Rune of Oldfyre

Chapter Eleven

We lost him in the swamp. When we continued south until we reached a hilly grassland. If my geographical knowledge was correct, this was the land of Phonie, adjudicated by the Coalfield family. I knew this because their eldest son Holden, now Sir Holden, would frequent the tavern in the village I grew up in. He would find an affordable whore and pay her to, just, talk with him.

The hills gave the local area a noticeably nice breeze. The greenish brown  grass that covered the hills had that really cool effect where it looks like waves of water. I always liked that effect. It didn’t reminded me of the serenity of life, or some pretentious bullshit like that, it just looked cool.

We made pretty good time. We were halfway to Incursia when we came across an old man. He looked up at us with wild eyes.

“Ah!” He screamed.

“What?!”Anya yelped concerned someone was about to ambush us.

“Bingle Bongle Dingle Dangle, Yikatee Doo Yikatee Dah, Ping Pong, Lippy Toppy Too Tah!” He rambled at us.

“What.” Allister said.

“I think he might be crazy.” Anya observed.

The man ran up to me placing his calloused hands on my shoulders. “AH! They’re coming, you’ll see.  THE LIPS, THE LIPS! They want your feet. You’ll see, they always lick the tortoise shell.” He spat out before running back the way we came, stripping his clothes off as he went.

“What was his problem?” Allister said.

“What do you mean? He sounded reasonable to me.” I said, jokingly.

We recommenced our journey until we encountered Black Hound a, pretty awesomely named, village located within the hills. We judged that it wasn’t just that old man. The village had devolved into bedlam. Fires were burning within its walls while hundreds of villagers ran around in total chaos.

Within the village, people were doing generally out-of-the-ordinary deeds: painting with feces, fighting invisible monsters, and screaming about it being game over as just a few examples. We wandered through the main street, observing the pandemonium, when someone called out to us.

“Hey, normals!” the voice yelled at us. We turned to face the direction it came from. It came from a slender man, not that kind, standing in the threshold. He motioned for us to come inside.

“What’s going on?” I asked the man once we were inside.

“We don’t know,” he said, “everyone just went crazy this morning. Started screaming about things that ain’t real.”

“You sure they’re not drunk?” Allister suggested.

“Does it look like they’re drunk?” He said.

“You sure they’re not high on some really powerful acid?” Al asked.

“Shit, I don’t know man. All I know is that they’re fucking crazy.”

“What happened recently that might have caused this?” Anya asked, actually trying to assess the situation.

“I guess the sudden appearance of that castle on the hill may have a thing to do with it.” He guessed.

“A castle just appeared randomly?” She asked

“Yup,”

“Did anyone investigate it?” I asked.

“Yes.” He said.

“What happened?” Anya inquired.

“Look outside.”

“I think we should check it out.” Allister said.