November 29th
Total Words: 48,1314
Ambience: Return to the Drawing Room
“Heaviness in the atmosphere — a sense of suffocation — anxiety — and above all, that terrible state of existence which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living and awake, and meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant.”
-Shadow. A Fable, by Edgar Allen Poe
You feel as though you've just been doused in cold water. Your skin crawls, your stomach tightens, you gasp for air, and there's nothing to be done to suppress the involuntary shudder that wracks your body as you suddenly find yourself awake in such a circumstance. Your eyes positively pop out of your head as you look around the room– which is not your own!– to see what, evidently, your own hands have done.
At last, you turn your eyes to your wrist, so firmly, coldly, whitely grasped, and to the face of the individual who has restrained you. Bespectacled, dark hair graying around the temples, slender white hands holding your wrist tighter, and impeccably dressed– he's a picture of the word portentous. “I believe you've done quite enough,” he says in a deep, stilted voice. You go slack and turn toward him, not sure what to do or what you have done.
Prompt: Use “I believe you've done quite enough” in your dialogue.
He leads you to the drawing room and sits you down on a red leather chair trimmed in carefully carved walnut beside the fireplace. “Where's the key for the shackles?” You have no answer for him. Still in moderate shock, you don't even care as he binds you to the chair to ensure you remain there while he rouses the rest of the house. Some minutes pass, and you seem at last to engage your mind in patterns of awakeness. “What have I done?” You say to the empty room. You can't help but wonder how much of the events of the past few weeks you have brought on yourself.
At last, the denizens of Inkhouse all gather in the drawing room around you. One author, in a particularly foul mood, rubs at a silver shackle about his wrist that seems to have had a bolt cutter taken to it. A quiet murmur goes through the room, and you feel their eyes cold upon you like the crowd beneath a gallows. “Friends, I know not if this is The Host themself, or some pawn thereof, but abject truth is this: I have at last seen them at their bitter work. The door is now locked seven different ways. Somehow, this individual will– must!– ammend what they have done. I say, it is high time for the nightmare to end!”
Challenge: Roll a die or use an online dice roller to roll 1d6 twice. Multiply the first result according to this guide: 1-2 x 300 3-4 x 150 5-6 x 100. The second result is how many times you must sprint to that number. Bonus points: if you roll low on both counts, finish your couple of sprints, then repeat the exercise.
Question: How do your characters perceive whether the conflict is worth the height of stakes that has been raised around it?
Comments