Chương 9: BECMI Chapter 8 – Out in the Darkness

The ooze wasn't smart enough to think itself sneaky, but it was, its tremblesense totally capable of tracking beetles scampering across the floor and lashing out with a gooey tentacle to smack them, stick to them, dissolve them with some hideously powerful biological acids, and absorb them. Most of the fungi in the underdark had secretions that made them immune to oozes and were actually capable of infecting the unicellular things, treating them like fertilizer they weren't afraid of in the slightest.

An ooze looking to feed on a mushroom stand basically turned itself into food for the spores of the things, and would either die in a rupturing mound of fresh young shrooms, or have to slough off a huge portion of its mass to get out alive. Thus, oozes tend to, well, ooze around in areas without shrooms or ultraviolet light, which sunburned them badly. That meant dark and damp areas with nothing more advanced than lichens or moss for it to eat over time.

Any animals were fair game, of course, but if you didn't know to watch out for oozes and have some fire or something at the ready, you were an idiot. Oozes were constantly flowing in from side caverns towards the elven farms, and harvested just as regularly for extra fertilizer, I'd found out, just like humanoid corpses were harvested and used to feed the giant spiders on the silk farms. Big oozes could attract a lot of fire magic when they came in, and even draw in patrols if they were sizable enough.

I'd only been wandering around for a month and I'd already seen a big black one the size of a small house, parked next to a river with a pseudopod extended into the water and occasionally flicking a blind river-fish up and out and into its mass to be digested. I'd blasted it down to scraps and jelly into the river, starting a feeding frenzy of fish and other things happy to return the favor of being dinner. Oozes were not part of the true ecology and were always fair game to be wiped.

I sincerely missed Aelryinth's ability to Dawnstop a Shape Stone when I was out here. It was impossible to do so, because there was no saved Channel uses available for Clerics here! I was truly annoyed when I discovered that my Ur-Priest Levels by default only allowed me to present a symbol of Faith and use negative energy to Rebuke and Command Undead.

I had to take Versatile Channeling to gain the option to change that to positive energy so I could Turn or Destroy them, but the many Feats and other powers built around Channeling did not exist here, because there was no direct Divine connection to empower them! It did mean that a Cleric had unlimited ability to Turn or Rebuke, depending on their preference, and me being an Ur-Priest and able to do both was actually right on trope for being one of the original Priests.

So I could Turn Undead all day, my main problem being that I wasn't very good at it compared to my spellcasting, as it was based on Cleric Level, not Spellcaster Level. Careful tests on random undead, mostly humanoids who had died unburied, revealed that I could destroy or command the most basic undead, like skeletons and zombies, without fail. Anything more powerful I had a rapidly decreasing towards zero chance of doing anything to.

This was wholly unacceptable, rendering a convenient and useful set of alternate abilities totally defunct, but I could do nothing about it. Making Pyramids was going to be MUCH more difficult in this world… and randomly Stone Shaping myself new passages everywhere was not on the table, either! I'd just have to go about it through the magic item method, I gathered. Well, it wasn't like I didn't have a lot of time to do that...

Shards /my Thorns were Force effects, something basically all oozes, jellies, and puddings were vulnerable to, straight-on cellular disruption. That I could also make Shards Elementally-aligned to exploit vulnerabilities was a nice cherry on top, courtesy of me being a Shardcaster. This Gray Ooze was immune to fire and cold, but lightning worked just fine on it, so my Elemental Barbs (Dart variants) drove in, the Holy Kickers lit it up, and it was blown apart by disruption of its communal structure.

The voltage dissolved the cell membranes, so it quickly began to dissolve into hissing sludge that spread over the stone, steaming with the acids released but doing no harm to the rock… which was hardly unexpected. If they dissolved stone they'd burn themselves down into pits and kill themselves from starvation. A simple scan of the area turned up corroded metal items that had likely been weapons and armor at one time, and were just scraps now.

However, the acid-resistant noble metals of a scattering of coins had survived, along with two gleaming agates. I swept them up with Minor TK, and then heard a whirring sound, followed by a squawk of alarm and the beat of heavy wings as the bat back there hastily took flight. He was being chased. Wizard/11 Casting gave me access to the Permanency spell that I knew of, which was NOT the Permanence spell that my mother's tomes talked about (and she wasn't powerful enough to have a copy of).

A Permanent See Invisible had set me back goldweight, but I wasn't about to be fooled by some of the magical shit existing down here, including naturally invisible floating and animate fungi! The Astral Ward I kept up made sure the magic on me couldn't be sensed by anything under a VII, so there was no threat of it being Detected on me. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

My Caster Level was also high enough that I wasn't too worried about a Dispel coming in and wasting my hard work as yet, either. A fluttering horde of cave pixies was fluttering after the hapless bat in a swarm of buzzing insect wings, squeaking battle cries of fey berserker fury, and a few twanging miniature bows basically shooting long needles at the bat. They weren't going to catch the bat once he took flight, that was certain, but that wasn't the problem.

Their reddish eyes raged in fury as the bat astutely retreated from the murderous swarm, chased by their screams and taunts it couldn't understand. And of course, there I was, out of Invisibility and standing next to the dissolving sludge of a gray ooze. I was noticed, because of course I was. Stick-spears tipped with the fangs of cave serpents pointed my way, and the whole Swarm turned its buzzing path my way as the bat got away. They spread out to cut off any retreat, but that wasn't going to happen regardless.

Swarms were anything but uncommon down here. Moths, spiders, centipedes, beetles, rats, snakes, bats, and locusts were all unduly common in the Underdark, easy to excite and totally capable of killing me in seconds if I let them.

My main advantage was that I could lower my body temperature down to an icy level that removed me as a target for most of them, like thinking of swarming an icicle, but these little fey were visual hunters, not limited by heat, and probably thought I was a rival fey since I looked like a brownie at the moment. That was okay. A Swarmkiller Clasp was the second magic item I'd made, precisely for this purpose.

Adding Bursting to my Thorns (not Shards, nopers) turned them into an Area of Effect spell, which did double damage to Swarms, while the Clasp also doubled the damage against Swarms. Banespell against Fey rode both effects. When I flicked up my spell, my Rose of Blood and Souls coiled up and around me, the incoming shrieking pixies changed their war cries to squeals of terror as glowing blossoms gaped wide to devour them, and my Thorns fired at them.

A Chained spell would have doubled the damage and more again, but that was overkill. Over a dozen Thorns trailing glittering petals drove into the mass of the Swarm, impaling a pixie each… and then pale pink Banefires blew in all directions wildly, Kickers riding them, and the Bursts also detonated. None of the pixies made it to me as the cavern here lit up with shadows and bloody flames, Kickers and Force/Cold damage tore the little buggers apart, and shattered pixie corpses fell in every direction.

Wailing little fey souls looked like they were sucked down into the flowers all around me, which withdrew out of sight into the ground as the last of the little corpses were pattering to the ground. Never had much use for Fey. Chaos' favorite bunch of incarnate emos just tended to cause problems, whether they tried to or not.

I hadn't actually sucked away their souls, of course, it was part of the Spell Thematics Feat coloring all my magic and applying automatically, unless I specifically wanted it to look otherwise. A little illusionary flavor to set the proper tone and completely misdirect everyone as to what was actually going on. Just getting into proper practice for later.

I was unsurprised when the bat came winging back shortly. The blasts of magic and the abrupt cessation of buzzing pixie wings had no doubt piqued its curiosity. It was quite circumspect initially, but when it saw all the little fey corpses spread around and Burning with vivus, it squeaked eagerly, dove down, and began hurriedly eating them up before the vivus took them all down to dust, totally ignoring me standing there watching it with grave amusement.

Pixies were tiny things, ranging from twelve to eighteen inches tall, but also pretty damn skinny, more like eating a bird than, say, a lizard. Hooked wing-thumbs and strong feet crunched bones and tore up slender bodies, hurriedly stripping off skinny muscles and organs, and taking care to eat up the gossamer wings they all had, as if they were delicacies.

The bat did keep one eye on me as I sat there and watched, but mostly was just engaged in a frantic gorging of itself trying to snatch up and devour all the best parts of the pixies before the vivus Burned them away. But they were Fey, magical creatures, and vivus ate them up happily. Fifteen minutes of frantic activity, and then the bat could only sniff through the drifting mist and all the white spots on the floor for more nibblies, not finding any.

"There will be more where that came from." The bat's long hairy ears swiveled on me in shock, and it spun around to face me in astonishment. It could understand me clearly! This world did have Druids, and Ur-Priests weren't limited to Clerics in the paths of Faith magic they could pull from, plus the Mystic Theurge Class could work with either Clerics or Druids. Speak with Animals was a basic spell, and useful out here in the wilds. It squeaked at me, trying to make sure it had really understood me.

"Yes, I can understand you." I eyed its bulging tummy.

"Don't be greedy, you got plenty to eat and you know it." It gamboled a bit, wavering and hissing, always happy to gorge itself and get more. I just laughed at it, and it belatedly remembered I was the one who killed them all, and it had basically stolen my kills, and I could be VERY angry with it if I wanted to.

"No, I'm not angry. I don't eat pixies. Come over here and let me take a look at you." Wary, but mollified by my voice and the magic of the spell, the giant bat came over on all fours, swinging forward somewhat like an ape. He towered over me, of course, but there was no doubting which one of us was in charge as he looked down at me.

"Ho, they got you with a couple of those little arrows of theirs," I clucked my tongue, glancing over his wings.

"Okay, down on your belly while I get those out of you." A bit hesitantly, the bat nevertheless lowered himself down so I could start working on him.

"I can see scars, so I know you've been shot before. I'm going to get these needles out of you, and fix you up. It's going to hurt a bit, but you know that, and you've got a full belly, so don't complain."