Nara stumbles down a slope and lands hard on the cobblestones. It is pitch black. An almost tangible, unbearable silence presses on her ears. She sits for a moment, breathes deeply and looks up into the night sky. Then she begins to laugh.
“Nara, you are a wicked girl.” She sighs. “How much I would have liked to see the Cardinal’s face.”
She stands and turns toward the portal. It shines almost blindingly in the darkness and bathes the immediate surroundings in a pale blue. She reaches out her hand. Just before she reaches it, she hits an invisible wall.
“Of course.” She pulls her hand back. “So definitely no turning back.”
She turns around and tries to assess her surroundings. She finds herself in a larger square, lined with dilapidated buildings. At the edge some stacks of planks pile up, which must have once been market stalls.
“First I need to get rid of this stupid dress.” She reaches back for the laces, but her fingers grasp at nothing. She turns around. And again. “Argh, these damn Church idiots! Why did they have to squeeze me into a dress?!”
With a deft grip she pulls a knife from under her skirt and begins to cut the dress. A simple leather armor comes to light.
She takes a deep breath. “Finally.”
She throws the scraps of white dress on the ground and examines them for a moment. Then she stomps on them defiantly.
She turns around and inspects the square. The blue of the portal illuminates the surroundings softly, but the silence is unbearable.
“Okay,” she says loudly, just to hear something. The silence does not answer.
She swallows. How many nights had she lain like that? No television, no cell phone, just the ceiling and the hum of the refrigerator. Here there is nothing at all, no wind, no birds, not even the portal makes sounds.
“Not now,” she says to herself. “First shelter, then existential crisis.”
She slowly turns in a circle and tries to assess the buildings. In the portal blue they are just shadows and outlines. One of the larger buildings to the right could be a barn. Or a warehouse?
“To your left.”
Nara freezes.
In a single fluid motion her hand goes to her thigh and she draws the knife. She turns on her heel, her back to the portal, the blade before her. The voice sounded as if someone had whispered directly in her ear and somehow the voice seems familiar to her.
“Who is there?!” Her voice echoes across the square. The shadows swallow it.
Nothing. No movement, no footsteps, only the faint flickering of the portal behind her. She waits. Seconds stretch like hours. Her heart hammers. No one steps out of the shadows. No one answers.
Slowly, without lowering the blade, she turns left. There stands a broad building, two stories high. What must once have had a sign above the door, the bracket still hangs, rusty and crooked. On the ground lies the sign with a faded drawing of a goblin with a beer mug. Through the half-open door nothing but darkness is visible.
She stands motionless for a long moment. Then she lowers the knife, but does not put it away.
“Did I imagine that?” she whispers. “Whatever, I have to start somewhere anyway.”
Nara pushes the door open with her foot. The door opens with a long squeak and she steps in, the blade still in her hand.
“Home sweet home?”
In the pale blue light falling through the door, she perceives the extent of the devastation. Overturned tables, broken chairs, a long counter whose shelves have collapsed. Everything under a thick layer of dust. Cobwebs hang between the ceiling beams. Shards cover the floor.
“Someone really let loose here,” she mutters.
She steps carefully in and suddenly stops. On the floor, half under an overturned table, lies a skeleton. Too large for a human. She takes a step back, the blade before her.
Then she pauses.
She steps closer and crouches down. The skull is massive and split in two, the jaws jutting out, the teeth sharp like chisels. Definitely not human.
“An orc,” she whispers. Then louder, as if she has to prove it to herself. “That is an orc, I assume anyway.” She stands up and holds her hand over her mouth. “So the stories are true.” Her thoughts race until she sighs. “Well, great.”
She steps over the skeleton and begins to explore the rest. Behind the counter: dented barrels, more shards. The stairs creak beneath her footsteps. Upstairs several bedrooms, all unusable and the basement does not look any better either. At least the house still seems half-way intact and stable.
She climbs back to the main room, pulls a chair upright and pushes it to a table whose legs are still complete. She sits, lays the knife before her and supports her head with her elbows on the table.
“So.” She breathes out. “Priorities. I need fire. And water. And a plan. And preferably also…”
Her head slowly sinks forward onto the table.
The first rays of sun fall through a hole in the wall and tickle her nose. Nara’s eyelids flutter slightly until she opens her eyes sleepily. She tries to get her bearings and wipes sleep from her eyes. Then she yawns and stretches until it suddenly occurs to her what situation she is in and she jumps up.
“Damn, I fell asleep!”
She breathes out and looks around. The tavern does not look any better in daylight than at night, rather worse. The dust dances in the rays of sun falling through the cracks. The orc skeleton still lies beneath the overturned table.
“Good morning, Dieter,” she mutters in its direction. “Then let us explore this place. You can stay put, I will take care of it.” She stretches once more and sticks her knife back in.
She steps through the back door into the courtyard. “A well, jackpot!” She reaches for the winch. With a dry crack it breaks apart in her hands, wooden pieces clatter on the pavement. The rope and bucket, however, remain suspended.
“Great.” She rolls her eyes, reaches for the rope and begins to pull. The bucket comes up reluctantly. She smells it and gags. “Okay, so no jackpot after all. Fantastic, now I get to build myself a filter system. From now on call me Nara MacGyver of Runenberg.” She pours the bucket out with a long groan.
Back at the marketplace she begins systematically to explore the other buildings, her hand always ready on the knife at her thigh. The square is much larger than it seemed at night. The portal flickers away merrily in the middle. She looks sharply at the portal. “Do not look at me like that, you could help me for once.”
She enters a smithy, or rather what is left of it. The roof has partially collapsed, the anvil lies buried under a beam. Tools rust away. The furnace itself seems undamaged. The path to it is blocked by rubble from the roof.
“Nothing that helps me right now,” she says disappointed and moves on.
Next the warehouse, which she wanted to enter first last night. A gaping hole in the roof has exposed everything to the elements. Whatever was stored there has long since rotted away.
“Damn, would have been too good to be true.” Then she finds some half-intact smaller barrels. “A bit rusty, but I can certainly fashion a filter system from them.”
Then a building built similarly to the tavern. In the middle a long counter, before it large tables with benches. On the walls several notice boards, studded with some nails. Of the paper nothing is left, everything has turned to dust. The building itself seems mostly intact, except for a few holes in the roof.
Nara stands before the counter and turns to face the entrance and the tables. “Ladies and gentlemen, let us discuss today’s deployment plan. We urgently need water and food. Does anyone have ideas? No? I thought so.” She sighs and leaves the building through a wide door beside the counter.
Before her stretches a large fenced square. Everything is overgrown, nature has been busy and has conquered the area. Nara bends down and pokes the ground with her knife. “If I had a hoe and seeds, I could certainly create a small field here. Cursed Church idiots.” She tosses the soil sample back on the ground and stands up.
Then she stands before the largest building in the square, two stories and with extensions on both sides, of which the right side has completely collapsed. It consists only of charred beams and rubble. The main building and the left wing still seem intact. Nara strides through the large archway and finds a large hall behind it. Then she stumbles over a beam lying crosswise and reflexively grabs the door frame. She catches herself just in time.
“Arthengard one, Nara zero,” she mutters and looks around. “Looks like a townhall to me. Let me see if I can find out anything about this place.” When she reaches the counter, she flinches. “Good grief, you scared me.” On the floor lie two skeletons, this time human. She grabs a leather-bound book from under the counter and opens it, its contents crumbling to fine dust and spreading across her entire clothing.
A metallic clang from outside.
She freezes. Then she closes the book and sneaks to the door and peeks out onto the marketplace. Something flies out of the portal. Then another. Then several at once, they hit the pavement and the clanging echoes across the square.
She furrows her brow. Observes. A sack. A bundle of cloth. An axe.
Then her eyes widen.