Why Is It Dark Here?

John woke up on the floor to find himself in pitch darkness. The floor was slick with a sticky liquid that gave off a rusted iron stench that was vaguely familiar. 

As he slowly came to his senses, he could not help but wonder why he woke on the floor and in a puddle of sticky liquid.

Shaking his head as if to clear it of any hallucinations, he placed his hands beneath him and attempted to get up. His hands slipped on the wet and sticky floor as he could not find any purchase. Falling face-first into the liquid made him involuntarily taste the sticky liquid. It was blood. 

Tasting the drying blood seemed to unlock something in him as a flood of foreign memories assaulted him. The strange memories seemed to suggest that he was lying in a puddle of his blood. It was as if another person's memories were crammed in a corner of his mind.

"I am John from Los Angeles, and this is just a bad dream," he muttered to himself, attempting to push the flood of memories aside and chase away the panic he was beginning to feel.

His voice sounded different, and even his accent seemed weird to his ears. He needed to start moving as the memories lodged in his head seemed to think he was in danger just lying there on the floor.

Using his legs as leverage, he got to his feet and began surveying his surroundings. Taking a look around, he found it was dark, really dark. But somehow, his eyes seemed to adjust to the lack of light. He could make out shapes and outlines even though everything looked different, almost weird. It was like he was seeing in hues instead of normal vision. 

As his eyes, kept adjusting to the darkness, everything around him began to take on greater definition. It was strange because he knew it was not getting any brighter, it was his eyes that were adapting to the darkness. He could now see surprisingly well in the darkness.

Everything he looked at, had a certain hue to it, and his own body shone like a beacon to his eyes. He realized he had night vision and his eyes seemed very good at detecting living things. Apart from himself, the only other living thing he could see, where some lichen growing on the walls. 

Looking around, he realized he was in a cavern of sorts, with several stalagmite protrusions jutting out from the cavern floor and numerous stalactite formations dangling from the ceiling. Further investigation showed a tunnel leading away from the cavern, and his sharp eyes could make out glowing fungi on the walls of the tunnel. 

With the tunnel ahead as his only exit from the cavern, he decided to get close and investigate it. However, he could not help but wonder at the way his body now moved. His movement was graceful, almost catlike. The agility he now possessed made him wonder at the capabilities of this new body.

However, the new memories crammed in a corner of his mind were showing him that the drying blood on the cavern floor was his. But he knew the memories did not belong to him but to the previous owner of this body, he now possessed. He could not wrap his mind around the fact that he died and woke up in the body of another creature. 

'Is this purgatory? Is this real or am I dreaming?' he asked himself.

He was still contemplating his current situation when his ears twitched, picking up a clacking and scraping sound up ahead. It sounded as if it belonged to a large lumbering creature. Not having time to wonder why his ears could now twitch like that of a cat, he turned right to face the source of the sound. From the bioluminescent tunnels emerged a large crab that towered over him. That was what he thought he saw at first, but as the creature came closer, leaving the tunnels and entering the tunnels, his acute night vision could make out a vaguely humanoid shape poised atop the crab.

With his eyes glued to the monstrosity that had now entered the cavern, he saw that the creature was a fusion of a humanoid body with a crab posterior, almost like a centaur. But unlike a centaur, its appearance was so eerie, it could as well be an eldritch monstrosity. It was a foul amalgamation of crab and humanoid features, protected by a thick carapace with protruding spikes decorating its head and spine.

However, the creature had little in common with a centaur as its humanoid torso looked less human the more, he peered at it. The overlarge lobster claws, small beady eyes, and protruding shark teeth made the humanoid portion of the crab monster look less human. To top it all off, it had thick carapace that encased it all around. Even its joints seemed well covered by the carapace.

The creature had not yet noticed him but was roughly trudging in his direction with its six crab-like legs. 

Seeing the eldritch monstrosity seemed to put him in a serious case of fight or flight. This went beyond the normal scare of seeing a strange being. It was as if this body knew the creature and was reacting to it irrespective of his opinions on the matter. 

As he paused to think, he realized the creature was familiar to the owner of the strange memories he inherited. From the memories, he could see the last this body saw before its death was the crab monster eviscerating him and leaving him to bleed his guts out. The owner of his new memories had put up a fight, but his spells had bounced off the monster's magic-resistant carapace.

Even if the new memories were not there to guide him, he could tell by sight the creature's exoskeleton was tough and glinted with an unfamiliar aura. 

Magic was new to him but the memories he inherited contained knowledge of the arcane and a plethora of spells if he dared to search deep enough. Before waking up in this strange cavern, his only experience of magic was illusions and sleight of hand from entertainers who called themselves magicians. On earth, magic only existed in movies and books. However, his inherited memories seemed to suggest that magic was a daily occurrence in this new world he found himself in

While he knew these new memories were not his, he couldn't help but shudder in terror at the nature of this new world. 

'If the previous owner of this body was a mage, then I should be capable of magic,' he thought, in an attempt at self-motivation. 

He should find a way around the problem if the creature is magic-resistant. Thinking about the challenge made him remember that the new memories indicated that the creature's carapace had magic-resistant properties, not the flesh underneath. But how does he get through all that carapace armor the creature seemed to possess in abundance?

Contemplating the problem seemed to cause another flood of memories to assault his mind. No, shouldn't let the vast flood of memories overwhelm him. However, he was fascinated by the prospect of casting magic and began searching the inherited memories for clues and spells.

Thinking of magic brought the image of certain spells and their components to mind. He began to filter for spells that required no components or elaborate preparation, searching desperately for something that could deal with a magic-resistant shell. 

He was in luck, as the previous owner of the body he now possessed knew of one such spell that could help him. However, there was a problem. The previous owner of his body had never cast the spell before as it was a magic-intensive spell that required a powerful mage to cast, especially as there weren't any spell components to aid the casting. John did not give up hope. How could he know it wasn't possible if he did not try it out himself?

The crab monster had been moving to a corner of the cave but suddenly paused as if noticing the presence of another being in the cavern. Its head began to pivot ominously as it began searching in the direction John was hiding. 

Seeing the monster turning in his direction injected some sense of urgency back into John. How would he know if the spell worked without even trying? Facing the creature, he began casting the spell. Knowledge of the spell seemed to flow to him from his inherited memories, directing his movements, the incantation vivid in his mind. The spell seemed to take all his concentration, but he did not mind. It was all or nothing.

The crab monster was stunned to see the person it had mauled a while back still moving and talking. John could not read the creature's expression. It may have been because his mind was now immensely focused on the magic he was weaving or it may be due to the creature's alien rigid face. However, John could still notice the creature's surprise and used the precious seconds to cast his spell, weaving his inner magic and the ambient magic together to complete the spell.

Before the creature could regain its wit, the spell came into existence as a noxious green cloud. The green cloud appeared to materialize from nothing and was suspended over the creature's head. The clouds grew bigger and bigger until it placed the entire monster in its shadow. It was a spell capable of creating an acid cloud over a single target.

The crab monster had to shift its attention from John to the deadly cloud just as it began spewing its load of corrosive liquid on it. As the acid made contact with the monster's carapace, it began thrashing in pain. The reason for that pain was visible to John. Its carapace was melting under the acid, the reaction of acid and carapace producing nasty fumes. 

John did not know which one sickened him more, the nasty fumes or the sound of the creature's shell melting. The sizzling sound the melting carapace produced was just as nauseating as the noxious fumes it generated. He held back the vomit threatening to explode from his throat. He needed to see this to the end. Fortunately, he still kept his wits about him as the acid cloud spell only lasted for about six long heartbeats, giving him enough time to think about his next move. 

He thought about making a run for it before the monster came to its senses. The problem with that plan was that the monster was blocking the only exit from the cavern. As his mind raced searching for solutions or alternative escape routes, The memories in his head supplied him with another spell, an arcane bolt popular among established mages but the creature looked too tough to be taken down by a spell that mundane. He intuitively knew that the arcane bolt would not be sufficient to finish off the creature in front of him, even without its magic-resistant carapace. 

He searched his new memories for a powerful spell, something with more punch, something like a fireball. Surprisingly, his memories came up blank. It was almost as if the previous owner of this body did not know what a fireball was. However, his memory still came up with another spell for him to use. Like last time, his new memories seemed to think he was too weak to cast it. Producing lightning without any aid was the purview of powerful mages as the memory indicated. He did not let that deter him. Well, he tried the previous spell and it worked, why shouldn't he try another one? The memories had already been proven to be wrong in Judging his capacity.

With nothing to lose, John recited the incantation for the lightning spell. like before, his inherited memories seemed to direct his actions. He subconsciously spread his legs wide into a balanced stance, pointing his hands toward the general direction of the thrashing creature. Powerful purple lightning was discharged from his hands with such force that he was thrown backward from the recoil force alone. The power from the magical lightning raised the hairs on his head and the whole cavern smelled of energy as if a storm was brewing. Purple lightning struck the thrashing creature in the chest, the energy of the spell flinging the creature backward, into a hanging stalactite. 

Surprisingly, the stalactite held against the force, even as the monstrosity fell to the cavern floor, twitching and sizzling all the way. John attempted to cast the spell again but stumbled as the attempt made him dizzy. Noticing the backlash from repeating the spell in quick succession, he cast [arcane bolt] on the creature, which was now a twitching mess on the floor, its melted shell in shambles and blackened flesh sizzling as remnant arcs of magical lightning still ran through it. He fired one bolt after another until the monstrous creature stopped moving. 

It wasn't until the creature stopped twitching that John could relax, leaning on a sturdy stalagmite outcropping. Catching his breath from his efforts, he could not help but want to rest from exerting himself. However, the foreign memories in his head alerted him to the dangers of resting in an unfamiliar cavern. Suterra was not a kind place.