Sleeping Giants Game 25

Intro

Stratton's Journey

As the command word for the teleport circle is uttered, a bright flash of blue fills the room. You shield your eyes, and while the blue light does not seem to die down, you slowly adjust to it. When you’re able to see again, you remove your hand from your eyes and look around.

Your friends are gone. The room you were in is gone. The floor is no longer beneath your feet. You are simply floating now, in an endless sea of blue.

You look around slowly, but there’s nothing but blue. Blue as far as your little gnomish eyes can see. It begins to pulsate, slowly at first but getting more rapid. And that’s when you see, out of the corner of your eye, a small square of fabric. Like everything else, it too is blue, and the sheen of the material gives away its origin: it is the blue silken handkerchief you were given so long ago. It twists and turns in the air, slowly dancing around you until it is directly in front of you. It stops moving completely, and is close enough that you could just reach out and grab it.

And so you do.

The endless blue space around you immediately stops pulsating, and fades to gray. In the distance you can spot little pinpoints of light popping into existence, almost like stars in the night sky. As if someone just lit a torch, the grayness around you becomes brighter, and takes on more of a silvery color. Among the pinpoints of light, you can see wisps of white and gray streaking between them. You glance around, and can see erratic whirlpools of color flickering in midair, like spinning coins.

You take it all in for a moment, unsure of exactly what is even going on. Then, seemingly from nowhere, a small vessel passes by you. It is shaped like a ship, but much like everything else in this place it floats by in mid-air. Two people sit side-by-side in the front of the vessel.

One of the two is a creature the likes of which you have never seen before. He has yellowish skin and alien features, with his hands firmly on the steering controls of the vessel. He is focused intently on the path ahead, and doesn’t even seem to notice you.

The other is, surprisingly, a familiar face. The same height as you, she is wearing loose-fitting, almost robe-like clothing, with a deep blue silken scarf resting decoratively on her shoulders and a thin silver cord stretched across her upper back. She turns to you, and immediate surprise comes over her face. “Mr. Pipsquanchy?” she says, as the vessel ferries her past you.

“Misha?” you respond, just as stunned. The vessel then disappears into the distance, and as it does the silver surroundings quickly fade back to blue, flashing so brightly that you once again have to shield your eyes. And when you open them again, you find yourself in a large, dimly lit room standing next to Lyla, the blue handkerchief clutched in your hand.