Ruth reached down to his gloved hand and tried to separate the ring from the finger. Despite being a black band over the ‘clothing’ his attempt to remove it failed. It was like trying to pull a skinsuit off his body from his finger. Not only that, the ring actively resisted him and he wasn’t sure, but he was growing increasingly alarmed because he felt like it was reacting by getting just the tiniest bit tighter around his finger.

“Don’t eat me,” Ruth said after a moment. “Haha, you made short work of that enemy! Do you require another meal or something?”

There was no response. The feeling of contentedness and warmth did not fade. Ruth held his hand out to the body of the dead Mongeese with the smashed hat, waiting for it to envelope the corpse or otherwise do something horrifying.

Nothing happened. Small relief.

This was something that had to be OHMYSHITWHAT…

Ruth held a hand over his heart and staggered away from the immortal and deadly text. It had appeared directly in front of him quite insistently, just like the old days. He squinted at the new information that was flashing in an urgent RED. Normally there would be more information but now it was just.

Attention: Please find a safe place to hibernate. Your body will undergo changes in less than 3 minutes. 2 minutes and 23 seconds remain before wish protocol “I’ll do it for you, from now on” assists with bodily changes.

Less than three minutes his firmly sculpted butt! That was practically two minutes which was a world less than three!

The hum was getting louder and the first few violet lit Cannibal Pixies appeared in the broken door. They flew around in circles for a moment before settling on one of the paralyzed Mongeese at the door. Fortunately or not for the Mongeese, he would be unconscious when they ate him alive.

Ruth froze for a moment, trying to figure out what to do when the Cannibal Pixies sniffed the air and looked around. There seemed to be something about the air they didn’t like. They worked together to grab the feet of the poor Mongeese and dragged him out the door. His hat fell off in transit. A moment later a pixie reappeared in the doorway and lifted the hat, it too flew out the door -- probably to a grim end like the creature who wore it.

“Maybe that will buy me some ti--”

1 minute 57 seconds.

Ruth turned around and to try the doorknob to the door that the Haberdasher had been trying to open when he became food for the wildly unpredictable and carnivorous clothing only to stop when the door knob started to jiggle.

Ruth quickly canceled the Generic Magnetic Field before he accidentally started destroying locks and handle. Locks and handles that he needed. The door, key still turned in the slot, opened inwardly into another larger room. There didn’t seem to be any other way out after a quick glance inside.

A number of disturbing things were present but he didn’t have time to examine or comment on them all.

Time was ticking fast.

Ruth turned around and strode over, grabbing the two unconscious Mongeese and dragging them into the other room before shutting the door. Between the smoke and the one he had slain, perhaps the Cannibal Pixies wouldn’t investigate much further. Intelligence wasn’t something that he really thought they had in abundance.

1 minute 23 secon--

“Agh! Stop it! Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Ruth flailed at the box to get it out of the way. He shut the door behind him and locked it, momentarily startled when he realized that the key was still jutting out from the door on the other side. Precious seconds slipped by as he opend the door, retrieved the key, locked the door. He pressed his back against the door as his heart started to beat wildly. Already he could feel the pressure of something within his body start to sieze control of his motor functions.

Ruth quickly moved into the room and threw two chairs in front of the door. He toppled a bookshelf next to the door across the frame as well. That would have to do for now.

Then Ruth saw the portal and he paused.

What the hell was this?

The portal, described as such because it was as flat as the immortal and deadly text and circular and hovering just off the floor, gave off a silver light. Nothing could be seen on the other side as it appeared to be entirely opaque. Ruth had seen a similar event once when he had been watching some humans hunting other humans. Desperate to get away, one human had made a similar thing and called out its name in an ancient language he hadn’t understood. The human had stepped through it, his fate uncertain.

The energy in the air hummed the nearer he got to it.

Was it a way out? Was it a trap? Was it life or was it death?

Ruth took a long momen-

47 seconds remain.

--shorter moment and considered his options. Stay and hope they did not get in. Fight for forty seven seconds and die. Go through the portal and live, maybe.

He needed an idea of where the portal led.

Ruth immediately went over to one of the sleeping and paralyzed mongeese, Malika, and hefted her on a shoulder. Without any sort of gentleness he took her off his shoulder on the other side of the room and threw her like a sack of potatoes through the portal.

Malika was gone.

Ruth waited and saw no changes from the portal. A cold chill went down his spine. Had he just fed a living being to a portal to see what would happen? No! He had saved it’s life! That’s what he’d done. Probably!

23 seconds remain.

“Shut up I can’t think!” Ruth paced to the second Mongeese. There would be no point in repeating the experiment to see the result but a new worry had grown. If he left the creature on the floor and it woke up beside him he’d be completely at its mercy. He could kill it with the remaining seconds, he supposed, but a part of him refused.

“Best of luck!” He threw the remaining Mongeese through the portal.

The next eighteen to nineteen seconds comprised of two things.

The first was Ruth threw a table with several cylinders and some weird books on it in front of the door.

The second was he moved another tall bookcase directly in front of the portal hoping that this action would block it from the other side so that if the, thus far, murderous creatures woke up maybe it would be an impediment.

“Is it wrong to think that I sort of hope the portal ate them?” Ruth was already regretting his ‘merciful’ actions.

“Aghhh.” Ruth clutched his head as red started to color the edges of his vision. With a last thought, he cast Generic Magnetic Field once more. Maybe it would protect him from small metal pixies if they came. Everything in this world sucked.

↢↦

“Not bad,” the woman said as she stepped seemingly out of nowhere. She cast an unworried glance at the pile of debris covering the entryway which was shaking slightly as creatures on the other side tried to push inward. A quick glance around the room was all it took. A moment of her attention and every piece of furniture, book, utensil, furnishing, and even portraits on the wall was piled in front of the door in an unnaturally entangled way.

Another quick glance had moved the bookshelf to the side of where it had been blocking the portal. The portal immediately reduced in size under her gaze. Moments later it fizzled out entirely. She moved the bookshelf back with a casual wave of her hand.

She brushed blonde hair out of her eyes and crouched down. White teeth gleaming as she smiled.

“I’ll be quick,” Tamara said. “Don’t wake up, or you’ll be sorry.”

↢↦

Ruth was once again soaring through the night sky. This time instead of the blue midnight scales they were a dark lacquered gold. Scales comprised of arcing electricity seemed to make up his entire body. His body felt fierce and powerful!

Despite the incomparably free feeling of the new lightning body, there was also a painful itch that seemed to crawl over his skin. He flew downward and raked the tree branches of great oaks and elms in his passing, breaking off branches and sundering tree trunks as he flew through the forest. Trying to itch his whole body as he passed through the area.

On some level he knew, that if this were real, he would have caught his wings on the sea of trees that he was flying through and long ago crashed to the ground.

There was no time to think of that though. The itch became pain. His whole body felt like it was on fire! The burning was horrible and unimaginably intense!

Worse than the burning though was the pervasive hunger that started to flow through him. He was so incredibly hungry.

Instinct told him there was food nearby. Salivating, the lightning dragon flew frantically toward the source of food. A large field broke into view as he flew through the trees.

The field was full of sheep the size of him! The sheep were also made of lightning.

Already in the field a familiar creature was already tackling one of the sheep. It was the creature that he had fought beside earlier--

Earlier when? Ruth thought it strange but couldn’t hold onto the thread of consciousness or memory of the event.

Despite the size difference Lightning Rush crowed his victory and tore into the sheep. It didn’t seem to matter that it was three to five times his size. Lightning Rush looked up once toward him, squinting as if he were having great difficulty understanding what Ruth was. It didn’t matter more than food apparently, as Rush continued his feast of the golden electric sheep.

Hunger clawed at him and Ruth fell on another of the sheep nearby. He tore and ate fast, feeling the unfamiliar heat and pleasure of the meal sink into his stomach and spread through his body. He joined Rush in roaring victory into the night sky.

↢↦

Tamara stood up at last, wiping the back of her hand over her brow. It seemed almost comical since she wasn’t perspiring and didn’t look like it had been much effort. The amount of time that had transpired was only about fifteen minutes.

“Keep being fun, and keep staying alive.” She smirked and started to turn around to leave. Then the smirk vanished and she looked upward, visibly startling like she realized what she’d said and that their might be an invisible audience. She crooked a finger upward and made a slow ‘naughty naughty’ wave.

↢↦

“It’s just a pet,” Simius said in the darkness.

“Let me kill it,” Damascus replied.

“No, it’d be better if she kept herself busy.” Simius said after an indeterminable length of silence.

“-but,” Damascus began to argue.

“Do you obey?”

“--I, I obey.”

Immortal and Deadly Text

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

★★★★ Limited Electrical Immunity.

Intelligence Favored

★★ Shock: Jolts targets within line of sight with a moderate to heavy shock, killing or incapacitating small to medium creatures. (Mana Consumption 2)

★★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. (Mana Consumption 10)

★★Magnetic Field: Powerful force to repel or attract metal using the caster as a base. Lasts for 4 hours or until canceled. (Mana Consumption 1)

Mana: 08/20

1 of 5 spell slots