image [https://i.imgur.com/9iiHBfZ.jpg]
The booming voice came from the painted zodiac on the ceiling, but it resonated enough to have been from anywhere or everywhere at once. It could have been an auditory illusion.
The temple’s green glow brightened and in the same verdant hue of the juniper specter whose mote still lay on the arena floor.
Little green lights ringed the structure’s edge. I could hear soft, squeaky shouts from around me. In my peripheral vision, blemmies stopped their peculiar routines and ran toward the center of town.
“Arise! Slaves of Odum, blessed be His name,
Deliver the uncolored ones to His truth,
Let them bask in the ecstasy of divine servitude,
Enlighten them for all eternity to His bliss.”
Fabulosa pressed her palms to her ears and shouted at me. “I reckon we’re the uncolored ones. He wants to add us to his specter spectrum.”
My gorge rose as I steadied myself. A falling sensation overcame me, and I doubled over for balance while the room spun. A halo of green silhouetted Fabulosa, and through the glare of Presence, I could see that my arms and legs emanated the same green light radiating from the temple’s interior.
The color green bathed the entire room.
“Patch! We’re shrinking!”
A debuff icon appeared on the periphery of my interface.
Debuff
Mote in Odum’s Eye
90% size reduction.
Duration
Until Odum Deems Otherwise
The proportions of the world changed. Every second that passed, I seemed to be 10 percent smaller.
I pointed to the town. “Quick, get out of the pit! Don’t get stuck in the pit!”
I ran to the edge of the pit as Fabulosa did the same. I hoisted myself over what used to be a shin-deep depression. The kiddie pool size looked closer to the full-sized version, and we climbed out from opposite sides.
“We need to get out of here!”
Fabulosa Slipstreamed close to my side of the pit.
We ran side-by-side from the center of town. The shrinking made me dizzy, so we lost our footing as we ran. I ignored the voice in my mind that exalted the virtues of Odum and focused on avoiding running into buildings. Our changing size made running easier because the streets grew wider.
The buildings became higher than our heads and continued to grow. We ran toward the closest cardinal point in the room. I used the zodiac painted on the ceiling for orientation. It helped me to remain upright under this dizzying effect.
“He, who stirs the constellations in his slumber, awakes,
He, whose dreams begat a thousand worlds,
Beckons all to everlasting submission.
Children of Odum, blessed be His name, attend to the nonbelievers.
See them to their place at the feet of His being.”
Fabulosa panted as we ran. “He’s laying it on a little thick.”
The painted animals on the celestial dome became hard to see because the room also got darker. As the range of my Presence light reduced, it wasn’t illuminating the space anymore. Only the ring of the glow stones we placed around the city stopped the room from plunging into darkness. Not only were we shrinking, but our spell ranges collapsed.
As we sprinted through the streets, the details of the facades sharpened. It became more apparent the doors, windows, and artifacts around town were fake. We still stood taller than the blemmies, whose mad features had grown more explicit at this vantage, but the vertigo sensation hadn’t subsided, so we stumbled while we ran.
The longer we ran, the smaller we became until we reached the city’s edge. The dizziness subsided when we stopped shrinking. We stood roughly half a foot tall, slightly taller than the blemmies, who were muscular. I wasn’t confident we could break free if one of them got a hold of us.
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“Is this the right way out?” Fabulosa looked as frightened as I felt.
“What do you mean? There are four exits.”
“No! The thieves only opened one of them. Remember the borehole?”
On the city’s outskirts, the buildings still blocked our sight. We couldn’t see over them and had gotten lost in the crooked streets. Rooms with radial symmetry made it difficult to maintain a sense of direction. And being underground rendered the interface map useless.
I slowed down. We’d spent so much time cutting down specters I’d forgotten that we climbed through a block of stone to get into this room. I looked at the nearest wall. It looked blurry, as if too far away. I could barely make out if we headed toward the correct exit. We weren’t. Besides, our diminutive size meant Slipstream wouldn’t have enough range from the floor to reach the thieves’ borehole.
“Patch, we have company.”
I turned to see dozens of lizards emerging from their holes. They still were smaller than us, but the sticky tongues they zapped at crickets weren’t so cute anymore. Perhaps the outskirts of town wasn’t such a good idea.
We didn’t have time to ponder the situation. A blemmy lurched around a corner and swung a heavy fist at us, even though we stood far outside its melee range.
“Does it expect to hit us from there?”
It didn’t. Perhaps blemmies had poor depth perception, but they closed some distance with a loping gait.
Name
Blemmyae of Odum
Level
20
Difficulty
Deadly (red)
Health
770/770
The blemmy’s chest-face disturbed me more after I shrank down. Its facial expression locked into a state of permanent confusion. Its eyes were unfocused, and one of its eyebrows hung beside the eye instead of above. It had an oversized nostril, swollen gums, and unaligned teeth that sprouted from several rows—a fat molar stood where an incisor should have been. Even its grunts sounded ugly.
A blemmy presented no challenge, but we’d seen over 100 of them when first assessing the city diorama. The game considered one member a red threat because it belonged to the entire population. We could wear this guy to zero in a minute, but his comrades would soon be upon us.
The mad chase began. The blemmies chased us like angry villagers. When more blemmies joined the race, Fabulosa’s twisting Tangling Thorns caught hold of two pursuers. Not only did it please me to see the grappling vegetation working in the sandy underground, but its eruption created an obstacle for the other blemmies to run around.
We picked up the pace and ran faster than our pursuers. When a few more appeared down the street in our path, I looked for a suitable defensive position. It would be impossible to escape the room.
“You think we ought to Hot Air ourselves to a rooftop?”
Fabulosa grimaced at the idea. Even in a defensible position, trapping oneself cut off future options, but we had no alternatives.
I cast Hot Air before she could respond. I could use the blessing once per day, but if I’d misjudged this building’s height or couldn’t reach the top, I could reset the cooldown with my cassock. Fabulosa had no such luxury. I rose as the blemmies closed in on our position.
Hot Air’s slow ascent presented a problem. I rose 1 yard for every second. We didn’t have time to see if I could reach the roof. Fabulosa came after me. The other problem involved its purely vertical ascent. If I were out of arms’ reach of the building, I couldn’t jump or lunge for it. Since the buildings were just models, they weren’t perfectly perpendicular, and the roof stood yards out of my reach by the time I’d elevated myself.
A group of blemmies gathered beneath us. Although we stood far outside their grasp, they made grabbing motions and awkward jumps to reach us. They groaned and waved their arms as if they didn’t understand the concept of distance.
When I reached the top, I Slipstreamed onto the roof. “Fab, is your Slipstream cooldown over?”
“I got 40 seconds left.” She floated out of reach, panicked because her Hot Air would end long before.
I quickly pulled a knotted rope from my inventory and tossed its coils at her when she reached roof height. She caught hold of it with both hands. I wrapped my arm around the other end to reduce the slack and support my grip.
I nodded to her, and she released her Hot Air effect, and gravity swung her down against the building with a smack. Neither of us lost our grip.
She unexpectedly grew heavier without warning, and I almost pitched forward off the roof. The tail of the rope had fallen to the blemmies, and they began pulling it. Their weight and strength grew more than I could bear, and my grip faltered.
I lowered the line to the roof’s edge, hoping to use the friction to maintain my grip. While the blemmies pulled on the line below, I didn’t need to tell Fabulosa to hurry. She perceived the taut rope in our vertical tug-of-war and wasted no time making her way to the rooftop. Within seconds, she reached me as the rope pulled my shoulders nearly out of their sockets.
The sandstone building felt as coarse as gravel at our size, and pieces crumbled as I struggled to maintain my grip. When Fabulosa reached safety, I let go of the rope before the mob pulled me with it. It dropped into the blemmies below, who continued to fight over it.
Using the Dark Room improved our rope-climbing skills, and Fabulosa ascended quickly. Watching her climb made me consider the magical sanctuary for an escape mechanic, but we needed to move, not hide. The mob below might knock down the building, and judging from the timeless trappings of the immortality engine, we couldn’t out-wait them.
We flattened on the roof and gasped for air.
I summoned Beaker, but he didn’t tower over us. Spells shrank, so I dismissed him. Even if he were his standard size, he might not be helpful. I remember how heavy they felt in my hand and doubted he could kill many blemmies before they overwhelmed him.
As I lay, catching my breath, I felt a tremor. Fabulosa sat up, rolled to the edge, and looked down. “They’re punching the building!”
I got up and peered over the edge. Like a zombie horde, they surrounded the structure and beat at the walls beneath us, knocking loose bits of rock with every swing.