unwilling to just be myself or a hybrid all the time. I needed to figure out how to control this, to take the best aspects of being Tavi and mitigate the worst with my own strengths.
I could see my analytical mind poking through even when I was deep into being her. Perhaps I wasn’t giving the original Tavi enough credit, but I was coming to believe that a true merger of our minds could lead to a truly terrifying combatant that was backed up by ruthless tactical planning.
Around this time, I also realized that I’d stopped looking forward to a time when I didn’t have Tavi’s body. I’d probably still move on from it, sure, but now I was at least looking to take something of it with me when I did. Tavi had improved me in some ways, and I couldn’t ignore that. Yes, she could be extremely embarrassing too, but surely I could overcome that in time.
These thoughts spun through my head as we jogged back to the dungeon entrance, making good time now that we didn’t have to worry about any enemies for most of the journey. We took the sewers slower, and Arven had me lead the way.
My perception and danger sense had proven very adept at spotting threats and the highest potential for threats was in front of us. I was nervous with my Essential skill on cooldown, but I tried to borrow some of Tavi’s insane courage to keep myself grounded.
Fortunately, we made it back with no issues, and I pulled up short in front of the dungeon entrance, having followed my mental map right back to where we started.
“Told you I could find it,” I told Arven.
“I didn’t say you couldn’t.”
“You sounded like you didn’t believe me.”
“At this point if you told me you were secretly a shape-changed dragon stuck in the body of a goblin, I’d believe you.”
“Man, I wish. That’d be so great!” I grinned at him, trying not to show just how close he’d come to hitting the nail on the head.
Arven turned to face everyone else. “Remember, keep the story straight and simple. This was a standard run, nothing weird happened. We made it to the second guard post and brought back standard loot, the most interesting things we saw were the Nightstalkers. Oh, and for the love of the gods don’t forget to unequip your titles.”
We all shared sheepish looks as we navigated our menus and unequipped our titles. I spent an extra few moments reviewing my own status and making sure there was nothing weird. Since I’d boosted my Dual Nature skill I was even less worried about being examined now, but I knew that could lead to sloppy behavior with things like the title system.
Arven went up the stairs first, followed by Dawn, Dorian, and Savas. They didn’t seem to notice they were leaving me and Lucus alone in the dungeon, just as we’d quietly planned with nothing more than a few glances and subtle body language.
It was scary how well I could read him, and it made me worry that he could read me even better. That he’d figure out that something was off. I also knew what he wanted to know.
Lucus started to open his mouth to ask me what I’d done with the Statuette of Valera we’d stolen the previous day, when it materialized into my hands. I grunted and tried not to drop it, having forgotten how heavy it was.
“I’ve got a personal extradimensional space now, it’s not very big, but I shoved this in it,” I told him, already starting the process of putting it back.
Lucus’s mouth hung open for a moment, then he managed to stammer out. “Oh. Ok.”
I grinned at him and wiggled my ears. “Come on, they’ll think we’re back here making out if we take too long.”
Then I walked up the stairs and out of the dungeon. That was another thing Tavi was right about - it really was fun to tease Lucus.