If you’re new to the Great Game, what kept you?
It starts flowing towards us, darker now, the shape always churning and shifting, and my voice dies away. Damned Hollywood. Can’t trust them to get anything right.
From somewhere outside, a strong, hard voice starts shouting in a language I don’t know. The bokor. It sounds a bit like French that he’s speaking, but it isn’t. The morosos stops approaching, wavers, and then heads back towards the doors.
Then I realise he’s started yelling at me. “The girl’s blood, seer. Kill her. Now.”
Shit. I grab Alice, haul her up, and hope the morosos and the bokor will be too busy to stop us escaping. She doesn’t exactly make it easy — she seems to have mostly shut down — but at least she doesn’t fight.
The morosos is just outside the doorway, now. The bokor does something I can’t see, and it flinches and recoils a little.
“Now, Seer. Now!” He sounds desperate.
It’s as good a time as any. Dragging Alice, I make for the doorway as quickly as possible, keeping as far from the morosos as I can.
The bokor sees us making an exit, and laughs hopelessly. “Fool.” He makes a gesture, and his eyes and mouth light up like pyres for an instant, and then he collapses, his face a charred ruin. Some sort of suicide magic?
The morosos immediately flows back towards us, and I can hear its hunger, billions of horrid little voices babbling depravity. Everything blazes red with agony, and then
Today’s picture is Sedlec Ossuary at Kutna Hora by Hari Menon.
Well, that wraps up this particular tale, I’m afraid. The big mistake was trying to bluff the banishing — on a par with trying to bluff an emergency appendix removal, I’m afraid. I included that option as a sarcastic one, and was flabbergasted when it got picked. I did rather hope that the companions’ doubts and then Massinisa’s horrible death might have suggested that trying anything else was a better idea than continuing. The only way to have survived this round was to sacrifice Alice, actively or passively.
It’s been a hell of a lot of fun working on this, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride — even if it did get a bit howling mad in places. Thanks for taking part.
I will be starting a new story in a couple of weeks, on this page, so don’t delete your bookmarks just yet. I’ll put a poll up in a few days so that people can vote on what sort of story it is. If you have any thoughts or preferences ahead of the poll going up, please, PLEASE make a comment and let me know what you think.
Wow..
Well done Tim.
I’m certainly going to miss this though. Looks like we chose wrong and didn’t understand the gravity of the situation for any of it, and we paid the price, for ourselves and others.
At the critical turning point, I also voted to do the summoning, because – none of the other choices seemed to actually lead anywhere. We didn’t know how to break through wards, and that’s what got Alice into trouble in the first place, the mage would be coming back soon, and be pissed, and it seemed like a last desperate resort, there was no other clear path forwards. We didn’t know who to ask.
But then the whole situation was desperate, a name is not enough. Now we’ve learnt that the worst can happen.
Anyway, I am really looking forwards to your next installment, whatever it may be. I totally understand if you need a few weeks break, this has been a massive undertaking and you have delivered a lot, so much several times a week.
Again, well done. I have looked forwards to every installment, been impatient for what happens next, I really like this interactive medium. You paint a very vivid world where we care and are personally involved. I think you’re going to have quite a few shocked and sorry readers today.
Sacrificing Alice was not really an option. If we would have done that, we would not have been in that mess in the first place.
Well, die and learn. In this case that we are not getting story immunity by being the hero.
Many thanks Tim, this has been most enjoyable.
Can we have something with kittens next time please
Thank you Tim – this was great!
Would you be interested in backtracking to the point where we (collectively) went wrong and continuing with an alternative ending? I love the world you have created, and I would be interested to learn more about the hotel.
Or is this comment simply showing me up as a not-very-good player of Steve Jackson / Ian Livingstone Fighting Fantasy books?
Haha yeah, I wouldn’t mind an alternate ending of backtracking to explore this hotel and it’s peoples some more.
One thing I have found interesting in this is that our protagonist is consistent, even with different numbers of people choosing what happens next.
He’s a little rash and quick to anger but has his heart in the right place and wants to help people, and it is this mix of rashness and helpfullness that have gotten us to this ending.
I’ll add in my vote for a backtrack. Just like with those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books I read as a kid, I kept a finger tucked in to mark that page. I’d like to choose again, thank you.