Note to self: don’t touch the feathers.

Satisfied that he had an excellent strategy for moving forward, Milo took a well deserved break, drinking a Soylent and taking a few gulps of water. Being terrified out of his mind was thirsty work.

After tending to the needs of his body, he decided it was time to hunt down some more XP. He’d seen several more of the birds while flying over the area earlier, so it would simply be a matter of flying to the closest stalagmite and dealing with them exactly like he’d dealt with the first. Easy peasy.

He took out another three of the creatures by breaking their necks and then smashing their heads into the stone floor when necessary, just like the first one. None of them saw him coming. From just those three he wound up netting himself a cool 120 points of experience. Level 4 seemed to be the standard for these guys.

He hit a dry spell at that point, until he finally spied two together in the outer edge of the room. He landed on top of a nearby stalagmite, briefly double-checking that he was still doing okay on mana. He was sitting at six. Good enough. He could take these two out by spending one more, then take a break to refill a bit.

The first cassowary went down exactly like all the others before it. It actually died just from the neck shot, making Milo’s job easier. However, the one beside it immediately realized something was up, letting out an ear-splitting screech.

-

You hear the cassowary’s cry, and you know fear.

-

Ah crap.

Apparently they had another method to deliver their unnatural fear. Maybe that was what made them so very scary. To make matters worse, a chorus of additional cries could be heard from around the cavern as every oversized hellbird in the vicinity was alerted to the intruder. Fortunately, the effects of the shrieking didn’t seem to stack.

Milo felt himself begin to panic, but he knew what was up this time. He clamped down hard on the emotion, doing his best to muscle through the intrusive fear with cold, calm logic.

They can’t reach me. They can’t touch me. I can fly. They can’t. This is fine. I’m fine. I’ll just kill them all. Threat neutralized.

After taking the moment to center himself and trying really hard not to think about how high up he was, he switched his focus to taking out the second cassowary, blasting his book on a collision course with its neck.

Frustratingly, the bird dodged with a sharp jerk of its head. Its keen, glowing red eyes were apparently more than just for show. It tracked the book warily, shrieking again in warning or challenge.

Milo shot the book forward once more, aiming for the much larger target of its body this time. It ducked to the side, causing the book to glance off its shoulder relatively harmlessly.

Come on, die you stupid bird. Milo was feeling the pressure, irrationally paranoid about the rest of the cassowaries showing up to gang up on him. He envisioned them forming a ladder or performing acrobatics off of each other’s backs in order to reach his perch high above. He nearly glanced over his shoulder before managing to stop himself.

He tried once more, scoring another glancing blow. The animal was amazingly quick, and he didn’t have the space in these tight quarters to move the book as freely as he’d like. He needed a new tactic.

His first thought was to take the book up high and smash down with it, gaining more speed in the process than he could in among the stalagmites. However, he was worried about a miss doing damage to the book if it were to collide with the ground at that speed versus the relatively softer body of the cassowary.

Instead, he hovered the book in front of the creature, then shot in for another hit. It was ready with another dodge, but Milo hadn’t seriously been trying to strike it. Instead, he rapidly brought the book to a halt and made it dive underneath the bird after it had dodged before immediately wrenching it up.

The book collided with the cassowary’s stomach directly between its legs, drawing a squawk as he lifted the bird up off the ground. He was a little bit rear of center mass, however, and the bird’s long legs pinwheeled through the air as it pitched forward to land awkwardly on its neck and upper chest area. It immediately scrabbled against the ground in an attempt to right itself, but Milo didn’t let up. Now that he had it off balance, he brought the book down like a hammer onto the thing’s skull, smashing it into the floor. Its head rebounded off the ground and it gave another half-hearted screech, obviously dazed. Milo raised the book into the air for a finishing strike.

By chance, the bird’s thrashing movements caused it to make direct eye contact with Milo for the first time.

-

The cassowary’s gaze strikes fear into your very soul.

-

Come on, seriously? Milo felt this one like a physical blow. He recoiled automatically, jerking back.

Off the stalagmite.

His arms windmilled, but he could already feel it was too late, that he was overbalanced. As he began to topple backward and it felt like the world was dropping out from underneath him—even as it would soon be rushing up to meet him—he activated Pause For Thought in a burst of adrenaline-induced problem-solving.

His first thought had actually been to catch himself with the book, but then, immediately on its heels—no, too imprecise, can’t even see it, not enough time—oh. Pause.

Aborting his finishing blow on the cassowary, Milo began pulling the book toward him as best he could without knowing exactly where it was in relation to himself. His view was currently full of the cavern roof and that was about it.

Fortunately, slowed time seemed to dull the effects of the magical fear currently influencing him, allowing him to focus more fully on the task at hand. Even so, it was unnerving to feel himself sinking inexorably toward the hard cavern floor beneath. He wanted to pull the book his way as hard and as fast as possible, but he knew that would be a mistake; if the momentum didn’t cause the book to overshoot and make him miss his chance entirely, trying to grab it while it was moving that fast could very well break his fingers. However, drawing it toward him too slowly could be equally calamitous.

Instead, he struck for a middle ground and hoped for the best.

He opted to draw the book up and over the stalagmite. Going around was possibly faster, but there were smaller stalagmites on either side he wasn’t confident of navigating around. Also, he wanted to be able to see it coming toward him and be able to grab it with his hand.

The wait for the book to appear in his vision was excruciating. He tried to take his mind off of it by positioning his arms as best he could to snatch at the book when it came.

He also shifted where he was looking so he would see the book the moment it appeared over the top of the stalagmite. Once he finally saw it, he wrenched it as hard as he could toward himself, only letting off when it had traversed slightly over half the remaining distance. After it had, he hauled back the opposite direction, rapidly decelerating it as it approached.

It was going to be tight on Pause For Thought, but he was starting to run low on mana by now and he thought he could make it. He’d activated the skill just a hair before he’d truly begun to plummet, and he was now a quarter of the way to the floor. Milo could feel the skill’s duration running low as his fingers made contact with the ropes wrapping tightly around the book. He grabbed firmly onto a knotted loop and was just able to wrap his left arm around the book before reality snapped back to normal speed.

He let out a startled cry, wobbling erratically. The heavy pack on his back threatened to drag him to the ground, his weakened arms struggling to keep up with the combined weight of his body and his gear. He compensated by dropping halfway to the ground, still desperately clutching the book as he struggled to coordinate both his body and the proper amount of force he needed to apply with Fetch Book to support his weight.

He just managed it, finally getting his chest resting up on the book as he hugged it tightly to himself, legs dangling below. One of his feet brushed against a small stalagmite he hadn’t realized was down there until just now.

That would have hurt to land on. Holy hell. His backpack would have cushioned him some, but still.

Fetch Book’s duration was running low now. Heart beating practically out of his chest, Milo aimed himself at a nearby stalagmite—not the one from which he’d been fighting the cassowary. He wanted a bit of distance and a minute to catch his breath.

He landed without incident and perched himself tensely atop it. He was still under the effects of the shriek, but either it was a lesser form of the feathers’ poison-induced fear or he was learning to deal with it. He was able to remain fairly calm as he half-knelt on, half-hugged the round-topped pillar of stone.

Three freaking fear effects. Although the stare seemed like it was more of a jump-scare than a lingering effect like the other two.

Milo’s worry of getting mobbed by cassowaries seemed unfounded. He didn’t see a single creature as he waited for his mana to slowly tick back up to six, not even the one he’d been fighting. Perhaps he’d found a spot where the meandering pathway through the stone forest simply didn’t reach. He couldn’t really tell from his current vantage point.

While he waited, Milo tried to think of what exactly he’d done wrong in the previous battle. Had it been a mistake to take on two at once? Given everything he knew up to that point, it should have been reasonably safe. Of course, he could have fought one like he had the skeleroo earlier, purposely sparring with one instead of assassinating it unawares in order to get a better sense of its combat abilities.

But would that have resulted in a different outcome? Probably not. That was essentially what he’d done, just on accident rather than intentionally.

The problem was that he simply hadn’t known about all of its capabilities. How could he, without testing it as he just had? Was there another approach he could have taken that would have kept him safer? Lacking much in the way of defenses currently, it seemed like only a matter of time before he encountered an enemy that was able to kill him with unanticipated abilities.

This is really, really dangerous, he realized.

Well, he’d pretty much known that, but as of right now he finally felt it. He needed a safer approach. Glancing around the cavern, he began to weigh various possibilities.