by Daniel Heck
You wait, as the knuckles of your clenched fists turn white.
“Fedwick came to us.”
You feel your head lighten and your lungs empty, and after several seconds, you remind yourself to breathe. When you speak again, your voice has diminished to a powerless squeal: “What?”
“It is truth,” he continues as he props himself up against a wall, “I should know, for I implanted the seal upon him myself. He applied to the church, but changed his mind within hours. He did not know… that with Thomerion, there is no changing of minds.”
“You lie!” By now, your muscles shake with rage.
“And what’s more,” he says, “you waste your energy with every step in this land. Fedwick is already dead. He is ours to command.”
Temptation to take drastic measures floods every inch of you.
What do you do?
I kill the worshipper right here and now.
I do my best to regain composure.
After you place the four of hearts, Saul deals the ten of hearts, thinks for a moment, and places it in the upper middle. The grid now looks like this:
He then deals the three of hearts, and there are only two spots left to place a card.
Where do you place the three of hearts?
In the upper left corner.
In the lower left corner.
You swing your staff hand over hand, over and over, aiming high and putting all your muscle behind each blow. Wyver crouches as you whirl, and deflects most strikes. His expression betrays a red-faced ferocity you’ve rarely seen in real combat, let alone this type of arbitrary exercise.
Just as you’ve turned to your right side to rear a finishing push, the druid flails outward from the left; his staff connects at lightning speed, just above your ankles. Both feet fly out from under you, and you crash into the stump head-first.
Everything goes black.
When your eyes next flutter open, you look about, and find that you lie on a mattress of straw, still within the wilds. Within seconds, a terrific ache pulses from where your head meets your neck, so strongly that your vision blurs and your stomach turns.
A humanoid clad in furs notices that you’re awake, and alerts others, who crowd around you, all jabbering at once. You vaguely recognize a kind-looking human standing among them, as well as a small, brown-haired being with a shiv strapped to his waist. Another gentleman blurts something about “an accident” and that he “didn’t mean any harm.”
Although Bartleby’s magic closed your gaping skull fracture before too much of your brains spilled out onto the arena floor, it seems the impact left you a bit of a vegetable, in ways no one can heal. You try to speak, but what comes out is a mess of garbled tongue-tripping. Others try to explain that you’ve been in a coma for several weeks, but none of it sinks in; the information floats away among your damaged neuroses like a rotting log down a river. Something, however, tells your heart that you will be taken care of well. Perhaps Fedwick’s spirit will look over you.
Your quest has ended... or has it?
Go back to the previous choice, or…
Restart from the beginning.
You take many deep breaths. Taking revenge now may hurt more than help, you remind yourself. You feel a hand on your shoulder, and turn to gaze at Bartleby. “Are you all right?” he asks.
“I believe so.”
The thud of heavy footsteps meets your ears from outside.
“What’s going on in there?” comes the voice of the innkeeper. You open the door to find her with a bodyguard in tow, and they force their way into your room. She glances at you at first, but then zeroes in on the worshipper, who still lay tied in the corner.
“What kind of pureblood trash do you think you are, barging through here and disturbing my customers?” she shouts, her hands on her hips. Then, her eyes widen and her jaw drops. She covers her mouth, before looking back at you. “Do you realize who this is?”
“He had not given us his name,” you reply.
“As most of these Thomerion chumps attest to, he no longer has a real name,” she comments, “but I recognize him.”
You arch an eyebrow.
“Sometimes, these religious types, they go a little overboard, and start hunting their own. This chump crossed paths with another bishop, a friend of mine, no less, who didn’t take kindly to it. A reward’s been out for his capture for many moons.”
Reward?
The bodyguard remarks, “Unfortunately, it does mean we’re going to have to take you all in for questioning.”
The air whooshes out of you as defeat sinks into your bones. You cooperate with officials, and negotiate a deal: stay out of Koraxon’s business, and they will allow you to leave peacefully, with a thousand gold pieces with which to line your pockets, to boot. Being bought off torments your soul, but the alternative seems to be imprisonment in hostile territory. As orcbloods record your general description for future reference and escort you back to the border, you wonder whether there wasn’t some better way to get what you wanted in the long run.
Better opportunities await you. Try again!
Go back to the previous choice, or…
Restart from the beginning.
Your instinct, fueled by battle adrenaline and bubbling up within you like a steaming cauldron, screams at you to follow it, just this once. You assault the druid’s lower half with sweeping strikes, some of which he jumps over. But then, one catches his knee at an awkward angle. Wyver drops his weapon, clutches his leg, and shouts in agony.
“Stop the fight!” Bartleby yells.
His words fall on deaf ears. You take advantage of the opening, and use your staff to shove upon the druid with all your might. He falls off the edge of the arena limply, as if a rag doll.
Nary a semblance of pride rises within you as you begin to calm. Rather, a twinge of shame grows as you step down and help the druid up.
“I owe you an apology,” you mumble, “That was…”
“Genius,” Wyver interrupts.
You reel at the enthusiasm in the druid’s words. He claps you on the shoulder, and a collective sigh of relief, smattered with mild cheering, arises from the crowd.
“Those kinds of tactics,” the druid reassures you, “may turn out to be quite necessary in the days to come. Your experience has shone through this day.”
You manage a half-smile.
“As pledged,” Wyver finishes, still wincing a bit, “I shall return to claim the throne.”
I wonder what lies ahead...
You tell the others you’ll follow through on Bartleby’s idea. Zander frowns, looks through his coin purse for a short while, and says, “I suppose I shall have to find some other use for these.”
“You were going to lend me money?”
“In these parts,” the ranger comments, “auctions are not cheap.”
He dismisses the idea quickly, however, and turns toward the east. Bartleby wishes you good luck, and departs as well.
No time to waste.
You ask around some public locations, and learn from a retired sailor that the best reef in Ambrosinia for oyster fishing lies almost due north, in the frigid waters of Ethias Gulf.
“I’d be surprised,” he cautions, “if you find what you need. It isn’t the greatest season for this kind of thing. But if you’re insistent, talk to whoever you can up there, and tell ‘em Matthias sent you.” You thank him, and give him a silver piece for his trouble.
You decide that time runs too short to take the trip on foot, and so use your last few silvers to rent a horse. Little trouble stands in your way, save heavy winds and early sundown, and you arrive at the bay just a day and a half later. A small cluster of fishermen guide you to the reef.
“This is our last go-round ‘til spring,” a youth explains. “Help us, and you can keep half the value of whatever you find. Deal?”
Ouch… not sure I can keep up my end of that…
“Deal,” you say.
With some guidanc
e as to how to use the fishermen’s rakes and nets, you cull the shores with relative ease. During the first several passes, however, you find only a few small specimens, just one of which has even produced a pearl. Several large dents and scratches mar the gem, making it virtually unusable.
Tedium begins to set in, and your joints creak from the moisture. Soon, you become sick of breathing brine and cracking shells, and just when you turn away from the others and admit to yourself the fruitlessness of this venture, a gigantic ship rounds a corner of the bay and approaches the reef at full clip. At its main mast flies a black flag imprinted with crossbones and the face of a tiger.
“Not the pirates again,” the youth says, “Run!”
Before you can speak to them, the fishermen clear out, taking as much as they can with them, although several crates of oysters lay left behind on the shores, as the surf laps their sides. You take cover behind a large tree further inland, just as the ship runs aground. A handful of armed men lower the gangplank and ru n onshore, whooping and hollering about ‘easy pickins.’
If anyone has a stash of valuable gems, you think, it’d be a pirate band.
You don’t feel that you need to run, and yet, there are too many of them to fight. Still, you think of two other ways to proceed.
What do you do?
I attempt to bargain with them.
I sneak aboard the ship.
“Let’s just get in there and do this,” you propose. “These brutes may be dumb, but I doubt they’re dumb enough to fall for whatever we could come up with.”
“A reasonable conclusion,” Vermouth admits, “But, it might help if you try to distract the last guard. Bartleby here will sneak in with me, and together, we pray to the gods that there isn’t much resistance inside.”
The cleric smirks.
We shall see.
That evening, you wait until dark, when the catacomb seems at its quietest and the slightest whisper echoes down the dank corridors. As you thought you remembered, a goblin sits on general watch duty, with his back to you against the bars of your cell. He listlessly slices at a section of wood with his dagger, while humming a guttural tune.
“What are you making?” you ask him from your cot, in your friendliest tone.
“Nothing,” it hisses, staring forward.
You pause before continuing, “Surely some sort of artistic intent lies behind it. It almost looks like a flute.”
The guard turns his head, but does not stand. Contrary to how you would guess he’d been trained, his eyes belie fatigue and heartache.
“Oh,” he remarks, “sometimes I create these little nothings as a reminder of my aunt. She and I would spend entire days carving and whittling, when I was younger. It was our shared passion.”
You arch an eyebrow. Bartleby chimes, “I never knew that goblins value family so highly.”
“There is a lot you humanoids do not, and will never, know.” The goblin turns forward again, and stares at the wall. Several moments of silence pass. From your side view of the creature, you think you see a tear in its eye reflect the light of the hall’s sole torch.
“You would like to see your family…” you note, “to be home?”
It stands and turns toward you. “I cannot,” it counters, “for the church forbids it.”
“And your service, nay, your loyalty, to them is voluntary?”
To this, the goblin says nothing, but hangs his head.
“If you help us,” Bartleby says, “we can in turn help you.”
“You tempt me. But trust is short around here. You are now servants of chaos, just as are the men that brought me here.”
No one says anything for a long time. The goblin continues whittling. Snick, snick, goes the repeated sound of the skimming blade. A stalactite somewhere in the tunnel drips moisture into a growing puddle.
“What is it you want, humanoids?”
The voice rouses you out of a half-sleep, and you meet the goblin at the bars. “Your master possesses a wand he used to influence our actions. We need that wand, to turn the tables and force him to cure a friend who is dying.”
“And, for this, you would take me home, and protect me from Thomerion’s vengeance?”
You and Bartleby exchange glances.
“We will do our best,” you vow.
“That is good enough for me!” the goblin shouts, a moment before you hear a loud clank and the shifting of wood against dirt from down the hall. The guard covers his mouth and returns to his post, but nobody else shows. Within moments, all is quiet again.
“Wait here,” he instructs, barely containing his excitement.
Where else would we go?
You crane your neck to follow the goblin as it skitters down the hallway to near where a large dog lay. He reaches over the dog and retrieves a golden key from a hook on the wall, then returns and carefully unlocks your cell. You file out, keeping your eyes and ears open for potential trouble, and tromp down the hall ahead of the goblin. Your heart beats a mile a minute, and you exhale with force.
“Wait…” the goblin calls, “I need to tell you something first…”
The goblin scampers behind as you and Bartleby charge down the hall and around several twists and turns, arriving at a metal door, different than the first one you encountered. This one is draped with a black and red banner, and has an obvious peephole. You attempt to turn the knob, but the door is locked.
Panting hard, the goblin catches up.
“Master’s door…is sealed… by a divine rune.”
“This one, here?” Bartleby asks, pointing to an angular symbol just below the doorknob, painted in off-white.
“I don’t know how to read it.”
“I do,” the cleric whispers. “Articulus Romunus…”
You hear the faint click of a lock releasing.
“I knew you would come in handy, although some patience would benefit you,” hisses the goblin.
The door creaks open by a small margin, and you tiptoe into the room beyond. Thick rugs, personal service items and a four-poster bed in the far corner decorate this bedchamber. On the mattress snores the bishop, dressed in a grey nightcape. The wand lay in plain sight on a nearby nightstand.
You exchange silent glances with the others and, smirking, you palm the item. First, you simply think of what you want it to do, but that seems to do little. Raising the wand above your head, you then wave it back and forth twice, over the body of the bishop. Nothing.
You try more complicated patterns, including curlicues, exes, figure-eights and even the kinds of maneuvers reserved for fencing or jousting. By all accounts so far, it seems to behave no more magically than a regular stick of wood.
Confound it, you think. There must be some kind of keyphrase.
You examine the wand, which gives no clues, as it boasts no etchings or markings of any kind. You take a moment to evaluate what to do.
What do you say while waving the wand?
‘Abracadabra.’
‘Thomerion shall prevail.’
“A strange choice,” Saul comments, “The other position would have given you a pair. Let’s see what the last card is.”
He turns over the four of spades, and places it in the last spot. The final grid looks like this:
You have lost.
I hang my head in defeat.
You think better than to offer the guard something, as if gold or other valuables could so easily sway a Thomerion devotee. You examine the floor late that night, however, and note that a particular chunk of stone displays a pattern of regular cracks. The formations snake out along the floor at unnatural angles, and then wind back toward the wall again.
“Bartleby,” you whisper, as the goblin guard snoozes just outside your cell, “Take a look at this.”
The cleric crosses the length of the cell toward you, and crouches over the stone. “Curious,” he says, “Do you think it could be removed?”
“Only one way to find out.”
You find som
e chunks of brick and an old nail within your cell, with which you begin to dig among the cracks and pry the layer of stone away. When you give it a strong shove, the stone makes a horrendous screeching sound, and the goblin guard stirs. You hold fast and still as a statue; your muscles ache from holding the slab in place.
After an eternity, the guard begins babbling in his sleep once again. You turn back to the stone and discover that you have unearthed a narrow passage that leads deeper into the ground.
You say to Bartleby, “Let’s do this.”
The cleric nods as you set your feet into the gap. You shove forward and land several feet below. Bartleby follows. No light exists down here whatsoever, beyond the faint glow from the torches in the hallway above, and since you were stripped of your packs when the bishop ‘recruited’ you, you have no way to light your own torch.
Bartleby incants a mystical word, and touches the corner of his tunic. The garment begins to emit a soft, white glow, which expands just far enough to see a few feet ahead.
“This spell will not last long,” he cautions. “Let’s move.”
In exploring this deepest of catacombs, you find only that more tunnels branch off from the first, each of which results in either complete dead-ends or more tunnels. After hours of this process, you almost wish you would encounter something hostile down here, just for the sake of variety.
You and the cleric backtrack through the maze, mentally tracking where you turned in the first place, until you are sure you are within just a few yards of the prison cell. Then, Bartleby’s light fizzles out with a poof. Groaning, you feel against the walls, and almost trip on a patch of pebbles, and turn away from the cleric as his footsteps trail just behind you.
