AN: Oops, should have uploaded this yesterday, sorry.
Chapter three: Third Rung
'CRACK! . . . CRACK! . . . CRACK! . . . CRACK! . . . '
I glared at the wall of stone above me, once again reeling back my arm to stab my braced, bony fingers into the wall.
'CRACK! . . . CRACK! . . . CRACK! . . . CRACK! . . . '
The sound of armoured nails digging into stone echoed with every repetition. I watched as small pieces of rock broke free and fell to the floor far bellow me. To be honest, I knew I could have done far more damage to the wall with ease. I was only using a fraction of my strength, after all. But then again, that wouldn't make as nice a hand-hold, so I continued to chip at the wall lightly.
I stared at the hole in the wall for a moment, judging if I'd done a sufficient job chiselling it out. Nodding once, I grabbed onto it and hauled myself up one step further, beginning to kick lightly at a hole I'd made earlier to widen it.
'CA-CLACK! . . . CA-CLACK! . . . CA-CLACK! . . . CA-CLACK! . . . '
I was currently half way up a high wall, trying to reach the cavern ceiling. Unfortunately, my attempts to simply jump up had thus far only resulted in failure, and comical falls back to the ground. It seemed my body, no matter how powerful, just couldn't generate the velocity to cover the distance. It made sense, of course. I had trouble building up momentum, with even my fastest run being more a glorified jog than a sprint for the first thirty seconds or so.
The highest I had managed to jump was enough to put my feet level with were my neck usually sat, but no higher. And the roof was six or seven times that distance away. So, scaling the wall it was.
'CA-CLACK! . . . CA-CLACK! . . . CA-CLACK! . . . CA-CLACK! . . . '
Once I finished kicking the hole wider, I stuck my foot in, and wiggled it around until it seemed stable. Then, I began chipping a new hole in the wall above me.
'CRACK! . . . CRACK! . . . CRACK! . . . CRACK! . . . '
My end goal was to dig through the ceiling until I could reach the surface. Mainly because I had no idea where the entrance/exit of the system of caverns was. I knew it had one of course, I remembered entering. Just not where I'd come from. I did, however, know it had been a very long time since I entered. Long enough that even if I could flawlessly remember the path I'd taken and follow it back to the entrance, digging through the roof would still likely be faster.
Or at least, would feel less aimless than wandering around until I found the exit.
'CRACK! . . . CRACK! . . . CRACK! . . . CRACK! . . . '
And so, I scaled the wall. It was slow going, of course, and I'd already fallen off the wall a couple of times, but that didn't seem like a big deal to me. It wasn't as if it hurt anything but my pride . . . which I didn't have much of to begin with.
I finished another hole, and pulled myself up further to begin kicking the next hole in foot-range.
'CA-CLACK! . . . CA-CLACK! . . . CA-CLACK! . . . CA-CLACK! . . . '
. . . I was bored of thinking of why I was scaling the wall. What else was there to think about?
. . .
I could think about how I was going to dig through the roof of the cave? No, I was just planning to blast at it, and maybe stab at it, when I got in range, so that wasn't a very fun line of thought. What else? Maybe the blasts themselves?
'CA-CLACK! . . . CA-CLACK! . . . CA-CLACK! . . . CA-CLACK! . . . '
Actually, yes, it probably was. After all, I didn't actually know how they worked. I just . . . used them. But, what were they? They were red, I knew that much. They also tended to make whatever part of my body I used to manifest them feel hot, and burn their targets. Were they fire, then? They didn't look like the fires I remembered, though. Those were orange, dark blue, sometimes gold, and flickered. My blasts seemed more . . . fluid, than that.
What else was hot? . . . light? Light could be hot, right? Could they be made of light, then? . . . Maybe? I had no memories of seeing a light strong enough to blow things away. So, I had no way to prove they weren't light, but no way to prove they were, either.
Was there something else they could be? . . . I felt like the answer was yes, but the memory wasn't forth-coming.
Rather than spend ages trying to navigate the edges of my memory just to remember one little thing, I decided to search for a new topic.
. . . What else can I do with my blasts?
I distinctly remembered how, when I'd first woken up in the desert, I'd only been able to fire them from my mouth. My tongue, to be more specific. But, after getting bored and starting to experiment, I'd learned to fire them from my fingers as well by imitating the feeling off energy flowing into my mouth with my hands. Did that mean I could fire them from other places as well? Would there even be a point to that? Would I be able to hit anything?
Blasts fired from my mouth were stronger than the ones with my hands, but also harder to aim. I didn't know why they were stronger, but perhaps they were less accurate because it was harder to direct my head than my hands? Or was it a matter of pointing my tongue vs pointing my fingers? Since I was going to start blasting the roof soon, I'd have to experiment a little.
For that matter . . . could I increase the power? Maybe by trying to charge it for longer? Make it narrower? Broader? Would it hit harder if it was thinner and more focused? Could I throw it like a hand grenade? It was shaped like an orb before I fired it, so maybe.
Idea after idea ran through my head, and I soon enough found myself with over a dozen little things I wanted to try with my crimson blasts of energy. Some more likely to work than others, but all of them fun to think about, and I was eager to get a chance to try them.
Could I shape them into a blade and swing them like a sword, or would they blow up in my hands? Could I make them curve after firing them? Could I fire five weak ones from each finger? Could I charge one in my hand, then palm-strike something before setting it off . . . without loosing my hand?
It was almost a shame that they didn't seem to have any recoil, or I may have been able to use them to fly . . . would I be able to ride the explosions they generated? Actually, did they cause explosions cause they exploded, or cause they flash evaporated whatever they were hitting so fast it exploded?
It was at that point that my right hand, not as strong or stable as my right, slipped out of the clutch I'd carved, leaving me to tip backwards off of the wall. Knowing better than to try and grab back a hold, I kicked off the wall and let myself fall. I hit the ground back first, sending a jolt through my body and making the ground quake for the briefest moment, before slowly crawling back to my feet.
I walked back up to my line of makeshift hand-holds and began to scale back up until I was at the top, noting it was only a short distance further to the ceiling.
I stabbed my hands into the stone again, and an idea struck me. 'Maybe I should learn to fight with my body better?'
Sure, my blasts were useful in fights, or at least the two I could remember being in since I first woke up in that desert, but that didn't mean I could rely on them forever. After all, they took a while to charge. Sooner or later, something would close the distance before I could blast them, whether cause they charged in to fast, or dodged the first shot and I didn't have time to charge another.
The chances likely only increased if I was going back up to the desert to search for a place with grass. After all, I thought, it was easier to dodge blasts when there was nothing in the way of you dodging, and open spaces favoured the fast. 'Of course, a lack of walls and pillars means it will be harder for ambush predators. Unless they hide under the sand. Not that I've ever seen an actual ambush specialist.'
So, how was I supposed to improve as a fighter? . . . plan out a lot of battles in my head before they happened? Would that help? I didn't know, but I felt that it probably wouldn't. Much anyway. But how else would I improve?
How did you improve at something? . . . you practised. Which wasn't really an option.
My head made contact with the ceiling above me, knocking me out of my thoughts with a jolt. I'd made it. 'Now, to start carving a hole.'
'I should have blasted through the roof first . . . ' I thought, putting a hand to my forehead with a tired sigh. At the moment, the only thing I wanted to do was go lay down in a dark(er) corner of the cavern and go to sleep. Which, considering that was what I'd been doing just moments before, spoke volumes about how little I wanted to deal with what I was facing.
'Volumes . . . what are volumes? . . . books? . . . paper, made of . . . wood . . . covered in ink . . . dried black liquid . . . set in symbols that represent sound . . . . . . '
You see, it seems that I'd overlooked the little detail that the surface would, likely, be a desert. As in, sand. Lot's of sand. Everywhere. Deep sand. And sand, could, in some capacity, flow.
So, when I'd slowly blasted my way through the roof and into the desert above(which, mind you, had taken well over twenty shots. Turns out I could influence their dimensions.) a stream of sand had come flowing down on top of me. It had started out thin, but I'd decided the try blasting one more time, at which point the sand-fall had grown as wide as my own body, casting off a huge cloud of dust. It was blinding, and got everywhere.
I'd decided to wait until the sand stopped flowing down to try climbing up, and, seeing that it would take a while, wandered off to take a little nap. And upon awakening, I'd returned to find . . . sand. Piled all the way up to the roof, outright sealing the hole I'd made.
"Brilliant. Jut brilliant." I sighed.
But there was no point sulking, I needed to start moving sand. So, I walked over to the mound, and began trying to climb my way up the pile of sand. That went about as well as one would expect trying to climb a pile of powder-dry sand would go. Which is to say, two steps up, then the particles beneath my feet slid out from under me, and I found myself lying on the ground, flat on my stomach.
I crawled back to my feet, dusted myself off, took a few steps to the right, and tried again. Made it two steps further up, then slid back down again, only this time I lost my balance and fell over backwards as I slid.
I lay there, staring at the ceiling, sighed, and crawled back to my feet. 'This is going to take a while isn't it?'
The third time I tried to climb the quartz-white sand-pile, I instead tried to crawl up on hand and knee. Which, seeing as I was wearing a robe, was about the most awkward motion I'd ever attempted, and I soon found myself needing to fight my own . . . clothing . . . body-part? . . . to make any progress. Until I once again had the powder beneath my feet give way and slid back to the floor of the cave. Only this time I was buried by the avalanche.
I sat up, letting the sand flow off me, and shook my whole body like a wet dog to try and get as much material away from my head and face before I opened my eyes again. I still got some sand in my eyes though.
I pulled my lower body out of the sand and dusted myself off again, though by this point I was so dirty that my black robes looked light, powder grey. I almost wished that I didn't have a nose hole, considering how badly I needed to sneeze.
"Aaa . . . AA . . . A-PHEW!" I coughed and sputtered, trying to wave a cloud of dust away from my face.
I quickly backed out of the dust clouds, trying to find some room to take a breath without flooding my lungs with powder.
Once I was a safe distance away from the pile, I turned around and glared at it. 'Ok.' I thought, making my way around the pile in search of the right angle. 'You know what?'
I blasted it. Broadest, strongest shot I was capable of. Aimed towards the upper-middle of the mass and angled so that I, hopefully, wouldn't wind up damaging my ladder from earlier. To my credit, it worked, and the giant pile of sand was sent flying like a sand-castle struck by a fire-hose. This, of course, created an even larger dust cloud, which blanketed the entire area in a white cloud.
Seeing that, I retreated back father and waited for the cloud to settle, hoping that it had cleared enough for me to climb up my "ladder" and begin making my way up to the desert.
It was not to be, however. Or at least, not at the moment. For, once the dust cleared, it became clear that more sand was falling. 'Great. Just great. More waiting.'
AN: Nothing much happens in this chapter, so it's probably a bit boring. Next one should be a bit more interesting.