When Goodie awoke, it was to a euphoric sense of comfort, marred only by the screaming rage of Her Majesty, a wondrous sense of relief from something that he was not blissfully unaware of, but soon made itself known.

Like an orchestra slowly warming up, their instruments slowly coming alive, so too did his sense of pain return. A burning sensation slowly worked its way along his nervous system as his body fully awoke, quickly building up and culminating into a fiery crescendo that threatened to overwhelm him.

Goodie wanted to scream, his muscles clenching from the horrendous feeling, almost forcing him to blackout again as it overtook him. His body had been pierced through by those sharp stone pointy things that you found in caves. For a brief, blessed moment he was temporarily distracted as he tried to remember whether they were called stalagmites or stalactites, but in the end all he could think was that they were a bunch of pointing rocks that had turned him into a glorified pincushion as he had fallen onto them at the end of his descent from above.

Instinct drove him to bring up his character screen and use one of his healing rewards.

For a moment he experienced a brief but impossibly long pause as he was stopped by indecision. Healing himself was the obvious choice, yes, but he knew from smell alone that he may have been affected by septicaemia, the stench coming from…well…all around him making it more than clear that he had soiled himself at some point. His wounds may have been infected by the filth of his own body, to think nothing of whatever magical, bullshit, otherworld bacteria that may have been covering the stalagmites or stalactites before he landed on them. If he healed himself, he may have been sealing whatever foreign contaminants had invaded his body inside and who knew what would happen then as he healing spells and cure disease spells were two different things, and he had only three of the latter. One of the cleanings spells might have been able to deal with the contaminants regardless of whether they were sealed in or not, but he was not willing to risk it and the spinning of his head was making thinking things through far too difficult for him.

Fearing that he would black out, Goodie pushed forward with his decision by selecting a cleaning spell before following up with the healing spell. Both bought relief to him as they wash over his body, the first of the rewards of his [Sacrifice] ability cleansing him of the filth that had contaminated his wounds and his pants, the second healing his wounds shut.

The relief from his efforts was short-lived, however, as he soon blacked out again.

A while later he awoke with a start, once again needing a moment to realise where he was and what had happened, once again being chewed out by the snake that was supposed to have been his servant.

Still disorientated, Goodie tried to centre himself by asking the obvious; who, where, when, what, how and why

Where he was, was more than clear. He was in the dark, the underground offering him not even the luminescence of its freaky mushrooms to see by. Not that he needed it, however, the eyes of Her Majesty more than capable of piercing the veil of darkness around him, but it was disorientating and being denied the use of his eyes was stressing him out for some reason.

It would be nearly impossible to the question of when, as there was no day or night down here and Her Majesty’s grasp of time was…she kept her own time.

Goodie was not much interested in why, but who and what had happened was that an utter prick had tossed him off a ledge, sending him tumbling into the depths below. He had done his best to use his powers to slow his descent but had ultimately failed, in the end, resorting to covering himself in balloons made of his shadow stuff with the hope that they would mitigate his eventual and sudden impact. A desperate tactic for a desperate situation, but one that may have saved his life.

May have, as the last moments of his descent were a complete mystery to him as he had blacked out, most likely due to the impact to his head from when he swung himself into the side of the hole that he had fallen down. All he knew was that he had survived the fall that should have rightfully killed him.

And still may do so, he thought as he took in his situation.

The bubbles were long gone, presumably turned back into the black goo that all his creations turned into without him there to keep them stable. Not that they were needed, their original purpose was to cushion his fall when he had hit the bottom, not to prevent him from being pierced. Had he known what lay in store for him at the end of his fall he would have opted for something else. A part of his mind not blinded by the pain he was currently experiencing or concerned over his current predicament opted that, instead of resorting to the silly tricks that he used to try and cling to the rocky walls of the giant hole he had fallen down in the hopes that he could then, somehow, crawl his way back up, he should have used his abilities to create a webbing between his arms and legs to try and glide down like he had seen those base jumpers do on the Internet.

"Fucking hindsight" he whispered through clenched teeth.

How the hell was he going to get out of this mess?

The fall had impaled him, the ‘stalags’ beneath had pierced his flesh cleanly, but had only allowed him to travel so far before they brought his fall to a halt, the stone spears on his body aloft like a mouse impaled on a thorn bush by a butcher bird.

He resisted the urge to turn his neck to look at his surroundings, every micro-movement of his muscles sending a wave of pain coursing through him. Not that he needed to. The cave was too dark for him to see anything anyway.

He could use Her Majesty to see for him, the link between them allowing for the transfer of information at a rate far faster and more efficient than any communications network constructed by humanity, but that same efficiency made gleaning anything from her site almost impossible as being assailed by an influx of her emotions. A torrent of indecipherable feelings, mostly of rage and despair, hope, more rage, and more than a bit of anger over him being dead and not dead, the rapid assault doing wonders for his already existing headache.

After a moment to let her calm down and another use of his healing ability to soothe his inflamed nerves, he got down to business.

Okay, he thought to himself, he was impaled, he would have to deal, he was in pain, but at the moment he was still alive, and that was all that counted.

Her Majesty was raging about something and that took priority. Even after having lost half her stats when she had been hit by that electric shield or whatever it was that the idiots had directed to defend themselves from that horde of creatures, she was still far smarter than he was, so if she was concerned about something other than being in the warmth of the sunlight, the chances were it was something that he should the concerned about.

After waiting for her to finally get over her little hissy fit, no pun intended, she went about showing him exactly why she was so angry by sending him a flood of memories over what exactly she had been up to while he had been out.

After he had been pushed by that idiot, Beta-douche, Her Majesty had raced after him, her [SHADOW RUN] ability allowing her to reach the bottom of the great hole well ahead of him, well in time for her to see him be impaled, her senses recording the event in extreme detail.

The memory of the event left Goodie with the intense urge to vomit as he saw himself pierced, a lump of meat lodging itself without ceremony or dignity onto a thorny bed of stone. He did not have the words to fully expressed exactly how that memory made him feel, the site of the rocky points piercing his flesh moving through him, however quickly that may have been, was…extremely disturbing.

But he had no time for that.

After that, the noise from his fall and no doubt the stench from him loosening his bowels had attracted a number of the beast of the underground. His pointy bed holding him too far aloft for the creatures to reach at the time, but Her Majesty had been startled by their numbers and, fearing that they would somehow find a way to climb up to him, she went about doing what she did best, which was to slither and bite, relying on the drunken affect the poison from her fangs would bring to render them all unconscious.

What amazed him was that all had fallen to its power. Sure, some of the larger creatures had wandered around a bit before succumbing to the effect, their physical attributes obviously much higher than their brethren, but still, they too had eventually fallen.

Ever since entering this place he had feared that its denizens would, at the very least, have been resistant if not outright immune to effects her attack. A fear that kept him from unleashing her as he had done back in the sewers of the city. He had assumed that they, as creatures of nature, would have had an innate adaptation to poisons and toxins, but that had obviously been gamer logic, something he had warned himself not to succumb to.

Had he known he would've hightailed it from the band of idiots the first chance he got, the fear of him having to confront the mutated animals of the underground by himself being the only think keeping him in line.

Oh, no, there had also been that collar that bitch had put around his neck.

His head still spinning, his brain fuzzy, the memory had drifted in from some dark part of his mind, reminding him he had been, and presumably still was, a slave to that roving band of morons.

The Collar!

Goodie freaked as tried reaching for his neck, the tug of his flesh against the stone skewering his right shoulder sending a shock of pain coursing through him.

After wasting yet another healing ability to soothe his wrecked body, he forced himself to calm down.

Why had they not activated the explosive runes on his neck?

Had they lied? No, Her Majesty was capable of sensing the things and as far as he could tell, they matched the ones that that bitch had put on the bottle that she exploded as an example of what she could do.

He doubted that they stayed by the hole and were even now trying to figure out a way to reach him, the narcissists more than likely carry on with their search for treasure. So had he fallen out of range then? Or something else.

More important was whether or not the runes would still yet explode after more time had passed or something had triggered an imbedded command or condition, and whether or not ‘What’sherface’ could somehow use them to track him if he tried to escape.

Was she even aware that he was still alive?

No matter, more important than anything else at that moment was escaping and he couldn't and wouldn't let the opportunity slip him by, his life having been threatened enough as it was. The creatures, Beta-douche, whatever else life was going to throw him, he had to get out now, get to safety before those morons did anything else to him.

His mind made up and his path clear, the only thing for him to do now was to figure out how to get himself free from his current predicament, and then, if he managed that, see if he could find a way to deal with the creatures that drunkenly lounged on the floor below.

Goodie swore to himself that if he ever got back home, that if he ever managed to find himself back in his nice comfortable bed, he swore that he would never, ever leave it again.