It's an incredibly foolish risk, but you decide on the center passage. You'd have to be crazy to walk down there, so it stands to reason that no one else has.
Taking a deep breath, you step in and feel the tunnel's detritus crunching under your boots. The floor seems solid enough, but every step forward brings another groan from the walls or ceiling. Dust sifts down from overhead, and you stifle the urge to sneeze.
Farther along, the grit underfoot is becoming gravel, and the walls are really beginning to grind. There are no offshoot passages, only the perilous way forward. Or back. A sliver of rock pegs you in the head from above as you consider retreating.
Instead, you continue forward in a sort of ceaseless flinch, your shoulders hunched up as you wait for something heavier to fall on you. The passage hooks sharply to the left, and then...
Nothing! All signs of a threatening cave-in cease. A glance back shows the tunnel is in pristine condition!
"Do not count yourself fortunate, fool," a voice groans from all around you.
A chamber lights itself at the end of the sharp left turn you just rounded, and you step inside.
"Dormduo's fall owed in no wise to avarice, nor yet did its doom plunge down in a pluviosity of divine flame," says an apparition before you. The ghost bleeds eldritch light on a room filled with treasure! That's what you like scranching underfoot!
You spare a moment for the lamenting spectre, which you slowly realize is that of Demkogodin, the final regent of Dormduo castle. It's hard to follow the mannered speech, but you have a general understanding as it spins its tale of woe.
"So it wasn't fire or brimstone," you mutter, idly pocketing a sapphire as the spirit spiels on. Some sort of divine visitation. A punishment? A practical joke. A person? A relative. Unbiddable. Unmarriageable. Disdainful of all noble appointment or office. Mischievous. 'Ingenuously ludibund'? Huh?
"So some god packed their brat off on you and that was it, eh?" you ask. "Finito!"
The shade proceeds through its routine, not acknowledging you, as a platform screeches up from under all that lovely hoard. A golden figure reclines on it. Doesn't look like much trouble. Some sort of statue. You might be able to lug it out.
"And thus, brave fool, are you burdened," Demkogodin's ghost concludes, fading out. Torches blaze into life around the chamber as the wraith's glow evanesces.
The statue begins to shift around. It sits up, yawns, and stretches. All right. It's really a person with shining gold skin, not a statue. It spots you just before you wise up and split.
"Hello!" it says to you, smiling. "I'm Dominy, ninth incarnation of the lesser theomorph, Ginga, whom you've probably never heard of. We're going to be very close friends, I can tell!"
"The curse!" you say, very theatrically, whirling toward an invisible audience with a hand against your forehead.
As it turns out, Dominy is roughly your age and indisputably a...
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author