Chapter 2

You turn left, striding cautiously along the faint path. It curves between towering dunes, whose shadows devour you, bathing the world in obsidian darkness. You realize now, that the stars above are faint, weak, fading like ill tended flames; with each moment, they grow dimmer. Soon, the darkness will be your permanent companion.

Trying (without success) to take off these bleak thoughts, you continue on, ash crunching underfoot, its foul scent wriggling into your lungs like parasitic worms eager and yearning for a host. It is not long before you escape those ravenous shadows, feeling their presence slide away like tar. Ahead, the path arcs deeper into the desert, burrowing between the dark mounds and passing into the distance where even keen eyes cannot see.

[If you choose to turn back, go to chapter 1]

You continue onward, exhausted muscles crying out, brittle bones feeling like fractured twigs, ready to snap under the weakest of forces. Slowly, the darkness of relentless agony creeps over you, and with the staggering, mindless gait of a creature brought back from death’s grasp after far too long in those cold arms, you stumble on, no longer registering each step, no longer fully aware of your course.

Lost in your suffering, it is with surprise that you register a change, an end of this long path, whose coarse sands cling still to your bare feet. Bare? You look down, realizing that your armor is little more than a few scraps of steel clinging against your body with admirable tenacity; their leather straps worn and feeble. Beneath, your skin is grey and pale, your heartbeat faint, labored, but in spite of your exertion, flawlessly steady. It is as though your flesh is but a thin covering over an automaton’s iron body.

When you raise your tired eyes, the sight that greets you is no more comforting than the tempest of woe that lurks in the ravaged mind behind them: a cave’s sleek blackness gleams in the hillside ahead like a visceral wound weeping pus and gore. You can feel malice emanating from it, but a familiarity to. A sense that once, long ago, you were here. It feels right, in a blighted sort of way.

[Enter the cave= chapter 4]