So, in hindsight, I may have gone overboard a little bit. Are you dead, kid?

Arathan landed carefully next to Rush. She hopped forward on her legs once, twice, and turned her head to give him a stare from one eye. There was the tiniest bit of regret in her communication. It really was just a smidgeon though.

Rush was on his back, eyes staring blankly upward and his tongue draped over part of his face. His front legs were curled slightly and twitched spastically for a moment. His tail was rolled up and coiled at the base of his butt and looked to be stuck in that position, probably from the little creature’s inability to think straight.

Arathan shook her head. It was probably the last seven smacks that had brained the damn lizard. She had been so angry when he had started to eat his way through her aura field. She had made it weaker so the damned thing wouldn’t explode.

Arathan had meant to deter or overwhelm him but he’d just been chomping his way forward like a mindless shark. Every piece of aura he consumed he immediately converted to his own aura and used it to press back against hers. His golden aura had done an admirable job of repelling her own red aura and he’d been almost within reach of her when the last vestige of patience in Arathan had finally snapped and she’d rocketed forward and smacked him clear across the face. Before he could fly more than a few meters she’d moved in front of him and smacked him again. This process of using him as her own personal smacking ball had continued for a short time -- and now here they were.

Despite her handicap of using power that was roughly on his level, Arathan had easily trounced him. That didn’t lessen her expectation for the future. The little mouth-breather was going to be a formidable force when he was older.

Try not to die I gue--

The communication ended immediately as Rush turned over suddenly from where he’d been feigning his semi-consciousness and rushed forward with tiny little legs and directly bit down on Arathan’s left leg. He growled and his tail shook ferociously. He shook his head hard, lifting Arathan slightly but failing to move her as she put her wings out to steady herself. Despite the fact that he was thrashing around pretty good she was fairly still, looking down at him with the timeless expression of an exasperated adult when a child was play fighting with them.

Her eyes narrowed as she stared down at him. It was obvious he wasn’t hurting her and probably wouldn’t be capable of it. In fact, she imagined his teeth would break long before he could pierce her leg.

That didn’t stop the feathers from puffing out in visible rage along the back of her neck. She could feel his damn slobber starting to creep down her leg as he gurgled and thrashed. He was trying to rake her with his tiny horns but they just scraped across her without leaving a mark.

This little bastard...

I’m the best!

FINE!! CAWWW! TAMARA DIDN’T SAY HOW MANY LIMBS YOU NEEDED TO HAVE!

↢↦

Ruth had picked up the book case and placed it in front of him as the Spectral Bear advanced. The bear had size on him and he could easily see over the top of the bookcase himself anyway. It was no problem keeping track of the bear as it continued the excruciatingly slow move across the floor.

As it closed in on the bookcase between them he could see it casually give the barrier a glance. Instead of trying to pick a side to move toward to go around the shelf it kept bee-lining straight toward him. It was obvious that it didn’t consider the bookcase any kind of obstacle.

“You still have plenty of mana? You can move through this thing can’t you?” Ruth frowned and considered his options. He had less than a minute before the bear reached the bookcase and either started to press against it to knock it over or, just as likely, walked directly through it to get at the Ruth meat pie that awaited it.

Ruth started to think about finding something to throw at it. There didn’t seem to be anything. Whoever had placed all the crap in front of the doorway had done an extraordinarily thorough job and everything that might have been thrown was behind the bear.

There was nothing saying that the Spectral Bear would continue moving that slow either. It was being extraordinarily cautious but Ruth remembered bears being quite swift…

Strength against strength was out the question. If it was one of those furred creatures with hats or he had a weapon he might have considered it. His prized bow had disintegrated earlier and Ruth regretted that immensely despite the fact he still wasn’t convinced that it would save his life in a pinch.

The remembered loss of the bow immediately struck a sad chord in his heart. Respect for the mighty weapon that he had lost. Moment of silence for the bow. Small moment for the arrows too.

Click...click...click…

The clicks from the claws of the bear tapping gently against the wooden floor were getting louder and louder in his ears as it came closer and closer. A drumbeat that would only increase in volume until the Spectral Bear struck.

↢↦

“Something wrong?” Heath asked.

“No, they’ll be okay. I’m actually less worried than I would have been before. Things are different now. He’s different now” Tamara walked in front of him before he could ask what she was talking about and pushed through a curtain that served as a door into the dingy and poorly lit front room of a building that didn’t particularly look any different from every other building on this poor street.

Shapes slowly came into view. People squatted near or sat against the walls, were alone or were in small groups, resting and awake, high and sober.

“This is where mission papers are submitted?” Heath sounded incredulous and part of his hood slipped down and revealed his chin.

Almost as if they were waiting for a reason two men pushed in front of him. One of them was idly twirling a dagger in one hand with the point against the tip of his index finger.

Before either one of them could finish sneering and even start to threaten him Heath turned to look at them and his eyes flashed a deep maroon. Both men collapsed.

Some of the people in the room who had started to look up in interest immediately found something more interesting to look at by turning their gazes away. The two people at Heath’s feet were staring blankly up at the ceiling. No one was immediately sure whether they were alive or dead.

“Softy.” Tamara rolled her eyes and stepped further into the room.

No one batted an eyelash or got in their way. This was the Kitvalka, the Evil Place, and it was just an every day thing where small fry tried their luck and came up short.

“Seems pointless now,” Heath admitted solemnly. “I forgot what these places are like.”

“You should go back to your roots every once in a while. Remember the muck you crawled up from.”

“I really don’t agree.”

He didn’t look back but he knew from spreading his senses out that there were already people in the room moving toward the two downed men removing their shoes and valuables. It was likely one or two of the scavengers would have the good sense to just slit the throats of the two thugs while they were incapacitated.

Tamara grimaced but her face quickly recovered. Not fast enough for Heath to miss it. It was just as well because they turned a corner and started to walk downstairs into a darker part of the building. Soon there was no light whatsoever. Neither of them commented about the darkness but Heath did finally give into his curiosity about the face she’d made.

“What?”

“Arathan is infuriated. She just asked me if she can pull Rush apart if she promises to put him back together.”

“Wow, I really can’t tell she’s your soul shape. Her temper is usually so generous.”

“Stop sneering, your face is going to get stuck that way.”

“How about Ruth?”

“He’s about fifty fifty.”

“Fifty what?”

“Fifty percent chance that he gets eaten by a Spectral Bear.”

“Oh, well that’s pretty good.”

“The other fifty percent is how likely it is all the smoke in the room knocks him and the bear out both, and they suffocate to death.”

“Well, that’s less great.”

“Yeah.”

“Worried?”

“Perpetually.”

↢↦

“I haven’t survived the human homes and the cows to get eaten by a bear.”

The Spectral Bear didn’t seem intelligent enough to comment or talk crap back to him. In answer, it just edged closer. It was finally close enough that he could smell its breath. The bear reared up on hind legs, towering over him even though it was crouching somewhat so it didn’t knock it's enormous head on the ceiling of the small room.

The time had finally arrived. It was only moments before it would drop down and either push the bookcase out of the way or phase through it.

Ruth raised his arms in preparation for shock but didn’t immediately cast the deadly electricity. His eyes half-closed in that fraction of second as the bear came down and he activated two of the new spell slot templates he had been given.

Ruth was banking on a descriptive word that the immortal and deadly text had used to describe the spells.

Within his mana circuitry, he felt two of the remaining spell slots go dark.

The word that he was banking on was instantaneous.

Lightning Ward flared up around his body and immediately registered the bookcase as being too close. Tendrils of electricity branched out from his body toward the bookshelf looking for all the world like an angry electric octopus.

The bookshelf exploded and sent wooden shrapnel flying out with great force toward the bear and to either side of the creature that was coming down unawares.

Lightning Chain wreathed into life around the Spectral Bear before it had a chance to come down. A great electrical vest sprang into life and immediately started to bore into the bear. It roared and started to come down in place, struggling with difficulty to move. The harness of energy kept it in place as the wooden shrapnel pierced deeply into the fully erect and rampant posture of the bear.

The Spectral Bear raised its head and started to howl. It flickered for a moment, obviously trying to phase, before solidifying once more as the energy and lightning from the Lightning Chain sizzled into its flesh.

“Can’t use your ability with that on, huh? Good to know!” Ruth stepped fearlessly into the space the bookshelf had occupied moments before exploding and pressed both of his palms onto the stomach of the Spectral Bear. Sensing the danger the bear raised both paws and got ready to lean down and bite him in addition to slashing him with it's claws.

“Too late.”

Two low sounding thumps came in staccato as Ruth released shock from both palms into the front of the bear.

Then it was over.

Ruth straightened up and looked down at the fallen bear in front of him. A look of blank amazement on his face.

Maybe the bow wasn’t that great after all?

↢↦

Tamara laughed softly. “He killed the bear and got out of the room. I don’t think it was the smoke that drove him out so much as claustrophobia. He’s checking a room with a broken door and there is plenty of ventilation. Catastrophe averted.”

“Really? I thought that was going to be a bit worse, honestly,” Heath admitted.

“Well, he’s getting ready to eat the bear but it’s actually much worse than if he’d been fighting it for a while or escaped narrowly.” Tamara shook her head, laughing soundlessly.

“Why?”

“When they were fighting some of the floor exploded. That damn raccoon was hiding a corridor that leads under the tree with a panel of heavy wood.”

“So?”

“So, it leads to Under Arch. The city below the garden.”

“Oh.”

“Wilkeena’s border town.”

↢↦

Ruth scratched his head as he looked over the bear. It was well and truly fried most of the way through. The front room had revealed several tools including a rather long knife. He was reasonably sure he could cut strips off this thing and take some of the burning pitch in the inner sanctum to stoke the fire in the front room. There was plenty of crap he could burn in that room.

Sadly the mongeese he had killed with the smashed hat was missing. It was too bad because he would have liked to take that hat. It had been much larger than the other ones and he could have maybe fed it to his clothing.

The clothing. Ruth looked down casually. This was his life now. Worried that he was going to be consumed by his clothing.

Maybe he could cook the bear before he ate it? He really missed the taste of charred meat.

Ruth was having more thoughts a second then he could rightly deal with.

They all ceased when he looked back and into the room where he’d fought the bear. The natural light that spilled into the tree through the door now illuminated far more of the room.

There was a hole in the ground barely illuminated by the natural light source. It had been revealed when a piece of the floor had disintegrated from the combined onslaught of his lightning ward, lightning chain, and shock spells.

There was something on the side of the hole.

Something that looked suspiciously like stairs.

Something to investigate when he was finished preparing his meal and letting his body recover the mana it had lost. Already he could feel the flow of mana in the area painfully increasing from the bear corpse in the other room. His body was hungrily trying to retain and convert it for his use.

“Stairs, huh?” He turned to the immortal and deadly text. “Where do they lead?”

No.

“No!” He mocked it.

No.

“NO!”

STOP.

“Stop!”

IDT Status

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

1 of 5 spell slots

Mana: 12/20

★Lightning Ward: 25%

★Lightning Chain: 25%