The Nameless Tale - Episode 1 - One Step At A Time
02 Feb 2021
The air was tense. It was cold. Opening the eyes hurt a lot but Nicholas did it anyways. He was shivering as he didn’t have any clothes on. The first thing he saw when his eyes adapted to the darkness was a small cell, made of dark stones, forming a mosaic on the walls, one that he followed with his sight until he managed to glimpse an opening of sorts a couple of feet from him. His breath was coming out and instantly condensing and his whole body was aching. He tried getting up and fell, then he fell again. Third time’s the charm they say.
Nicholas slowly moved towards the opening, careful not to step on anything. He was skinny, not too high and not too buffed, yet with visible muscles. He passed a hand over his bald head touching it from behind. It hurt. “Where am I?” he asked himself, unsure if he could actually remember the last thing he did before passing out. His only memory was his name, Nicholas, and a name of a place, a town maybe: “Lorn”.
The corridor was dark and without a single source of light so navigating it was really hard. His only plan was to escape this place as soon as possible and reach the outside world. He passed other cells, empty ones and reached a bigger corridor. The place was a maze, one you could be lost in for hours and Nicholas, of course, didn’t want that. He continued down the big corridor when suddenly he almost fell. There was something at his feet, something he had almost tripped over: it was a human corpse. The corpse was rotten and old, probably months old, and it was wearing a red armor, eaten by rust. Nicholas screamed and then immediately shut his mouth, as the sound waves started resonating in the corridors forming a wave of echoes that ceased after some interminable moments. “That, was a mistake” he thought, but the vision of the corpse had been sudden and horrifying.
He had to move, if something was in the dungeon he certainly had noticed it of his presence. He had to move, but where? Putting his right hand on the corridor wall and feeling its texture he started going forward. After a few minutes he found another corpse, this time he was ready. More passages were stemming from the main corridor, going over many directions. Some of them covered by purple drapes ruined by moss and by time, others closed by doors. And then there were corpses. After the first ten Nicholas stopped counting. All of them decayed, all of them rust red. He tried scavenging for some useful items1d6. Success on 2 or lower. 5! but found nothing except for useless, rusted weapons.
The cold was unbearable, and he had no way of seeing past a couple of feet in front of him. His feet started hurting and after sitting down for a moment he realized that blood was coming from his right foot, this was rather unfortunate. “What in the hells happened here? Who are this people?” he mormoured to himself. “Am I the only one alive?”. Of course no one answered.
He kept going in the dark, limping in pain, doing as little noise as possibleRandom Encounter on 1. Roll 1d6 = 3 and keeping himself close to the wall. Then, suddenly, he felt a breath of fresh air. His spirits rinvigorated, and he started going faster, ignoring the pain. This wasn’t the day for him to die. The cold was getting stronger and the air lighter, and after a few turns he noticed that the corridor was actually becoming less and less dark.
He emerged in a what looked like the cellar of a small house, an empty one. The corpses were even here, but these weren’t even wearing armor. The only thing of note in this room were some stairs that Nicholas promptly climbed. His hearth was rushing and the care he had vanished as soon as he saw the white light coming from the windows of a kitchen of sorts. White light and snow. He stopped.
It was probably a bad moment to stop but Nicholas never saw snow before in his entire life and the sight was beautiful. He reached the nearest window and looked outside. He saw an endless landscape of white untouched snow, dotted by rocks and tall trees that were swayed by the wind. Everything was so pristine, so immaculate. It was almost like the horrors he saw in the basement never happened.
He scrolled his head, it wasn’t the time to think about that. He had to decide his next course of action and do it fast. And that was the moment he heard a noise from upstairs. The house probably had a second floor. Nicholas scanned the surroundings and found a closet, the closest thing to a hiding spot he could’ve thought of and slipped inside. He had trouble controlling his breathing, but he stayed in silence. A minute passed, then two, and then a woman appeared in the slice of the house he was able to see. But she wasn’t a normal woman and it looked like the wonders for today weren’t over for Nicholas. She was an Elf. Not a very beautiful for his standards, certainly not like the ones from the tales and stories: she had short bobbed hair, white like the snow, and rugged clothes that covered most of her body, leaving enough to see some inscriptions made in blue on a lot of parts of her body.
Trying not to shiver too muchHide 1/6. Roll 1d6 = 3 Nicholas moved himself away from the slit, but it was too late. The Elf suddenly turned her head towards the closed.
“Come out” she said in a calm but forceful voice “Come out or I’ll kill you right there”
Nicholas hesitated for a few instants but then realized he had no other choice and stepped forward
“No need to, am coming out” he said, as he was exiting, completely naked, from his hiding spot.
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