Death, Taxes, and Cookies: to Rule an Underworld - INTERMISSION 2 END

[X] Experiment

Yeah, that'd probably be the most proactive thing to do. I won't get anything done just sitting around or hoping to find some secret hidden in the walls. Then again, I'm not sure I'll get anything done swinging around a miniature skull on a stick either, but it can't hurt to try, can it? I've always liked messing around with things. Even if my brother had to bail me out of the trouble I usually got myself into.

I get up off the floor again, the skull-wand-thing clenched tightly in my hand. I crane my arm backwards, focusing an eye on a... thing of pointy rocks (Stalactite? Stalagmite? I think it's stalagmite), aaand...!

...

Thinking about it... I don't actually know how wizards use these things.

This isn't working. Like trying to draw blood from a stone, this thing.

Maybe it only works on, like, not-rocks.

Hm.

Alright, testing inconclusive.

I'm doing science, here.

---

I spend a while doing things like that - smacking things with the weird wand, waving it in the air, incanting the first thing on my mind ("Lemonade! Thatch! Weasel!"), all without really knowing what I'm doing.

This is really frustrating.

This is really frustrating.

I don't know why I keep trying the same things, over and over again. I guess part of me hopes it would do something, no matter how much time it took. But as it becomes more and more obvious that nothing was happening, my heart sinks lower.

For a brief moment, a thought flickers across my mind - I wonder if my brother knew anything about wands or rods or whatever - and when I next swing the wand forward, a motion made with that same sort of silent plea for the thing to do anything, I find that it feels - heavier. Filled with some weighty fluid. No, more like - something was flowing out of my palm and through the rod, as if that quick thought opened some hidden floodgate within it, which now freely lets through what it once sealed.

Before me, a shape coalesces. I watch, stupefied, as it collects itself, flickering motes of strange black spots gathering and forming up, up, and up, into a form that dwarfs me.

...

...

The skull-faced figure and I stare at eachother, its' black mass remaining amorphous, churning invisibly even as it detaches from my wand. Silence reigns over the little cave for a long while, then a while longer.

And then a while longer-er.

I should probably make the first move. But what should that move be?

[ ] Ask it something. Like "who are you", "where am I", and "what in the heck is going on". Info-gathering is good. I'm not sure why it would know these things, but even just getting a neutral nod in response is better than losing a staring contest for eternity.
[ ] Fighting stance. I haven't the first clue of how to defend myself, but if this thing tries to attack me, I'm not going down without a fight. Besides, I have a magic wand now - if it can conjure a scary monster, it can conjure a fireball, can't it?
[ ] Command it to do something. Maybe wave the skull-wand thing at it. Maybe it's, like, a familiar? An elemental? I have very little knowledge on how magic works, but wand-waving got me into this situation and by Vestus it will get me out.
[ ] On second thought, maybe staring contests aren't so bad. I'm okay with just staring at a giant scary entity for a bit. It hasn't gotten me into any trouble... and maybe I'll find something odd about it from looking a little closer.
[ ] Yell.