Lights up on the front counter of the local CronenBurger. You've just come back down to earth from a daydream in which you were... well, it doesn't matter. In front of you is a till with some pictures of burgers and small print. In front of that is a customer. They are about seventy years old and dead skin flakes float around their face and hands like a suffocating mist. They're looking at you, and saying something, but by the time you tune in to it it's already gone. You hear somthing >plink< to the floor from a great height.
[[Hit some random buttons.]]
[[Shout, 'What?!']]
[[Do nothing.]]
[[Walk out.]]You realize latently that this shit is too much.
You excuse yourself to the bathroom and lock the door.
You have an old tobacco tin from your dead grandfather.
You remove the lid, on which is a small print of a painting of a red dragon.
Inside are 2 small, round tablets.
One [[Yellow->A Fistful of Drugs.]], one [[Pink->Lord of the Drugs.]]
Which one do you take?
You ring up a lavish feast for this old gent, then lazily point at the number on the front of your till. The customer looks at you, fairly confused, then hands over the money he's been gripping in his crusty fingers. You throw it in the till without even counting it, not something you've ever done before, and you wave the befuddled old mouth-breather to the side with a look of sheer contempt. There's another one behind him. And another, and...
[[Lose it.->Ding en sich.]] The old man jumps back, alarmed, and knocks into the customer behind him, causing a chain-reaction of tuts and cusses all the way to the door. You see blue lights out in the car park. The old fucker repeats his order: One big boy meal with extra big boy sauce and a creamy-dream sugar-boy drink.
[[Hit some random buttons.]]
[[Do nothing.]]The customers stare at you. You stare back, blankly.
Some time passes.
The old man asks you something.
[[Respond.]]
[[Walk out.]]You dry-swallow the diazepam.
Nothing happens. Your hands still shake, your head still thrums like a subwoofer.
You flush the toilet before you leave, for appearances sake.
Back at the counter, your manager gives you a look somewhere between pity and revulsion.
A customer approaches and tries to speak to you, only their words are one long bleep like a censored cuss.
From the corner of your eye you see something shoot across the floor behind the counter and under the shake machine.
You hunker down onto all fours, covering your thin work trousers in spilt syrups, and try to get a look under there.
Nothing but darkness, darkness and a small point of light, like maybe somebody dropped a coin and it rolled under.
You can hear a voice calling your name from somewhere nearby.
You guess you should stand up, but you should be able to reach that coin, or whatever it is.
Your name is called again, more insistently this time.
What do you do?
[[Grab the coin->Same Day, Different Shit.]]
You dry-swallow the DMT.
Nothing happens. Your hands still shake, your head still thrums like a subwoofer.
You flush the toilet before you leave, for appearances' sake.
Back at the counter, your manager gives you a look somewhere between pity and revulsion.
A customer approaches and tries to speak to you, only their words are one long bleep like a censored cuss.
From the corner of your eye you see something shoot across the floor behind the counter and under the shake machine.
You hunker down on all fours, covering your thin work trousers in spilt syrups, and try to get a look under there.
Nothing but darkness, darkness and a small point of light, like maybe somebody dropped a coin and it rolled under.
You can hear a voice calling your name from somewhere nearby.
You guess you should stand up, but you should be able to reach that coin, or whatever it is.
Your name is called again, more insistently this time.
What do you do?
[[Grab the coin.->A Quest!]]
(You reach out to touch that little point of light in the darkness of the undercarriage, but your arm keeps reaching. You realize it’s not a coin at all but a hole into a lighted basement, the edges of which stretch and snap like gossamer at your touch. The light behind you grows dimmer and when you look back you can’t see the counter any more, which means you must be all the way under the shake machine. You never thought you could fit a whole person under here, but right now there’s plenty of room. Over the sickly-sweet smell of your sticky clothes there’s a strong whiff of something like hot bad breath. The next thing you know is that you’re falling, but falling slowly, falling through webs and webs of black ichor toward a point of light far below. The thought crosses your mind that you’ve just been eaten by a god, but when you question it, this errant thought just laughs and slips away.)
You grab the coin and stand up.
But you're not in the CronenBurger anymore.
You appear to be in a smoky, laquered-wood boarding house with an upright piano and several dusty malcontents sprawled over some stained and fading tables and chairs.
Directly in front of you is a large bar, hewn from a single slab of Redwood and pock-marked with cigarette burns; deep, irregular gouges; dirty glasses. There's a glass in your own right hand, but you still hold the coin in your left.
On the other side of the bar from you a drunken man who's neglected to remove his stetson slams his drink down so hard you hear the glass crack, and see a sparkling chip of it spin off into the yellow haze that hangs over the saloon.
The fellow licks his lips in the gloom and lifts his hat just high enough to fix you with a squinty stare. His irises are blacker than the hairs in his nose. He gestures to a bottle on the shelf behind you.
'Again,' he says. 'One more, and I'll go...find that sum' bish. Killum. One more.'
He leans very slowly backwards until his balance is lost and he topples wordlessly onto the floor.
Two men enter through the swing doors. You recognise them instantly as the Sheriff and his Deputy. The Deputy looks at you, with something in his eyes. The Sheriff addresses the room, but the only thing he says is your name.
[[Er, yes?]]
[[Point to the guy on the floor.]]
[[Drop everything and book it out the back.]]
A manager comes over. One of the nicer ones. He says the police just phoned. It's nothing to be concerned about, but would you follow him to the office?
You see a couple cops push their way through the doors into the building.
[[Lose it. ->Ding en sich.]]
[[Stay put.]]
[[Follow him.]] You can't think of what it is you're supposed to say. Something about...kelp?
[[Make words->Ding en sich.]]
[[Spit->Shout, 'What?!']] The Manager leads you through the restaurant into the bin cage and shuts the door behind you, then he grabs one of the bins - overflowing with shit and insects - and drags it in front of the door. He looks at you. He shakes his head, reaches into his pocket and looks at the floor.
'You want to know why I did it?' he says after a while.
[['Did what?']]
[['I'm fairly sure that's a fire hazard, sir.']]
Two police officers push themselves through the throng to the counter. Only they don't look very official - one of them's wearing a beanie and taking hits off a chunky rig.
When they get to the counter they ask your name.
[[Say your name.]]
(You reach out to touch that little point of light in the darkness of the undercarriage, but your arm keeps reaching. You realize it’s not a coin at all but a hole into a lighted basement, the edges of which stretch and snap like gossamer at your touch. The light behind you grows dimmer and when you look back you can’t see the counter any more, which means you must be all the way under the shake machine. You never thought you could fit a whole person under here, but right now there’s plenty of room. Over the sickly-sweet smell of your sticky clothes there’s a strong whiff of something like hot bad breath. The next thing you know is that you’re falling, but falling slowly, falling through webs and webs of black ichor toward a point of light far below. The thought crosses your mind that you’ve just been eaten by a god, but when you question it, this errant thought just laughs and slips away.)
You grab the coin and stand up.
But you're not in the CronenBurger anymore.
You appear to be in an enormous stone hall, the walls of which are draped with largely-crimson tapestries on which white stick-figures fight and dance and fuck.
Running down the middle of the hall are two huge oak tables supporting mountains of shiny meat and dull silverware, and making use of these tables is an extemely loud and garish party of soldiers in various states of undress from various sizes and styles of armour; you can discern no uniform among them.
You're stood at the head of one of these tables, a coin still in your left palm while your right supports a tray of clay cups filled with liquor.
You shiver and notice that, unlike the revellers at the tables, you're wearing nothing but a loose silk robe. One of the soldiers nearest you tries to hand you a plate with a pile of small bones on it and reaches for the tray with his other hand. He looks completely soussed and his breath when he speaks almost knocks you unconscious.
'Give us another,' he says.
[[Give him another.]]
[[Walk away.]]
[[Do nothing.]]The first rozzer, the better-dressed, turns to the second and looks in his eyes. In response, he puts away his rig and pulls a pistol from his belt. You didn't think police were allowed to--
He lifts it up and puts one between your eyes.
You die, fairly confused.
[[Open your eyes. ->Refusing the call.]]
The manager winks at you. Then, seeing your blank expression, frowns.
'I did it because it's what we deserve, it's what we need, to be woken up with a splash of blood and terror to the face. To start the next phase in the cycle. But I got it wrong.'
The Manager pulls something sharp and brilliant yellow from his pocket.
He looks up into your face, beaming with psychotic ecstasy.
'I thought he was you.'
One of the two poorly-dressed cops who came up to you at the counter busts through the door and entangles himself in the blockade. He calls for help from his partner, who arrives and levels his weapon in your direction.
You probably have time to say about two words before he pulls the trigger.
[['Fuck you.'->Refusing the call.]]
[['^^ph'nglui mglw'nafh^^'->Wait, what?]]The Manager, pacing the bin cage, turns his head sharply towards you and throws you a look of dry reproach. As he does so, his footing slips in the rain and he falls a few feet onto his arse.
One of the two poorly-dressed cops who came up to you at the counter busts through the door and entangles himself in the blockade. He calls for help from his partner, who arrives and levels his weapon in your direction.
You probably have time to say about two words before he pulls the trigger.
[['Fuck you.'->Refusing the call.]]
[['^^ph'nglui mglw'nafh^^'->Wait, what?]]The drunk sharpens up enough to carry the first sip quite delicately to his lips, then loses all composure as he yawns the majority his lavish feast back onto the table before him and coughs a few leftovers onto his tunic. His eyes roll back in his head and he topples forawrds into his own lap where he remains, motionless and limp. You walk backwards out of the hall, down a stone corridor that leads to the latrines. Before you can make it there, a hand falls on your shoulder. You turn. It's Lord Atwood, his face red with drunken-ness, and his free hand on his belt.
'Where do you run to, young thing?' There's a faraway look you don't much like in his eyes. He grips your arms in both his hands and forces you up against the wall, where he holds you and looks at you, breathing heavily. 'You don't run from me, I trust.'
'No, your lordship. Never.' You try to twist enough to get some breath, but Atwood holds you fast.
'Shh.' Says Atwood, placing a hand over your mouth as he moves the other to your base of your skull. Your head swims. 'Sleep now. Little thing.'
And he twists his arms.
You see darkness. But you can still feel the rough stone at your back, the sweating palms cradling your limp form.
Atwood lays you down. He burps, and begins to drag you down the hall by your legs.
[[Open your eyes.->Refusing the call.]]
You spin on your heels and traverse the uneven stone floor of the dining hall, your head ringing with the noise and smells of the place. You find a door in the far wall and push your way through it, dropping your tray of drinks at which time you notice a small gold coin in your left palm. You fill with warmth as at a familiar face in a crowd and stagger down a drafty corridor lined with old chests and descend a spiral staircase to a dimly-lit room with a small tin basin, into which you relieve yourself with a sigh. 'What a glorious sound.' A voice from somewhere behind you remarks, 'like a herald of golden angels.' You turn and make out a skeletal frame chained against the wall of the basement. You step closer, and hear another voice behind you, by the basin: ^^You filthy animal, I clean myself in there.^^You whip round once more and see an emaciated, one-eyed black cat, sitting next to the basin in this small round room, half in shadow.
The cat winks, or perhaps blinks at you, then stands up and walks forwards. You instinctively step back, and feel an outstretched hand brush your shoulder. 'What is your name, o wandering soul?' Croaks the first voice which, turning and placing your back to the wall you finally make out as a nude and skeletally thin old man held by loops of dark iron chain to the cobblestone wall a few feet above the basement floor. ^^Why are names so important to you?^^ The cat paces silently past you, its one yellow eye slowly roving the darkness as it settles beneath the ancient prisoner's feet. The old man affixes you with dark, eyeless sockets and grins a black U beneath the ragged grey mess of his long beard.
[['Who goes there?']]
[['Nice Kitty.']]
[[Leave.]]Both the men's faces go slack, and the Sherrif pulls his pistol from its holster and fires five rounds into your chest. You're knocked back against the shelves and hear some glass shatter from far away as you slump to your knees. Theres some kind of red gunk falling with a series of increasingly wet thuds on the floorboards before you, and as you look down into the crimson mess of your life you feel a coin slip from your loosening grip and roll away down the bar.
[[Open your eyes. ->Refusing the call.]]The Sherrif stares down at the drunk with a confused look on his coupon, then he walks over and grabs the guy by his collar and starts to drag him out of the bar. The drunk never stirs, and a sliver of drool from his open mouth dangles out, making a silvery snail trail on his path towards the open Saloon doors. The Deputy, a slight fellow with horn-rimmed spectacles, stays behind and takes a seat at the bar, his magnified sky-blue eyes seeking out your own.
You turn away from watching the drunk being dragged out to look at him for a second and he starts talking, energetically.
'You know me, don'tcha? Shit, every'un in this dryfuck pisshole town knows me and they know what it is I'm about, too, and why I do this job. I want to talk about you though, what it is you might be about.'
And he whispers your name.
[['Shut the fuck up.']]
[['You gonna order a drink there, Deputy?']]
[['Who? I'm Billie Chicklets.']]
[['Where the hell is this place? I want to go back to the CronenBurger!]]
You push open the backroom door just as two men in dark suits are fumbling with the latch, and knock them over each other into a heap as you sprint outside into the fresh air and the dim sunlight, you have a moment to make the fragment of a thought before a cart slams into your side at 30mph, severing your spinal column. You watch from far away as the coin you forgot you were holding in your left hand falls to the dirt floor and rolls away under the Saloon foundations.
[[Open your eyes.->Refusing the call.]]The Deputy's eyes widen, the skin around his mouth slackens, and for an unsettling moment he appears as a child before the immensity of the world. He recomposes himself, 'it is you.' He takes off his glasses, wipes them. 'My father told me I'd be the one to meet you, but I never believed him. He was a drunk. Not as bad as Lonny,' he nods to the door, 'but mean, it made him real mean. I still have dreams, I wake up sweating every night, having dreamed of killing my father.' He puts his glasses back on, regards you silently. 'So what do we do now?' He says at length. Dust trickles slowly down from the ceiling. In the corner, the old fixture, Gerry, slumps his chin down to his chest as the sunbeam over his face winks out. Outside you can hear some kind of scuffling, clipped shouts.
[[Stay at the bar.]]
[[Wake Gerry up.]]
[[Investigate the noise. ->Follow the Deputy.]]The Deupty looks at you searchingly for a long second. Comes up empty. 'No thanks, I'm on the job.' He gets up from the stool and walks slowly out the Saloon doors, without turning to look back. Dust trickles slowly down from the ceiling. In the corner, the old fixture, Gerry, slumps his chin down to his chest as the sunbeam over his face winks out.
[[Follow the Deputy.]]
[[Stay at the bar.]]
[[Wake Gerry up.]]The Deputy titters excitedly and winks at you. 'Exactly, exactly right, how silly of me.' Behind him, two men walk into the bar with their pistols drawn at their hips and their hats still on. They point the guns at you and the Deputy. You push the Deputy off his chair and manage to get back down behind the bar as they let off a round each, then jump up over the bar as the men reload and grab the Deputy by the scruff of his neck as you begin running past the men, hearing two more bullets whip past your face and plant themselves in the wooden beams of the Saloon. Cold sunlight washes your face as you push through the doors, throw the Deputy into the street and wheel around whilst lowering yourself into a slight crouch, your arms loose at your sides. 'What in the fuck...' you hear the deputy moan behind you as he pulls himself to his feet. Along the street you can hear scuffling and two men grunting. Inside the Saloon is eerily silent.
[[Go back into the Saloon.]]
[[Investigate the noise.->Follow the Deputy.]]
The Deputy laughs, a little nervously, and lowers his voice to tell you,
'I think maybe we should talk outside, it ain't gonna take 'em long to wake up Lonny and figure out he ain't nearly capable of... what it is that was done.' He looks around the Saloon where most people have cleared out to go home, only the die-hard alcoholics like Gerry are dozing in their chairs. 'Night, Gerry.' Says the Deputy on his way out, putting his hat back on and turning to look your way as he reaches the doors. His profile is illuminated in red by the last of the day's light.
[[Follow the Deputy.]]
[[Stay at the bar.]]
[[Wake Gerry up.]] Outside, the Sheriff and a drunken, enraged Lonny are rolling around the dirt floor, the Sheriff reaching for his gun while Lonny throttles his and spits on his reddening face.
The Deputy next to you pulls off his jacket and tosses it on the ground, then screams, 'Halt!'
Lonny turns his head long enough to take in the Deputy, you, and old gunslinger Gerry over leaning on the Saloon wall polishing his revolver, then the Sheriff connects a right hook to his neck that knocks him sideways.
The Sheriff unholsters his pistol, rolls Lonny off his chest and grabs him by his thin hair as he raises himself up and brings his pistol up to Lonny's wide, twitching eyes. 'You slippery fucker,' the Sheriff says as he pulls back the hammer. And he calls Lonny your name.
'You stupid fuck, that's not me,' says Lonny slurringly, 'that's--'
A word you've never heard before drifts through the air:
^^ph'nglui mglw'nafh^^
Abruptly, Lonny's head and shoulders scatter over the road behind him, as do both the Sheriff's hands and his pistol.
Both men topple silently over as you turn to look at the Deputy cradling some sort of makeshift wrought-iron blunderbuss in his arms.
The Sheriff begins screaming and his screams become words:
'What in the shit-raping fires of hell are you doing boy? I always knew you was a twisted little kiddyfucker like your father, I should have drowned your fucking degenerate ass in the horse trough the day you crawled out of your drunk-fucking-whore-mother's --'
His upper body chooses that moment to become one with the wind and dirt and the grisly lower-half spins in the recoil from the Deputy's noiseless weapon, which when you look at it appears like an old antique, or like nothing at all since it seems to reflect none of the evening light.
The Deputy meets your gaze, clears his throat. 'My mother wasn't a whore.' He says. 'She was religious.' Gerry clears his throat, and turning to look at him you can see he has both his revolvers trained on the Deputy. Both men have a different kind of faraway look in their eye - the Deputy appears lost in memory, while Gerry seems to have retreated somewhere deep within himself as a kind of emotional defence. You notice once more that he is the absolute spitting image of Clint Eastwood, and feel reassured that this must be a dream. Only you can still feel your heart hammering in your chest, smell the death on your clothes and on the dirt ten feet away from you. Gerry begins to speak, in gravelly low tones, on the subject of his own past.
'I walked out of hell more times than I care to count, killed my way out of it more than a few, but I swear in all the ungodly things I done seen, and done myself on this earth nothin' smelt more evil, more blasphemous and un-fucking-holy as that thing you're holding there.'
The Deputy seems to wake from his trance, turns toward Gerry. The old man continues, faster now.
'I knew both your old folks and I always thought there was more to 'em than everyone said. Smart, complicated folks, but they weren't neither of them all the way bad, even your father.'
The Deputy raises the thing to his shoulder. Gerry's words grow even quicker, more slurred, and that faraway look he had comes a little closer. 'So I'm sure that when he gave you that thing he didn't anticipate you using it on any regular folks such as happen to be fighting in the street or trying to make their way home.' Gerry holsters his own revolvers with resignation. The Deputy looks at you.
[[Nod.]]
[[Shake your head.]]
[[Shrug.]]Two men in dark suits walk into the Saloon with their pistols drawn and at their hips, and their hats still on. You open your mouth to speak --You're knocked back against the shelves and hear some glass shatter from far away as you slump to your knees. Theres some kind of red gunk falling with a series of increasingly wet thuds on the floorboards before you, and as you look down into the crimson mess of your life you feel a coin slip from your loosening grip and roll away down the bar.
[[Open your eyes.->Refusing the call.]]Inside, the two gunmen lay slumped in a red heap by the wall. Gerry stands over them, turning to meet your eye before he crouches with evident difficulty between the still-bleeding corpses. You watch him undress the men, carefully, in search of some papers to identify them. He finds only one sheet of paper, which he passes to you. On it is a crude illustration of your face, above your name.
[[Talk to Gerry.]]
[[Investigate the noise.->Follow the Deputy.]]You walk a glass of old water round to the old man's chair and throw it in his face. He comes around and says in his gravelly voice 'you closin'?' A thought occurs to you from nowhere - Gerry looks exactly like Clint Eastwood. Before you can finish processing this information, two men walk into the bar with their pistols drawn at their hips and their hats still on. They point the guns at you and the Deputy. Gerry reacts like a trained dog, rising and blowing them both against the wall with six-shots apiece right in the ten-ring in a single, fluid movement. The Deputy lets out a small, child-like shriek. You notice you've fallen into a crouched stance with your arms loosely by your sides. Your temples pound and your ears ring with the ghost of the twelve sudden explosions that just happened right beside your skull. As if in response, the sound of the fighting outside grows louder. The Deputy runs out. Gerry reloads and holsters his pistol, walks over to his where his kill lie slumped on the floor, one of their rear-ends incongruously pointed up towards the blood-spattered ceiling. You watch him undress the men, carefully, in search of some papers to identify them. He finds only one sheet of paper, which he passes to you. On it is a crude illustration of your face, above your name.
[[Talk to Gerry.]]
[[Follow the Deputy.]]'Motherfuckers don't have any kind of identity on them, from their clothes it seems like they must be from somewhere north of here, over the Thulu River maybe, 'n any case they came a long way to show your squirelly ass some justice. You mind tellin' a confused ol' timer jus' what in the hell you mighta done to these boys that just cost me twelve bullets and a good shirt?'
[['I don't know.']]
[['Something pretty fucked up, we gotta leave.']]
[[Walk out. ->Follow the Deputy.]]The conversation's interrupted by another scream from outside. Gerry looks at you, then stalks out with his pistols drawn.
[[Follow Gerry.->Follow the Deputy.]]The conversation's interrupted by another scream from outside. Gerry looks at you, then stalks out with his pistols drawn.
[[Follow Gerry.->Follow the Deputy.]] The Deputy raises the strange device and Gerry's torso spreads in colourful ribbons over the side of the Saloon. He lowers it again and looks at you. 'We better go,' he says. You haven't really looked around the town until now. There are a few wooden buildings painted green and red that advertise themselves as the General Store and Stables, plus a few more smaller wooden houses from which a couple of men and women in bonnets and braces and bedclothes are emerging holding candles or guns or leaning out of windows. Outside the Saloon is a wooden sundial. The inscription reads 'Soon comes night.' The Deputy walks over to the Stables and unties two horses, leads them back over to where you stand over Gerry's twitching corpse.
You climb on, and follow the Deputy out of town along a wide dirt road that leads up to a set of red mountains a few miles off. When you turn back, you can see the orange glow of fire illuminating the silhouette of the town you've fled, not much of a town really, just a set of sticks holding out the dirt, the burned-out skeleton of a church at its centre. You see a sign on your way out: Arkham, pop. 83.
On the road, the Deputy tells you his story, but you're not really listening. Something about being created by a pair of lovers from the Cult of the awoken from a preserved foetus and a distilled nightmare to further their quest to finally wake the Old Ones and enslave humanity and yadda yadda yadda...
The Deputy leads you into the mountains, through a jagged ravine of crumbling red rock and along a river to the mouth of a cave. This cave is black, unlike the orange rock it's hewn into, and no light pierces its mouth. The Deputy ties up the horses at a dying white tree bent low over the river and fills his flask. He gestures for you to do the same. You realise very latently that you still hold a coin in your left palm. You open it and see an indentation on the coin of the same cavemouth beside the same bent tree. You stoop to fill your flask, and at the same time splash a little water on your face, and just for a split second you're back in the bathroom of the CronenBurger, looking in the mirror at a face you barely recognise. It passes. Your flask is full. The Deputy drinks deeply from his own flask, then raises the thing, the tube-made-of-an-absence-of-light, in your direction, tips his empty flask upside down.
[[Drink.]]
[['What's going on?']]
The Deputy lowers the insane artifact and re-affixes it to his back. Gerry looks at you with bald terror and confusion in his squinty eyes. Slowly, he backs away.
The Deputy clears his throat. 'We better go,' he says.
You haven't really looked around the town until now.
There are a few wooden buildings painted green and red that advertise themselves as the General Store and Stables, plus a few more smaller wooden houses from which a couple of men and women in bonnets and braces and bedclothes are emerging holding candles or guns or leaning out of windows. The Deputy walks over to the Stables and unties two horses, leads them back over to where you stand surveying the town.
You climb on, and follow him out of town along a wide dirt road that leads up to a set of red mountains a few miles off.
When you turn back, you can see the orange glow of fire illuminating the silhouette of the town you've fled.
Not much of a town really, just a set of sticks holding out the dirt.
But there's a large intricate house whose silhouette you can see on a slight hill over the river. It's half-collapsed, or burned, but it looks like it may have once been a church. You wonder how you never noticed that before.
You see a sign on your way out: Arkham, pop. 84.
Along the way the Deputy tells you his story, but you're not really listening. Something about being created by a pair of lovers from the Cult of the awoken from a preserved foetus and a distilled nightmare to further their quest to finally wake the Old Ones and enslave humanity and yadda yadda yadda...
The Deputy leads you into the mountains, through a jagged ravine of crumbling red rock and along a river to the mouth of a cave. This cave is black, unlike the orange rock it's hewn into, and no light pierces its mouth.
The Deputy ties up the horses at a dying white tree bent low over the river and fills his flask.
He gestures for you to do the same. You realise very latently that you still hold a coin in your left palm. You open it and see an indentation on the coin of the same cavemouth beside the same bent tree.
You stoop to fill your flask, and at the same time splash a little water on your face, and just for a split second you're back in the bathroom of the CronenBurger, looking in the mirror at a face you barely recognise. It passes. Your flask is full. The Deputy drinks deeply from his own flask, then raises the thing, the tube-made-of-an-absence-of-light, in your direction, tips his empty flask upside down.
Before you have time to respond, Gerry appears at the top of the ravine-edge with a rifle at his shoulder. The Deputy raises his nothing-gun and lets off a blast which shatters the ravine and causes a rockslide that carries Gerry down with it.
The recoil also knocks the Deputy down, at the cavemouth, and he drops the artefact. He recovers quickly, and scrambles over to where he dropped it, but it's closer to you, and so he stops and regards you fearfully through his broken and dusty glasses.
You pick it up. It weighs nothing, and burns where it touches your skin. Gerry groans on the other side of the river and emerges, choking on dust, from the rubble of the landslide.
[[Shoot the Deputy.]]
[[Shoot Gerry.]]
[[Throw it in the river.]]The men in the dark suits, the dead ones, walk out of the Saloon behind you. The Deputy screams a warning louder than a thunderclap, but not in time to save you from a bullet to the back of your head. The screen goes dark.
[[Open your eyes. ->Refusing the call.]] The liquid takes a while to travel down your throat, as if you were drinking molasses instead of water. The sensation is not pleasant. The Deputy smiles and removes his glasses, throws them on the ground. You notice that instead of eyes the man has two small mouths with pointed teeth.
'It is you. I wasn't sure if I could trust you until now. I am the Corinthian, Shepherd of Nightmares. You are the One Chosen, compelled to slay the leader of the meat-puppets by the coercion of the Old Ones Nug and Yeb. Now you face your final task, to relinquish your physical form so their progeny can cross the ethereal plain and regain control of our dimension. Give me the coin.'
You give him the coin. Terror compels you. He reshapes it with his fingers into a small sacrificial dagger, and hands it back. Then he walks into the mouth of the cave, and disappears. You drop the empty flask of riverwater, and follow.
The cold air blasts your face, but you adjust quickly to it as your eyes struggle to interpret the layers of negative space that squirm over the Corinthian's back as he keeps an even pace down the darkened tunnel.
Soon you feel as though you have been walking for many years.
When you turn, you cannot see the mouth behind you, or anything much in any direction beside the soft translucent glow of the creature leading you deeper into the cave.
The Corinthian does not turn to look in your direction, or change his pace when you falter, often, on the uneven floor.
But after a while, you perceive that you are alone.
You expect panic, but it does not come.
Instead, you can feel only a weak vibration from the lump of pointed metal in your hand.
Looking around, quaking in the relentless cold breath of the stone, you can see and feel that the walls have fallen away, and that exposed on all sides you stand beneath a monstrous statue of...something. Your eyes won't let it come into focus.
Suddenly soporific, you sit down at the base of the subterranean monolith, and slowly lift your hands above your head. Without warning your right hand descends at speed, the dagger gripped tight, and plunges into the top of your sternum. You topple forwards, onto the base of the statue, and your head begins to fill with the noise of an ocean.
An ocean? Not quite right. There are frequencies here you've never heard before. No, you decide as you slump to rest your head on the statue's enormous clawed foot, this is no ocean.
You can hear the universe.
It doesn't sound happy.
[[Open your eyes ->A thousand years of what now?]]The Deputy frowns, then smiles. 'Yes, I guess I can tell you now.' He removes his glasses, folds them neatly into his pocket. In place of eyes, the Deputy has two ragged red holes rimmed with pointed teeth. They appear to be smiling.
'I am the Corinthian, Shepherd of Nightmares. You are the One Chosen, compelled to slay the leader of the meat-puppets by the coercion of the Old Ones Nug and Yeb. Now you face your final task, to relinquish your physical form so their progeny can cross the ethereal plain and regain control of our dimension. Give me the coin.'
You give him the coin. Terror compels you. He reshapes it with his fingers into a small sacrificial dagger, and hands it back.
'Now imbibe the liquid.' He says.
You pretend to drink a little of your flask, after all it doesn't seem like this guy should be able to see.
The Corinthian smiles at you with his eyes.
You make some fake gulpy noises and toss the flask down as if it's empty, back into the river. Satisfied, the Corninthian turns and walks into the blackened cavemouth.
The tree beside the river twitches. You hold your little dagger and widen your eyes as you step into the dark.
The cold air blasts your face, but you adjust quickly to it as your eyes struggle to interpret the layers of negative space that squirm over the Corinthian's back as he keeps an even pace down the darkened tunnel.
Soon you feel as though you have been walking for many years.
When you turn, you cannot see the mouth behind you, or anything much in any direction beside the soft translucent glow of the creature leading you deeper into the cave.
The Corinthian does not turn to look in your direction, or change his pace when you falter, often, on the uneven floor.
But after a while, you perceive that you are alone. You expect panic, but it does not come.
Instead, you can feel only a weak vibration from the lump of pointed metal in your hand. Looking around, quaking in the relentless cold breath of the stone, you can see and feel that the walls have fallen away, and that exposed on all sides you stand beneath a monstrous statue of...something. Your eyes won't let it come into focus.
You feel suddenly unbearably hungry - your stomach makes a noise like a burst football full of sewage and you instinctively hunch, groan, dry-heave. You have nothing remotely resembling food, and who knows how long ago you left the surface behind. All you have are your clothes and the small sacrificial dagger in your palm.
You guess that it might have some sort of nutritional value. On the other hand, that stuff the Corinthian was talking about seemed kind of important.
[[Eat the dagger.]]
[[Stab yourself.]]
Nothing happens.
He continues to stare up at you with big blue eyes behind those bottle-bottom specs. Then he speaks a word you're unfamiliar with, ^^ph'nglui mglw'nafh^^ and the thing in your arms moves to his as he rises and blows Gerry's creaking form back into dust.
As he stands he grows taller, and his glasses slip off, and you notice that his eyes appear filled with blood. That's all you have time to notice before he turns the weapon on you, mutters, 'so disappointing,' and blows off your legs. You black out with pain.
When you wake you're in a dark, irregular stone corridor, bouncing along strapped to the back of what you assume must be the Deputy, or whatever he was.
'Oh good, you're awake.' He says as you lift your head. 'I wouldn't want you to miss such a historical moment.'
He stops walking, yanks you off his back and carries you into an enormous underground cavern.
You've never seen anything like it before, except maybe once...
Huge stone statues of cosmic horrors which bend your imagination dominate this enormous antechamber, all looking inwards towards a central altar.
The Corinthian lays you down on it and says, 'don't be scared. After this is all over you'll be a vessel, a portal through which all the energy and will of the Old Ones flows into this dimension. It will be like becoming a God...only more painful.'
He raises a small golden dagger over his head, then drops it as his skull explodes into screaming red mist. He falls over backwards, and you reach out to catch the dagger before it touches the stone. A silhouette limps towards you, one hand on the wall for support.
It's Gerry... or at least, most of him. Parts of him are stripped away to bone or float like vapour round the corporeal parts, but all of him keeps on limping towards you. When he reaches the Corinthian, he stoops with visible effort to collect the blackened relic on his back, then raises it up to face you.
'Gerry, you just saved the fucking univ--' Is all you manage to say before your atoms are scattered to the quantum winds.
[[Open your eyes.->Something's...different.]] Gerry screams the first half of a word before his meat unravels on the wind. The Deputy looks at you in awe. He speaks a word you're not familiar with and the thing in your arms leaps out and reaffixes itself to the Deputy's back. He shrugs, shakes his glasses from his head. You notice that he has two small, smiling mouths with jagged red teeth where his eyes should be.
'It is you. I wasn't sure if I could trust you until now. I am the Corinthian, Shepherd of Nightmares. You are the One Chosen, compelled to slay the leader of the meat-puppets by the coercion of the Old Ones. Now you face your final task, to sacrifice yourself to the Old Ones so they can release the Great Bear from his cage in the stars, and devour this world. Give me the coin.'
You give him the coin. Terror compels you. He reshapes it with his fingers into a small sacrificial dagger, and hands it back. Then he walks into the mouth of the cave, and disappears. You drop the flask of riverwater, and follow.
The cold air blasts your face, but you adjust quickly to it as your eyes struggle to interpret the layers of negative space that squirm over the Corinthian's back as he keeps an even pace down the darkened tunnel.
Soon you feel as though you have been walking for many years. When you turn, you cannot see the mouth behind you, or anything much in any direction beside the soft translucent glow of the creature leading you deeper into the cave. The Corinthian does not turn to look in your direction, or change his pace when you falter, often, on the uneven floor.
But after a while, you perceive that you are alone. You expect panic, but it does not come. Instead, you can feel only a weak vibration from the lump of pointed metal in your hand. Looking around, quaking in the relentless cold breath of the stone, you can see and feel that the walls have fallen away, and that exposed on all sides you stand beneath a monstrous statue of...something. Your eyes won't let it come into focus.
You feel suddenly unbearably hungry - your stomach makes a noise like a burst football full of sewage and you instinctively hunch, groan, dry-heave. You have nothing remotely resembling food, and who knows how long ago you left the surface behind. All you have are your clothes and the small sacrificial dagger in your palm. You guess that it might have some sort of nutritional value.
[[Eat the dagger.]] Sploop.
The Deputy gets to his feet, his boots kicking up clouds of dust that sting your eyes and throat.
He speaks a word you're unfamiliar with: ^^ph'nglui mglw'nafh^^ and the device leaps out of the river back into his arms as he rises and blows Gerry's creaking form back into dust. As he stands he grows taller, and his glasses slip off, and you notice that his eyes appear filled with blood.
That's all you have time to notice before he turns the weapon on you, mutters, 'so disappointing,' and blows off your legs. You black out with pain.
When you wake you're in a dark, irregular stone corridor, bouncing along strapped to the back of what you assume must be the Deputy, or whatever he was.
'Oh good, you're awake.' He says as you lift your head. 'I wouldn't want you to miss such a historical moment.'
He stops walking, yanks you off his back and carries you into an enormous underground cavern. You've never seen anything like it before, except maybe once... Huge stone statues of cosmic horrors which bend your imagination dominate this enormous antechamber, all looking inwards towards a central altar.
The Corinthian lays you down on it and says, 'don't be scared. After this is all over you'll be a vessel, a portal through which all the energy and will of the Old Ones flows into this dimension. It will be like becoming a God...only, more painful.'
He raises a small golden dagger over his head, then drops it as his skull explodes into screaming red mist. He falls over backwards, and you reach out to catch the dagger before it touches the stone. A silhouette limps towards you, one hand on the wall for support.
It's Gerry... or at least, most of him. Parts of him are stripped away to bone or float like vapour round the corporeal parts, but all of him keeps on limping towards you. When he reaches the Corinthian, he stoops with visible effort to collect the blackened relic on his back, then raises it up to face you.
'Gerry, you just saved the fucking univ--' Is all you manage to say before your atoms are scattered to the quantum winds.
[[Open your eyes.->Refusing the call.]] ^^Always with the names.^^ The cat raises a bald grey paw and touches its chest. ^^I'm Smudge, and this is--^^
'I AM DEUTRIUS FARGAZER, WIZARD OF THE NINTH REALM OF INTERNIA, PROPHET OF THE SIX WINDS, CHAMPION OF THE PLANES OF SHIGALOO, INCONVENIENCER OF CHAOS, DEFILER OF WAYWARD GODS, CONFOUNDER OF QUANTUM CONUNDRUMS, INTERSTITIAL INTELLIGENCE ANALYST, TELLER OF FINE JOKES AND WHIMSICAL TALES, MURDERER OF ORCS, PhD.
'I have been imprisoned here by the foul acolytes of my sworn arch-nemesis, the dark wizard of this realm...Meethanos O-Zoni.'
Fargazer pauses to spit a tooth onto the stone floor where it bounces with a minute plink into the basin beside you.
'Who it seems has fooled your own feeble-minded human leaders into thinking their wealth and positioning will make them immune to the atrocities he intends to commit. But with your help, humble meat-puppet, I shall reverse the poisoning of this realm by his Despite and begin us on the path to healing and enlightenment and Sublime Knowledge of the universe!' With this last statement the old man shakes violently in his chains, his head tileted back in ecstasy, until energy deserts him and he falls limply back into the slack iron embrace. Smudge the cat rolls his one remaining eye and looks at you.
^^Well? Are you going to free us or what?^^
[['How?']]
[['Nice Kitty.']]
[[Bug out.->Leave.]]
you reach down to touch the mangy feline and it melts into the floor, re-emerging beneath the chained old man's feet.
^^You don't want to do that,^^ the cat says. ^^Trust me. And I'm not a kitty. May name is Smudge, and this here is...^^
'I AM DEUTRIUS FARGAZER, WIZARD OF THE NINTH REALM OF INTERNIA, PROPHET OF THE SIX WINDS, CHAMPION OF THE PLANES OF SHIGALOO, INCONVENIENCER OF CHAOS, DEFILER OF WAYWARD GODS, CONFOUNDER OF QUANTUM CONUNDRUMS, INTERSTITIAL INTELLIGENCE ANALYST, TELLER OF FINE JOKES AND WHIMSICAL TALES, MURDERER OF ORCS, PhD.
'I have been imprisoned here by the foul acolytes of my sworn arch-nemesis, the dark wizard of this realm...Meethanos O-Zoni.'
Fargazer pauses to spit a tooth onto the stone floor where it bounces with a minute plink into the basin beside you.
'Who it seems has fooled your own feeble-minded human leaders into thinking their wealth and positioning will make them immune to the atrocities he intends to commit. But with your help, humble meat-puppet, I shall reverse the poisoning of this realm by his Despite and begin us on the path to healing and enlightenment and Sublime Knowledge of the universe!' With this last statement the old man shakes violently in his chains, his head tileted back in ecstasy, until energy deserts him and he falls limply back into the slack iron embrace. Smudge the cat rolls his one remaining eye and looks at you.
^^Well? Are you going to free us or what?^^
[['How?']]
[[Bug out.->Leave.]]
You return to the banquet hall, where it appears the festivities have escalated somewhat: where before a few score men and women stood or sat in lines along the heavy-laden tables now the cavorters' ranks have swelled and spread over the tables and floor in bunches of violent procreational or otherwise engaging activity. The throne at the end of the hall lies empty, and at its feet someone has dumped the corpse of a dog trampled in the confusion. Its unseeing eyes survey the chaos in the fire-lit stone hall, wherin flickering shadows spray phantom gouts of blood and viscera to hang dripping from the walls and braziers.
[[Back to the basement. ->Walk away.]]
[[Stay here - seems chill.]]
[[To the tower!]]The moment this word leaves your lips Fargazer's eyes roll over white and you feel the coin in your left palm squirm and warm until it's red-hot and it spins out of your hand and slices through Fargazer's chains in a smooth figure-eight, releasing him onto the floor where he lands in a creaking squat. He raises himself up, grabs the coin out of the air and flips it back over to you. You catch it, notice that it's cold now.
'Thank you, kind mortal.' He frowns, looks at Smudge, who hops up onto your shoulder. You shift uncomfortably but the cat holds fast. 'Time is short. Will you aid us in our quest?'
'I guess,' you say, shifting to get this cat's claws out of your skin. Smudge purrs.
'Then first, we must speak to Lord Atwood, and entreat upon him to change his ways...' Fargazer picks up a loose stone from the floor and floats it above his hand. 'Or face the consequence.'
The rock turns to dust, spreads out like a galaxy.
Involuntarily, you gulp.
Producing a wooden staff from...somewhere, Fargazer leads you out of the basement and along a stone corridor to a staircase. Along the way, he tells you his fantastical backstory, but you're too freaked out to really listen. Something about being born from a conspiracy of wind and birds and earth to protect the realm of the ignorant mortal from the insatiable hunger of the Old Ones and blah blah blah.
Eventually he falls silent at the foot of a spiralling stone staircase.
As you ascend the steps, you grow cold, and you have the strange feeling that for every step you take up into this tower you're really descending deeper into the bowels of the earth...
Eventually, you reach the top. There's a wooden door, the cracks in which emit a faint red glow.
Smudge, perched on Fargazer's shoulder, emits a low purr.
'Fear not,' Fargazer whispers as he pushes the door open with the tip of his staff.
'Mortals are not made to weild power. All they know how to do is eat and...'
The door swings open to reveal a scene from Hell.
'...shit.'
Corpses in various states of contortion, arrangement or violent disarray plaster the walls of this dim chamber, which seems to be lit in crimson from below. You recognise some of the bodies of your fellow servants here in Atwood's court.
In the centre, you see the grossly-overweight Atwood, caked in gore, hunched and slobbering over something obscured in shadow.
You step closer, to make out some of the form beneath him, and freeze.
The Lord is balanced precariously on top of a monstrous black squid, with many small, irregular mouths in the surface of its thick tentacles which sprawl out through the carnage.
As you watch, Atwood tears chunks from the pinned beast with his hands and teeth and wolfs them down hungrily.
Tactfully, Fargazer clears his throat.
Atwood's head spins faster than his bones should allow. His eyes are clawed-out, empty holes. Smudge's hackles rise and it spits. Fargazer tries to appear unmoved, but sweat beads on his wrinkled brow.
The coin vibrates in your hand. Perhaps this is your moment, but who is your target?
[[Attack Atwood.]]
[[Attack the beast.]]
There's a noise above you. You look up and can see the sky.
It's full of blood. Sharp black rocks swim in its surface, disappearing periodically as they dip beneath, or above, or however that works. As you watch, one rock breaks the surface, writhing, reveals itself to be the tip of a monstrous talon. It reaches down, blindly, but towards you, it seems.
You reach up a forearm to protect yourself and the claw skewers you through it, through your ribcage, your left calf wet with blood. Then its limb hook and it pulls you up into the miasma of gore. You turn to look down and see the earth below you crumbling like so much filthy sand. You see yourself, a gilded fool, standing at the edge of a yawning precipice. Your birth, death, the many tedious and brief lives you've lived. Finally you see the face of the Great Bear, and its terrific beauty turns your brain into meat.
[[Whoops.->Refusing the call.]]You pop that golden treat right in your mouth and gulp it down in one big, strained gulp. As you do so, the Corinthian steps out from his vantage point behind the statue and says:
'Hey what the hell are you...' He squints through his teethy eye-holes at you. What they see widens them into a red scream. 'Oh fuck.'
You see the universe. You see 13 billion years of light and life and...
And then you see beyond that,
Into the darkness.
The darkness that you always could see, but never wanted to.
That had always been there,
in the space between everything you laid on top of it.
Scratching at the edges of your mind. Wearing you down.
Waiting. For the little lights to burn themselves out.
You hear all their confused voices. Shake your head,
-huck up the coin into your hand.
The Corinthian still stares at you from across the chamber, his hands outstretched, but falling slowly to his sides.
'Kid, you don't need to see that. No one does.'
He starts to walk towards you.
'I can take your eyes. You won't have to see anything.'
The coin shivers in your palm. On its face, 3 stars.
Orion's belt.
'I have a collection, you see...'
The Great Bear.
'...of eyes, I mean.'
The Corinthian, you can see with your newfound sight, is nothing but a bundle of insecurities. You can make him redundant with one thing: clarity.
This is a tool you now possess.
The Corinthian is gone.
There is still work to be done. The Old Ones' machinations must be thwarted.
You think about this.
And you smile.
Because you know exactly what to do.
[[Open your eyes ->Something's...different.]]You plunge the dagger into your breast. The sinus-like holes in it allow your arterial blood to flow through onto the base of the statue, behind which you finally perceive the Corinthian, watching. The statue itself, you can see now, depicts an enormous many-limbed insect with a cartoonishly large head. It smiles at you, just for a second, and one of its million eyes winks.
[[Open your eyes ->A thousand years of what now?]]The two gunmen look at each other.
Behind you, you hear your manager say: 'shit.'
When you turn to look at him you see that one of his eyes has grown an inch wider, and as you watch, so does the other. His jaw, too, slowly widens past the dimensions of his face as his skin grows darker. Thick, black tentacles burst from his back and go to work peeling gouts of red flesh off the rest of his growing, twisting skeleton as it expands up into the air, casting a shadow over you, over the forecourt, then over the entire car park. Before you can think to move Cthulhu's form has filled the space between you and is pushing you back into the wall of the CronenBurger. You hear something >plink< to the ground from a great height. It's a gold coin that's landed at your feet, and seems to be shifting, growing itself into some sort of weapon. You pick it up. It shifts and twinkles into an intricately beautiful, deliciously crafted golden sword.
[[Carve him up.->Oh boy.]]
[[Swallow the sword.]]You stick the sword in its oily flesh, where it begins to glow, turning the flesh white and bubbly with its heat. Cthulhu screams from its maw somewhere high above you, then it opens its pores and inhales rubble from the ground around it. The sword slips deeper into it, and is gone, but you can still see faintly the glow of its heat as it travels erratically through the body of the beat toward its head. When it gets there, Cthulhu giggles a giggle like fifty cement-mixers being raped by a harlem of quantum octupi, and spits the sword like a toothpick into the vastness of space.
You lose hope. The darkness surrounds you.
You die. But it feels different. Almost like...
[[Open your eyes.]]
...
[[Open your eyes.]]
[[Open your eyes.]]
...
......
...fuck.It tastes sublime, slips down smooth like tingly whipped cream.
Your vision widens, and the ground moves away, as you feel yourself expand up into the sky, rising alongside the monstrous form of your old manager as you grow
and grow until the ground curves beneath you and you stare into the vacuuous black eyes of the thing's vast tentacled face across a great expanse of cold sky.
Cthulhu becomes the moon. You the sun.
It becomes entropy, death. You are the circular nature of time, the many planes. Hope.
It is the impossibility of movement, the inert space between dimensions.
It is madness, a forbidden knowledge, a paradox.
It is suffocating absence.
You are defeated.
And you... don't care.
You are wilful ignorance. Cognitive dissonance.
The human superpower.
Cthulhu shudders at your stupidity.
With a sound like a galxy kissing its teeth, it shrinks itself down and slips silently back into the pacific ocean, to sleep it off.
You cough, and the coin leaves your lips and spins away into the cosmos faster than you could follow even if you weren't falling gently back to earth through layers of vibrant, enchanting coloured gases.
After a few minutes of smooth silent descent through space, you pass through the clouds and see the CronenBurger beneath you, half-crushed and collapsed by your encounter with the Old One.
As you drop down into the rubble-strewn carpark, the CronenBurger Owner rushes over to you from outside the semi-sunk restaurant. You see a big dirty shape, its torso bound in shiny tape, flit across your periphery towards the river.
'Hey you!' He pants, resting his palms on his thighs. He's sweated through his dark suit, darker now in some places and dusty in others from the blast.
'Seems like things could have been a lot worse if you hadn't show up. We've really got to start vetting our managers properly. Whew.' He wipes his brow and produces a box from a shoulder-bag.
'Anyway, I wanted to give you this on behalf of the CronenBurger, and the universe I guess.'
You take the box and open it.
Inside is a shiny new name badge, with your name spelled wrong.
There's also a £10.00 voucher.
For the CronenBurger.
It reads:
'Thanks for playing!'
...now find out the truth.
thesandcastle.me
...Right.
Presently, the stone floor of the hall begins to shift, crumble, ripple in small waves of pebbles that knock the cavorting, cannabalising soldiers and noblemen to the ground with cries of confusion. You lose your own footing and begin to tumble toward the centre of the room which is groaning open like some giant stone beast's maw...
'Medium or large?' You hear yourself say.
Wait, that's not right...
[[Open your eyes ->Refusing the call.]] You sneak past the chaos and into the next staircase, though you needn't have bothered - the guests are so deeply entranced by their own depravity.
As you ascend the steps, you grow cold, and you have the strange feeling that for every step you take up into this tower you're really descending deeper into the bowels of the earth...
Eventually, you reach the top. There's a wooden door, the cracks in which emit a faint red glow.
You push it open. Inside is a miasma of gore arranged around the circular room in unsettlingly ritual fashion.
You recognise some of the less-dismantled bodies as members of the serving staff here in Lord Atwood's court. Most are beyond recognition: their entrails and skin has been torn to ribbons and strung in wide concentric circles over the stone walls.
In the centre of this nightmare tapestry, coated in thick layers of wet and dried blood, Atwood's monstrously obese form crouches with his back to the door, muttering and chewing intently on something beneath him.
As you creep closer, you see dark tentacles, small jagged mouths, and realise Atwood is crouched on top of an oily-black beast of such strange shape and dimension it hurts your head to behold it.
It writhes limply beneath him as he snuffles his face wetly into it and tears off reams of shining black flesh that disappear down his gullet.
You move closer, and a bone snaps beneath your toes.
Atwood turns to look at you, but his eyes are gaping, sightless red windows.
He swallows another lump of the beast and stands up.
'Who goes there?' His voice is deeper than you remember. The shadows on his face seem to crackle with mischeivous energy.
[[Speak.]]
[[Stay silent.]]
Your mouth is dry.
'Erm..'
Atwood flattens like a spring and pounces, his considerable momentum knocking you into the wall where you're skewered by some poor servan't ribcage. His doughy fingers, chewed to a jagged point, start to carve the skin from your body.
You freeze. Atwood sniffs, hunkers down and continues to gorge himself on the thing beneath him, which emits a low whine.
You hear footsteps on the stairs below, and a pompous voice declaring: 'Mortals cannot weild power. All mortals know how to do is eat and...'
The door creaks open
'...shit.'
Through the doorway enters a nude old man with scars lacing his torso, a crooked stick in his right hand, and a mangy-looking feral cat on his shoulder. The pair of them stare around the room in horror. The old man notices you, and places a finger to his lips.
He clears his throat. Atwood turns, and the old man takes a step back and nearly falls down the stairs at the Lord's empty gaze. The cat on his shoulder bristles and pulls itself upright.
The old man begins to speak, shakily, pointing his stick at Atwood.
'Halt, uh, fiend. Relinquish thine, erm, extra-dimensional quarry and show me thine hands or I shall be forced...'
Atwood growls deeply and spits a chunk of oily viscera across the room.
You feel like maybe you should help out here. All you have is a coin, but you could do something with it, get their attention maybe.
[[Attack Atwood.]]
[[Attack the beast.]] You throw the coin at Atwood and it plinks harmlessly off his shoulder and into a puddle of gore.
But he turns in your direction, hisses with confusion, and as he does so the old man in the doorway lets off a bolt of white energy from his staff that burns a neat hole clean through Atwood's temples.
Atwood grunts and topples forward...
-whumpf-
...onto the blood-soaked boards of the tower floor.
Over in the doorway, the cat on the old man's shoulders hops down and paces into the room, climbing over Atwood's corpse.
The old man's brow furrows, and he calls out:
'Smudge?'
The cat pauses briefly, stood astride a thick black tentacle that twists around the room, and begins to hack up a furball.
It chokes and writhes and convulses until strings of dark liquid pour from its mouth, onto the creature beneath it. The fluid spreads and coats the creature's body, and the cat keeps retching, until the retch turns into a low chuckle:
^^hu-hu-hu-hu-hur. You fools.^^
'Smudge?' The old man steps into the room. 'What're you doing?'
^^Atwood's mind was the only thing-< the cat's bones crack as it barfs up another pint of ichor >Which kept Nug and I tied to our physical forms.^^
'Nug and...' The old man steps closer, weilding his stick. 'You know this demon?'
^^Of course.^^ The cat turns back to the doorway with glowing green eyes.
^^He's my brother.^^
And it pounces, latching onto the old man's face before he has a chance to react. He flails backwards out the doorway and they crash down the steps. Meanwhile, the many-limbed and -mouthed thing at the floor withes tentatively, stretching itself around the room, fondling the patterns of flesh until it touches you, and recoils slightly.
Out of the corner of your vision, you see the old man limp back into the doorframe, his face a red mess of scratches.
He croaks a message to you as the entity wraps a thick tentacle around your face.
'Remember what I said, mortal. Play to your strengths!'
The tentacle worms its way into your mouth, down your throat, wraps itself around your spine.
[[Open your eyes ->Something's...different.]]
Lights up on the front counter of the local CronenBurger.
Only this time, something's...different.
The same old man looks at you with the same old eyes as always.
And he speaks the words you can never make out.
You look past him, out the window, see the sun start to set over the river which borders the car park. And...stars. In the daytime.
3 of them. Brighter than you've ever seen.
Ursa Major.
[[Hit some random buttons.]]
[[Shout, 'What?!']]
[[Stay frosty.]]
[[Walk out.]]You toss the coin deftly and silently into one of the little fanged mouths spread randomly about the creature's sprawling form. As it plops in you hear Smudge say:
^^Wait, what are you...?^^
White noise fills your ears as the creature shudders and writhes, glowing orange benath the oily surface of its skin. It releases a piercing scream from multiple orifices as it folds itself around Atwood and begins to thrash wildly on the spot, still rooted by the enormous man's weight.
Quite suddenly, yet somehow also in slow-motion the thing pauses its movement for a split second, and bursts like a popped soap-bubble, showering the room in warm black resin.
When you wipe the worst of it out of your eyes you can see Fargazer and Smudge still stood in the doorway, cleaning themselves, and Atwood's grotesque form face-down in a great black puddle.
'Nice work,' says Fargazer, 'although I think I also had it handled.'
Smudge laughs, emptily.
'You can't say much, furball. All you did was purr at -' Fargazer winces as Smudge flicks a finger-bone at his head. The cat laps up some of the black gunk which layers the chamber, and shudders in ecstasy.
'Medium or large?' You ask Fargazer.
He looks at you blankly.
[[Open your eyes. ->Something's...different.]]
You nimbly hop the counter and slide around the queue of outraged customers like a fish on a hook as you push open the doors and drink in the last blood-red rays of sunshine. You cross the parking lot, swing your legs over a fence and sit down by the riverbank, kicking your work boots off and stretching your legs as you watch the water snake lazily by.
You see a boat half-landed on the other side that looks abandoned, covered over by a few layers of tarp and some random 2X4s. As you watch, the boat quakes and the tarp rolls off to reveal an extremely dishevelled, damp, bearded old man in a trench-coat clutching to an empty bottle of rum for dear life with one hand as he pulls himself out of the boat and onto his feet with the other.
He spots you before you can think to hide and waves. When you don't wave back, he pushes the boat out, hops in and paddles the fifteen feet across to your side, nipping from his bottle on the way.
As he jumps out and offers you his hand you see that it's missing a couple fingers. You take it anyway, shake gingerly.
'Just the person I wanted to see,' the old guy says in a voice like a gassy last breath, 'Murphy Meatfucker, Meatfucker Intelligence.' And he hands you his card, a sopping wet laminated likeness of his face.
'A certain group of people have put a considerable amount of trust in me
by hiring me to find you...and I have to admit I've been dropping the ball somewhat...' He takes another nip from his bottle, and you see that it's not totally empty, there's about a half-gulp in there you figure he must be...recycling. You shudder, involuntarily, and Meatfucker grabs you and leads you over to the boat. '...thus far. But all's well that ends well, and from the look in your eye I'd say it's time to bring you in.'
With that, he feints toward you and slaps a ziptie around your wrists in a fluid motion, jerking you off your feet and into the boat.
'Don't do anything silly.' He says, and belches. Then he finishes the last of his rum and throws the bottle at a tree, where it smashes into dust, shards of it gouging red grooves in the bark.
[[Patience is a virtue.]]
Meatfucker keeps his eyes on you as he uses one long arm to paddle slowly downstream. A spider drops out of his hair, and without moving his eyes he catches it, crushes it, and licks his palm, blinking once as he sucks the juice down his gullet.
'Did you find the coin?' He asks when he's finished chewing.
You say nothing. Meatfucker nods. 'Fair enough.' He says.
The boat slows alongside an abandoned carpark around a bunch of warehouses, fenced off for reconstruction. Meatfucker climbs out and pulls you and the boat to shore, dragging you out by your bound wrists as the skiff buries its bow in the bank.
Slipping through a hole carved in the fence, you trip across the carpark in your damp socks, under streetlamps warming in the dusk.
You reach the door to one of the warehouses, propped open with a stick and crudely painted in black with the words:
MEATFUCKER INTELLIGENCE: "A SOURCE YOU CAN TRUST"
Beneath it, you're stunned to see a twitter handle: @meatfuckerintel
The old man pushes you through the door, into a darkened labirinth built of towers of books, newspaper and detritus. Meatfucker coughs, a little bashfully, and leads you through the trails to a clearing in which are a couple chairs and some wooden crates of booze around a chiminea.
Shucking off his heavy filth-encrusted coat to reveal another similar one underneath, Meatfucker sits you in a chair and uses a loose pipe to crack open one of the crates and unscrew a bottle of cooking sherry.
He haunches down and tries to light the chiminea with a wet match.
'You want a drink?' He asks you after he's on his third bottle, the chiminea still a cold, inert lump in the middle of the darkened room.
'Fuck it.' He sets himself down in a chair opposite you.
'I bet you're wondering who it is hired me to come find you.
'The thing is, it's sort of a long story.'
He stands up.
'So, about thirteen billion years ago...'
The warehouse falls darks as the rod holding the door open, somewhere behind the stacks, topples over with a clatter.
'Oh...' The old man starts to say, before something drops down between you and rips out his guts. You're sprayed with blood and ephemera before you have the chance to react, and instinctively close your eyes.
When you open them again, whatever it was has vanished, and Meatfucker kneels a few metres in front of you, gathering slimy loops of his entrails in one fist and trying to push them back home with the other. You stand and lift the matchbook from his coat pocket.
Squatting and striking a match on the stone floor, you raise it slowly up to your chest and look around.
There's nothing here but books and bottles, the chiminea lying on one side and barfing ash across the floor towards the mouth of the trails.
'Jesus Fuck I think this is it.' Murphy says, still desperately clawing away at his open torso. The stink of him hangs thick on the air.
[[Dip.]]
[[Help a brother out.]]You sprint back off down the trails and out the door into a fine rain, your sodden socks heavy and cold on the tarmac. Walking slow, your bound wrists playing havoc on your balance, you make it to the fence and manage to heave yourself onto the top with only a few pulled muscles and wire abrasions. The ziptie on your hands gets caught in the fence and snaps, and you rub your wrists and cracked pelvis as you collect yourself on the other side. You walk, in a random direction, you think until you find a bus stop.
Drivers on the road roll by your limping, blood-covered figure without a second glance. Some speed up, even better to pretend they never saw.
Before you know it, you're outside the CronenBurger, the car park thinning out now after the evening rush. Outside the fire-door you lock eyes with the Manager, smoking a thin cigarette and wincing under the drizzle. There's a red stain on the sleeve of his shirt, that he conceals - just not quite fast enough.
'There you are!' He dashes his fag and walks to meet you. 'What the hell happened?'
You shrug, keep limping up to the restaurant.
'Well listen, someone turned up who wants to speak to you,' He opens the fire door and ducks in, then holds it open. 'They're waiting in the office. I said I'd find you.'
As he says this last part he looks into your eyes.
You feel a twinge of recognition.
[[Go home.]]
[[Follow him.]]Before you leave, you crack open a bottle of hooch for the old guy and hand it to him. He accepts it, and loks at you with gratitude in his eyes, but when he opens his mouth it's just a fountain of blood.
You sprint back off down the trails and out the door into a fine rain, your sodden socks heavy and cold on the tarmac. Walking slow, your bound wrists playing havoc on your balance, you make it to the fence and manage to heave yourself onto the top with only a few pulled muscles and wire abrasions. The ziptie on your hands gets caught in the fence and snaps, and you rub your wrists and cracked pelvis as you collect yourself on the other side. You walk, in a random direction, you think until you find a bus stop.
Drivers on the road roll by your limping, blood-covered figure without a second glance. Some speed up, even better to pretend they never saw.
Before you know it, you're outside the CronenBurger, the car park thinning out now after the evening rush. Outside the fire-door you lock eyes with the Manager, smoking a thin cigarette and wincing under the drizzle. There's a red stain on the sleeve of his shirt, that he conceals - just not quite fast enough.
'There you are!' He dashes his fag and walks to meet you. 'What the hell happened?'
You shrug, keep limping up to the restaurant.
'Well listen, someone turned up who wants to speak to you,' He opens the fire door and ducks in, then holds it open. 'They're waiting in the office. I said I'd find you.'
As he says this last part he looks into your eyes.
You feel a twinge of recognition.
[[Go home.]]
[[Follow him.]]You go home and have a nice cup of tea.
You decide not to watch the news.
For once in your life you have a nice, early night, and feel rested.
You wake up and calmly prepare a delicious breakfast to the enlightened sounds of Classic FM.
[[Go outside. ->A thousand years of what now?]]