The BMDO Pick-A-Path Adventure

[ER]

You awake to the sound of screaming, and realize it is your own. You can't remember your nightmare but instinctively know it was terrible. You open your eyes and find yourself lying in semi-darkness in an unfamiliar place that feels cold and smells foul. The clothes you are wearing are none you have ever seen, a tunic, breeches, soft leather boots, though beside you on the stone floor lie an unlit torch, a small well-maintained sword, and a rolled-up scroll sealed with a blob of red wax bearing a seal of a rampant dragon.

You stagger to your feet, pick up the sword, torch and scroll, then after lighting the torch you break the dragon seal and read the scroll, which says: 

THE DOOR TO THE LEFT LEADS TO FAME, FORTUNE, AND DANGER.
THE DOOR ON THE RIGHT IS EVEN WORSE.

Do you chose the left door or the right door....?

[Alex]

Oooooh, right. Has to be right!

[retrorussell]

I'll definitely take the door on the right:

[ER]

As you approach the door to the right, you notice the foul odor is much stronger there, and when you lift the time-stained wooden bar and shove the door open (to your surprise it does not creak but pushes outward silently) you are struck by a stench so potent you gag.

You advance downward into and through a narrow, twisted stone passageway that drips moisture onto you and makes your footing slippery, yet after a moment the passageway widens and the paving underfoot becomes more secure.

At last you come out into a large vaulted chamber, obviously ancient, well-built but long unattended, and your eyes meet a skeletonized form sprawled across the floor, clearly years dead. Though the dead man wore chainmail and carried a sword, both now rusted and worthless, you see the lower left leg of the skeleton is missing, torn or bitten off at the jagged femur. A trail of blood shows the mortally-wounded man had retreated into this room from the passageway at the far side, only to collapse and die here.

On the floor in front of the figure words are scrawled in blood, now brown with time.

BEWARE THE SLUMBERING DRAGON

There is only one way forward from the room, so you pass the skeleton and advance into yet another passageway, much shorter, that ends at a small ledge above a deep pit, at least a hundred feet down and totally dark. You see it is likely possible to tiptoe around a sturdy stone ledge that encircles the pit, and reach an opening to a passageway on the far side. There is also a strong metal ladder that leads down into the darkness of the pit, from which the stench is ensuing, and from which the sound of deep snores arise.

Do you try to tiptoe around the pit?

Or do you descend the ladder toward the snores and stench?

[Alex]

In the pit!

[ER]

You walk carefully toward the lip of the pit, peering downward into the darkness, guttural snores lashing up at you mingled with the smell, which doesn't seem as offensive after a moment.

Deciding to reach the floor of the pit no matter the danger, you take the metal ladder into your hands, folding a ten foot length downward, and ZING! an arrow whizzes past you, missing your chest by an inch.

You leap back, sure someone has taken a shot at you, til you realize the ladder was cunningly trapped, set to launch a projectile should anyone move it more than an inch or two. A close miss!

Still, once this has passed, the climb down proves untaxing, with you lowering yourself rung by rung onto a small ledge about every ten feet, each with a new ladder to be folded toward the depths. After the first section there are no further traps, and progress is rapid.

Though the darkness is still unbroken, you feel moreso than see that after a climb of about sixty feet you are nearing the floor, so you decide to drop your torch into the blackness in order to reveal what awaits.

To your horror if not your total surprise, the light of your fire lets you see the sleeping black-scaled dragon you'd somehow been expecting. The dragon looks weak, emaciated, as if diseased, with scales missing in several patches along its back and ribs and the top of its crested cranial area, and you spy missing teeth as well in the gap of its half-open maw. It is also clearly a prisoner here, as if a guardian, a chain and spiked collar fitted around its throat, no way for it to escape the pit, to which it must have been brought in its juvenile days, many decades ago.

Despite the sounds of your climb and the noise your torch made as it clattered to the ground, the great reptile does not surrender its repose and shows every sign---the deep snoring---of indeed being asleep. You figure boredom has driven this pathetic specimen of a mighty species into near-ceaseless sleep, its only escape its dreams.

You see two main options as to how to proceed.

Do you drop down onto the dragon, sword-lowered, hoping your weight and the momentum of your fall drive the blade through the decrepit creature's brain?

Or do you try to sneak down the last section of ladder, creep past the sleeping foe, and exit through an open doorway at the chamber's rear?

[Alex]

KILL THE DRAGON! Hopefully it doesn't raise its head and yawn as I plummet down.

[ER]

Getting a firm two-handed grip on your sword, you plummet through space, aiming at what you think might be a soft place atop the dragon's skull, though at the last second, before contact something dreadful happens....

The dragon raises up and hisses what might be a laugh, then with a motion that is almost nonchalant it headbutts you away, spinning you backward into a wall, where you hit hard and roll, bruised tailbone to skull, seeing stars and realizing you've bitten your tongue badly enough for blood to be filling your mouth.

But that's not the worst of it. No, right before your eyes the air shimmers and this weak diseased dragon suddenly throws off the illusion that lured you so close. Instead of a pathetic creature waiting to die, the chain and collar vanish, the dragon grows twice its size, its jet black scales sheen above rippling muscles, its teeth, without gaps, are each like a dagger, and it rises above you, powerful and cruel as it extends its tail to block the only way out of the pit, the rear door.

Though dazed you manage to dodge the dragon's first almost playful strike, though you hear its jaws snap in the air just to your left, and a splash of reeking, stinging saliva peppers your skin like mace.

Next you roll to the right and a massive clawed foot slams down blocking your path. Feeling like  a mouse toyed with by a sadistic cat, you rush forward, driven by anger, making a move that takes the dragon by surprise, and with a sweeping slash of your sword you make contact with the dragon's shoulder and...

Your blade slips downward, doing absolutely no damage whatsoever, but sending shockwaves straight up your bones to your shoulder sockets. Striking a steel wall at full tilt could not have slammed you much harder.

The audacity of your action does aggro the beast, however, making it lift itself high above you and slam its entire body against the rear wall in a fit of temper, knocking some stones loose and leaving a slight gap, from which light shines from some source beyond.

Feeling the dragon is unaware it has just given you an option to run for your life, you glance quickly beyond it and face a decision:

Dive for the hole the dragon has broken in the wall?

Or stand your ground and keep fighting?

[Alex]

Hmm, I think it is time to go for the hole.

[ER]

Summoning up all your dexterity, you make a lunge past the dragon, aiming at the fissure it has created in the wall. Just as you leap the foul wyrm belches out a geyser of acid, scouring the floor where you'd been standing but a microsecond before, leaving a bubbling, sizzling brew slathered on the wall and underfoot.

Your leap was not what the vast creature had been expecting, and you nearly get past it, the tip of your nose reaching the opening where faint distant light, white and pure, somehow so pleasant and welcoming, beckons you on, but to your rear you feel jaws clamp on your left leg. The dragon picks you up and begins to shake you about, like a dog on a hare. Your leg snaps off, blood flies everywhere, and agony all but consumes you.

Yet you remain at heart a warrior, so while the dragon is set upon your leg, you manage to grasp the lowest rungs of the metal ladder and tripod your way back up, blood dripping down under you into space.

Though the dragon roars and snaps its fetid jaws under you, you move beyond its reach and, faint now with shock and blood loss, reach the top of the pit before collapsing. Torch gone, you crawl onward into darkness, your breath coming in labored pants, until you reach the chamber where the skeleton missing a leg had been lying when you arrived here moments ago.

Now the chamber sits empty...

Remembering here at the end who you are and what this place is---a time trap vortex----you realize the dragon's transformation had not been the undoing of an illusion but the re-set of a snare set in time itself, shooting you and the beast backward to when the old, decrepit reptile you'd tried to attack was young and strong, yet even then the prisoner of the sadistic wizard who unseen controls the time trap set on this dungeon.

Still there must be a way out, you know, there must be, and your only hope is to find it during one of your seemingly unending resurrections. Maybe the next one.

This is the hope that lives in you.

With your last remaining strength you undertake an action you've carried out countless times before and use your own blood to scrawl a warning to yourself on the floor:

BEWARE THE SLUMBERING DRAGON

Then all fades away.

You awake to the sound of screaming and realize it is your own....

The End.

[Alex]

Normally I manage to die a lot quicker than this. I must be slipping in my old age.