There was a deep chill running through the stone beneath him. Robin groaned. That bootleg mead he’d whipped up carried a kick. Maybe he should have taken it easier on the psilocybin? Never get simultaneously drunk and high off your own bathtub brew whilst practicing ritual magic naked—naked? yup, still naked—on the quad.

Robin opened his eyes. Everything was still black. Well that’s less than ideal. He felt the stone in front of him. Shouldn’t there be grass? He slowly edged his fingers out. There should still be an athame nearby and the last thing he needed was to cut himself. All his fingers found was stone, stone, and more stone. Wait, there was something carved here—

Congratulations! You have found a shrine to the Lost God Rhyth!

The words appeared in the blackness before him, floating in a bright blue box. It didn’t do a lick of good for lighting the darkness around him, but he could at least see something.

Do you accept the Blessing of the God? Y/N?

Well this was a trip, and not the one he’d expected to be on. Of course he’d end up on a vision quest where he wasn’t able to see a goddess-damned thing. Par for the frelling course. Sure, Robin thought. He could use a blessing right about now. He waved his hand somewhat ineffectually through the apparition. Something worked and the pitch black began to fade into gradients of shadow.

He was in a small cave. Well, small in diameter. The space above his head rose quite far, and a small forest of stalactites hung overhead, draped in shadows. Most of his surroundings looked entirely natural, the stone unworked. The exception was in front of him, the small shrine his questing fingers had found. Seeing it was harder than feeling it. The graven image danced in and out of focus. If he looked too closely the features all faded into just another expanse of stone, but if he sort of unfocused his eyes a figure slowly came into view. Humanoid, with just the hint of a face. The lips were turned up in an unmistakable smirk, and the suggestion of hands cupped in front of the figure were filled with a bit of water.

Not how he’d imagine Plato’s cave would look, really. But he also hadn’t imagined his ritual attempt to translocate himself to a different reality would come with hallucinatory gaming prompts, so…yeah. Party. Should he drink the water? Odin would drink the water. Fionn would, well, not drink the water but if there’s a tiny minnow in there, that might work as well.

The rest of the cave came into focus as Robin’s eyes fully acclimated to their new sight. There was not a minnow swimming in the water. Before Robin could take a drink, however, another message appeared.

Blessing Bestowed!

Your Heritage has been changed to Shadeling.

All Finesse Properties have increased by 1.

Proficiencies Unlocked: Stealth; Deception; and Insight.

You have learned the [Lesser Phantasm] cantrip!

Peculiarities Unlocked (1 slot available): Tongue of the Fallen Tower; Mask of Myriad Faces; Chronicle of Infinite Visions.

This…was not at all what Robin expected. Enlightenment, even the kind temporarily bestowed by indulging in psychoreactive substances of questionable provenance, wouldn’t look like this. Would it?

No. This was some kind of weird trip. Though he was only feeling mildly buzzed, at best. Hardly even that, in fact, since the latest message had popped up. Had his body actually changed? That would probably clear out some of the more exotic substances floating about in his blood.

Cantrips? Proficiencies? Sure, he played as much D&D as the average PhD student, no, probably a bit more, but this system didn’t track with that one. There were other odd elements. That said, it had been described as a blessing, and in the interests of engaging with the wisdom that comes unexpectedly…yes, he felt like he knew something he didn’t know before.

Robin’s fingers flexed through a quick series of positions, the ones his instinct told him were necessary to invoke [Lesser Phantasm]. A small ball of blue flame appeared, flickering, above his upturned palm. It rippled and snapped, surreal in its silence. Robin repeated the gestures. The flame winked out, but this time the crackle and pop of a small campfire flared out. So sight or sound, but only one at once?

He was unable to ponder the issue further, however, as the sound sparked a disturbance among the stalactites above. Shadows flitted and chittered above him, before a horde of small winged forms descended upon him. Robin only had time for a brief glimpse before the things were upon him.

Like the unholy offspring of a squid and a flying squirrel, they dropped down around him, spinning, tiny tentacles lashing out and drawing small lines of blood across his naked and entirely vulnerable body. Robin yelled, flailing his arms wildly in the air about him. The things span around him, neatly evading his blows while lashing him with more of their own.

There was nowhere to run! He was trapped in this cave with no visible exit. Naked. No weapons. All he had was a cantrip. The same thing that had called these things down on him in the first place!

Robin seized at the idea. If the cantrip had got him into this mess, maybe it could get him out. They clearly reacted to sound, maybe a sound could drive them off? He passed his hand through the gestures again, focusing on the first annoying sound he could think of: the sound of his morning alarm.

A blaring, repeating, shriek, like a cyborg climaxing after electronically edging for a full powercycle, echoed throughout the cave. The little beasties staggered a bit mid-air but didn’t retreat. Still, Robin was encouraged. These things weren’t bats, but they lived in caves and responded to sound, so maybe if he amped up the frequency? Was there a volume limit? He felt that there was but also that he wasn’t near it yet.

His skin stinging from the myriad cuts, blood running into his eyes, Robin tried again. [Lesser Phantasm]. This time he summoned the voice of an opera diva, hitting a perfect C above high C. Not enough. he added a second voice, and then a third. He wasn’t this good with music, the magic was compensating to a degree.

The little monstrosities flitting around him grew visibly more agitated and several missed their attacks on his person. Didn’t like higher nosies, eh? Well, then maybe…Robin cast his cantrip once more, and this time he imagined turning up the frequency to the top of his audible range and beyond. The sound vanished from his hearing, but clearly not from the hearing of his assailants.

They went berserk, exploding away from him and flapping in ungainly and staggering trajectories upwards, until they disappeared once more amongst the stalactites.

Congratulations! You have defeated a Swarm of Juvenile Shadowmantles! Experience awarded!

Robin collapsed back against the cave wall, wincing as the cold bit into the bloody scratches all over his body. This did not feel like a hallucination. This did not feel like a vision quest. This felt real. This hurt. He was bleeding for frell’s sake! That, at least, he could do a little about.

With a mental prayer for forgiveness sent winging toward where Rhyth might be, Robin dipped his bloody, bleeding fingers into the water of the shrine. It wasn’t much, but it could clean some of the blood off his face and ease the tight, parched feeling of his throat.

Do you wish to make a small sacrifice to the memory of Rhyth? Y/N?

Robin froze, fingertips in the water. Sacrifice? Sacrifice isn’t generally something he engaged in. He was more a free-wheeling, free-love kinda guy. Not so much with the letting of blood and offering smoke to powers unknown.

Still, Rhyth’s blessing had allowed him to fend off those wee beasties. And there was more where that came from, thing he hadn’t yet explored. Maybe not pissing off the mysterious power whose shrine he was a guest in wasn’t the worst idea?

Robin suddenly and with stark clarity understood a bit better what it must have been like calling out to an unknown and mysterious sky at the dawn of humanity’s civilisation. And he didn’t care for it. No, not at all.

‘Yes,’ he said after a long moment, ‘I do willingly and respectfully offer sacrifice to Rhyth.’

New Quest: [Gone, But Not Yet Forgotten]

The God Rhyth has been lost from the memory of most of Mayaser. Recover knowledge of his worship and uncover the mystery of his disappearance before all memory of him has faded.

Reward: Unspecified.

Oh joy. A quest. Well, at least the sacrifice was free time, not blood? Robin blinked and looked at his arm. His scratches were gone. Huh. Looks like the quest came with a fringe benefit. Not that he was going to complain.

Of course, before he could embark on a quest, he’d first have to figure a way out of here. Between the attack, and the touch of a lost god, Robin had shifted his perspective. Whatever was going on, this was his reality now, so he might as well embrace it. If he woke up in a hospital in a few weeks, having fallen into a coma while imbibing experimental psychoactive mead, well, so be it. He’d deal with it as it happened—or not.

There was clearly a way out further up the cavern wall. Those things clearly ate, and the lack of bones and droppings around here suggested this was not where they usually did that. Ergo, there was a way out up there somewhere.

However, there was also a shrine here, and he doubted anyone would build such a thing without an easier way to access it than rappelling thirty feet every Sunday. Rhythsday? Whatever.

Well, he wasn’t climbing out of here. Not with anything he had on him. Clearly. But he wasn’t totally without resources. He had the Blessing of Rhyth, and at least one—what was it? peculiarity?—to choose.

Though how he did that was anyone’s guess. Maybe something to do with the screens he’d been seeing. There had to be a command they responded to.

‘Peculiarity selection?’

The screen blazed across his vision. He’d guessed correctly, then. After some experimentation, Robin discovered the information responded to his thoughts, and he could often garner some additional insight by focusing on the name of things, not unlike a more traditional tooltip interface.

Tongue of the Fallen Tower

Grants the bearer the ability to speak, read, and write all languages.

Mask of Myriad Faces

Grants the bearer limited shapeshifting ability. Bearer is limited to shapes of the same general form (bipedal life forms cannot shift to quadrupeds or hexapeds, etc.), but can freely shift particulars of appearance (hair, skin, etc.) and biology (sex, internal organs, etc.). Physical abilities of the target form may be used, but exceptional or supernatural abilities may not. This ability has no effect on clothing or equipment carried.

Chronicle of Infinite Visions

Grants the bearer the ability to use [Visual Phantasm] at will, without the need for any invocation costs or components.

Robin considered his options. [Tongue of the Fallen Tower] was amazing, and would clearly be useful in the future, but it offered little in the way of an immediate solution to his predicament. The same was true of [Chronicle of Infinite Visions].

His final choice, on the other hand, had some definite possibilities. A lot would depend on whether or not he could assume a humanoid form with wings, and master learning to fly, with [Mask of Myriad Faces], but it was the only way out of this cave he could see with any of these abilities. Peculiarities, as they were called.

Before Robin could make a final decision, however, his circumstances changed. Or at least, something new entered his cave. He cocked his head to one side and closed his eyes, straining to chase down the new sounds.

There were voices drifting into the cave.