Have you ever tried to turn off your panicking brain by sitting down and scrolling through your phone, sometimes for hours on end? Yeah, that’s where I was now, only, I didn’t have a phone. All I had were my menus that held every vital thing about who I was in a neat little window.

  What else are you meant to do when you’re trapped in a deep dark dank hole with no way out sitting beside the corpse of a gargantuan snake?

  “Joe, what’s happening?” Nora bellowed from up above, distracting me from the one thing I wanted to do.

  My chest swelled as I sucked in a deep breath, closing my eyes and leaning back against the cold and wet wall of the pit.

  “I’m fine. Just stuck. Give me a minute.”

  She was yelling other things now but I chose to ignore them as I let the darkness permeate my entire being. I focused on the sound of running water, letting it drown out any other noises. I breathed slow and steady, not really counting the seconds but making sure each movement was as long and slow as I could manage without bringing on a coughing fit.

  When I had settled and the pain from my groin had turned into little more than a dull throb far in the back of my mind I opened my eyes and focused on the blinking notification bell.

  New Skill Unlocked: Master of Shadows

  Once a day you can bring forth the power of your Goddess and command her followers that lurk in the darkest corners of your world. The Lady’s Force will replace your magicka pool for the duration of the skill effects. Skills that require magicka will become unavailable when Master of Shadows is active.

  Requires the blessing of the Shadow Goddess to activate.

  Well, that explained a lot about what had just happened. When I had been falling I had been attempting to use my Unrelenting Force skill to command the shadows but what had happened had dwarfed that skill with its sheer intensity. It was no wonder this new skill was something I could only do once a day.

  I’d always thought commanding the shadows would just be an innate power I had simply from being the Shadow Goddess’s Chosen One. Well, at least I’d thought that from the moment she berated me for, what was it again? Ah yes, ‘cowering before the very things that should be prostrating at your feet’. Clearly, that was not the case. I would have to unlock skills to use the powers she had gifted me. That was fine and all but despite being stuck in this damn world for who the hell knows how long I still hadn’t figured out how certain skills unlocked.

  Was it an event-based process? Did I need to make particular decisions or choices to make the skills I wanted become available? Was it linked to my player level? Or maybe I just needed to use skills in the same branch for particular amounts of time to unlock something more along that line.

  It was a mystery. One I wasn’t sure I would ever really build a full understanding of. This is the kind of thing that I would normally leave to the experts as I perused their well-documented walkthroughs. It was a shame such a thing would never be available for me here. There were no search engines for the end of the world. A rude oversight of the so-called primordials if you think about it.

  Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, scrolling my menus.

  My main character stats hadn’t changed as much as I would have wanted them to. I was at a much higher level now but still, everything seemed so small. This slow creep leveling up was beginning to grind my gears.

  Having my sword equipped with its boon of the Spriggan Wraith upgrade along with my Ring of Vitality and the Ruby Amulet of Melumek’s Curse was doing a fine job of bolstering my paltry numbers.

  The next window I looked at was my skills. The list was ever-growing and often easily forgotten. Especially the skills I rarely got much of a chance to use like Golden and Gnome Tongue. The reminder of their existence was enough even if the skills were next to useless deep down in the bottom of a foul-smelling hole.

  Fifteen available skills for me to use on a whim with only a few minor restrictions. I still missed my Shadow Rush skill but even I couldn’t pretend I didn’t have a good thing going with what I did have.

  An idea of how to escape my current predicament tickled the back of my mind. The thought was still in its infancy; only partially formed with fuzzy edges and a lot of unanswered questions but it was a start. Finding that feather-like touch of inspiration was the entire reason I was scrolling through things I already knew. Focusing on other mundane things had a wonderful impact of bringing out the deeper more useful thoughts. Almost like coaxing out a frightened animal by pretending you weren’t interested in it at all and letting it come to you.

  “Joe, don’t make me come down there!” Nora screeched like a harpy from up above.

  The sound jarred me from my meditation. The world was suddenly too loud and cold and uncomfortable again. The fleeting thought at the back of my mind spooked and darted away, disappearing back into a darkened corner I could not reach.

  “Nora, please, would you…”

  “Shut the hell up!”

  I flinched at Frank’s interruption. It might have been what I had wanted to say but I wasn’t stupid enough to actually say it like he was.

  “Excuse me?” The warrior woman bellowed.

  “That was Frank, I swear,” I called back.

  “You had better hope it was Joseph Griffon!”

  I hissed through my clenched teeth at the sound of my full name. It was like having Mrs. Percott coming at me for making a mistake on the farm. The only difference was Mrs. Percott also unfortunately knew my middle name and liked to throw it in the mix whenever possible. Trust me, if you ever meet her and she pulls that crap, turn your ass around and bolt in the other direction like a grizzly bear is on your tail because I can assure you, it bloody well is.

  I settled back down into my favored relaxing position and waited for the calm to overtake me again. When it did instead of hitting the three lines branded into my wrist I focused instead on my quest menu. I could have visited a different window, like my crafting one perhaps, but this one seemed a little more mind-numbing which is what I was going for. If I looked at my craftables I was sure to start trying to make shit again and Gabby and Jacob just didn’t have the time to wait for me to play with my potions.’’

  Gabby and Jacob, that’s who you’re doing this for, I reminded myself. That’s what is important right now and was the reason I needed to calm the fuck down and let the thought come to me.

  Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in…

  The thought came rushing to the front of my mind; no longer scared to be seen or heard. A wicked smile curved my lips as I looked up again at the tiny pinprick of blueish light that had to be Boopzy. There was a way for me to get out but it was dangerous and unbelievably stupid. Just the way I liked it.