The Great Game

If you’re new to the Great Game, please have a quick look at the blurb to your left, where you’ll find a short catch-up introduction!

“You will not find the girl.”

He flinches. “The girl?”

“She has hidden herself well.”

He sighs. “Very well. What is the price?”

I remember that the Macandal generally deal in sorcerous favours. “Seven spirits, bound.” That feels like a high price.

The bokor grimaces. “That is ridiculous.”

I smile pleasantly. “5 hours and 31 minutes.”

“Alright, seer. You make your point. Seven spirits, bound, when Sinclair wants them. Now where is the girl?”

Good question. It needs to be somewhere away from where Alice and Massinisa are hiding. What will take him in a different direction? Ah. Gotcha. “She is in the hotel’s ancient warrens, from the time before Sumeria arose. There is a chamber there that persists, with animals painted on the walls. The guides know it. She is within two corridors of that place.”

“I know it,” he says.

Damn, he’s a guide? He doesn’t look anything like crazy enough. Still. “Make haste. Sinclair would prefer to be able to collect on our deal.”

His face contorts for a moment, but he nods, and strides out. As soon as the sound of his footsteps fade, I dash back the way I came. The pressure of the bokor’s presence eases, but not entirely; there’s a sense of imminence.

Alice and Massinisa are where I left them, looking jumpy. They relax as they see me round the corner.

Alice quickly asks, “What happened?”

“I bumped into one of the sorcerers. I bought us some time, but not much. Come on.”

I start leading them back to the ritual room. Alice comes up beside me. “How long do we have?”

“I don’t know. I sent him off on a wild goose chase, but he’s a guide, so there won’t be much travel time.”

“What do you mean that he is a guide?” Massinisa sounds doubtful.

“You know how easy it is to get to reception? Guides can get anywhere like that, if they know it.” I check round the corner quickly, then lead on. “Some nodes are fixed. The guides use them as landmarks to different areas. But I gave him as big an area to search as I dared, so we should have a while.”

I usher the the others into the ritual room, and follow them in, sliding the doors closed behind me. They’re both staring at the design, much as I did when I first saw it. Alice is trembling slightly.

She wrenches her eyes away from the thing and looks up at me. “What now?”

“We now the creature’s name. Sinclair said we could use that to banish it.”

“Yeah, but do you know any handy banishing rituals?”

I look around the room helplessly. I don’t know what I’d expected — maybe to find a grimoire or something. My new memories don’t stretch to banishing rituals for anti-life.

I don’t even have to say anything. Alice just shudders, and says “Oh god.”

“We could lie in wait here for the sorcerer,” says Massinisa. “If you stand somewhere visible, perhaps Alice and I can overpower him.”

“Uh, maybe,” says Alice. “Or we can get the hell out of here whilst his back’s turned, and go see if we can find a ritual to use, and maybe a weapon or two. The creature might not be planning to snack on me for days yet.”

“That’s true,” I say, “but it’s a risk. The sorceror has a room just a couple of doors away. It’s heavily warded, and I don’t know what the wards do, but there might be something in there that will tell us how to proceed.”

“Hold on,” says Alice. “Didn’t that Valis guy say that I got sent here in the first place because I tripped a bunch of wards back home?”

“Um, yes.”

“Peachy. Do you genuinely think it’s worth the risk?”

Today’s image is Prehistoric Painting by Klearchos