Ruth was on his third skewer and feeling pretty good. His stomach was full, his mouth had largely stopped threatening him with brain piercing pain, and Rush had kindly waited for him to have at least a third skewer before he had walked over and started to eat the rest of the corpse from the feet up.

It was kind of amazing to watch the creature that was less than a meter long stuffing the Spectral Bear remains down it’s mouth. Fascinating to watch it take large bite after bite without end.

Dinner and a show.

When the bear was gone Rush had walked over to where Ruth was sitting and went around him. From his back, he felt small little claws hooking carefully into the clothing. A small weight settled on top of his head.

I sleep.

“My clothes might eat you.” Ruth felt compelled to warn when he felt the thing's tail starting to drape down his back. Rush seemed to weigh practically nothing despite stuffing the entire bear corpse inside of his body.

I sleep. The insistent tone in his mind was slightly irritated but didn’t sound fearful.

There was only one thing that Rush was even slightly concerned about in the universe and it was in the nowhere sitting outside of his Ruth space.

Ruth sat for a moment and watched the fire burn down. He considered the small creature sitting on top of his head. Despite the myriad of questions he had about its origin, its intent, or the fact that it could easily eat something his size, he decided that he didn’t mind how it was sitting on him, nestled between his horns.

Ruth wasn’t entirely certain but he even felt like it had very slightly diminished itself so that it would be smaller and have more space up there.

Pissing the creature that could appear and reappear and change its size off didn’t seem a worthwhile endeavor.

Not only that, but, and Ruth was really being honest with himself at this point -- there was something satisfying about having the creature on his head. All the little furred creatures with hats had evoked a strange envy inside of him. Now he had his own hat.

A teleporting, sharp-clawed, pointy-toothed hat -- a better hat.

Ruth stood up and was surprised to find that the small weight on his head shifted easily with him. He had been sort of afraid that Rush would fly off if he moved, but that seemed unfounded. It was using small claws to slightly dig into his scalp but for the most part the tail wrapped around the base of his horns seemed to be holding it in place.

Ruth threw down a skewer and decided that it was time to explore a bit.

Going outside was risking the danger of the Cannibal Pixies. There was no reason to think that they wouldn’t come back. He didn’t know anything about them other than the fact that they had been very dangerous. The battle with the Spectral Bear had not been taxing in any extreme way physically, but it had been nerve-wracking. He didn’t want to just wait around in an obviously unsafe location and wait for whatever walked in to try and eat him.

There was also the question of future sustenance.

Ruth was tired, but in great shape after his long sleep otherwise. His small ‘friend’ who had helped him before was in not so great shape. The weight on the top of his head felt lighter still, as if Rush was in an extremely fragile and delicate state.

Just wait…

Ruth snorted and smiled despite himself. It seemed his companion talked to itself in its sleep. The vehemence and anger in the softly communicated words were endearing.

Nearby, the immortal and deadly text was mindlessly creating the words:

> LORDRUSHLORDRUSHLORDRUSH

It might be some time before the immortal and deadly text recovered from whatever mental damage it had taken.

Ruth turned toward the inner sanctum and finally eyed the hole in the floor. He lifted chin and stared intently at the stairs for a long time.

If not outward? Downward.

↢↦

Sikes was used to the darkness by now. It had been weeks, maybe months since he had been stuffed into this dark hole. The only time he’d seen light in recent memory was when the Raccoon, who called himself the Haberdasher, came down with a candle to feed him once a day.

Inevitably, Sikes would have to listen to the Raccoon talk about the experiments it was doing. Sikes did his best to follow along with the archaic and often incredibly wrong theories that the small and evil creature droned on and on and on about, but sometimes it was hard.

Often if he started to gently correct some of the misconceptions or theories about how mana was transferred from a living vessel and imbued into objects the Raccoon would start to tremble in absolute fury. His whiskers would quiver and the rage in his voice would start to make his voice shrill and terrible. He would often jab a pointed stick through the bars at him and just keep whispering, ‘you see?’ as if somehow that explained things.

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A few times Sikes had been tempted to grab that stick and try to pull the Raccoon closer. Sadly the Raccoon did not have the keys on him. If he grabbed the Raccoon or somehow managed to kill him it would just be a different form of slow death. No one would unlock the cage and no one would feed him.

Sikes would often stop talking at this point(with the stick jabbing) because the Raccoon would just start rambling about things that made absolutely no sense. Things like the transference of the soul and the spirit and how it was independent of mana and how Sikes just didn’t understand.

Imagine telling Sikes, the foremost linguist, and curator of lost tomes in Under Arch, that he was the one who didn’t understand.

Sikes wished that his traveling companions hadn’t been killed.

One thing that had to be said for the Raccoon. He was an evil bastard. The four of them had been exploring routes to the surface and, hopefully, Wilkeena’s garden when they had come through a small passageway absolutely covered in sweet smelling smoke. When they awoke they were in a small alcove that was separated from the rest of the cavern by a metal cage that was ridiculously solid.

Often the food they were given was laced with something that made them feel weak. Weeks passed and his companions were taken one by one. The Haberdasher knocking them out with the luxurious sleep inducing candles.

Sikes believed he was the only one left because he could speak with the Raccoon. It was an older language, but one of the creature languages he’d picked up in his younger days reading through older manuscripts about the garden.

Little did he know that the language that he’d learned would keep him alive alright. It would keep the Raccoon from slaying him so that it could instead torture him to death with its stupidity.

Sikes had tried to explain once that mana was separate from the soul, which would often take a shape when properly awakened. That had earned him three days without food. When the Raccoon had returned and asked him if he’d learned a valuable lesson, and then claimed it was a science of all things, he’d nodded.

Sikes had learned a lesson. This Raccoon was insane and he was going to die in this dingy cell or on the floor above where his companions had been led and never returned.

The Raccoon had been gone for a long time.

Hunger was starting to gnaw at his insides but it wasn’t so bad. His stomach was smaller now and he didn’t move much, not that he’d have the energy anymore.

An explosion had shaken the floor above him somewhere nearby but nothing had happened. The darkness was still and quiet for some time after the large noise.

If he was lucky, he mused, the Raccoon had blown himself up and he would starve to death in a matter of days. If he was really lucky, the Raccoon had exploded himself and the lab he’d spoken of in great detail would burn to the ground and he would suffocate.

Sikes was just imagining what it would be like to suffocate when a light rounded the corner.

A… what was that? Was that a Tiefling or a Devil?!

Sikes didn’t care! “Hey! Hey, let me out!”

The Tiefling/Devil came nearer and stared through the bars at him. There was only curiosity in his eyes.

“Let me out!” Sikes shook the cage door weakly, taking in his possible savior. There was a lizard sitting on top of his head. A weak light was illuminating the floor around the Tiefling/Devil that didn’t seem to be from any light source.

The creature stared at him a moment and turned its head. It stared down the passageway and turned, giving no indication that it understood or cared about him in the slightest.

Maybe it couldn’t understand him? He was speaking the old language that the Raccoon had been speaking. Sikes knew a lot of languages. It was one of his jobs to read all the manuscripts and translate many of the tomes for the wizard tower in Under Arch. A fat lot of good that was doing him lately!

He could read those tomes but couldn’t use even the simplest of spells. Not that he knew many spells. Most of the books he’d been given to translate were historical in nature. No one would trust an uninitiated with a book of spells, even if that person wasn’t capable of utilizing mana.

He tried the language of the Striders. “Say something!” he cried.

The Tiefling turned toward him for a brief moment and then glanced upward, speaking to his companion, “shall we? The immortal and deadly text is displaying light so there’s no reason to delay.”

Sikes almost felt like he could cry. It was Draconic. The Tiefling was speaking in Draconic.

“Draconic? I love Draconic! Draconic is my favorite thing in the whole world,” Sikes said hurriedly. He didn't even care why this Tiefling was speaking Draconic, a language few intelligent creatures bothered to learn. Draconic was a joke in the language community. Dragons had inherited memory regarding language but rarely spoke with each other because it turned out that Dragons hated each other. Now, imagine that you spoke Draconic and weren't a Dragon. Dragons held even less regard for non-dragons.

↢↦

Rush had somehow made the immortal and deadly text emit light. It was a real help in the darkness as they descended the stairway.

Ruth was trying not to feel annoyed that it had taken the small lizard to think about it before the box had decided to be useful. Ruth was really trying not to let the fact that the immortal and deadly text seemed to hang on every word Lord Rush said with obvious joy and contentment. Even now it was spouting ‘Lord Rush’ over and over.

The creature in the cell was of minimal concern to him. It looked like a shorter and stockier version of a human. Its skin was grey, almost charcoal, and its eyes were orange. It looked sick like it had not eaten for a long time. Ruth was not sure how it had gotten stuck where it was.

It tried to talk to him a few times but was obviously unintelligent. It shook the cage, cementing his decision to leave it be.

Ruth had no desire to try and save this thing. From his experience, there were no good things in this world. If he let that thing out it would just bite him.

He had just turned away and started down the passageway with a casual word to Rush when the thing behind him spoke in the most horrific Draconic Ruth had ever had the displeasure of listening to. Its pronunciation was so bad, it’s lisp so tremendous, and it absolutely lacked the pleasurable clicks that the teeth should have made when it formed words.

In short, the creature’s pronunciation was so gods awful it was worse than what Ruth was currently capable of producing with his new lips and tongue.

Ruth narrowed his eyes and turned around.

IDT STATUS

LORDRUSHLORDRUSHLORDRUSH

Planar Tiefling: Ruth (Level 10+) (Young Adult/Lord Rush) (Lightning Specialized)

1 of 5 spell slots

Mana: 16/20

★Lightning Ward: 25%

★Lightning Chain: 25%