"Spark it," Stark cursed as he rounded the corner and found not the exit he was hoping for, but a glowing white crystal ... which seemed to be making the tattoo itch like crazy.
He couldn't resist the urge to scratch at it, even as Jarvis intoned a disapproving, "Sir."
Then a huge surge of magic rushed up his arm, bringing with it a wave of pain - and then nothing.
~
"Jarvis?" Stark muttered blearily as he woke up. Whatever had just happened was
not good, he could tell.
"Sir," Jarvis said, his normally composed voice wavering slightly and coming from right beside Stark's ear. "Are you quite well?"
"'m okay," Stark grunted, rolling himself over and shaking his head. Apart from the dizziness and double vision - though, really, he'd inflicted this state, or something very much like it, on himself enough times in his lab that he could deal with it. He climbed to his feet, wobbling only a little. "How long was I out?"
"Only a few moments, sir," Jarvis reassured him, taking off and hovering beside him as usual.
That was reassuring at least. "And I guess we have no idea what that was?"
"I'm sorry, sir, my sensors -"
"Aren't calibrated to pick up anything like that. Okay," Stark sighed. He'd known that already. He'd been hoping that Jarvis might have seen something that he'd missed, but apparently not. "I guess we keep going ..."
He headed onwards through the sewers' twisting tunnels and passageways, muttering to himself about all the things he
could have installed into either his armour or his golem to have avoided this mess, from additional sensors to some kind of positioning system that would help him pin-point his location and find a way out.
Ideas for potential upgrades started to spin around his head and distracted him a little from the situation - until he felt an unpleasant prickling in his arm again, just as he came to yet another Y junction.
Stark stopped and stared at the junction for a long while, internally cursing his foul luck and the fact that he'd come here at all. He waved his arm vaguely at each of the paths, but it didn't prickly more or less when it was closer to either of them, so that was no help.
"All right," he said after a moment. "Jarvis. Generate a random number between one and one hundred."
If it was even, he'd go right. If it was odd, he'd go left. It wasn't any worse a method of navigation than 'using his instincts' - which hadn't got them anywhere so far.
"Seventy-three, sir."
"Great," Stark said, and turned down the left hand pathway.