504 days after a wizard cursed the REALM…
Current Version:
Gloriander and Shutterbug spend the day exploring the ruins of the human village. The Steampunk Faery flutters around, using her camera to capture bits and pieces of the landscape’s soul. She allows Glory to ride atop her steed, Clockwork, a glassy-eyed squirrel with a leather saddle.
Glory immediately distrusts the creature. Clockwork’s insides hiss like a snake. It walks in jerky steps, sometimes bucking like a bull. It makes odd clicking sounds and emits puffs of steam from its nostrils. But Glory’s quick mental calculations determine that riding Clockwork the Squirrel is marginally better than a full day of walking.
On an Elven and Faery scale, the tumbled stone walls resemble mountain ranges. Each pile of burnt wood might well be the ruins of a forest fire.
No trace of a living human can be found among very many traces of the dead.
Glory extracts some much-desired ribs from the decaying bodies, with which to make new Elven bows, but soon abandons her collection. There are far too many bones for the squirrel to carry.
“This is my first time to the human world,” Glory notes. “But am I correct in assuming it doesn’t usually look like this?”
Shutterbug flutters down to her. “Nah, it’s always been this way. Well, certainly without the dead bodies. Those’re new. And the homes weren’t always so rubbly. And the people, before, were moving around and doin’ things. I’d have to compare me new pictures with ones I took last Samhain t’really be sure though.”
Their exploration continues as the sun moves across the sky. Shutterbug takes only pictures, Clockwork leaves only footprints, but Gloriander gathers a trove of treasures. She loots rings off bodies that no longer require adornment, and the tumbled-down homes provide her with a trove of spoons, candle nubs, sewing needles, and magnifying lenses.
Shutterbug frowns her disapproval. “Where are the screws? The springs? The bits of wire and rivets? How can ye build any useful contraption outta this lot?”
“I don’t build contraptions,” Glory tells her. “I collect survival tools.”
She wraps her treasures in a human-sized handkerchief and drags them behind the squirrel. For supper, they feast on bugs speared by the needle, roasted over a candle lit by focusing the evening sunlight through the glass lens.
“‘Tis good,” Shutterbug admits, between bites of the roasted beetle parts that Glory has piled onto a silver coin platter. “But I’d have cobbled together a mechanical chef.”
That night, in the ruined village under the stars, Glory dreams of a skeleton with glowing eyes and a green-glowing mist of miasma. Human houses burst into flame as she passes. People run in every direction. The lucky ones escape, but far too many are trapped under rubble, burnt in fires, or hunted by the skeleton’s pet monsters.
The Elven mathematician snaps awake to find her eyes crusted over with tears. Shutterbug, already awake, is rocking back and forth, shivering. “What is this place? What happened here?”
“I don’t know,” Glory tells her, “but I don’t want to stay in this horrible world for another moment longer than I have to.”
Web3 Draft:
- Listed on OpenSea
- Listed on Rarible
Revision Notes:
To be added.
