The Eye of Winter's Fury (15 page)

85

It feels like walking against a flood. All around you currents of sand and stone fly past, screaming and howling with angry voices, ripping at your cloak, battering against your armour, whipping you with sharpened lengths. The deluge is blinding, disorienting, filling your vision with a chaotic confusion – as if the very land itself has risen up against you, seeking to thwart your progress.

You stumble onwards. Unharmed. The flying rubble passes through your spirit body, leaving no mark or scratch, nothing but a tingling cold. Only your clothing suffers from the assault: metal now scoured and dented, cloth shredded to tatters. (You must lower a single attribute by 1 on a head, chest or cloak item.)

Your magic keeps you anchored, powering each stride, stopping
you from being lifted off into the storm. But it takes every ounce of willpower, pitting your mental strength against that of the wind: two elements fighting for dominion.

The wind shows no mercy, throwing itself against you in endless waves, its own will bent on punishing you. Breaking you.

The old Arran would have given up and let the storm have its way. The old Arran would not have had the strength to endure such might. But you have been forged anew – through pain and sacrifice and death. You meet its fury with your own. Another step and then another.

Just when it feels you have nothing left to give the wind loses its vigour, the walls of sand gradually thinning to a pattering rain. A few more strides and the storm is behind you – its roiling waves curving overhead, like a giant dome.

And beneath it, a city of ruins.

The architecture is both alien and familiar – a collision of different styles, as if its makers worked in isolation rather than unison. Jagged towers and broken-topped halls give way to grand and opulent palaces. Beyond them huge angular edifices rise high as mountains, scraping the very heights of the storm, their immense shadows deep and far-reaching.

You walk along the deserted spaces, the ground dry and cracked, contoured into uneven ripples suggesting the passage of water in times past. Dark lichen crawls out of cracks in walls, creepers hang like dirty cobwebs from arches and bridges. Each building appears hollow, empty. Occasionally, you spy shapes out of the corner of your eye – shadows hovering in doorways and windows. But each time you look they appear to elude you, refusing to be seen.

And then there is the heat. A stifling presence. It rises up out of crevasses and fractures in the rock, expelling an acrid smoke into the air. You cannot fathom what evil is at work beneath your feet – turning this once frozen land into a desert.

You head deeper, the wind still dogging your steps, dragging half-heard voices along the deserted streets. At times you are sure you catch a maddened cry or a peal of laughter, but when you try and discern its source you find yourself wandering lost and confused amidst an ever-branching maze of avenues, their crumbling buildings staring back in vacant silence. Mocking.

Not a city. A graveyard.

And yet, somewhere amongst these forgotten ruins, there has to be the source of the storm. Perhaps the witch herself . . .

You cast out your mind like a net, extending invisible tendrils of magic, feeling for other traces of power. Amongst the buildings there are glimmers, perhaps other souls lost and damned amongst the wreckage – but they are mere candle flames to the sun-sized power that burns intensely . . . right ahead of you.

The street is empty.

You lift your eyes, scanning the walls and rooftops until you spot the creature, squatted on an irregular mass of rubble atop a high tower. It has the appearance of a gigantic fly, black bodied and covered in hair, with six spiny legs splayed out across the rocks. The demon’s head comprises a single compound eye, its fractured surface glittering like a dark jewel. It stares out across the ruined city, focused on something distant . . .

The storm.

As you watch, the demon spreads its wings; four immense membranes of midnight black, pitted with white orbs. The wings extend vertically into the sky, rocking back and forth like the sails of a ship – each one moving independently of the others. You feel a prickling against your mind, a sense that . . . you are being watched.

In horror, you realise the true nature of the white orbs. They are eyeballs. Hundreds of them.

One of the wings snaps rigid. From the beast’s head three tentacle-like appendages burst out from beneath the main eye, their ends snaking round to face you.

Quickly you race for cover as the street is engulfed in a torrent of oily-black ooze, splatting across the cracked red earth. A second later a jet of fire hits the oil, setting it alight. The heat is other-worldly, a spirit-fire. You scrabble over broken rubble, seeking to put distance between yourself and the searing blaze.

The wings snap round once again, searching for you. Using the debris as a shield you make for a crumbling wall, vaulting off a hunk of masonry to reach the top then jumping again to catch a ledge on a facing building. You draw back into a recess, peering cautiously round its edge, studying the demon’s tower.

The interior floors have collapsed, making it impossible to ascend
from the ground, but above you an adjoining bridge offers a way across, allowing you to scale the outer walls to the summit. An easy enough climb, if you can avoid being spotted. It is time to fight:

	Special abilities
	Deadly ascent : This combat is played differently to a normal combat. In order to reach the sentinel you must first scale the tower whilst avoiding its gaze. To achieve this, you must take three speed challenges to reach the summit. Any time the result is 19 or less, you have been spotted – and must roll and apply the following damage/effect:
	or You are hit by the oil proboscis. This inflicts 1 damage die, ignoring armour , and reduces your speed by 2 for the next challenge test or combat round.
	or You are hit by the fire proboscis. This inflicts 1 damage die, ignoring armour . If, in the previous test or combat round, you were hit by oil, this damage is increased to 2 damage dice.
	or You are hit by the acid proboscis. This reduces your armour by 2 (each time) for the duration of the combat. Once your armour is reduced to zero, you must take 1 damage die instead.

If a proboscis has already been defeated, you can ignore its effect and move onto the next challenge.

If the result is 20 or more, you pass the challenge test. Once you have completed three challenges (passed or failed), you have reached the top and can attack the sentinel as normal, rolling for attack speed/damage etc.