In the Rhyme Zone, 411 days after a wizard cursed the REALM…
Current Version:
The crows circled, taunting with their cries from every forest-darkened tree branch. “Not a spice! Not a spice! Not a spice!”
“Why do they keep saying that?” Snaggle growled. They went to cover their ears but their mailed hands encountered only the sides of their helmet. “And why do I have to wear this stupid suit of armor?”
“The crows have a strong connection to the curse,” Lorea explained. “They know the Word you seek, and provide rhymes or other alternatives that are only one letter removed from the answer.”
“That seems like it could be a useful hint,” Snaggle considered. “Annoying, but still useful. Why don’t more Wordlers come here on their quests?”
“The rhymes come at a cost,” Lorea explained. “When there are many, the Rhyme Zone turns deadly. This is where Wordler 388 failed on the word NIGHT. The Rhyme Zone is a place of last resort, a refuge for the desperate.”
“Or for those who have been invited.” Snaggle frowned. “The note said, ’Wordler 411, seek information in the Zone,’ but maybe it meant some other zone?”
“Maybe,” said Lorea, doubtfully. She held her staff aloft, as if using the ugly rock at its top to sniff the air. “This way, I think.”
“That way,” Snaggle corrected her. Lorea might have been the most competent wizard to survive NIGHTfall, and she might have been carrying a powerful magic artifact, but Snaggle had a Folk nose and innate senses. Lorea nodded, and they travelled on through the forest in the direction Snaggle had indicated.
“Not a spice! Not a spice! Not a spice!”
“A group of crows is called a murder,” Lorea noted.
“Because their screechy calls make people want to murder them?” Snaggle joked, mostly because they were avoiding other, more disturbing implications.
These crows hadn’t just murdered Wordler 388. They had stripped the flesh and organs from her body, leaving only bones. And then, after her death, Wordler 388 had become a tool that the curse had used to kill and torture countless others. Now these same murderous crows were inviting Snaggle toward a similar doom, if they weren’t careful. “This armor is too constrictive,” they complained. “If I have to run, I’ll want to shift to four feet.”
“The metal is enchanted. Combined with your Folk protections, it should keep you safe.”
“And yourself?” Snaggle asked.
Lorea grinned. “I have a rock on the end of a six-foot-long stick.”
“Not a spice! Not a spice! Not a spice!”
“Murderers! Killers! Enablers of a Wordler genocide!” Snaggle called back.
“Not a spice! Not a spice! Not a spice!”
Snaggle sighed. There was no way they’d ever win a screaming battle against an endless supply of birds.
The scent of magic grew stronger. The way that Folk usually described the smell to non-Folk was as a combination of burnt toast and sour milk, but really It smelled far more impossible and absurd. Like if a slice of burnt bread could be milked like a cow, and the resultant toast-milk then got left out to go bad. It smelled like something wrong to begin with had gotten worse through neglect.
“There!” Lorea pointed. In the clearing, incongruously, someone had set up a writing desk. Among the items on the desk were a stack of blue notepapers and several bottles of ink.
A crow had perched atop the stack of papers. “Not a spice! Not a spice! Not a spice!” it challenged.
“Not thyme,” Snaggle agreed. “The answer is RHYME.”
The canopy overhead exploded with overlapping screeches. For a moment, Snaggle thought they’d guessed wrong, and that the murder crows were about to attack. Then they deciphered the new call. “Next! Next! Next!”
The crow on the desk dipped its beak into an ink bottle and wrote some words on one of the sheets of blue notepaper. Grasping the page in its talons, it took to the air and shot out of sight.
“Incredible,” Lorea breathed. “When the curse lost the QUEEN, it used Wordler 388 to deliver its daily message. When it lost Wordler 388, it used the crows.”
“Then it will have to find something else yet again.” Snaggle shrugged out of their protective armor and shifted to a four-footed form. They stretched the kinks from their shoulders to their tail with a series of pops, then set their teeth to work destroying the desk, chewing up the notepapers, and breaking the ink bottles.
“What are you doing?” Lorea asked in horror.
“If we deprive the curse of enough of its messengers, it will have to leave us alone.”
Web3 Draft:
- Listed on OpenSea
- Listed on Rarible
- Pinned to IPFS
Revision Notes:
To be added.
