Story Arc #1: The Castle of Shadows
Up the Slope Without a Spear
A chapter of a ‘choose your own’ story.
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You look again up the rocky slope, then back at the warrior with the spear, Zyra.
“All right, then,” you say after a pause. “I’ll continue this way, and try to find evidence of the legendary Castle of Shadows. Are you coming with me?”
But she shakes her head. “I have errands to do, stranger, and a clan to protect. Besides, my evil sister Jade is never far away.”
You frown at this. “Evil? Okay… well, then, could I borrow your spear? I’m unarmed, with no equipment to speak of.”
But with a slight shake of her head, she turns on one heel and begins to make her way back down towards the mountain village without answering your request.
“Damn it.”
You walk on. The boulders are large, and although this makes it effortful to pass them, it also means that for the most part you can leap from the top of one boulder to the next. It’s preferable to walking on loose stones, you know from experience.
So far, though, there is nothing to indicate a ruined castle, or even a settlement. Everything looks completely natural, as if it has been like this for hundreds of years. Which it no doubt has.
But just as you are starting to feel like someone has been playing a prank on you, something catches your eye. It’s so low down you barely saw it in the half-light, but it looks like the top of a stone-built wall, of the most ancient kind.
Or are you imagining it?
“That’s weird,” you murmur, walking closer.
It’s hard to see by the evening light, but as you approach, there’s no mistaking it — there is a man-made wall that at some point has been covered by a rockfall. It’s the top of a ruined structure.
The Castle of Shadows? Surely not.
But it’s something.
What’s more, there’s a way in. To your left, there is a gap where loose stones have been cleared away, and the rock below has been chipped at with some kind of tool. Adjacent to this, several of the stone bricks at the top of the wall are missing. This results in a hole — a very definite entrance. But it’s too dark to see anything inside.
You look back, but Zyra is now out of sight, and you’re not even sure that you could find your way back to the village.
You briefly weigh up your options. You’re pretty sure that it would be madness to wait here for dawn — you certainly need more daylight to see by, but you’d freeze to death if you slept out in the elements.
You could try to follow Zyra back, but you’re not sure you could manage to leap down across all those rocks in the twilight. Or you could clamber into the hole, and hope to find somewhere safe and sheltered inside, to wait until the morning…
On reflection, you decide to:
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