Cold night presses around the tavern yard. Behind Bardronas, smoke leaks from the open door. Ahead, the road is barred by a roadside shrine and a tall, gaunt figure in tattered robes.
At Bardronas’s boots, the earth smolders green again, hungry and low. The deserter soldier shifts beside him, blade raised, but the stranger lifts one empty hand in warning.
The Stranger
Hold. If you step through that fire blind, it bites deeper than the one in the tavern.
The stranger angles the lantern forward. Its emerald flame dims the green glow on the ground, as if answering it.
The Stranger
I know what was loosed in there. I can steady the blaze, but only if you let me come close.
The deserter soldier glances from Bardronas to the stranger, tense but hopeful, while the shrine’s shadow keeps the road narrow and close.
The Stranger
Name me your ally for this night, barbarian, and I will show you where the fire is weakest.
✓ Quest Accepted
Survive the stranger’s fire
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn what the shrine fire can do
“Step toward the shrine to inspect the source of the emerald flame.”
SUCCESS (Fair Perception, rolled +2)
Bardronas steps to the shrine’s edge, and the mud around his boots blackens in a ring of heat. The green glow licks up the stones, not from a torch, but from something buried beneath the altar.
Bardronas
The light comes from below.
He leans in. A hairline seam splits the shrine’s base, breathing out that hungry crackle, as if the tavern fire has found a throat here.
The Stranger
Do you feel it? The blaze is bound to the road itself. What burned in the tavern only woke the path.
The Deserter Soldier
By the gods... it’s under our feet.
The Stranger
One ember can call the rest. If this shrine cracks open, the fire will remember every place it has touched.
The lantern’s emerald flame flares in the stranger’s grip, and the seam in the shrine answers with a deeper, vicious hiss.
Quest Complete
Learn what the shrine fire can do
““What can we do, how can we get out of this town?””
SUCCESS (Great Reasoning, rolled -1)
Bardronas
Then speak quickly. How do we leave this town alive?
The Stranger
By the road no longer. The fire knows the road now. If you take it, it follows.
The Stranger
There is a dead streambed west of here. Old ward-stones line it. They break the binding, but only if the lantern stays lit.
The Deserter Soldier
A streambed is better than burning under a roof. I’m with you.
The shrine answers with a sudden green pulse. Hairline cracks spider through the base, and heat crawls over the mud in a widening ring.
The Stranger
Choose now, Bardronas, or the fire chooses for you.
Bardronas has the answer in hand, the route west, away from the shrine and the tavern, where the lantern’s light can still outrun the crackling blaze.
Bardronas leaves Outside a roadside tavern behind and arrives at west streambed.
““Okay let’s go””
SUCCESS (Good Agility, rolled -2)
The west streambed lies dry and black under the night, its stones split by old roots and older runes. Bardronas reaches the lip of the ditch with the stranger and the deserter, and the emerald lantern throws a hard green line across the mud.
Along the streambed, ward-stones stand half-buried like broken teeth. The air tastes of ash, and that hungry crackle seems to follow from far behind, thin as a curse.
The Stranger
Here. Keep the lantern over the stones. If the fire touches the binding, it will have a road through the water too.
Bardronas
Okay, let’s go.
Bardronas moves first, taking the westward cut of the streambed instead of the road. The green flare licks after him, then slackens where the ward-stones begin.
The Deserter Soldier
It worked. By the pit, it actually worked.
The stranger lifts the lantern higher. Its light catches a fresh seam of glowing fire ahead, threading through the mud between the stones like a living vein.
“I keep moving, I want to leave the town”
SUCCESS (Good Agility, rolled +2)