Hero Quest, episode seventeen
The King of the Faceless, part four
Character Sheet
Race: elf
Class: bard
Background: scholar/street urchin
The king reaches for you. You recoil and duck beneath his smoking gauntlet, then scamper away, half-crouching. The heat rising from the flagstones is immense. Your body flushes with sticky sweat.
You dart towards the face. The king growls and gives chase. His thunderous footsteps shake the ground behind you but you dare not look back. The face is near. You run.
You reach the face and grab it. It’s hot to the touch and riddled with blistering burns.
The king roars. The ground shakes. The flagstones crack and buckle. His thunderous step is upon you.
You leap aside and mere seconds later, the king collides with the wall in an echoing crash of shattering masonry and molten steel. The wall collapses on top of him, burying him beneath smoking stone.
You’ve no time to catch your breath though. The hall’s still shaking. The cracks in the floor and walls and roof still grow. You turn and run towards your brother. A chunk of ceiling drops, wreathed in flame. It hits the ground beside you, shattering and spraying shards of glowing rock across the chamber. A piece hits your face. It burns.
You reach your brother’s still idle body fighting for breath through the hot, smokey air. Nearby, his spectre floats aloof. You hold his face out towards him. He makes no move to take it.
You glance about the chamber. Everything is crumbling around you. Another hunk of flaming masonry drops from about, shattering to your right. To your left, a torrent of orange flame erupts from a fissure in the floor.
Behind you, the mound of smoking rubble piled upon the king stirs and from within, the king growls.
Next episode - 19/02/25
Thank you for joining me on this adventure.