>>5990186>>5990236>>5990261>>5990320>>5990758>>5991042Shadow is your ally. Young Ilythiiri either internalize this truth at an early age or perish before adulthood. Taking care to cover your tracks as you push onward, you sequester yourself away in a patch of thick shrubbery, with a rocky outcrop at your back. Seating yourself on the grassy forest floor, you steady your breathing and drink languidly from your waterskin, observing the stream as its waters gently roll by, which adopts an almost otherworldly quality as the sun's soft twilight is reflected off of its surface.
Your intuition proves correct. A silvery glint in your eye alerts you to the speedy approach of a thing twice your size shaped to resemble a sleek-seeming predator, much like the displacer beast Alantha or Malar himself. But this is no creature of flesh and sinew. It is as though the entirety of its body was wrought from steel - claws, limbs, and all. Perturbingly, it moves with the intention and flexibility of a fully organic being. You have seen golems before, constructs of varying quality and material. But you feel reasonably certain that this is no golem.
Though its body is undeniably of a dense metal, its footsteps are completely inaudible, an affront to all sound logic. As though in determined pursuit, it hurries along, keeping its head low to the ground. Attempting to work out the direction it intends to take, you come to a frightening conclusion. It is tracking <span class="mu-i">you</span>, not by sight, but by scent. Visual concealment will do nothing to prevent it from discovering you.
By your estimation, you have several moments until it has successfully determined your location.
>[Drink Potion of Pass Without Trace] It was judicious of me to purchase this beforehand. I should be able to drink this and slip away, if I am quiet.>[Agility, Attack] I shall deal with this permanently. If this creature is a threat to me, it would be wise of me to strike while I remain unnoticed, rather than flee.>[Intellect] There must be a way for me to use the environment to escape detection. It is merely a matter of applying what I know of the surface world.>[Write-in.] 