The Great Game

Wow. Installment 20 already.

If you’re back again, thank you very much for your interest and support! Please keep on voting — it means a lot to me, and reassures me that this experiment is worth continuing. You can safely skip all this bold italic text

If you’re new here, then welcome. ‘The Great Game’ is a work of interactive fiction, a particpatory story where you’re in charge of what happens next. I write a bit. You tell me how to continue, then I go off and write that, and give you your next choice. I’ll let our narrator sum up the story so far:

“I woke up in a deserted hotel, a bit like the Marie Celeste. I was trying to find someone — anyone — when a guy wearing utterly mad crap popped out of nowhere. He babbled a bit at me, and then dazzled me with some sort of laser. I blacked out. When I came round, the place was busy, my eyes had turned from brown to pink, and outside the window… well. We’re God-knows-where. I’ve formed a tentative alliance with a woman in a business suit, Alice, who claims the hotel changes layout, and is home to people from all over time and space. I suspect she’s right. She thinks she’s being hunted by killers, so we’re trying to get some information on them. I’m about to attempt to bluff some out of a Victorian gentleman in a formal outfit. He has a blood-red top hat, a monocle that appears to be carved from pure shadow, and a huge wolf on a silver chain. What could possibly go wrong?”

The man is leaning against the wall, the wolf curled around his feet. It would be cute if the damn thing didn’t look so feral. He looks like he’s idly watching the passers by, sipping from a champagne flute. He glances over at us, and smiles broadly.

It is not a reassuring sight.

I decide to act like I’m a fully paid up member of the club. I stroll over to him, and lean against the wall nonchalantly, copying his pose. Then I glance down at the beast on the floor between us. “Nice wolf.”

The wolf looks up and round at me, and arches an eyebrow. For a long, horrible moment, I’m absolutely certain it’s going to talk, and something inside me gibbers in panic. Then it looks away again, and rests its head back on its paws.

“If you like.” The man is clearly amused, and his tone reminds me why I’ve always been so irritated by period TV dramas.

I’m pretty sure I’d lose in any small-talk battle, so I cut to the point. “I need to find someone.”

“My word,” says the man, without even the slightest hint of surprise or interest. I can’t see anything behind his monocle, but there appear to be tiny motes of light deep inside it.

“You can point me in the direction of the right people.” I put all the confidence I can muster into the statement. He remains impassive behind his meaningless smile, so I continue. “Will you do so?”

He thinks about it for a moment. “Why would I, when you know the way perfectly well yourself?” That catches me by surprise. I was expecting an opening haggle. He seems pleased to have unsettled me. “Surrender to your intuition.” He leans down and ruffles the wolf’s mane fondly. “Unleash yourself.”

 Loading ...

Today’s image: Dark Wolf by and (c) DaRkDesaSteR at Deviant Art.