11

(Previous Post: 10)

You're growing worried, because you can remember nothing. You glance at Roisin, then at at Micajah, and their expectant faces tear at you. You close your eyes, if only to provide a moment of focus, and try to recall something—anything. Who are you? What's going on? You think there has to be a thread of memory within you. Something to pull other memories to the surface--but there isn't. With your eyes still closed, you begin to feel afraid. Frustrated tears form under your eyelids as you respond.

"Nothing," you say, "I remember... nothing."

And, as suddenly as the words escape your lips, you feel struck by a force which knocks you to the ground. You pry your eyes open to see your attacker, but quickly realize there is no attacker to see. Roisin and Micajah stare down at you, looking both scared and concerned. Your lips move as if to tell them something, but no words escape your lips.

Your eyes involuntarily move toward the sky. Strange, you think, that the polar star should shine so brightly through the fog. Like an insane watching eye, striving to convey some message, it watches as you slowly slip into unconsciousness.

Slumber watcher, now the spheres,
Six and twenty thousand years
Have revolv'd and I return
To the spot where now I burn.
Other stars anon did rise
To the axis of the skies;
Stars that soothe and stars that bless
With a sweet forgetfulness:
Soon my round will be o'er
And the past disturb thy door.

You open your eyes, and the night has turned to day. A low green mist hangs over the ruins of an abandon gray stone city and an encroaching green marsh. It laps at the edges of where a road once crawled, slowly swallowing what remains of mankind's advancement. Trees grow in at unusual angles, bursting from pavement and embracing the sides of what once may have been a great temple. An almost-submerged gray rock Akurion reaches toward you from the shallows of the marsh. And, half buried in the rushes, you spy a curious green idol.

The wagon is gone, and Roisin and Micajah with it. Or, you think, maybe it is you who has left--from the unfamiliarity of the wagon where you awoke, to the desolate alien megalopolis where you now stand.

• If you pick up the idol, go to 12
• If you do something else, comment below and your story will continue as soon as possible