Skara Braens

Part 23

Part 22 Vote Tally

Option A: 0
Option B: 0
Option C: 2

Really? That was not what I was expecting! Well, onwards!

You look down at the vial of opaque, pale blue liquid still in your hand.

"Well," you say.  "Since I already have you..."

Wondering if you, in fact, are poisoning yourself, you down the liquid and replace the vial.  The taste is as sweet as the smell promises, but there's a terrible aftertaste that sits sour and curdling on your tongue.  You wrinkle your nose and smack your lips as you try to identify the taste.

You hit the floor, unconscious.

You are not in the hollow in the middle of the night when you next wake up.  Instead you are near the altar, where Mordina freed you from drowning.  A groaning behind you turns your attention inland, where scores of people shuffle mindlessly across the dead, yellow grass.  Their skin, on those who still have enough to see, is a strange, mottled grey, struck through with blue and purple; veins and arteries that can be seen.  In other places, green and white mould clings to the skin.  In people who appear to have been this way for a while, their bones can be seen through gaps in the skin where the flesh has rotted away or fallen off.

You notice in the press of these stumbling, shambling mindless people a number of desiccated corpses, their skin, where it remains, like tanned hide stretched in ribbons over equally tanned bones.  These shambling mummies wear leather helms and carry swords of bronze and, or helms of steel and chainmaille, some with various kinds of amour stuck to them, and carrying weapons of steel.

Yet other mummified people stumble around wearing furs and skins and carrying stone-tipped weapons, cruel-looking clubs embedded with shark teeth.  One carried a mummified infant to its chest.  The child held on with wiry, papery hands, it's eyeless head swivelling in a sickening imitation of childish curiosity at the world.

The steady beating of your heart falters as fear strikes you full in the chest.  You stare at the scene, fighting back screams and bile.  To what terrible nightmare did the sickly sweet of the blue liquid send you?

It is then that you hear the soft whispers.

"Help me," a voice to your right whispers.  You aren't even sure it's not a trick of your mind rather than something your ears picked up in this heavy, dead air.  Still, you turn your head and find the mummified remains of a child, covered in leather and fur.  It has no eyes, and yet it stares up at you, most of its skull exposed.

"Help me." The child's mouth does not move, but by the slight movement of its head, it seems like it is, in fact, speaking to you.

A corpse with a steel sword, wearing a few scraps of what once was a maille shirt notices the mummified child watching you.  It follows the child's line of sight and sees you, if a thing without eyes can see.  It ceases its mindless shuffling and turns to you.

"Help me," a new, feminine voice whispers in your mind.

"Help me," the child says again.

"Help me." This time the voice is from the left, from the grey-green corpse of a man wearing the dark green uniform of the military that found you.

In ever increasing numbers, the walking corpses of all kinds notice the change in their companions' behaviour, then notice you, adding their voices to the chorus begging for aid.

"I can't," you manage to croak back.  "I can't help you."

The voices grow urgent, begging, even demanding. They begin to advance on you.

"Help me."

"Help me."

"Help. Me."

"Help me.

"I can't," you say, stepping back. "I can't help you."

Still they advance, and you retreat, forgetting that you were standing at the edge of a cliff.  "I can't," you continue to murmur, stepping backwards as they approach.

Then there was air beneath your foot and, quite unexpectedly, you pitch backwards.  You breath catches as you watch the cliff edge lift into the sky. Over the whispered please for help, you hear a soft, sinister chuckle.

You slam your eyes shut as your body hits the water.  But water does not claim you.  Instead, you feel cool, with wind whipping through your head and the whistle of rushing air passing over your ears.  You open your eyes to find yourself gliding through the sky.

Beneath you, a series of islands, obscured every so often by wispy clouds passed in a spectacular display.  You recognise you are descending, and so flap your arms instinctively in order to stay in the air.  To your great surprise, you rise again.  Blinking, you look across to your right at your outstretched hand to find that it was, in fact, a wing.  Reddish-brown feathers  tremble in the wind.

Unsure you're seeing what you're seeing, you test the wing, flapping it.  You expect your arm to move.  Instead, the wing pushes down and returns to its position.

You are a bird now.

Opening your mouth - beak - you yell, hearing instead the sharp cry of an eagle.

You are an eagle now.

What was in that blue concoction you drank?

The scene before this horrified you.  Now, you feel exhilarated.  You are flying. Flying!  Unable to contain your jubilation, you bank, letting your instincts guide you into riding the updraughts, flipping over, diving and recovering and any number of other tricks in the air.  The sense of freedom and power that fills you is intoxicating.

For a good while, you forget the horror of the walking corpses pleading for aid.  You forget that you awoke without memory or purpose inside a neolithic burial mound.  You forget you fled an attack of living dead, abandoning Drust.  You forget that you are supposed to be undergoing an obscure naming ceremony from a strange, angry village elder.

In your current state, it may not have mattered to you.

Flashing light catches your keen eagle eyes.  The first, like a mirror signal, flashes a small dot of white light on a small island.  In the east, on a smaller island, a similar light flashes, but this is gold.  In the south, on the largest of the islands, flashes a red light.  In your mind, you are dimly aware that you must select one.

Where do your wings take you?

a) North (white)
b) East (gold)
c) South (red)

This is the last choice to make before your name is decided.  Voting ends 22 December at midnight.  Good luck, Adventurers!