First, he had a house to kill.

Somewhat diminishing his joy, he finally sighed at the box that was waiting patiently in front of him. The immortal and deadly text couldn’t read the mood at all. It moved back and forth in a welcome manner as if greeting him. The damn thing had been chasing after him watching the debacle in the forest. It probably enjoyed it. To his dismay, it started bobbing at that point as if agreeing with him.

The immortal and deadly text informed him of some things, including:

Mana expenditure: 10.

Remaining mana: 10

The rest of that nonsense could wait. The important part was mana remaining. It would be another little while until his mana pulsed over and he got back to full again. He wasn’t too keen on the blinking numbers so he ignored them. He supposed this was some sort of smart way to monitor his ability to circulate mana and retain it? There was no point in thinking about it.

To his back, there was a very nerve-wracking situation with the utterly still forest. Strands of webbing swayed back gently in the wind and the trees shuddered slightly as a chilly breeze brushed past as if on cue. The moonlight actually seemed somewhat inviting. Even the leaf pile that contained at least one spider and a shed had quieted down, only shaking now and again in irregular intervals and with less and less violence.

He turned his attention to the small clearing in front of him. It was actually a fairly large clearing. Large in the sense that it could have contained more than just the tricky house and the cowardly shed. Moreover, the creature that had just devoured the cow was once again pretending to be a house. It seemed to be shuffling slightly, ever so slightly, trying to move another meter into a position where it was blocking a horrifying blood circle in the grass from his view. The remains of the mad cow.

“I see you, you bastard.” Ruth hissed through his lips. It was possible the creature had never been graced with hearing the subtle elegance of draconic because if anything it acted even more nonchalant as if the entire episode where it was eating the moose right next to him had been some sort of clandestine operation. That house was pretending it had always been a house like it was the sane one and he was the asshole.

Brief moment where focus was lost.

Ahhh, the building still hadn’t heard the subtle elegance of draconic because his speech sucked. He moved his tongue around in his mouth for a moment trying to use spit to wet it. Maybe, it was broken?

Ruth was going to continue the investigation regarding why he couldn’t speak draconic for shit anymore when a small breeze ruffled some leaves on the ground behind him. He jumped about three feet in the air and then moved further forward, heroically, into the clearing. Some careful consideration made him pause. The truly heroic thing, he thought to himself, would be to see if he could avoid confrontation altogether. So he’d move on the edge of the clearing and away from the scary-ass probably normally peaceful spiders. They were likely just misunderstood and you couldn’t just murder things that were misunderstood and bigger than you.

He was about to do that when he heard the sounds of faint children's laughter coming from the house across the clearing. The rustling of people moving within, the soft light coming from a weird corner of the building denoting light and warmth, it was even pretending to make small ‘cluck cluck’ noises from farm birds. This house just didn’t know when to stop its shit. It was bad enough that it had actually managed to shape itself into some semblance of a human habitat, but it was actually able to mimic the noises of inhabitants?

Ruth was slightly impressed.

Ruth was even more pissed off that it seemed to be fully aware of his presence and was trying to lure him in despite the fact he had just served it a prime meal.

He supposed it was worth asking the immortal and deadly text. He pointed to the house across the clearing. “Kill.”

No.

“How do… I kill it then?” Ruth asked, straining his worldview greatly and lowering himself to ask.

10 Mana Remaining

★ Shock - Consumption 2 Mana

★ Generic Magnetic Field - 1 spell slot

★ Generic Thunder Struck - 1 spell slot

“Are you… kidding me right now?” Ruth scrunched up his face.

The immortal and deadly box bobbed up and down for a moment, but before he could be infuriated it replied.

No.

Then the immortal and deadly text disappeared. Ruth twisted back to the house with some expectation. The immortal and deadly box had obviously just moved so fast his frail and mortal form couldn’t keep up. It was even now delivering a blow on the dastardly house…

Or not. Ruth stared at the house waiting for it to explode in some sort of surprising and grisly fashion. The house continued facing Ruth, the twinkling of laughter and light and mirth rising in volume slightly as if that was all it took to fool him into coming closer. The fake chimney at the top producing a slight dark smoke or gas, faking a warm hearth.

The whole thing looked even more alien to Ruth because he had no idea what happened inside human houses to begin with since he’d never been in one. He had always assumed that they contained humans and that was where they lived, spawned, and defecated. It had never occurred to him that there were some humans that just liked to hang out inside the stomachs of domesticated shelter predators.

The immortal and deadly text didn’t seem like it was going to solve his problems. Not that it had solved any of his problems before this, either. Ruth sighed and thought about what to do. He could get some branches or brush and start throwing them at the sides of the house. It would build up a nice starter spot that he could set on fire with lightning?

The idea of the house suddenly shrieking in fear, hiking up its foundations toward its support beams in terror of the fire made Ruth start to smile. The smile faded as he frowned. He frowned because he found several flaws with the plan. The first being, that would take forever. He didn’t have the kind of time where he could be lobbing sticks all night. The second? The second was the house could just move. It had already moved a considerable distance in a rush and the shed had shown him the creatures were capable of continuous movement. The third? There was no reason to talk about how he was not about to go back into spiderland to get wood and the only trees he knew of that might not have spiders were behind the house.

Ruth started to move slightly to the left, intent on escaping through a treeline nearest the side he knew didn’t have spiders.

The house shifted slightly and seemed to be focusing on him. It trembled slightly and almost tiptoed a little bit in the direction he was going. He stopped, turned, and started going to the other side. The house shuffled very slowly and discreetly in this new direction.

This tricky bastard.

It was obvious to Ruth that the house was waiting for him to get closer. Whether it was aware of the peril of the spider forest or not, he didn’t know. It didn’t seem to be aware that the shed was being eaten. Maybe, it didn’t care? It was more likely, Ruth decided, that the creature was just waiting for him to get close enough to increase the odds of capture. He thought again of those tentacles that slapped and ripped apart the moose. They had been lazy in their endeavor as if it were the easiest thing in the world to crush bone and rend flesh. The tentacles were basically prey hooks, and Ruth guessed that they were very fast.

Time to check the things he has. Sassy tail. Check. No nonsense clothes. Check.

HISSSSSSSSSSSSS. Is that all?

He briefly considered the remaining mana he had and the spells that were available to him. Shock was a good choice but distance did seem to matter. The Magnetic Field wouldn’t do him any good because Ruth seriously doubted that there was any metal present in the monster or in the clearing that would be of any sort of use with the conditions of ‘repel’ and ‘attract’. Thunder struck? What did this thing do again? Well, he could cast it twice right now, even if he wasn’t sure how much mana it took. He would learn that when he learned the spell itself.

“What the hell,” Ruth shrugged. He knew there was some other solution to the situation but he just… couldn’t think of it! It was infuriating. So Ruth did what Ruth always did when a better, more elegant, well-thought-out solution wasn’t available to him immediately -- he did something impulsive.

He stretched his right hand out and closed his eyes. He focused on the spell slots and immediately thought of two dark spots bobbing up and down next to three empty and vacant feeling spots. Ruth thought about using Thunder Struck, treating it like he had always treated magic and breath attacks when he was a dragon. An ancient memory of how it was done slowly surfaced in his mind, something in his blood or inherited from somewhere coaxing him toward the right idea of how something was done.

The box reappeared nearby, the corners drooping down almost as if it were suffering at being called back this quickly.

★Generic Thunder Struck

Channeled spell, discharging localized lightning under user direction after sufficient channel time. Due to the volatile nature of spell, effects on targets largely uncertain.

The house waited silently in the clearing, its otherworldly and alien attention solely focused on Ruth, unaware that the stars were disappearing in the night sky. The fresh scent of water began to pervade and permeate the air.

Ruth opened his yellow vertical slitted eyes and felt rather than saw the cloud cover spreading out over an area above the house. Despite the irritation at how slow this was, he wasn’t too bothered. It was just an experiment, after all, to see what Thunder Struck was about.

So far he was super unimpressed because he was channeling the spell using a spell slot and it was taking forever. His shock spell, tentatively his favorite, happened near instantaneously. He had been channeling this one for almost a minute by this point. Ruth felt like this was an unacceptably long time and if he knew exactly what a minute entailed he'd be certain. He got the feeling that if he were to stop what he was doing or move his body the spell would fail and consume itself, so he had no choice to continue standing there with his arm outstretched.

His opinion on how this was a waste of time changed immediately the moment the spell began to activate. His senses heightened and the smell of ozone stung his nostrils as the location where he was pointing suddenly lit up. The world, fully illuminated, froze for half a moment as lightning arced across the sky from every direction and centered on a single focal point above the house, making the clouds roil dangerously as if they weren’t gas but boiling water.

The house itself began shrieking before Ruth’s own eyes adjusted to the spectacle of giant ropes of lightning pouring down on it like water pouring over a waterfall. He startled for a moment, realizing that he could still direct it, and continued to follow the house with a pointed finger as it began to try and shuffle to the left. A devastating ninety or more continuous rods of pure golden light hammered into the house in under ten seconds or less.

Ruth dropped his hand dumbly, his ears ringing as the silent sounds of night slowly returned his hearing. He had been momentarily deafened from the cacophonous sheet of golden death that had fallen to the ground across the clearing.

The house sizzled and smoldered, acrid smoke beginning to rise into the air. The sounds of laughter and farm animals had ceased in its entirety. The house started to fall in on itself, the larger shell of the creature it had used to disguise itself as a general shape tipped to the side and fell over, scores of tentacles and toothy appendages flopping disgustingly onto the ground and writhing for a moment before going still.

★Generic Thunder Struck - 25%

Channeled spell, discharging localized lightning under user direction after sufficient channel time. Due to the volatile nature of spell, effects on targets largely uncertain.

Spell slots remaining 1

↢↦

Amaranthe lightly strummed her cello as she watched the darkness light up as Ruth cast his spell. She had been somewhat curious as to whether he would even survive being dragged around by the monster moose so she had continued to watch. It wasn’t because she found him particularly interesting. It had more to do, she decided, with the fact that she couldn’t really figure out how he was still alive.

The house hunter ate the moose that was chasing Ruth, the spider ate the shed that was chasing Ruth, and now he had actually managed to kill the house with a fairly troublesome spell he’d apparently had. Amaranthe might have thought that Tamara was actually making things work out for him, but her general understanding(as shallow as it was) and the fact she had seen no hints of interference made her think that Ruth may just be the luckiest little not-dragon on Flynn’s World right now.

The spell he had cast may have seemed mighty to others, but to her? She could wave her hand and that cloud would dissipate entirely and he would just be holding out his hand toward her in comical fashion. The time it needed to activate in general was far too long. He also had to consciously direct it? Any reasonably intelligent opponent would just move or interrupt him in some fashion.

For a surprise attack or used for artillery purposes it did show some merit but… so what? The universe was vast and there were many such destructive powers.

Amaranthe smiled softly as she watched Ruth drop his hand to his side and gape. He had lowered his head and closed his eyes. Probably going over how that was actually not a very useful spell. “Don’t worry little friend. Despite this setback, you have a long way to travel. Don’t be discouraged by the inferiority of such a simple starting spell.”

↢↦

Ruth opened his eyes, entire body trembling, and he raised his fists to the sky! He roared from deep within his throat and his golden slitted eyes against their black background seemed full of energy and vigor.

HE WAS FREAKING AWESOME.

Shake-shake-shake-shake.

↢↦

Amaranthe blinked rapidly, and then slowly shook her head with a wry smile.

↢↦

Arathan and Tamara both closed their eyes and shook their heads, one human grimace, and one crow grimace.

Arathan was the first to open an eye and then let out a long exhalation when she saw where he was headed. “I’m not even surprised. He’s just so petty.”

↢↦

Ruth turned around slowly and eyed the quiet forest. The spider webs and the leaves looked enticing. A promise of safety in the enfolding darkness and quiet solitude of the forest.

There was no way of knowing where anything in particular was. Still, there was one more spell slot available to him right now and he was feeling a little punch-drunk from the continuous electrocutions, ambushes, and heart attack inducing heart palpitations. He decided that for the sake of his mental health, a general direction was good enough. He raised his hand and pointed into the trees in the direction of the pile of leaves where the spider was probably gorging on the shed. He closed his eyes and grasped that last shining black spell slot and once again explored the pathways that led to the spell Generic Thunder Struck.

Ruth decided to attack the darkness.

↢↦

The immortal and deadly text bounced behind him mournfully as lightning once more played across the sky and the heavens shook. Ruth had likely just started a forest fire and...

The immortal and deadly text was being ignored again.

★Generic Thunder Struck - 50%

Channeled spell, discharging localized lightning under user direction after sufficient channel time. Due to the volatile nature of spell, effects on targets largely uncertain.

Spell slots remaining 0