Side Story 1: Serra, Cleric Turned Cow

Author's Note: This is the first of (at least two) side stories that come directly from personal RPs with reddit users. These are all considered a separate canon from the main story, and will feature more in-depth description of the main character. This particular story follows close to the main storyline, and so will often seem familiar, but also has plenty of unique and different aspects. My goal is to publish one chapter a day until the story is complete, at which point I'll move on to the next story.

A special thanks to reddit user TriumphantKitty for her contributions. If you'd like to be led through a back-and-forth of this style, send a description of the character you'd like to play to my reddit account.

Your name was Serra, and you served The Goddess. Wearing a flowing white robe that hugged your body in all the right places, with cutouts at your stomach, your knees, and for your tail, as well as a pair of sturdy, ornate white boots. Your flowing blonde hair is separated by a pair of small cat ears, identical in color, and a long, bushy, dark grey tail extends from the small of your back. The Goddess has sent you to seek out the corruption that spreads throughout the land and extinguish it. Your most recent mission leads you to a long-forgotten series of catacombs, the dreaded halls of the greater demon Drath'nalak.

It had been a long, intense day of travel, but even as the sun started to dip over the edge of the horizon, the last few steps were taken, and you looked upon a gaping crevasse, the entrance into the dungeons of Drath'nalak. Inside was rumored to be wealth beyond measure, anything from simple piles of gold to enchanted jewelry, magic tomes, technological marvels, and other items of legend, some even bearing rumors of demonic origins.

You couldn't quite shake a sense of foreboding when descending into the pit, knowing that if the rope were to fall an ascent would be almost impossible, but it was far past time to turn around. The light slowly vanished, both as the sun set and as the descent grew deeper, with the monotonous footsteps against the rock and slow dripping of water as the only audible sounds.

In an instant, everything changed with a loud crack, tension in the rope vanishing. You fought to keep your handhold, but falling was inevitable. Fortunately, there was not much space left between you and the cavern floor, and besides a few bruises there were no consequences, but without a rope to climb back up, you're not sure how you'll manage to escape these twisted catacombs.

You've fallen into a wide cavern, a broad dome in shape, with the floor and ceiling littered with the rock formations of stalactites and stalagmites. A strange glow fills the room, one that seems to originate in the very center, and it casts shadows against the back walls where the light manages to break through the rocks. The wall itself is several feet away, and you're likely about a third of the way into the cavern.

Looking up, you can't see the hole that you've fallen through in the dim light, and your rope and pick are lying on the ground at your feet. Similarly, there are no obvious visible breaks in the wall, but you can only really see the wall well in the immediate vicinity.

Shakily climbing to your feet and grabbing your pick, you call out into the darkness, "Hello? Anyone?" The sound of your voice echoes around the cavern, but no reply comes other than the faint sound of the wind above you. As far as you can tell, you're alone in the cavern, with no signs of movement in the low light.