In the mountains, 395 days after a wizard cursed the REALM…
Current Version:
“A wise frog once said, ‘It’s not easy being green,’ but try being covered in green flames. Try being an animated skeleton, enrobed in the tattered remains of the clothing you wore when crows ripped your body apart. Try being compelled to deliver word puzzles to your former friends under the threat of death if they fail. Try all of that, and now let me further inform you that green flames are spiritual in nature. The living soul infused within my bones is literally on fire and yes, as you might imagine, it hurts like hell.”
The bartender continued to polish a glass with his apron while staring blandly back at the lights within the flaming skeleton’s eye-sockets. “That’s a shame, but it don’t change nothin’. Whether alive or dead, we don’t serve Villagers in this here establishment.”
The skeleton, Wordler 388, raised her right arm to display a hand-puppet of green felt with ping-pong ball eyes. “What about frogs?”
“Get out,” said the bartender.
“Okay, okay,” said 388. “I’m not physically capable of drinking anymore anyway, even if I weren’t on duty. I’ll leave quietly if you can provide me with directions to a certain cabin in the woods.”
The bartender was happy to provide directions to the cabin, once he learned who had taken up residence there. “I haven’t been back in a decade,” he’d said, “but gods help me, I won’t abide a Villager takin’ up squat in Daddy’s old huntin’ cabin.”
“Daddy” must have been an enchanter, 388 thought. The approach to the cabin doubled back on itself again and again, in a path that would have formed an encircled pentagram on a map of the area. There were wards nailed up to the trees which 388, being undead, had to destroy before she could pass. It was tedious and bothersome and what kind of game did a man like that hunt for anyway, she wondered.
The cabin had a long-deserted appearance. The east wall had collapsed, nature had entered through the gaping hole, and the sagging roof was performing a slow-motion disintegration. Amusingly, the door set into what wall remained was triple-locked and secure.
388 shattered the heavy oak door with a single blow of her skeletal hand. Which would have looked a whole lot more intimidating if she’d remembered to remove the puppet first.
“Oh, Kermit! What have I done to you? Oh, look at your eyes!” She cast the ruined puppet away, rebuilt her composure, and stepped purposefully through the doorway. There was still a chance she could recover some shred of the terrifying entrance she had planned in her—”
The bones of her foot triggered a tripwire. An arrow shot from across the room into her torso and wedged itself between her ribs.
388 looked down at the arrow in surprise. “Yeah. That happened. Anyway, I’m here for you, Bob. Or should I call you Wordler 395? Because that is what I dub thee—dang! I totally flubbed the line. Can I get a do-over?”
It was only then that she realized her target was not in the cabin after all.
Twenty yards from the wide-open east wall, the door of an outhouse slammed. A man with a rolled-up magazine strode toward the cabin, jumping the debris pile on his way into the gaping hole. “It’s a hap- hap- happy day! It’s a hap- hap- happy—Gah!”
“I dub thee Wordler 395,” 388 intoned in her most imposing voice. “You have until sunset to find the five-letter Word that will protect your life.”
“You have an arrow in your chest,” the man observed. “And is that a puppet on the floor?”
388 sighed. “It’s been a rough day, and I’m not particularly happy about it.”
Web3 Draft:
- Listed on OpenSea
- Listed on Rarible
- Pinned to IPFS
Revision Notes:
To be added.
