A wise man once said that there was no greater delight than self-development. I had no idea exactly who this 'wise man' was though, since I found the quote on the internet, it was probably Albert Winston Gandhi. In any case, I have indeed developed something this day in myself. A profound and deep-seated loathing for stairs, that is.
"Bloody hell… Just how deep are our cells?"
My quiet grumblings found no response in the empty corridors of the Chasm of Desolation. There wasn't a soul in sight, which made me wonder. Future-me said he stole all the inmates from here, but by the looks of it, this prison could house hundreds of people. Just where did he take them? Just where will I take them?
I was also getting a bit unnerved about the lack of staff as well. Sure, this was technically a 'dungeon' in the original meaning of the word, before role-playing games hijacked the concept, and not a jail, but the lack of guards was still baffling. Sure, I could understand that the lower levels would have nobody patrolling because of all the anti-magic malarkey, but that wasn't the case up here.
Also, I still had no idea how people were fed in here either. Future-me making the bottom layers off-limit was one thing, but someone had to come down here to deliver meals to the inmates. At least one person should've realized something was off when the food budget was reduced to just one person.
Unless, of course, there was no food budget, and the inmates were expected to just survive by gnawing off their legs, or something.
…
"Ouch. Dark."
My whispers were still met with the cold indifference of the empty cells as I made my way over to the next stairwell. The higher up I got, the less stifling the air felt and the less bright the magic circles embedded in the ceilings of the chambers were. The two phenomena were probably related; while I reinforced the Leoformer against dispelling efforts, there was still a certain tightness in my chest whenever I donned it down there. Not painful, but just annoying enough to be noticeable. That sensation was easing up with each floor I climbed.
I would've said I was breathing a bit easier, if not for these goddamn stairs! I was in good shape, but there was a limit to everything! On second thought though, maybe that was the real reason why I couldn't see any guards here; they must've hated the stairs as much as I did.
It wasn't until I reached the highest floor that I finally found some sign of life.
"Huh? Is somebody out there?"
The growling voice of a man came from the back of the hallway. An actual prisoner. In a dungeon. Who would've thought?
On closer look, there were a couple of others locked up in their own cells as well. For a moment I wondered how I missed these people the last time around, but then I remembered that I didn't bother to use the stairs back then and just Phased between floors, and I felt silly. And annoyed. Mostly annoyed; being able to Phase would've made this whole thing so much easier. I could just teleport in and out and didn't have to worry about being spotted or paying attention to my environment or…
Was I maybe spoiled by my abilities, I pondered as I slinked past the emaciated prisoners. Future-me probably had a good reason to leave them here, so I didn't want to tangle with them either, and just as reached the stairwell leading to the ground floor.
"[Hm? What was that?]"
I instinctively ducked behind a nearby corner. There was a lone Faun standing near the steps, clad in green armour and holding a polearm. A halberd of some kind, I surmised, and while I silently questioned the usefulness of such a weapon in these cramped spaces, I kept my thoughts to myself and observed him from afar.
This level of the dungeon was better lit than the lower floors, though not by much; there were only a few old-timey torches on the stone walls providing just enough light to blot out the faint glow of the ceiling circles, but not enough to provide proper visibility. I was no prison architect, but I imagined that was pretty important for security reasons, yet whoever made this place didn't seem to share the idea.
Anyhow, I could barely make out the features of the Faun guard due to the dim conditions, but I could tell a few things. One, he was as well-built as the average member of the species. Two, he belonged to the 'Pip phenotype', as I liked to call it, meaning he had wolf-ish features with lots of fur around his face and neck and a pair of triangular ears at the top of his head. Would Naoren find those attractive as well?
I shook the stray thought away and focused on the task at hand. I had to decide how to deal with him. I could always just take out my weapons and duke it out. Even though this outfit only had the bare minimum of physical enhancements, I figured I could take him out with no problem. However, that would be noisy and attract more attention, so I left it as a last resort. Alternatively, I could try sneaking past him. That would've been a terrible idea in any halfway realistic scenario, but again, this whole place was pretty much purpose-lit to enable such shenanigans. I just had to figure out how to get him to move first.
The plan coalesced in my head pretty quickly. For starters, I used my phantom limbs to grab the closest torches and 'turned them off' using my temporary retcon ability. I was starting to get quite proficient with this, and it only took me a few seconds of browsing through the fractal torch catalogue to pick the right ones. Once I successfully made the lighting conditions even worse than they already were, I inhaled deeply and let out a shrill whistle.
"[What was that? Show yourself!]"
The Faun hefted his weapon and looked left and right, clearly startled by the sudden sound, and he cautiously inched forward. I remained crouching low behind the corner, and there were two ways this could play out: he either came my way, in which case I would've had no choice but to jump him, or he continued down the corridor, in which case I could slip by unnoticed.
Luckily for me, he chose to do the latter. I waited for him to move past the junction, and when I felt the moment was right, I leapt out from my cover and quickly (yet sneakily) approached the stairs leading up. I was halfway up when I heard the Faun grumble about how "[It must've been my imagination,]" and while I often made fun of clichés, that was a low-hanging fruit even by my standards.
The ground floor was as bare as the last time I came through here, essentially just a natural cave with some metal grids set down for flooring, and while those would've made sneaking about a tricky proposition, that was only a problem when there were guards to avoid. Which, for the record, there weren't.
I managed to make it to the mouth of the cave entrance before I saw anyone, and it was yet another Faun inside a small, rectangular white guardhouse with a flat roof and large glass windows on three sides. Through those, I could see that he was… currently not paying attention to the entrance and reading a newspaper under the red light of the late afternoon sun. Huh. Well, that made things easier.
Originally my plan was to let my eyes get used to the light outside first, but I couldn't let an opportunity like that go to waste, so I adjusted my Leoformer's enhancements a bit and made a swift dash along the sheer cliff face and towards the brick wall enclosing the whole area. I was nominally familiar with the layout of the surrounding compound thanks to my earlier scouting efforts, and I knew that if I got past there, I would be in the city proper.
Of course, getting past the wall was easier said than done, but it wasn't that high, and so when push came to shove, I was sure I could clear it in a leap as long as I had something to bounce off for extra height. The cliff wall provided me with just that, and so I jumped, then kicked off the rocks and soared through the air while holding onto my top hat. The only thing I forgot to take into consideration was the landing…
"Sunova…!"
My touchdown wasn't particularly dignified, but I managed to do it without rolling and making my clothes dirty. In retrospect, maybe I should've shifted to one of the more combat-oriented outfits, but hindsight and I always had a rocky relationship, and I doubted it would get better any time soon.
More importantly, I was standing in the middle of a wide, deserted street with only a few placeholders in the distance, just outside the walls of the Faun barracks encircling the entrance of the Chasm of Desolation, and as I looked back over my shoulder, I couldn't help but wonder if sneaking in was going to be harder than sneaking out. I figured I would cross that bridge when I got there and shook my numb legs a bit. I should've slipped into one of the nearby alleys right away, but again, hindight.
"[You! This area is off-limits!]"
A reflexive shudder ran down my spine as I glanced at the source of the booming voice and saw a large spear-wielding Faun emerge from the shadow of a gate set into the wall. He was the classic phenotype, meaning he had ram-like features with curly grey horns, and he stomped his feet with every step as he approached me.
Crap. I knew for a fact that the perimeter of the compound had the most guards (probably because they were more worried about someone trying to break in than anyone managing to escape without their powers), and I purposefully chose this spot to cross over the wall because there weren't as many stationed here. It was just my luck that one of them spotted me anyway.
The approaching Faun might've thought that I couldn't understand him, so he bellowed, "Area not for you! Your identity, show me!" in the stilted speech pattern I was familiar with.
I had to make a snap decision, and I hated it when I had to do that. While I could see some placeholder passers-by down the road, this area was clearly sort of a no-man's-land buffer zone around the barracks, and my presence here was already causing a ruckus. If I ran, the guard would certainly follow, and if I fought him, it would only raise the alarms. Refuge in Audacity was an option, but…
"I said, identity! Now!"
He didn't look like he was going to listen. As such, I was left with only one option.
I looked the approaching Faun in the eyes, searching for the familiar orange light within, and I found it right away. He nearly stumbled as our consciousnesses made contact and I could not only see but palpably feel a sense of shock and confusion through our connection. It wasn't strictly necessary, but I still pointed a hand at him and said, "[I bring upon you the Rite of Dominance, Faun of Inanna!]"
It was a force of habit, and I didn't wait for him to respond before initiating a Dominance duel on my own, not holding anything back.
Three transparent spectres of myself erupted from my position. Then three more. And then four on top of that, plus another three. Wave after wave, I sent my ghostly copies against the Faun's mental constructs, and while he met my first handful of Dominance spectres valiantly, his eyes began to shake at the second wave, and by the third, he was in full-blown panic.
I didn't relent though. Thanks to Brang and the others, I was more than well-versed in this way of mental combat, and I was confident I could overwhelm the average Faun with enough effort. I just needed to confuse and disorient him long enough to let me slip away. That was the plan, at the very least.
It was around wave four that his whole body began to shake, and before I could fully deploy my fifth wave of ethereal doppelgangers, he let out a throaty scream.
"Graaah!"
I thought it was a battle cry at first, but then he dropped his spear and his eyes rolled back into his head before collapsing on the spot like a sack of potatoes, cutting our connection and dispelling the spectral battle around us before it could've even had a chance to properly begin.
It all happened too fast for me to react, leaving me standing in the middle of the road with my arm still stretched out and a hapless Faun convulsing on the ground. Well, crap. It was time for another spur-of-the-moment decision; I could either run or grab him and get the body out of sight before someone else would notice him and set off the alarms. I settled on the second option. As I said before, I hated snap decisions, mostly because I had a habit of making the wrong call under pressure, and it made me feel silly in retrospect.
At the moment though, I only felt mild panic as I dashed over to the unconscious Faun's side and grabbed him under the arms. He was too big for me to lift, so I settled on dragging him towards the gate embedded into the wall, where he wouldn't be out in the open anymore. Alas, as decent as the idea sounded at the time, reality just wouldn't cooperate with me.
"[What's going on here?]"
I froze for a moment when the large door behind me opened, and I beheld not one but three Fauns on the other side. Were they alarmed by the previous shouting? Or was it just time for the evening shift? Why was I thinking about such useless things in this situation?
I locked eyes with the Faun at the front, one of the rare lion-like phenotypes, complete with a majestic brown mane and a flat cat-nose, and after a long beat…
"[Sentinels of this domicile of shackles and stone, come fort to me! A fellow of duty has tumbled!]"
Refuge in Audacity, my old friend… don't betray me today…
The three newcomers shuddered as if they'd just been poked by a cattle prod and hurriedly came outside.
"[What… What happened to Grugnr?]" one of the more goat-ish Fauns in the back asked, so I snapped at him to keep the unbalanced.
"[The name of this guardian, I know not, but his countenance fell ill as if witnessing the parade of a thousand angry ghosts! His mortal coil obeyed the cruel certainty of the universal law of gravitation!]"
"[The universal law of… w-what?]"
"[Cease your useless prattling at once! Can't your ocular organs witness the dire disorder that befell upon this person of masculine form? At haste! A maven of mending you must find!]"
"[A… what?]"
"[I think he means a doctor,]" the other Faun muttered in a half-daze, so I snapped at him next.
"[The dallying you engross yourself in speaks ill of your uprightness of nature! The comradery of the beast-men of Inanna must not be what it once harkened to be! Away with you, and bring the pundit of recuperation! And you!]" I pointed at the lion-faced Faun next. "[I mandate that you grasp onto this sentinel of lacking consciousness and transmit his corporeal form within the ramparts of this here stronghold!]"
"[Yes, we should do that…]" he muttered in a daze and he grabbed into the left side of the unconscious Faun. One of the others hurriedly came over to his other side, so I stepped aside and let them prop up the body. The third Faun already left, probably to bring a healer as per my demands.
I pretended to follow after them, but as soon as they were on the other side of the wall, I grabbed the open wing of the gate.
"[My account vis-à-vis the disgraceful performances of you sentinels shall be elongated and scathing! Pray that he-whose-name-is-crows auricles remain ever-distant from its auditory oscillations!]"
With that, I slammed the heavy wooden gate shut, followed by silence. One breath. Two breaths. Three breaths.
"Holy crap, that actually worked..."
My whispered words were followed by action, and I turned tail without any further ado and dashed across the road and into the nearest alley between the old buildings lining that side of the street. I ran for quite a while until I reached a more congested sidewalk, and only then did I slow down to a natural walking pace to blend into the crowd.
In conclusion, that was almost a disaster, and I had a hunch it'd make sneaking back into the dungeon much harder. If only I was allowed to Phase, even if only for short distances, none of this would've happened…
There was no point crying over spilt milk though, so I put the events (and my reservations about the return trip) aside for the moment and focused on one of the marks I had in the Abyss. While I couldn't teleport to it, it still served as a decent compass to guide me in the right direction, and after a solid hour of wandering through the winding, crisscrossing streets of the Inanna's capital, I finally beheld the familiar shopping street with the familiar pub-slash-salon at its far end.
"Good evening." The barkeep's greeting sounded completely disinterested (not to mention, wrong, as it was clearly still bright outside) right until he recognized me and gave me a thin-lipped smile. "Oh, it's you, sir. Welcome back. It's been a while."
"Yes. I've been busy as of late, but since I was in the neighbourhood, I decided to say hello."
The establishment was just like the last time I visited it, its air saturated with the smell of cigar smoke and liquor, as well as buzzing with the noise of two dozen Abyssals gossiping around their tables. This was my go-to place to put a finger on the pulse of the popular opinion down here, and while I was planning to listen to the grapevine later, there was something else I had to ask first.
"Have my friend come by as of late?"
Before the barkeep could respond, a familiar rotund man let out a guffaw at a nearby table.
"That rascal Antonio said you'd come by later today and that would be the first thing you'd ask!"
"… Is that so?" I asked the man behind the bar, and he nodded in the affirmative.
"Sir Balderdash also refilled your tab while he was here. What can I get you today?"
"Go figure…" I muttered under my breath and closed my eyes to get my expression under control. After a long second, I looked the bartender in the eye again and told him, "I'll think about whether I'll get a drink later, but first…" I raised a hand a used my thumb to point at the worn pool table set at the other end of the salon floor. "Do you happen to have a spare cue ball I could borrow?"
That was, after all, the main reason for my excursion to the surface today. I'd have all the time in the world to immerse myself in the churning of the rumour mill after I secured it.