>>6052350>Stygian Step>21 StealthYou need to still your heart. It pounds so hard in your chest that you fear it might explode, but you need it to become still if you want to make it past the beast before you. Weaving threads of magic into a spell requires serenity and piece of mind, lest you lose control and concentration. Consequences could range from something as juvenile as turning your clothes invisible - not that you're wearing much right now - to the spell quite literally exploding in your face.
Breath. Hold. Let it go.
Breath. Hold. Let it go.
Breath. Hold. Let it go.
It takes several minutes of that cycle to force your heart to calm itself. Those minutes stretched on into what felt like hours of keeping your mouth clamped shut and your breath as gentle and soundless as you could manage it. But in time, your panic fades. After all, this encounter is just a consequence for your foolishness, when you decided to go beyond the Wardenstones to greedily pick more herbs than you could find within the barrier's boundary.
Foolish men and women get dragged away by monsters to meet a terrible fate, so you're lucky that you've the freedom to wander the dungeon in the first place. Never mind the fact that you already met your terrible fate and brought thirteen goblins into the world before your captors got themselves killed.
Your fear is gone. You have room to breathe properly, though you keep them light and quiet. In the shadow of a sugar maple, you keep yourself from slumping or collapsing to the ground. Thoughts race through your mind, and soon enough you arrive at what your gut thinks is the best way out.
You suspect that the nose of this wintry wolf is too keen to be fooled by a Minor Image or Ghost Sound. Even a Silent Image barely gives off any scent; nothing less than a Major Image would have a fragrance that could fool such a beast.
Suffice it to say, such magic is beyond you.
Nor do you stand any chance in combat against it. Even with a piece from <span class="mu-s">Ingrid's Indispensable Equipment</span> - the adventurer's checklist before striking down to the Deep Lands - the wolf would surely rip your guts out if you attempted to ambush it. Which leaves you with one option that you can see: Go around it.
The fastest, safest way is through the shadows. Your senses extend through the shade of the maple you stand beneath, and soon enough you can feel every shadow nearby. There is one not so distant from you, a smaller oak beyond the wolf and towards the rising pillars of smoke. It sits at the edge of your perception, but this is not the longest that you've had to jump before.
Breathing calmly, you do as the old hermit taught you.
<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-g">Stealth of 21 meets the Winter Wolf's Passive Perception of 21. You avoid waking the beast!</span></span>
