I’d never been hungry in this world before, I reflected. There was always food around.

  I’d seen mushrooms in here—they glowed, they were hard to miss—but without Serru’s expertise or at least my own identification ability, I wasn’t about to risk eating those. There really wasn’t anything else.

  I couldn’t honestly tell whether I was hungry because I had missed lunch and it was now long past any reasonable window after breakfast, or whether it was because I was hurt and my body was demanding resources. As Zanshe would probably say, there was no reason it couldn’t be both.

  I was getting thirsty, too.

  I paused, and then held my loud and boured breath to listen. Had I just heard water? And where had it come from? I turned slowly in pce, trying to keep my breathing quiet so it wouldn’t interfere.

  That way? I was almost sure it was that way.

  Well, sort of sure.

  All right, it was my best guess. It wasn’t going to get any better.

  I did take a wrong turn or two, and the less said about the nguage I used over the extra walking the better, which made the zombie felid snicker.

  I finally found it, though. This one bubbled right up out of the floor, and the pool around it was at least somewhat rger, the capacity of a juice pitcher or even a bit more.

  I knelt heavily beside it, scooped water to drink, and then sagged to the ground.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Resting. I’m tired, hungry, injured, in pain, and angry beyond all words. I can’t do anything about any of that except being tired.” I wasn’t looking forward to how stiff lying on bare stone was going to make me, but I just had nothing left.

  “You always this zy?”

  “Yes, definitely. I stop at work for naps every shift. Don’t care if I’m in the middle of saving someone’s life.”

  “In the middle of what?”

  “Paramedic,” I mumbled, already halfway out.

  I might have been wrong about the brief silence, followed by vicious swearing, and somewhere in it, I thought I heard, “Seriously? But not the same... right? No. Yes. Oh fuck. How is this fucking clueless noob a warden?” There might have been another pause before, “Fine. If you’re taking a nap, I can go grab one and maybe a snack without missing anything except maybe a nightmare.”

  I faded out completely, and came back with no sense of time. The only sound was my own breathing and the burbling of the water.

  I opened my eyes and shifted position, not without a poorly-suppressed whimper or two, until I could see the zombie felid. There was no motion, no sign of it being inhabited by his awareness.

  It hurt, but I managed to push myself up to my knees. I might not have long before he was back to spying on me. I scooped a double handful of water and drank it thirstily.

  Without much hope, I tried bringing up my dispy.

  It was still fuzzy, but to my surprise, it blurred more, then came into better focus, like someone adjusting settings. It still wasn’t as crisp and clear as it usually was, and the response was sluggish and finicky, but at least it was there.

  I couldn’t just change to my centaur form. Odds were too high that he’d catch that. I didn’t know where I was, but he did, and if he thought I was starting to gain ground, he could easily send zombies in to beat me again, maybe drag me somewhere else, maybe find other ways to keep me from reaching my magic. He needed to keep thinking that I was crippled.

  I didn’t have any healing abilities in this form.

  But I did have the ability to turn water briefly into Recovery. That was something.

  I snuck another gnce at the zombie, then cast it.

  The pool of water began to glow with swirls of colour.

  I gulped as much of it as I could, and spshed the rest all over myself, hoping that the glow would be invisible that way. Then I stretched out again to wait.

  Recovery had only a fifth of a Quickheal, but it did have Anodyne as well, and that took the edge off the pain; my stomach’s efforts at heaving whenever I moved and the pain spiked eased. What else was there? Lulbye, to act as a muscle rexant, and mine probably needed it. Refresh. I could use that, and hoped it wouldn’t be affected by my recent experience with too many booster potions. And Soce for mood, which wasn’t likely to do much.

  Or maybe it did, especially combined with this form’s default state of mindful serenity. This situation sucked, but I wasn’t dead yet.

  Could my friends find me? I was quite certain they were searching frantically by now. With any luck, Aryennos would survive that. Zanshe aside, they didn’t really have the skills for it. Serru, who might have a way to, was still some way off.

  Serru had finished every message with, I’ll find you, I promise. She didn’t mean this, no one had expected this, but I didn’t believe for a second that she was going to just abandon her adopted newcomer, not after everything. She was smart and resourceful, and since she and Zanshe went on gathering trips in this area, even camping in the Quincunx shelter, they were probably familiar with the nearby caves. Zanshe struck me as formidable in her own right, and she might be able to leave keeping an eye on our more urban friends to Heket, but she might need to wait for Serru’s more specialized experience.

  Serru was coming, Zanshe had expected to meet up with her in two days or less.

  If I couldn’t find a way out, or even if I could and it left me lost and still vulnerable and injured, I just had to survive long enough.

  To do that, I had to not give Zombie Boy any reason to do anything except watch. But I needed his attention here, not on my friends.

  Possibly I bcked out again. My thoughts stuttered but in the dim light, with nothing changing, I had no way to tell how long the stutter had been.

  I didn’t feel quite as bad, though.

  My irregur Recovery was helping.

  I crawled back into reach of the water, and drank again, and did my best to saturate skin and hair.

  The zombie felid was motionless. I snuck a look at it, then, with my back to it and keeping motions minimal, used Identify on a nearby glowing mushroom.

  Blushing Mooncap. Edible raw or cooked. Best market: restaurants and other food services. Grow profusely in Highnds caves lit by... bh bh bh. Nothing mentioned poisonous twins. The Highnds were supposed to have rodents with hantavirus or rabies or something, not toxic doubles.

  Eating something that glowed, even if it was glowing a gentle peachy orange and not screaming red, still made me nervous.

  On the other hand, I was really hungry.

  I picked a small one, hesitated, and tossed it into my mouth before I could think about it much longer.

  It tasted like under-seasoned but properly-cooked chicken. The chewy texture of it didn’t entirely match, but it wasn’t bad. Just before I swallowed, I picked up a hint of fruitiness.

  With something to boost the fvour a little, that would actually be quite good.

  I picked a second one, twice the size, and ate it as well, but decided to stop there just to allow a bit of time to make sure nothing weird was going to happen. Still, having something other than water in my stomach was a good feeling.

  After a st drink, I gathered my shredded resolve and staggered back to my feet.

  The zombie felid didn’t react.

  I left it there, and went back to stumbling my way through the darkness. In stretches with no crystals or mushrooms, the gloom was near-total, but even near clusters of those coppery crystals, it never really reached a level I could call ‘bright’.

  “Think you’re clever, trying to leave me behind?”

  “Figured you’d catch up.” I didn’t bother to look around. “Why bore you by making you follow at my pace?”

  It had been a while. My stomach’s only issue was that it wanted more.

  “This might get exciting,” I added. “I think I’m out of options other than eating glowing mushrooms.”

  “Never seen these ones before. No idea what they’ll do.” Even the zombie’s fttened tone conveyed interest.

  “Yeah, well, someone stole my bag that had food in it. Having fun trying on my clothes?”

  “Left it by one of the cliffs so your friends know you jumped. Or fell. Whatever. Girly fucking thing. You can’t even manage being a guy when you’re in a guy form, I guess.”

  “Gee, cannot think what about your awesome example of manliness I might not want to imitate.” I really hoped these were all the same mushrooms. They probably were. I picked one off a ledge and inspected it. It certainly looked the same, and smelled the same.

  I took a deep breath, and ate it.

  The fvour was, reassuringly, the same.

  The zombie felid watched me intently. “You know this world does have poisonous mushrooms, right?”

  “Yes. Mostly in the Forest, but could be here. Right now, it’s worth the chance. They don’t taste all that bad. You should try them. Oh wait, you’re possessing a corpse, you can’t.”

  “Maybe I’ll send a zombie to gather some if you don’t die.”

  “Tell me something. How did you recognize me in different forms?”

  “Crafting in one form, some info skills in another form, hammered them into one device that I can use in any form.”

  “That is... actually really cool and clever. You ever consider settling in a school town and inventing things instead of terrorizing people?”

  “Should have, before going to the Axis.”

  “Which you can’t actually talk about, any more than I can tell my friends about the other sites.”

  “The Axis won’t take you home.”

  “So you’ve said.” I picked another glowing peach-coloured mushroom and ate it with better confidence. “And I still have zero reason to believe you.”

  “Fine. Let me know if you actually want the rest of the tutorial. Like the reason it can’t. The stuff your little harem there don’t know.”

  “You’ll be the first I tell.”

  Just to break the silence, I started singing ‘Sheena Is A Punk Rocker’. I wasn’t going to get much energy behind it, between injuries and walking, and transtion made the rhythm a complete mess, but it was better than nothing.

  “What the fuck are you singing?”

  I paused between verses. “The Ramones.”

  “Who?”

  Instead of answering, I kept singing.

  “How fucking old is that, a hundred years?”

  I waited until the end of the song to reply. “They got together in 1974 and changed music. Even if people forget them. Figures you’re one of them.” I ate another mushroom, then started ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ and tuned out his further compints about my taste. I wasn’t singing for him anyway. If it annoyed him, that was just a bonus.