Title Unlocked

- Newcomer -

Congratulations on making it to the island! You’ll probably be dead soon, but if not, you’ll want to start exploring. Lots to be seen, lots to be done. Survive the first twenty four hours to receive your next title.

The prompt came to me not as a voice, but as a thought, fully formed, in my head. It alerted me with a very slight headache. I hoped I would get used to that.

Reward

- Newcomer Starter Kit -

Keep yer eyes to the sea, cap’n. A package will arrive momentarily. Seriously though, we put Amazon Prime to shame.

I tilted my head to the rolling ocean waves, but didn’t spot anything outside of a few protruding rocks. That’s when the standing stone caught my eye.

It was further down the beach, just before where the sand tapered off to a stony outcropping at the base of a cliff. The stone was erected in the sand, wide at the base and narrowing to a point like a giant arrowhead. It was black, and from a distance looked perfectly smooth. A sound emanated from it.

Thrum… thrum… thrum…

Drums. A rhythmic heartbeat.

I stood, almost without thinking, ignoring the searing pain in my legs that screamed just five more minutes.

I hobbled in the direction of the stone, my actions unconscious. It pulled me. As I neared, I could see just how tall it was. Fourteen or fifteen feet from sand to tip, and who knows how much of it buried below like the Easter Island heads. The world began to darken at my peripherals. The sounds of the ocean fell away. So did the jungle ambiance.

Thrum… thrum… thrum…

Runes were etched along the rock, spiralling out from the middle like the arms of a hurricane. No, not rock. It looked more like… glass. It was reflective. As I neared I could see a dark mirror of the beach, murky and unfocused, and the fuzzy shape of someone walking towards it.

I reached out a hand, when I was close enough to touch it.

Thrum… thrum… thrum…

I flattened a palm against the central rune. It was warm.

Thrum… thrum…

The heartbeat stopped, and all the sounds around me flooded back in an instant. I blinked, and my vision returned to normal. That was weird.

I pulled my hand away, and saw the rune I had touched was glowing blue.

“Huh…”

Instantly a light flashed across the runic arms.

For the second time in one day my feet left a horizontal surface. A sudden force kicked the wind out of my chest and tossed me into the air. I flipped, the world spinning around me. Earth. Sky. Earth. Sky. Before I could attempt to orient myself I was already crashing down again, sand whipping at my eyes.

A smattering of pain signals chided me from the extremities to my skull. After it died down I spotted it, titled in the sand. Waves lapped around the base of a gnarled wooden box. A chest, actually. A treasure chest, complete with rusted hinges, seaweed and barnacles crusting the exterior.

The kit? It must’ve been. The clue is in the box. The words from Mr. Pink came to me suddenly. I half dragged, half stumbled over to it and sank to my knees in the wet sand. I ran a finger over the wood, a sickening shade of undersea green. It felt real. As real as everything else, at least. Hallucination or not, my brain was putting on a hell of a show.

I flipped the lid, and gaped at what I saw.

The inside was cushioned on all sides with a soft, emerald green fabric. In the corner was a canteen—a thermos, by the look of it—with a varnished hardwood veneer. Next to it was a smooth, rectangular stone and a shiny piece of metal, banded together with a red and gold ribbon. There was a coiled rope, held in its shape by a cardboard frame, the front of which was dark green, with an elegant golden font that read “The Emerald Expanse Corporation”. A knife, next to that, sat by itself, the hilt adorned with golden flower imagery, and a sharpened blade that looked like it might be a prized hanging on the wall of a world-renowned chef.

Simpler was a plastic bag of burnt orange mushroom caps, wet and gross looking. A folded note with a corporate seal lay just beneath it.

The most elegant and suspicious item in the chest was directly in the middle. It rested on a plush blue pillow, nestled between the other objects. A large glass, bulbous at the bottom and curving to a narrow throat stoppered with a wine cork. Inside was a liquid, dark as a deep red wine but viscous like a gas station milkshake.

Item Discovered

- Healing Elixir -

More powerful than the standard Healing Potion, the Elixir formulation has a much faster healing time and is more potent in its effect. That, or it’s poison.

Just kidding.

Or am I?

I didn’t have much of a choice but to trust it. My body was falling apart and if I didn’t put something in my stomach soon I might keel over. But I set it back down on the pillow for now and slipped the sealed note out from under the bag of mushrooms. If there really was a clue like Mr. Pink had said, this was probably it.

“Benjamin Quayle,” it read, in a typed font. The paper was still warm, freshly baked from whatever printer spewed it out. I cocked an eyebrow at the sea beyond the chest. There were no boats. No drones in the sky, either. Where the hell had it come from?

I broke the seal and unfurled the page. There was handwriting in the middle of it:

A Mother’s Warning

Little boy, little boy, came the mother’s cry

Will you not finish your beets?

Will you not even try?

All day, all night, sweets, sweets, sweets

Little boy, little boy, do not anger the Hobblescar

It will come in the night

It will feast on your feet

Oh don’t doubt, he really just might

You will tell him what you eat

And he will tell you what you are

Little boy, little boy, the mother’s tears she tried to rid

Why won’t you listen? Why won’t you eat?

Seriously, kid

Just eat your fuckin’ beet

Ah, bad poetry. And not a very good clue. It had something to do with food, or weird creatures that eat children, but beyond that I couldn’t decipher a deeper meaning. Not with the constant pounding in my head. And with that, it was time for the potion.

After popping the cork I held the bottle under my nose. There was no scent at all.

“Here goes nothing,” I said and took a sip. It was warm as it traveled down my throat. Before it reached my stomach the pain was blunted.

“Whoa.” The effect really was abrupt.

Achievement Failed!

- Hardcore Mode -

Looks like you chose the easy way out.

“What? Hardcore mode?”

Stat Decrease

- Favour -2 (-2) -

Taking more items from the chest will not affect your Favour further.

“My… Favour?” I waited for a follow-up prompt that never came. “Hello?” A stiff wind picked up and quickly died. “Hey!” Somewhere a bird squawked.

I narrowed my eyes at the chest.

It was a trick. I imagined the voice who talked to me earlier, watching me in some far-off observation room, stroking a Persian cat on his lap, cackling. Tricks and riddles. I didn’t know what it meant that my favour had been lowered. I wasn’t religious, believe me, my mom tried. But maybe this really was the afterlife. Hell, maybe that really was the voice of god. Shit, I shouldn’t have said hell. Shit, I shouldn’t have sworn. Shit.

And how did Mr. Pink fit in to everything? He knew about the box, so he was either on the island before, in my position, or he was some kind of twisted dungeon master for whatever this whole thing was. He did have a corporate look about him—the tie, the pressed suit and slicked back hair, that fake spray tan and teeth whiteners. But he died in the crash. He must’ve. Right? What was that song about god being one of us? No, that one takes place on a bus.

Seeing no reasonable alternative to, you know, not dying if I was still alive, I threw my head back and downed the potion. Within moments the burning and the aching receded, starting at my chest and gradually retreating to the fingertips where the pain vanished altogether. I looked down at my twisted arm. I turned it, slowly at first, swivelling it at the elbow with the help of my other hand, until it was in its proper position. No pain.

Knife. Rope. Canteen. Stone and metal, which I quickly realized was flint and steel. I pocketed everything I could, slipping the rope up my arm to rest on my shoulder, and hooking the canteen onto my belt.

I was about to stow the mushrooms away when I thought of the poem again. It could easily be another trick, I realized, or misdirection. I wouldn’t know unless I tried. Opening the bag released a miasma of earthly scents. I reeled away, fighting the urge to hurl. When I steeled myself for a second go, I held my breath, plucked one of the caps from the bag and flattened it against my tongue. I gulped it down whole.

The buds on my tongue buffered for a moment while they attempted to process a taste they didn’t expect. Where they braced for impact against a tang of mud, with notes of dirt and earthworm droppings, they instead found the familiar, if not mild, taste of…

“…chicken,” I said, bemused, after the cap had gone down.

I let it sit in my stomach while my senses grappled with the confusion. I didn’t feel any different. There was certainly no immediate effect like with the elixir, but that was fast acting, so maybe I just needed to give it time. Either way, weird.

Chicken. Huh.

A shard of a memory came to me, of lying on the beach, half-dead. I remembered chewing… something. I looked down at the sand around me. It was mostly clear of debris. Scattered groupings of small rocks sat amidst dark tufts of sand-speckled seaweed near the water, but nothing crawling that I could see.

There’s no way.

I knelt down and scooped up a handful of sand. I lifted it to my mouth, letting some of it slip between my fingers. I stuck my tongue out, catching a speck of it on the tip. I swallowed.

Chicken.

I dropped the sand and turned back to the chest. Using my knife I scraped off some of the seaweed stuck to the wood and tasted a minuscule amount.

Salty chicken.

What the fuck?

I leapt to my feet. “What the hell is going on?” I yelled to a passing cloud. It rudely glided by. “Answer me!” I spun, brandishing my knife at the sun. It glared back with oppressive heat. “Nothing to say now, huh? No more shitty poetry? No more stupid jokes? You think this is funny?”

Silence answered my call. I kicked the sand ineffectually. I was glad to have my strength back, and yet at the same time I felt entirely powerless in a game I didn’t understand.

My eyes fixed back to the standing stone. The runes were still aglow. It was activated, I realized; I needed to touch it again.

I sauntered over to it and spread my legs to brace myself against another force, and held out my hand. The shadow fell over the stone, and in its reflection I saw a shape, rapidly increasing in size.

CAW!

I turned to face the largest bird I had ever seen.