Kaldalis considered how reckless it was to chase the enhydra again. The last time had been disastrous, and had led to this whole mess where he was separated from his allies.

Then again, it wasn’t like he was going to get more separated from them. He was already on his own.

But there were other hazards. Other traps. And running at the pace he was, he was never going to be able to remember which way was which if he blundered off the true path and into a dead end.

The map would only help so much.

As the hallway went on, though, he felt like the concerns were unfounded. There weren’t forks or branches in this hall. The enhydra didn’t have any way to go that might take him off-course. The maze was long behind him, so he couldn’t get lost.

Upon realizing this, Kaldalis threw himself into the chase.

All he had to do was be ready to pounce as soon as he had the opening.

The enhydra burst into a larger room, and Kaldalis popped his Jump cooldown and hurled himself forward. He misjudged his speed and instead of jumping on top of the little critter, he sailed clear over it. A leviabeetle came into view at the edge of his vision, but he only had eyes for his charm-carrying quarry. He hit the ground and whirled before diving for it, hands outstretched.

His fingers closed around an oily tail and the creature slid out of his grasp, running back the way he’d come. Kaldalis scrambled to get back on his feet and keep up the chase. He sprinted for a dozen steps after the creature before he noticed it was gaining ground. Apparently laying a hand on it had triggered it to pick up the pace, and he realized that while his Jump cooldown was ticking, he had to bring this chase to a close in the next minute, or else it was going to be a long time before he could pounce again, and that was if he could ever catch up to the sprinting enhydra.

He pounced again, measuring his jump more carefully this time. His hands brushed against the creature’s furry flank, just shy of giving him a grip. It redoubled its speed and Kaldalis pounced again, knowing this was going to be his final try. If he didn’t catch it now he was never going to be able to keep it in view. If he didn’t get it right this second, it was going to beat him all the way back to the portcullis where he’d been separated from his friends, and its narrow body would squeeze through the metal gate. And that was if he could even keep up with it for that long.

It was now or never.

Kaldalis pounced aggressively, caring more for landing on top of the creature than landing with his hands on it. The creature was under his chest for a moment, letting out an alarmed squeak. He tumbled across the stone, and the creature tried to leap away. Kaldalis grabbed a hold of a leg and dragged it back, trying to snatch at the back of its neck. His hand only got a single finger of fur as the enhydra tried to squirm free.

Kaldalis’ grip held for barely a fraction of a second, but it was enough. His other hand clapped down on the creature’s stomach, and while his hand didn’t go all the way around it, the grab was solid. When they skidded to a stop, Kaldalis had the creature pinned to the floor with one hand.

“Gotcha,” Kaldalis said, “again.”

The critter squirmed for a second, and he tightened his grip. For a second, it was trapped. He had it.

And then it twisted, broke free, and bolted like a bullet from between his fingers in the blink of an eye. He couldn’t even follow it with his eyes. It was absolutely gone, leaving him to wonder why such a thing could be caught at all. Shouldn’t they just bolt away like a blue hedgehog looking for chili dogs at the first sign of trouble? Why do they run at a less extreme pace at all?

“Videogame logic,” he concluded out loud, letting out a sigh as he lifted up his hand. Beneath it, where the enhydra had been a moment before, was a little wooden sphere, inset with metal rings. Kaldalis held it up in front of his face, examining it.

Willful Charm

Item Level: 8

Acumen: 12

Clout: 12

Vigor: 13

Cooldown Reduction: 0.4% (Minimum 1 second)

Kaldalis considered this as he caught his breath after the chase. A little less than half of a percent wasn’t much. Even on the three minute cooldown of his jump, he was going to get the one second minimum.

One second off wasn’t going to be impactful for him, not even for his Endure cooldown.

But he knew someone who could benefit from a second taken off of all his cooldowns.

“Well, then,” Kaldalis said, tucking the charm away in his inventory. “This is for Balrim. And, indirectly, for me. A second off the CD of his healing is going to be an unreasonable gain in my longevity.”

With a groan, Kaldalis scrambled to his feet and looked around. Having rushed down the hallway, heedless of his surroundings, and then turned around and rushed back, and then rolled around on the ground wrestling with a weasel, he barely knew which way was which. It wasn’t like it mattered, though. There wasn’t a way to split off where he might become lost, but there also wasn’t a way to tell where he was or what way was which. There also weren’t helpful arrows on the walls to direct him, nor was there a quest marker on his minimap to point him the right way. So he just picked a direction and walked.

Luckily, he picked the right way. He soon found himself in the open room again, and he inched his way forward until he spotted the leviabeetle he’d seen before. He was glad it hadn’t aggroed onto him before and gotten free reign to smash at him while he was wrestling with the enhydra.

Now that he’d returned, he could see why the creature hadn’t given chase.

The leviabeetle was an ex-leviabeetle. A desiccated insect corpse.

Kaldalis approached it and gave it a tentative poke with his polearm, and the shell wiggled a little, disgorging a fistful of grimy dust from the opening in the shell that had once been its face.

Kaldalis knelt down and looked around a bit. The creature didn’t have any visible wounds or other signs of struggle; the shell was intact and there was no sign of blood on its pincers. It looked like it had just collapsed here. Why?

Kaldalis reached down and touched the ground. The green-hued stone was clear and clean, where it wasn’t sullied by powdered bug guts. Was there poison, or…

Kaldalis sat up and looked around.

There was no lichen here. No moss. The stone wasn’t just clean and clear. It was dry. The leviabeetle - which he knew subsisted on a diet of mosses - must have starved. Kaldalis’s sense of direction told him that he was deep under the ground, but he still believed he was relatively close to the coastline. How far down did he have to be into the bedrock of the island for it to be keeping out the ocean? He wasn’t a geologist. He didn’t know.

All he had was what was ahead of him, past the dried beetle corpse. A stone arch opened up into the way forward.

Not a hallway this time, but stairs. From where he knelt next to the dead bug, he could see the curve of the wall winding its way down and around.

He got to his feet and went to the stone arch.

This wasn’t just stairs, it was a stairwell, and it spiraled down out of sight, travelling beyond his range of vision. The stairs were solid stone, with a railing of black iron that looked like it was free of rust. Just the same, he didn’t want to put his weight on it until he knew how far down he’d be falling if it yielded under him. He considered for a moment, and then did the immature thing he’d seen in cartoons, but never done himself in real life. He snorted, inhaling deeply, and then spat a loogie over the railing.

The bit of snot and spittle glimmered in the nonexistent light as it fell down the shaft in the center of the spiral staircase. It vanished into the blackness below. Kaldalis held his breath, straining his ears to hear how far before he heard the little patter of spit on stone below.

Holding his breath, Kaldalis realized that the ruins were eerily silent.

No rattle of his armor. No clatter of insect shell on stone. No scrape of boots or rustle of fabric.

He was very aware that he was utterly alone, separated by unknown feet, fathoms, or even miles of stone from any other sentient creature.

He saw Myrin’s health bar take a hit, and even in this purest moment of silence, he heard nothing. No cry, no struggle, no curse. How far away were they? Was he ever going to see them again? Would the bottom of this stairwell reunite them? Were they going to drop in somewhere behind him and stare down this same inky blackness? Had they already met this path through a door he’d missed and were fighting so far ahead of him that he couldn’t hear them from here? Were they-

Pap.

The almost-negligible sound of spit hitting stone felt like it was hours displaced from when he’d hocked it. But in the complete and utter silence of the ruins, the incredibly quiet sound was unmistakable.

Kaldalis gasped for air, suddenly aware that he’d been holding his breath for far too long. Spots fogged his vision, and he steadied himself against the wall until he got his bearings back.

“Oops,” he said to the darkness, ignoring the echo, “I got a little introspective and terrified for a minute there. Sorry, stream audience, I’ll try and make sure my existential crises are out loud in the future.”

He stepped down the first stair.