This is the first part of an adventure series where YOU determine the next step in the story.
Led by a single black-clad figure, your team of five moves like wraiths between the trees. Since you entered the forest three hours ago, the only sounds you’ve heard are boots swishing through the underbrush and the occasional sound of a rifle shifting in someone’s hands. No animals. No birds. Not even a single bug. The air is stagnant and smells like decay. Everyone’s edgy. It hadn’t taken you long to decide this mission sucks.
Ahead, you see the tainted, bloody glow of the moon peeking through the trees. Your team’s tracker leads you toward it, until the trees finally break around a small grassy circle.
At the edge of the clearing, the tracker holds up one clenched fist and your team comes to a halt. Weapons are at the ready. You check the small black box hanging from your utility belt. The needles are going crazy with activity.
Your team leader motions for silence. He tosses another quick glance around the area and fixes the tracker with an irritated glare. The tracker returns his stare and points toward the center of the field.
In three years, the tracker has never been wrong. If she says these are the coordinates specified in the assignment then they are. It isn’t her fault that there’s nothing here.
Your team leader gestures at you and you know you’re up.
You unfasten a large silver ring hanging from your belt. Metal tabs printed with various symbols hang from the ring, and are rubber-banded together. You remove the band and hold the ring between two fingers.
The tabs come alive, spinning around the ring. After a few seconds, you expect them to rest and point in a specific direction, but they don’t. They continue to slide around the ring and fan out in different directions. More than half point to the ground.
Occult energy is everywhere. You can’t pinpoint the source.
You walk around the field’s perimeter, watching the tabs closely as you move. Twenty feet from your original position, every tab slides to the left side of the ring.
You follow the tabs back into the trees and wade into a pile of leaves and dead brush. Just as your boots clomp down on something hard and metallic, the tabs unanimously point down.
You snap your fingers to grab your teammates’ attention. In the aberrant silence of the forest, the sound carries easily. After the team assumes a defensive position, the tracker starts sweeping away the leaves.
It’s a hatch in the ground. The number 27 is printed at the top with a symbol beneath it. You don’t know the symbol. You’ve learned about all the attack and defense symbols and this is neither. You check the box hanging from your belt. The device indicates that the symbol is active, but it can’t determine the symbol’s purpose.
As the tracker finishes clearing the hatch, her arm hits a long object matted with leaves and sends it rolling toward you. You stop it with your boot and pick it up. You peel away a few of the leaves, exposing dried blood and human toes. Repulsed, you drop it and jump back. The rest of your team turns its weapons on the dismembered foot as if it might attack.
After a few tense seconds, your teammates visibly relax and try to stifle chuckles. Your team leader glares at you and jerks his head, dismissing you to finish your sweep of the field.
The tabs lead you to the opposite side of the clearing. This time they’re pointing at the edge of the grass. You kneel down for a closer inspection and find a layer of sod resting atop another hatch. You snap your fingers and back away.
As your teammates arrive, you finish rolling back the sod. The hatch below is nearly identical to the first one you saw. The number 27 is printed at the top, but the symbol below is different: the top halves of two opposing symbols have been joined together. According to your black box, the symbol is active. You aren’t sure how that’s possible. The hatch is crossed by deep gashes that appear to be claw marks. Red and black blood is smeared everywhere.
Your team leader silently points to the hatch before you, then to the one on the opposite side of the clearing. He looks at you expectantly.
The “spook stuff”, as he calls it, is your business. He wants your expertise to determine which hatch to enter. It’s a good thing he’s ordered silence or you might have to confess that you don’t have a clue.
What do you do?
A: Choose Hatch #1: Unknown symbol with the dismembered human foot
B: Choose Hatch #2: Opposing symbols and blood everywhere
Vote in the comments or on Twitter. Voting ends Tuesday night. The highest vote will be the next step in the story, posted on Fridays.
Image courtesy of R_A_L.
UPDATE: Voting is now closed. This Friday, you will open hatch #2. Thanks to all who participated!
Jen Kirchner 
Feet are gross. B.
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ACK! I cannot decide… I’m waffling but i will go with B. I agree with Amber, feet are gross!
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I’ll go with B for two reasons: 1) As Amber and Mirwyn said, feet are totally gross, and 2) maybe the claw marks means that something nasty wanted to get in and couldn’t. Which hopefully means that there isn’t anything nasty inside. I have the feeling that my hope will be in vain.
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i agree with alan i go with alan because of his scond reason!!!
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I’m going A. Less blood, but the symbol isn’t active either. I’m going to guess that’s a good thing.
Is this set in the same world as The Relic, Jen?
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Whoops, wanted notification on replies, and forgot. Ignore this!
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Both symbols are active and you don’t know what either of them do. Yes, this world is the same as the one in The Relic. 🙂
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Whoops… Misread that… Well, I’m still holding to the less blood part. Although, that could mean a vampire.
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I vote for #2 – the hatch with the opposing symbols that is active – it sounds interesting…
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I’m going with A. I like feet. And for some reason the second door creeps me out. Not in like a “Krusty the Klown creeps me out” sort of a way, but it still creeps me out. It’s just a foot, people, grow a spine!
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If the purpose of the team is to investigate, then they must go down the hatch that seems the worst.
B–covered in blood and all.
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***which hatch to descend is moot; whatever awaits or draws us downward with its siren’s call shall be ‘there’ regardless… in real ‘black-ops’ time, while processing data as it manifests– attempt to discern the meaning or value held within the origins and genesis of the #27… i.e. :
ordinal– 27th (twenty-seventh)
cardinal– twenty-seven
binary– 110112
factorization– 33
duodecimal– 2312
octal– 338
roman numeral– XXVII
hexadecimal– 1B16
divisors– 1, 3, 9, 27
and, so forth…
whether a crafted clue, deception or utter obfuscation, again, the hatch chosen is a means to knowledge/not an end. begin to accertain ’27’ via the following lenses: astronomy, music, harmonics, physics, art, religion; symboligy, cartogriphy, etc…
just flipped a coin, heads, going down “A”…
the past is prologue– see you folks down below next week– lets glean a bit of hinted/possible back-story / separate some wheat from chaff in the interim 🙂
very nice, jen.
lp
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B – Hatch 2. The hatch with the two opposing symbols is very intriguing.
And, just so you know – I can’t stop thinking about the ’86 movie The Wraith now…all because of your first sentence!
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Yay! A new story! I vote for A, please.
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I’m going with B. I like blood. Let’s rock this.
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I’m going with A – something really badass tried to get into B and it doesn’t look like it ended well…
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I say A because I don’t like to be alone and something tells me I won’t be lonely with Mr. One Foot.
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I vote “B” for blood.
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I was leaning towards the foot. Feet are pretty gross but there was less blood. Then, all the talk of nasty things maybe not being able to get into the other hatch swayed me. I hope I’m not wrong. Gonna go B.
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Definitely B. The black blood gives me an idea that demons don’t like this entry much either which may offer some small advantage.
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I’m voting A. Screwy magic that isn’t supposed to work is NEVER a good sign. A sign you don’t recognize, that’s a mixed bag.
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I’m going with A – going with my first reaction – not sure why it lept out at me.
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I’m voting A – I don’t like those opposing symbols. Bad hoodoo.
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I’d like to vote B. A feels like a decoy to me, maybe a booby trap… and B looks like its well used.
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A for Amputated Appendage? Or B for Bloodied Boundary?? I would rather walk forever in a circle with one foot, than meet my bloody end from paradoxical magic symbols. To the Fonz door! (ayyyyyyyyyyyy)
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I choose b because it will “bee” the bestest. Get it get it.
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B. BLOOD!
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Human toes?! lol I think that’s my worst nightmare.. Thanks for that. 😛 Anyway, I know which adventure I want. Whee.
B for Blood please. I don’t care for severed feet. 😛
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B. Dismembered anything is not a good start.
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Yeah, I’mma gonna go with everyone else who thinks feet are gross. I’m gonna go with B because the blood COULD be from some evil something that some other good person has already killed and so I may have one less nasty to deal with.
As for opposing symbols, my character is dyslexic and they look like they belong together. 🙂
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First of all, this is awesome.
Hatch #1 maybe blew a person to bits, leaving nothing but a foot. Hatch #2 maybe resisted a sharp gouging of claws. Hatch #2 seems safer to try to open.
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The voting is now ended. Stay tuned for Friday’s next step.
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