(DCSS = Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup)

It was a normal frog archer run with my fearsome amphibian and their battlemage ancestor shooting and conjuring their way through the dungeon. Between my huge damage output (thanks Harm!) and my constantly Idealized ancestor, the run was extremely easy. Thus, I entered Zot:5.

After clearing the rest of the floor, I switched my Harm amulet to another one with -Tele to prevent teleport traps and got to the Hall of Zot. Unexpectedly, orb guardians weren’t alone at the entrance - a draconian gang settled there too. That confused me and my ancestor died. Which is fine, it’s not like its the first time (battlemage is squishy!). I just need to reset the encounter by going to the staircase.

So, I hopped and, as I was merely two tiles from the stairs and enemies were pretty far away, I just walked to the stairs. And then…

55054 | Zot:5 | HP: 1/204 [Orb Guardian (54)]

OUCH

I didn’t notice there was a moth of wrath among the enemies, and the closest orb guardian to me was zerked. Total misplay but still…

Think, now! What can I do to guarantee survival? I can’t hop as it’s on cooldown, can’t blink as I’m under -tele, can’t use Transference as my ancestor is dead. Throwing net, mephitic cloud, wand of paralysis all have a chance to fail. Invisibility and Leda’s Liquefaction won’t prevent their attacks.

My gaze lifted upon scrolls of summoning that were chosen over scrolls of butterflies by the RNG this run. “If only I had these…” I thought when I noticed a scroll of butterflies right there in my inventory. Unused since the very beginning of the game when I decided to play as hunter instead of hexslinger. The only scroll of butterflies I could have for this entire run.

A gentle wind pushed the orb guardian away from me as colorful insects filled the space between us. Thanking Xom for this beautiful coincidence, I went upstair and healed up to full health, and then eventually cleared the rest of the last floor and escaped with the Orb.

🦋❤️