The Silly Narrative Continues

 Heck yeah, I'm going to keep this going. Games are still happening! Plus it's keeping mew writing. It might not be great writing, it might not even be good or make sense, but writing it is. Onward!

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From the Journals of Telik, Last of the Sepa tribe

I was sure I was dead. Everyone else had been killed after all, so why not me? I'm still asking myself that, really.

My tribe had managed to hide for a long time in that cave, even as the followers of the mad blood god had slaughtered... just about everyone else, it seemed. But nothing good (or for that matter, just not horrible) lasts forever, and they found us. And they did what they do best. Really, I don't want to go into the details here, the point is that everyone I knew died. I got away for about an hour, and then they found me, and then... things got strange.

I'm still not sure why they saved me. The one who I've learned is called Yolig tried to explain in his own way, talking about singing stones and breaking the bright walls. It's all very mystical and all very confusing. 

But here I am, alive, and in the company of giant creatures from the deep caverns. I'm sure they'll eat me eventually, but until then, we've got to "find the swamp friends" whatever that means.

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What it meant, it turned out, was sneaking into some ancient ruins, where the "swamp friends" were said to live. Yolig tried to explain to Telik (in his own way) that she'd have to prove to them that she was worthy of "the gifts of the swamp"

She followed after one of the other troggoths, feeling very uncertain.

Of course the ruins were haunted. The real challenge would have been finding ruins that weren't. The risen spirits in these particular ruins were not happy at being disturbed. Risen spirits never are.

One particular spirit holding a bell drifted through the crumbling wall until it met the troggoth guarding Telik, and with its strange bell, it dealt him a fearsome wound.

Yolig found himself fighting strange ghosts that seemed part man, part horse. They stalked through the ruins, holding long glaives, so Yolig started thinking of them as "spiky horse ghosts".

Luckily for all of them, the ghosts of various kinds still responded to being beaten up with clubs and boulders in the same way that most non ghosts did.

That is, until the leader of the spirits arrived. Drifting on a wave of cold horror, and bearing an executioner's axe, it felled the troggoth guarding Telik with a single sweeping blow.

Telik did the wisest thing and ran, once again proving her worth to Yolig

"Tiny one! Say the good words! Make the swamp friends come!" Yolig bellowed, which was pretty much the only way he talked. With that, he charged the axe-ghost, he favorite boulder held high.

Telik wanted to shout back that she had no idea what he was talking about, that she didn't know any words, good or otherwise, but that didn't seem like a path to survival right now. Nothing did.

But she had to do something. For some reason, her mind went back to an old rhyme, a nursery rhyme really, that her father once told her, something involving mice and cats. She said it. Nothing happened, and she could hear Yolig yelling in pain. 

With nothing left to lose, and more spirits closing, she shut her eyes, and shouted it as loud as she could.

What followed was not what she expected. There was an overpowering smell of rotting fish, for one. That was unexpected. And there were the swamp friends, popping out of the strange plant that she hadn't even really noticed.,.

Yolig was barely hanging on, his stony hide bleeding from several deep wounds, but he grinned hugely and said "Yes, good! Olvarn will be pleased!"

The swamp troggoths lumbered into battle, and to Yolig's rescue. At least, that's what they seemed to be doing at first. Telik was also caught off guard by what happened next. The troggoths opened their mouths as if for a mighty roar, and then instead.... they vomited. Profusely. All over the ghost.

It worked. Whether the spirit was truly slain, or just so profoundly humiliated that it fled the world of the living, Telik would never be sure. But it was gone, either way. They had won.

Telik could only wonder at what might come next.