You stalk quietly out of the cathedral - or, well, as quietly as you
can; your claws click against the bone floor.
And then they click against the stone floor instead. It seems the passage outside the cathedral is of more conventional craft - still lined with bone-filled alcoves, but otherwise merely hewn from
the- -your mountain's- stone.
You look right, then left; the corridor continues in both directions with no particularly distinguishing features.
Arbitrarily, you head left.
Click-click.
Click-click.
Click-click.
...It's actually rather annoying, especially when you don't know what - if anything - might be listening. You pause, pondering the art of walking silently-
Click.
That wasn't you.
You taste the air again. Nothing. Or, rather, nothing new or unexpected.
Click-click-click-rattle-
You spin around, and, on pure instinct, lunge at the praying-mantis-like bone construct that's clattering its way out of one of the alcoves. Your fangs close around its upper arm with a crunch, and where you were half-expecting tasty marrow you find only dust. Pthui; you spit-
-and then discover that your instincts are not optimized for fighting undead. A
living creature would be in shock and dying from that hit, but the bone construct simply does not care. It lashes out at you with its remaining arm, the sharpened bone blade of its 'hand' skittering across your scales. It doesn't draw blood, but that
stings none-the-less.
Several moments of panicked flailing later, and you're standing amidst a scattering of definitely no-longer-animated bone fragments. You stomp a few of them, grinding them into the stone floor, just to be sure. That was... embarrassing. Nobody saw that, right?
You glance one way, then the other. Another click-clattering of bones marks a second construct assembling itself, but aside from that the corridor is clear.
This time you curb your instincts, and dash
past the construct, slashing your claws through a thigh-bone as you go by. That doesn't put it
down, of course, but with its mobility crippled it becomes fairly straightforwards to disassemble the thing at your leisure.
Much better.
Still tastes like dust, though.
Traits revealed:
- Draconic Resilience (level 1): Reduces the effect of physically damaging attacks by a small amount; can reduce damage taken to zero.
- Combat Instincts: It turns out that your reaction to being surprised is to strike to kill. This may, at times, prove inconvenient. But there is an up-side: when attempting to kill a living creature, you gain a small bonus to your attacks.
- Natural Weaponry: Your teeth are sharp and sturdy enough to crush bone; your claws are... actually kindof blunt? Still sturdy, though; maybe they're meant more as digging tools than weapons? No, they're a bit short for that... Meh. They're at least reasonably effective with the amount of force you can put behind a hit; you gain a small bonus to all attacks using your claws or teeth.
You continue cautiously, taking the time to...
[] Practice: Stealth
- The sound of your claws on stone is still annoying. You're not actually sure that moving more quietly will help against these constructs - they don't have heads, nevermind ears - but not announcing your presence to everything and anything else nearby is still worth working on. Yes. That makes perfect sense. You're not doing this just because the sound annoys you.
[*] Practice: Perception
- Given recent experience, it seems worth your time to actually double-check each bone-filled alcove as you go past. You didn't notice anything unusual about the alcoves that spawned monsters at you, but perhaps you would have if you'd been just a bit more paranoid? If nothing else, stopping your own motion at regular intervals will give you time to listen for the click of bone-on-bone; you do not want to be caught by surprise again.
[] Write-In: Or maybe there's something else that would be useful here? Philosophy, perhaps? (No, that was sarcasm - you rather doubt these bone constructs can be put down by way of spirited debate.)
