Chapter 12: 12: The First Chamber

While his leg healed, Eli drank water and tried to fashion a rope from moss-roots, to tie the club around his wrist to make climbing easier. He failed, so he ate the moss instead. He'd already finished the squash-like fruit. The moss tasted like ... well, moss. Still, trolls could eat anything--rotting flesh, molding vegetation, handfuls of clay and gravel (though he wasn't sure if his new teeth could handle those)--and he needed to stay strong. 

He threw another pebble and watched the clister emerge from its den, tongue flicking. 

"Over here!" he called.

The lizard crawled across the cavern toward him. Too far to see much, so he kept talking until it approached close enough to give him a better view. Then he felt himself smile. The clister still looked pretty battered, while he was almost completely healed.

"What's going to happen now," he told it, "is I'm gonna keep beating on you then running away until I finish you."

The lizard hissed and paced, and finally returned to its den. After a few minutes, he threw another pebble. He didn't speak that time, though, and the lizard searched for him for twenty minutes before leaving. 

Twenty minutes later he threw another pebble. And another and another ... until the clister didn't even bother checking the noise.

Then he climbed down--one-handed--from the ledge and followed the spark across the cavern. Looking for the right spot. Every so often he threw another pebble, just to maintain the pattern. He didn't know if clisters were smart enough to notice that kind of thing, but he didn't want to find out by getting his face chewed off.

He finally found the right place: a row of thick pillars with widening bases that joined together at knee-height. He could step over them, but the beast would struggle--if it could squeeze through the gaps at all.

He swept the area with the spark. Looked okay, so he whistled once, then threw a few more pebbles.

The clister emerged from what looked like a mud puddle and raced toward the sound.

Eli stayed hidden, watching with the spark for the right moment. Then without exposing his face, he brought the club down on the base of the clister's spine.

The lizard gave a shrieking hiss, writhing in pain ... and his club shattered.

Stone shards bit into Eli's arm and he stumbled, knocked off-balance by the sudden absense of his weapon. Teeth snapped inches from his knee, the blessdamned thing reacting uncannily fast despite its wounds, so he jerked backward then scrambled between the pillars while the spark whirled furiously, searching for another club.

It found a heavy rock instead. Good enough.

The clister lumbered around the pillars for him, hissing steadily, and he heaved the rock and fled. The rock missed, but the injured clister was moving slower now, so Eli reached the ledge without trouble.

An hour later, he slunk among the pillars and found another stone club to repeat the process. Again and again, he taunted the clister from its, striking one or sometimes two blows from partial cover before he ran. 

Steadily wearing the creature down like a trickle of water digs through stone. Using his superior healing ability more than anything else ... until the enraged creature heard him a heartbeat too soon.

The clister lunged sideways and took a chunk out of his calf. 

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Eli stumbled away then sprawled onto the jagged, rocky ground. An uninjured clister would've killed him in an instant--but by that time, he'd pulped half the lizard's face. One of its eyes was a dripping socket so he managed to rolling toward its blind side and retreat to the ledge before collapsing.

He lay on the moss, eating and healing. And after the numbness blunted his pain, he noticed a change. An overlapping in his vision. 

The spark showed him a clear picture of his surroundings--every tuft of moss and rivulet of condensation--but now another picture appeared. A dingier one, that didn't float through the air in response to his thoughts but remained anchored in place at ...

Oh! At his face. 

At his eyes, because apparently his troll blood had finally started adjusting to the darkness. The overlapping vision disoriented him at first. More than the first time he's seen from two places at once. Huh. Still, given how weak his real nightvision was, he easily learned to ignore his eyes in favor of his spark.

Though he wasn't sure that was the smartest approach. He needed to weave the two perspectives together. Then he'd see even more than the spark's omni-directional vision. So he waved his hand in front of his face, trying to simultaneously watch from his eyes and the spark--which he moved above him, beside him, below him. Focusing like that exhausted him ... and he snorted a laugh suddenly, realizing that he was sitting in the dark, waving his hands around.

He closed his eyes and withdrew his awareness from the spark--at least most of his awareness, as a faint link remained. Even as he slept the spark floated an arm's length above him, and a muffled part of his mind monitored his surroundings.

When he woke, the double-vision bothered him a little less ... though mostly because he'd learned to ignore his eyes, even when open. The spark worked better. His calf was almost fully-healed, too, with just a single patch of shiny skin. 

He checked the chamber for the clister. He didn't bother throwing pebbles that time, he just climbed across the wall, then to the ground to grab another club--and the lizard scrambled at him from just beyond eyeshot. Sparkshot. Whatever.

That time, he didn't run.

He crouched. "C'mon, Blinky. Time to finish this."

The clister looked rough. One eye gone, tail dragging, moving with an unsteady gait. Still, its teeth were as deadly as ever. 

Eli shifted his weight toward its blind side, which he'd hammered during each of their previous encounters, and the lizard immediately snapped that way--falling for Eli's feint.

He lunged forward instead, feeling the impact of the clister's heavy flank as he brought his club down in the same spot on the scaly neck that he'd slammed three times before. The clister stumbled, then slammed into a pillar.

Eli struck again, and again--and the clister fled, squirming across the chamber toward its den. Not fast enough. Eli sprinted in chase, following the spark's path, and with a two-handed swing he caved in the creature's skull.

It collapsed, but didn't stop breathing. 

Not until he hit it four more times. 

Then he bashed it once last time and howled in victory.

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