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Character: Ataya
Stage: Adept
Luck: 47
Creature: Vispirii Queen x 7
Success Rate: 6 - 100

Win x 7: (63 x 7)/2 = 221exp

Total: 221exp, Levels to 56 with 22/56 exp left over, +12 stat points to distribute, + 6 Royal Venom

Word Count Required: 2,100+
Final Word Count: 2,981

Winter was coming.

With it would come Ataya’s — and his sister’s — sixteenth birthday. But in the meantime, while the winds still nipped of the last threads of autumn and warm desert air still occasionally slithered its way up the mountainside, Ataya knew he had only a limited sliver of time left with Dysarrin before the snows took him away again for a season. Today, a particularly brisk afternoon wherein the approaching chill of winter seemed to work its way through even the best-sewn of leather travelling clothes, Ataya’s intent was to make the most of that time. As such, he was in the company of said friend, some greater-than-usual stretch of distance from home, exploring the lower edge of a yawning cliffside, steep and sharp as though cut by a gaili dragon itself.

To the west, thick, grey-black clouds roiled tempestuously, angry as a foul dream, and from their direction came the wind. Though the chill did not bother him, the grit that it brought with it bit at his cheeks, and he reached up, tugging the edges of the hood on his cloak in closer to his face. Glancing over his shoulder, his ice-blue eyes flit to and landed on the now positively hulking shape of his best friend. At eighteen, Dysarrin had long surpassed Ataya’s father in both height and bulk. Weighing in now at surely approaching, if not over, three times his own weight, he looked like an only partially shaven baowi molded into the rough shape of a man and clothed in whatever strung together, matted furs were available.

But, filthy appearance aside, he was strong. The sort of raw strength Ataya’s body would never at its fittest even hope to muster, and over the near-decade that they had spent in each other’s company, Dysarrin’s was a strength he had grown accustomed to — and appreciative of — having around. It was comforting to know he had a reliably loyal wall of muscle that consistently put itself between him and whatever it was that might come at the two of them.

This in mind, he hummed as his gaze flit back around to eye the cliff face and — well further up it — the smattering of dark holes, like a grossly enlarged version of insect nest pockets. “Dysarrin…” he drawled, narrowing his eyes to a squint on closer inspection, “…do tell me the plan wasn’t that we were going to climb, was it?”

In the pause that ensued after his question, Ataya huffed and opened his mouth, nearly ready to add further commentary when—

His voice cut off in a half-strangled yip of sound of sound because, very abruptly, Dysarrin was inside his hood. Fractions of an inch from his face. Breath and smell and body heat all in his— “Dys—” Ataya scowled as he leaned back and away, craning his neck and taking a stumbled step in reverse even as he pushed at Dysarrin’s face with his hand. “Your concept of personal space is so lacking I feel I could confidently assert that it’s all but non-existent. Unless you plan on kissing me, do try to stay out of my hood while I’m in it?” he quipped, ignoring the irritated burn to his cheeks — for that’s what it was: irritation — and adjusting his clothes. And tucking hair behind his ear. And scowling at the earth. Because he was irritated. “Besides,” he added, “I don’t need to be carried. If climbing precarious cliffs to rogue poison insect nests on the cusp of winter is really how you want to spend your time…”

He moved to the base of the cliff face, hood falling back for all his previous efforts when he tilted his head back to look straight up and gather energy in his palms. A moment later, with a clip of a few guiding spellwords, he snapped his palms out flat to the rocky earth. On impact, ice spidered up beneath his fingers, climbing the wall like frozen vines and with each strand building on those beneath it, hardening, and building again. After a concentrated effort which could not have taken more than thirty seconds in all, he had before him a ladder. Solid. Frigid. But fully functioning.

Satisfied, he hummed, sparing Dys only one, fleeting, self-satisfied glance before starting up it towards the first pocket cave. “You’re welcome to use it also,” he asserted as an afterthought without bothering to glance down, “if you grow bored of scrabbling at the rocks and the ice doesn’t hurt your hands.”

Though physical fitness had never been and would never be Ataya’s strong suit, even he could climb a ladder — particularly one designed specifically by and for him — and he reached the cusp of the rocky entrance easily, adding a fraction more girth to his ice creation at the top to make the transition easier before slipping in and crouching as he squinted into the new space. Dark. He murmured another, now instinctive, spell, calling several small orbs of light to his palm and then guiding them down the unlit passage ahead of him.

‘Goop’ was the first word that came to mind as the walls of the cavern lit up. Not a particularly technical term, but fairly accurate sounding. It looked almost like sap. Globulus and somewhere stuck between solid and liquid. Like especially rich honey. It even smelled sweet. But, from what he knew of vispirii nests, eating of it would be one of the last choices a person ever made if they attempted.

Shifting his weight to make sure he was entirely stable beforehand, he peered over the edge to gauge his friend’s progress. “Dys? Do you need help or are you coming?”

Ataya gave a withering glower, stamping back the uncalled for — insult? disappointment? embarrassment? frustration? — something that bubbled up in him at Dysarrin’s assertion. Of course Dysarrin wouldn’t want to kiss him; no one wanted to kiss him. Even Dysarrin wouldn’t stoop to that level. Grinding a mental heel into that thought, he assured himself firmly that this was a good thing, at least insofar as his friend was concerned. He didn’t want — and hadn’t meant to suggest that he wanted — Dysarrin’s affections in any form.

Regardless of what his sister said.

Or anyone else, for that matter.

It didn’t surprise Ataya in the least when Dysarrin forewent his perfectly sound ladder in favor of free climbing. He did note, however, as he watched his friend scale the slope, that he had inarguably fine-tuned his method and process over the years. Sure-footed. Quick. All but effortless. It was almost impressive, the amount of natural, time-honed strength that went into Dysarrin’s process. Almost.

Ataya flicked his eyes away.

“Evidently not,” he said in mumbled answer to his friend’s first gruff assertion upon making it over the lip of the cave. “But that doesn’t mean y—nnnyyhng, no, you idiot, don’t eat it!” Ataya jerked forward, slapping his palms flat to the cavern floor and sending a violent cold snap rippling over the immediate proximity with focus, in large part, on all the surrounding vispirii hive sap. In a matter of moments, it was frozen over solid. To be safe, however, Ataya huffed, crimping the tips of his splayed fingers inward and drawing up a layer of small ice spikes atop the surface of the frozen material. Like thorns. A deterrent, he hoped, to Dysarrin’s natural instincts which had apparently not evolved beyond the toddler-stage mentality of putting everything in his mouth.

“While I realize your capacity for common sense is grossly limited so as not to make it immediately obvious that eating the first thing you find within a cave of giant, toxic insects is not necessarily the best course of action, if we’re going to explore, could you at least attempt not to poison yourself within the first five minutes? I would really rather not have to cart your corpse out of here myself…”

Ataya stepped sidelong, anticipating Dysarrin’s rebuttal in some form but grimacing nonetheless at the saliva-coated, crushed ice that came pelting his way. Since the ‘offer’ that followed clearly demonstrated only his friend’s absolute disregard — as usual — for everything useful he’d just said, he chose to ignore it, grunting when his companion nudged at him and huffing.

“I wouldn’t do it physically, obviously,” he retorted, though the words were little above a mumble, well aware that Dysarrin wasn’t likely paying attention to it either. “And it might do you well in the future not to explore everything with a ‘tongue first, ask questions later’ attitude. There are some things which surely even your stomach can’t handle and it’s vulgar besides…” But, instead of belaboring a dead point, he followed in the other’s wake, pushing at Dysarrin’s hand when it unnecessarily dragged at him. “I don’t need to be towed…”

It was his guess that, if anything lived in the thoroughly-slimed cave — as seemed to be the case purely given the abundance of fresh glop itself — whatever it was and however large in number they were: none of them were likely pleased with having their home frosted in. This guess was further supported by a growing, droning hum from deeper within the bowels of the cliffside pocket. Ataya kept solidly behind Dys. Dysarrin’s primary combat function as a wall couldn’t be filled, after all, if Ata wasted the use by moving in front of him.

Ataya’s mind, however, refused to stay on bugs. “I was in Taliuma recently…went to see a fire festival with my sister, and…” He frowned. “Well, evidently you’re not interested — not that I was offering, to clarify — but do any of the men in your…‘tribe’ or whatever it is you call it, ah, bed…other m—?”

The question, in its entirety, never made it. Instead, the first of the angered lot of their chosen opponents came whipping over the bend and in. Ataya exhaled, the ambient air temperature sinking like a stone through lakewater before he focussed it, zeroing in on the insect’s wings and flash-freezing the thin membrane. As the body came to a skidding drop on the cavern floor, however, its spindly legs finding purchase and working to right itself, its company joined them.

Other than a brief flick of a glance in Dysarrin’s direction following the initial takedown — and his companion’s characteristically barbaric and energy-exhaustive battle ‘technique’, if it could be called that — Ataya paid only minimal attention to what his friend did from there. So long as Dysarrin didn’t look as though he was on the road to getting himself killed, and so long as Ataya knew where he was, that was all that mattered. He turned the bulk of his focus to their targets.

One, two, three—

Ataya’s gaze darted from one to the next in the swarm, trying to pin down a number, and he pursed his lips as he lost count. Messy. Too many to keep track of. A sigh. So be it.

He flicked his wrist out and coiled his fingers in the still-chilling air. At his push, frost rippled white-blue along the cavern walls, further back and progressively thicker, layering upon itself. Then, with a flick and yank it spired sharply downward from the cave wall, skewering through the bodies of two of the fattest ones at opposite angles, like icy thumbtacks pinning them to a display board. But a great deal messier. As their innards oozed, seeping from the puncture in their exoskeleton, Ataya grimaced and froze that over also, stilling their skittering, struggling bodies into iced-over husks of what they once were, dusted white and near perfectly preserved.

He wondered, in spite of himself, what it would take to make them move again.

Before that thought could cement itself, though, another was darting for him, front pincers clicking and wings a blur of color. As it swooped, nimble as any fowl and twice as erratic, Ataya pushed, sinking himself into the ample swath of shadow along the cavern floor and reforming to watch the insect only barely miss colliding with the space he’d vacated a half-second prior. When it turned for him again, Ataya tapped his staff, a ripple of energy pulsing out over the cavern floor and up, up. The sea of shadow at his feet and beneath the insect undulated like boiling tar and climbed like a black spirit, enveloping it entirely: a hapless, twitching creature swallowed up in a blot of ink.

Ataya felt its energy spasm, lifesigns flicking off one at a time. He spoke, channelling the energy of his spellwords through Eurielle, and with her — as the creature’s life faded entirely — he searched, attempting in that moment to pinpoint its departing spirit. He had read somewhere recently that such energies could be tapped into — and even stored, for all varieties of potential uses in later spells — but he had yet to execute a successful ‘catch’ of such thing yet, with no reliable pointers or strategy on how it ought to be done. This time he was similarly unsuccessful, and huffed, approaching what remained of the corpse instead.

Stooping beside it, he gathered a small square of cloth from a pouch at his hip and reached out, carefully — carefully — gathering a sample of its venom before folding the cloth and tucking it back away for later experimentation. As he stood, his gaze caught, much to his chagrin, on unfortunately smooth, small reflective pool — likely the natural and perpetual result of him fighting with ice beside a firani — within which his reflection stared, briefly, back at him. He snorted and froze it over, turning and giving a sharp push to a loose strand of his hair as he glanced towards Dysarrin.

“Having fun yet?” he asked. And then, after a pause and a frown and despite all his best intentions: “Do you think I’m ugly?”

Ataya narrowed his eyes, attention honing in belatedly on the unidentifiable globulous mass of something that Dysarrin had apparently found interesting enough to merit bringing it to his attention. What it was and where, precisely, in the insect’s corpse Dys had even found it were mysteries Ataya did not care to pursue. It didn’t seem to matter, in any case, since Dysarrin switched topics with him, setting the whatever-it-was aside in favor of moving in — again — breathing distance from his face. Ataya pursed his lips.

“Dysarrin, I specifically recall, though I admit it would not startle me to hear you had already forgotten, telling you not to—”

But then, Dysarrin was speaking, leaning and touching him with the same saliva, slime, ooze and innard-juice-soaked hand that had been carrying his ‘thing’ moments before, and Ataya’s lips curled back further in unmasked disgust like the withered edges of paper coiling back under the heat of a fire. As he opened his mouth again to object, however, Dysarrin finished his analysis, and Ataya felt the edges of his frustration wear down, brittle posture — fully ready to jerk away from the other’s hold — loosening a half fraction. He eyed his friend, ignoring for the moment the multitude of health hazards almost surely attached to filth that was Dysarrin’s hand and their current source of contact.

‘Funny looking’ was not precisely a compliment, granted. But not ugly was at least a starting point. Albeit a rather low bar, but something, and as such, better than nothing. At length, he huffed and tugged lightly at his arm in a less-than-forceful attempt to dislodge it.

“‘Best,’ mm?” he repeated. “I suppose one couldn’t ask for much better than the best.” His gaze flicked to the seeping wreckage that was Dysarrin’s set of kills and he hummed disinterestedly. “Have we explored this cave, then, to your satisfaction, or would you prefer to put forth several more attempts to ingest poison before we depart?”

Ataya watched dubiously as Dysarrin spoke. Wild, childish enthusiasm — while common in Dysarrin — did not necessarily bode well, given the sorts of things that Dysarrin found worthy of such enthusiasm. He opened his mouth to point out that while yes, most people did actually like to have the best things and Dysarrin wasn’t uncommon in that regard, simply liking the best things did not mean that everything one did happen to like was the best, and that by definition the ‘best’ could only be one thing to begin with, but…

This was Dysarrin, and he assumed — all but assuredly correctly — that the information would fall on deaf ears.

In the next instant, he forgot the argument anyway as Dysarrin shoved the thoroughly disgusting thing back in his face, and Ataya had to crane his neck back to avoid contact, expression immediately pinching back up with heavy distaste. “Best things,” Ataya repeated. “You like me, and that. I am oh so flattered, forgive me if I don’t swoon. You can keep it.”

Suitably revolted, and admittedly perhaps mildly irked at being effectively compared to an oozing insect bladder in terms of relative value, Ataya turned on his heel, and started their departure. He had had enough insects — and everything that came with them — for one evening anyway.