September 2021 – The Official Website of Author Derek Barton

Recently I have had a lot of luck and honor in getting my story submissions printed by the gaming magazine, Gamebook Zine. They are a specialized magazine printing in England that focus on “gamebooks” and the medieval fantasy genre. They printed two of the Flight Of The Dirithi sagas so far.

Gamebooks are primarily based on a Choose Your Own Adventure style of storytelling. I wanted to pay back their generous support by submitting my own gamebook. They have already read and accepted the story which will be in print around December! Not wanting you all to wait and since most of you probably wouldn’t have heard of the magazine, I thought I’d print my submission story here for your entertainment. For anyone who enjoys this style of storytelling, please check them out on Amazon — well worth the read!!

My story is not in the fantasy realm but more of a post-apocalyptic future romp. Enjoy!!

The INFERNAL ETERNAL

RULES & PLAYER SETUP:

Hello there, dear reader. You are about to join young Zack Anders, a budding YouTube Video Blogger on a unique adventure. What starts as a usual day of urban exploring on the outskirts of the city quickly turns into a bizarre, dangerous nightmare! He’ll need your street-smarts, some key decision-making, and a real stroke of good luck to survive.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

Along with the story, you will need to have the CHARACTER SHEET (shown here), a pencil, scratch paper, and four six-sided dice. Zack has brought along some handy equipment in his duffle bag.

The first step is to roll for your SKILL CHECKS – STRENGTH, ATTACK, AGILITY, and finally your SPEED. Roll 4d6 subtract the lowest roll, add up the number. This decides your skills modifier. The modifier will dictate battle outcomes and other experiences.

3 – 9 +0 modifier

10 – 14 +1 modifier

15 – 16 +2 modifier

17 +3 modifier

18 +4 modifier

You have a total of 100 HEALTH POINTS for the adventure. You have a small, one-time First-Aid kit that will restore 25 HEALTH POINTS.

COMBAT SITUATIONS

1# Establish INITIATIVE to see who acts first by rolling 1d6 and adding SPEED modifier. Now compare your score to the opponent’s INITIATIVE. Whoever has the highest INITIATIVE goes first.

2# Attacks are then made by ROLLING 1D6 and adding your ATTACK modifier. Roll the opponent’s AGILITY to counterattack.

3# If your ATTACK roll is higher than your opponent’s AGILITY, your hit damage is 1d6 plus your STRENGTH modifier plus your current weapon or item modifier.

4# Subtract total damage from HEALTH POINTS.

5# Combat stops if you fall below 0 HEALTH POINTS, or all your opponents’ scores do. Otherwise repeat Steps 2#, 3#, 4# until a victor.

Combats must be completed as the creatures will always give chase and continue to attack until they are destroyed…or you are!

RANDOM WEAPONS YOU MAY FIND

Baseball Bat +2 damage per hit

Heavy Flashlight + 1 damage per hit

Iron Crowbar + 3 damage per hit

Letter Opener + 1 damage per hit

Metal Pipe + 4 damage per hit

Pocket Knife + 1 damage per hit

***********************************

INTRO:

The morning winter chill in the wind speeds up your pace through the deserted parking lot. Your red hoodie isn’t helping enough so you slip the hood over your head and stuff your hands deeper into its pockets.

Your cell vibrates in your jeans pocket. Gotta be Jordyn.

The display reads, HERE. WHERE YOU AT?

In the corner, the clock says 8:37 AM.

You’re late. It will take another ten minutes at least to meet her at the warehouse. And that’s if you jog!

You reply, ALMOST THERE. 5 MINS.

She’s anxious. In fact, she’s been busting to explore the place, ever since she learned of it from Jasper, a mutual online contact that found possible leads for you and her. With Jordyn, you have been doing a YouTube urban explorer channel for a year and a half.

Jordyn was in love with the mysterious back history of the warehouse that sat just inside the city limits. Supposedly once owned by the government, the building was leased out by several high-tech firms and military R&D groups. Three years ago, the building was suddenly sealed up and abandoned. However, it was going to take more than the barbwire-topped fences and chained door locks to keep them out and filming the inside of the sprawling, two-story structure.

As much as she was dying to go, you were suspicious. How many times did lame science-fiction movies start out with this very starting scenario? Urban myths always had a nugget of truth somewhere wrapped in all the fluff, right? Yet here you were jogging directly toward trouble.

The heavily wooded area around the warehouse has only one road leading up to the metal gate. Only twenty feet or so sat Jordyn’s baby blue VW Beetle.

What was she thinking?

They had planned to park a half-mile back then cautiously approach and scout the gate and guardhouse. They were even prepared to hike a half-mile through the surrounding woods and use bolt-cutters on the western fence in the cover of the maple trees.

However, it was all quiet. Her car and the guardhouse appeared empty.

Beyond the gate, you see a rusted metal door with a thick, pad-locked chair securing it. The bottom and top floor windows of the warehouse are boarded or have rusted grating.

Use your bolt-cutters and sneak across the yard to the door, turn to 11
Investigate the warehouse guard shack, turn to 22
Look inside Jordyn’s car to see why she didn’t wait, turn to 2

The faint smell of flowery perfume wafts over you as soon as you open the door. Jordyn.

You have known her most of your life since age five, meeting in school, hanging out at the skatepark, and making out a few times in this very car.

The two of you weren’t official yet you knew you were a couple. The “on again off again” relationship had strained things on occasion but for the present, both of you are content to be partners…friends. This time you wanted more, she was on a different page. You were patient and confident things would come around again.

Patience was your trademark. Quiet, concise with your words and a planner. It gained you respect among the small gaggle of other friends you and Jordyn shared.

You are jolted out of your thoughts when you see her black duffle bag on the passenger side floor. It was not her style to leave without her gear. You lower the driver-side visor, but nothing is stowed there – she has her keys on her.

The hair on the back of your neck raise. Your instincts are pressing you to run inside and find her. Find her NOW.

Go to the Guardhouse, turn to 22
Go to the warehouse door, turn to 11
Grab the duffle bag and look inside, turn to 27

It’s dark and dusty in the tiny room. A set of rickety metal stairs on the opposite wall leads to a metal door.

Faint light comes in from under the door. While there’s nothing in here to help you, your heart kicks up as you read the sign above the door. It says ROOFTOP ACCESS.

Your fear that it is locked is proven to be ridiculous as you step right through – it is in fact a magical portal.

Stumbling and unable to catch yourself, you fall and sprawl out on a dusty cement floor.

YOU IMMEDIATELY RECOGNIZE YOU’RE BACK IN THE WAREHOUSE STAIRWELL!! YOU’VE RETURNED TO REALITY.

Decide to go up or go down to find Jordyn, turn to 21
If you have Jordyn with you, CONGRATS you and the love of your life can escape and have a wondrous life together!

THE END, turn to 1

The clearing behind the cliffside quickly becomes overgrown and you soon find you have trekked into the woods off path. The thick maple tree canopy blocks out the light and it has gotten dark in this shadow-filled glade. Massive tree roots ripple below and above the ground causing you to trip and stumble.

As the hours pass and the sun sets you wander in circles and find yourself hopelessly lost!

In the cold late hours of the night, you put your back up against a tree trunk and close your eyes in exhaustion.

You never open your eyes again.

Try again to save Jordyn, turn to 21

You step into a small, tiled room. There are two elevator doors on the left.

In the corner beside a withered, dried-up plant you spot a corpse. Dust and cobwebs cover the desiccated skeletal remains, but it is clothed in a once-designer gray suit. An opened, empty suitcase remains clutched in his hands. Nothing is apparent to the man’s cause of death.

Suddenly a bell chime rings out followed by one of the elevator doors squealing as it creaks open, faint flickering light flashes from within the car.

The panel next to the door isn’t lit so you don’t know if it is going up or down.

If you enter the elevator, turn to 10

Through the dirty glass window, you can see the office is rather dark and filled with shadows. Upon entering you see that the floor is littered with paperwork overturned filing cabinets, and some thrown around desk drawers. Someone was very interested in finding something hidden within the small room.

You hear an odd popping sound coming from the floor, something under the papers. Tiny pea-green wisps of smoke rise around you. It smells like vinegar, bleach, and sulfur all mixed in big quantities.

Just as you decide to leave the room, the entire office shakes, and patches of the cement floor give way! A slow-acting acid is eating away at the floor!

Here you must roll 3d6 to determine the difficulty of avoiding falling into a hole. Then you roll 2d6 plus your AGILITY modifier to see if you successfully escape. If your AGILITY roll is higher than the difficulty score you succeed.

Success means you leaped to a ceiling brace in time as the patch of cement fell from beneath your feet. Luckily the bar holds your weight, and you swing over to land before the open door.

Failure means you weren’t fast enough and drop! You are able to grasp the sides of the hole and haul yourself back up buy your right leg was cut by a piece of cement rebar and you now have a gaping wound in your thigh. You lose 4 HEALTH POINTS and your SPEED is hampered -2 to any quick movements and combat initiative.

Explore the small west office, turn to 26
Open the door next to the west office, turn to 17
Investigate the stairwell, turn to 21

As you climb the cement steps, an electric sensation washes over you. Your skin prickles with goosebumps and the hair on your arms and head raise briefly. You spin around but don’t see any source of the odd charge in the air. Ahead of you is a door propped open with a small wooden wedge. Only a faded label saying RESEARCH mars the door’s surface.

Go through the door, turn to 20
Go to the lower level, turn to 13

Your eyes squeeze shut as you convulse and writhe from the burns. Pain wracks your body, your breath is taken away. All is slipping away fast.

Your throat chokes on the smoke as you scream out in denial.

Yet, you know this is the end and you have failed to save yourself and Jordyn.

THE END

Try again to save Jordyn, turn to 21

Finally! I’m getting out of here, you think to yourself as you rush inside.

The rusted floorboards crack and fall apart beneath your feet as your body bores through and plunges down the shaft.

Darkness swallows you up. The humid air in the shaft rushes past you. You feel the closeness of the shaft’s wall and you pull your arms in close to your sides to avoid bashing them as you descend.

The fall goes and on, you continue into the pitch black… It never ends.

THE END

Try again to save Jordyn, turn to 21

You squeeze through the twin fence gates that block the warehouse road’s entrance. No guards patrol the grounds, nor do you spot any dogs. Yet you feel eyes all over you, dread washes over you.

Jordyn.

Your feet answer the inner voice inside your head. She’s somewhere inside the ugly warehouse and she’s in trouble. Every nerve in your body feels raw and you feel a true fear of what she’s gotten herself into.

But I can’t leave you alone to fight this.

You cross the empty lot to the chained door. The links are too thick for your bolt-cutters. Luckily there’s a large bay of windows that only have a metal grate protecting them. They cut the metal like butter and in minutes you are able to snake your small frame inside.

A faint light illuminates the massive room. Blankets of dust and cobwebs cover everything. You spot a fresh set of footprints leading from another door along the west wall. The doorknob has been punched out. Must’ve been Jordyn’s point of entry. Her prints travel to a small office and then to another closed door.

There’s another office in the southern corner with a large glass window. Opposite it, you see the start to two sets of stairs, one going up and another into a basement level.

In the center sits banks of tables, desks, and wooden benches. Stacks of cardboard boxes rest against the eastern wall. An odd wispy cloud of smoke lazily wafts in the air, but you cannot see its source. The smoky air, the tomblike emptiness, and the muffled silence again heighten your fear for what might have happened to Jordyn.

Cross to the western office, turn to 26
Go inside the southern corner office, turn to 7
Look in the room where Jordyn’s footprints end, turn to 17
Go to the stairwell, turn to 21

The narrow path is surrounded on both sides by high brush, their branches are layered in vines keeping it nearly impossible to see around you. A series of chittering sounds and a chorus of humming insect trills fill your ears. The skies darken the further you travel the path.

Finally, you enter a large, manicured clearing. The grounds swell up and down with little mounds of grass, the path continues to a massive center fountain. All about the clearing are white statues of various characters from all sorts of historical time periods. Under each of the statues, you can see small metal tablets displaying details and facts of the statue personas.

You rest on the edge of the peaceful fountain, trying to get your bearings and figure out where you are and how to get back. However, your thoughts are interrupted when you smell smoke. Behind you at the other exit to the clearing stands another smoldering creature much taller than the other before and there are two doglike ones crouched at his feet. These two have much smaller bodies, darker, and less fiery mass. Their jaws, however, bristle with nasty spikey fangs.

“INTRUDER! TRESSPASSERS DIE!” The giant roars and charges.

Special After round 2 of combat you lose an extra point each round due to the heat from his body.

If you beat the Embergiant and his wolves, turn to 24
If you succumbed to their attacks, turn to 9

Squaring your shoulders and stiffening your back, you gather your resolve and walk down into the gloom of the lower-level stairs. There was a definite haunted, paranormal vibe resonating from the door at the bottom. A stenciled word BIOMETRICS LAB labeled the door. A black electrical box hung ominously over the top of the door.

It doesn’t appear to be operational…

Brave the shadows and open the lower-level door, turn to 28
Maybe up and into the light is better, turn to 8

Consciousness is a faint sliver, and you can barely breathe. Webs secure you tight and blind you to your surroundings.

It really doesn’t matter long for you soon feel a sharp pair of painful jolts in the back of your neck. The pain soon spreads down your back as the spider’s acidic bite destroys the nerves along your spine. You’re grateful for the quick numbing sensation as your nerves die and your muscles dissolve.

Your last thoughts are spewing curses at the spiders.

THE END

Try again to save Jordyn, turn to 21

The sound of splashing water grows stronger as you travel down a dirt path. The clusters of trees spread out as you enter a small park area, and the path winds its way up a hill. The sky is a faint baby blue color with few clouds. The tranquil area is the very definition of sanctuary.

On the top of the hill, you discover a massive fountain of blue and gray marble stone. The crystal-like water cascades out from a tall angel statue. Her eyes cry twin streams into the pool below her feet.

Lying in the wild grass blades, you see your angel, Jordyn. She is on her back, laying with her head propped up by her windbreaker, her arm thrown over her face. She’s seen her own troubles. Her hair is singed on one side of her head and her black concert shirt and jeans have multiple scorch marks.

You want to rush and sweep her in your arms, but you don’t want to scare her. You softly whistle a piece of a Def Tones song, you both love.

She immediately sits up and stares at you in shock and relief.

“Babe, I’ll get us home now,” you whisper to her.

Now, it’s her that rushes into your waiting arms and you hold her as she sobs. You promise aloud to her and yourself that you’ll never let her go again.

There’s no other entry to Fountain Hill, turn around, turn to 24

As you approach the door, an acrid smell stings your nose. When you pull it open the full power of the smell almost knocks you from your feet. This was once a simple bathroom but now the majority of the room has a massive, gaping hole. Gray-green clouds plume from the hole and you can see spots on the cement floor where the acidic vapor has caused the stone to bubble and crack.

You quickly shut the door, your eyes have already started to sting.

What the hell did they do here? And where was Jordyn? Could she have fallen through the floor?

Explore the southern corner office, turn to 7
Investigate the small west office, turn to 26
Climb up or down the stairs, turn to 21

You pull on the center drawer finding only more papers and a few partially written in notebooks. They must’ve belonged to the man, J.C. Carver. None of the notes and scribbles made much sense or even explaining what really happened in this warehouse. A sharp gold-plated letter opener has been shoved to the back of the drawer.

When you tug on the handle of the bottom drawer you discover it is locked. Now that’s interesting…

You open your backpack to retrieve a crowbar you carry just for this reason or to open locked doors. The drawer popped relatively easily.

At the bottom, a small metal box sat next to a slender bottle of whiskey. Inside the box, you find a square digital tablet. Under it was a coil of black charger cable with a USB adapter. The tablet wouldn’t turn on but who knows how long the thing had been there or even if it would operate.

Instinctively you pocket the item certain you’d gleam information later.

Go to the door next to the office, turn to 17
Explore the southern office, turn to 7
Cross to the stairwell, turn to 21

The room is pitch black, so you retrieve your cell phone to use its flashlight feature. Ahead are several large tables and metal chairs. Along one wall are vending machines and a counter with several microwaves.

You hear a raspy movement in the shadows at the back of the obvious cafeteria. Inside a walled-off kitchen area, low, gurgling moans echo out to you. A thin metal door pushes open as two forms come through. A man severed at the waist stalks forward on his arms. His gory entrails slide along behind leaving a bloody smear. Right next to him a woman sheared in half from head to groin pulls herself along the kitchen’s tiles. A sick toothy half-smile stretches across her half face.

Two other disgusting butchered torsos follow the first two!

If you go below 0 HEALTHPOINTS, turn to 29

When you push the upper floor door aside you are dumbstruck by what you find laid out before you. A circular cement court encircles an overgrown patch of grass with a brown stagnant pond. Six stone benches line up on one side of the pond. A cloudy gray sky with rolling clouds of low-hanging smoke presses down over you.

Where the hell did the roof go? Your mind shouts.

Leaving the stairwell, you walk around the corner and find you are not inside the warehouse any longer. There are still maple trees clustered about the property but no roads, no parking lots, no city backgrounds at all along the horizon.

“I’m in a park,” you mutter to yourself.

As you pass a stone column that holds a glass orb, you spot a man, sitting slightly hunched over on another of the stone benches, this one facing an engraved mural wall. He’s smoldering, his body glowing like charcoal embers inside a barbecue grill. An aura of faint wispy smoke surrounds him.

His head turns towards you. The eyes are small fiery pits, and he has no tongue as he roars and hisses upon seeing you. He…or it…leaps to its feet. The body has a molten mass of embers attached to a skeletal frame with hands and feet ending in nasty claws.

It races and bounds over several other benches, showing it is not limited in its physical skills, and swipes a heavy-handed claw at your head.

Special — After round 2 of combat, you lose an extra point due to the heat from his body.

If you fall below 0 with your injuries, turn to 9
If you beat the Emberman, turn to 12

Twin sets of gray stone stairs are here, one going to the upper level, the other to a lower, darker level. The overhead lights are burnt out for the lower level, but you see a door with a tiny window slot at the bottom. It’s pitch black on the other side of that door.

Laying against the first step to the upper level you see a rusty steel bar. There’s also an overturned trashcan in the corner, but nothing else catches your attention.

Grab the metal bar.

Climb to the upper level of the warehouse, turn to 8
Make your way down the stairs to the basement level, turn to 13

The short, stubby rectangle that pretends to be the wooden guardhouse, leans slightly, pressed by some of the intense thunderstorms that rage sometimes through the region. It has a faint musty smell, and everything is layered in thick dust and cobwebs. One corner has been repeatedly drenched by a leak in the roof and the boards and rotted mostly away.

There’s nothing of any use here and no one has used this guard shack in some time. In the only drawer in a gray metal cabinet near the door, you see a small ring of keys and a long-handle flashlight.

You sweep up the keys and flashlight.

Go to the Warehouse, turn to 11
Explore Jordyn’s car, turn to 2

From the EXIT door, you walk along a dusty bare hallway that leads into the center aisle of a massive room. On both sides of the room are clusters of office cubicles.

The room isn’t lit well, but it seems some of the cubicles must have monitors still powered on. A faint bluish glow illuminates from these monitors. You thought for sure all power had been cut.

Nothing else about the cubicle farm seems familiar as everything is covered in white sheets or perhaps paint drop clothes you suppose. The ceiling is a mass of party streamers. On the other end of the massive room, you see a closed set of double doors and on the right side of the room, another hallway continues further into the business skyscraper. On the left wall, broken windows allow chill flurries to blow in.

As you pass along the center aisle you spot movement, shadowy forms moving fast in and out of the cubicles. In fact, you now realize the monitors are themselves moving. Loud hisses echo about the office all around you.

Five massive blue glowing spiders leap over the walls of the cubicles in front of you. Their bulging black eyes have reddish ichor leaking in gooey streams. Their fangs glisten as the spiders hiss and approach!

Special — six successful hits means you are bound in webs!

Take the double doors on the left, turn to 33
Take the hallway on the northside, turn to 25
Fall unconscious or bound in web, turn to 15

You crest a short knoll and enter a shallow valley. At the bottom is a cement oval stage with a massive mural carved out a rock cliffside. Several cement benches are placed in a semi-circle around the stage.

The now unused concert area is peaceful enough, but you don’t find anything of value or use either.

The mural depicts a sprawling modern city in the throes of a battle and unusual lightning storms in the skies. The very fabric of reality in the carving depicts tears and massive rifts.

You wonder what the meaning of the mural is and if somehow it depicts some of the dark secrets of the warehouse.

At the edge of the left side of the stage, you see a thin gravel path. And as you continue to study the mural you swear you can hear the sound of a creek or at least the sound of water splashing somewhere.

Take the gravel path, turn to 34
Climbing to the top of the cliffside, you find a clearing heading eastward, turn to 5
Follow the splashing sound, turn to 16

Another set of double doors open slowly, but you have to work hard to shove them open as a pile of garbage has barricaded the entrance. To your left is an archway opening to a small elevator lobby.

All around the room the walls have a massive mound of desks, computers, chairs, monitors, and even headphones. You surmise it was once a call center setup. The only thing not piled along the square room’s wall is a steel grate with wall-to-floor monitors.

Partially buried on the opposite wall of this large room is another door with a small sliver of a window. It’s too dark in the other room to see anything.

Glowing firelight beams down from the ceiling behind the monitor grating. This light moves like the glowing blue light from the spiders! This light surrounds the thick bodies of bat-like creatures. They share the same physiology as the Embermen and you duck as they fly over your head. Globs of ember plop down in little emberballs of fire.

Special — Roll 1d6 to determine how many Fireglobs fall during combat. Next roll 2d6 to know the AGILITY difficulty score needed to avoid them. Failure means losing 3 HEALTH POINTS each.

Go to the elevator lobby, turn to 6
If your burns and claw attacks make you fall unconscious, turn to 9
Dig out the door buried by trash, turn to 19

You crack open the wooden door to the office. A large desk sits in front of three massive file cabinets. On the desk sits a scribbled-on desk blotter and calendar next to a tiny crystalline trophy engraved with the name J. C. CARVER, Director’s Award.

This office is cramped and poorly lit with a series of fluorescent bulbs. There are no windows.

The cabinet drawers are open but hold only empty folders. A center drawer remains open and holds only pencils, pens, and a pile of paperclips. On one edge you note the dust has been wiped off. You smirk at the small butt cheek prints in the dust. Jordyn must have explored in here, sat on the desk when she texted me.

Go to the next room where her trail ends, turn to 17
Trek over to the southern corner office, turn to 7
Explore the stairwell, turn to 21
Look inside the desk, turn to 18

You lean inside and sweep up the duffle bag from the floor. It’s slightly heavy with the equipment she was responsible to bring. Unzipping it, you see as expected her extra Samsung video camera, the Veckta Spirit Box, a coil of extension cord, several packs of batteries, and a backup cell phone battery. You also spot a crumpled pack of smokes and a lighter.

Damn. She swore she quit.

You take out the cigarettes and throw them in the brush next to the car. You zip up the bag and take it with you. It’s time to get moving!

Go to the warehouse, turn to 11
Explore the guard shack, turn to 22

You hold your breath as you walk under the black box. Nothing happened. Obviously, electricity no longer powered the building. You smirk at your paranoia as you shove open the door.

From the pitch dark, an earthy cool breeze swept over you. You raise your cell phone flashlight to burn away the darkness. Office desks are before you, covered with dust, debris, and broken glass. On the far side of the room, you see a series of broken windows where wind gusts inside. Your eyes bulge as you spot a wall of mirrored windows. It’s a close skyscraper with a broken bank logo and electric sign which hangs partially off the side of the building. Other city buildings stand silhouetted against the early dawn horizon.

What in the Nine Hells? Your mind screams.

Spinning around, you see what you already somehow knew, the Biometrics door was gone, and you are standing in the center of a long-ago abandoned business. This was as far from a science lab as you could get.

In the gloom ahead you find a metal door marked EXIT.

Run to the EXIT, turn to 23

You fall unconscious onto the floor.

When you next wake, you feel many hands lift you and place your naked body onto a cold steel table.

You begin to scream in pure terror when you hear a mechanical sawing sound start up and echo off the kitchen walls.

You are to become the newest torso zombie!

THE END

Try again to save Jordyn, turn to 21

Icy rain pelts you and several inches of murky water cover your tennis shoes. Overturned desks, metal pails of office garbage, and rotting softback computer chairs float around a massive wooden table. A terrible thunderstorm rages outside and floods the once elaborate meeting room through more broken windows.

Just as you decide to turn around you spot a set of curved scimitar swords with a tower shield decorating the back wall. This could definitely help you in any encounters. Next to the shield is a single door standing partially open.

Halfway across the room, your trek is rudely interrupted as a murder of massive man-size crows land on the broken window sills. Their hollow eye sockets seem to stare ominously at you, their raging ember-bodies glow with the inner fires.

The flock fly as one, claws raised to cut you in ribbons as short tongues of fire erupt from their beaks.

When each bird is brought below 0 HEALTH POINTS they fly into their attacker and explode causing an extra 7 points of damage.

Take the door near the shield, turn to 3
The crows get the best of you and your HEALTH POINTS go below 0, turn to 9

A hunger pang strikes you as you make your way out from around a cluster of maples. Ahead you are amazed to encounter a wide tunnel opening. Thick emerald moss and purple vines carpet the exterior and drape down from the ceiling. No light breaches the tunnel’s murky interior. An occasional chittering sound echoes from inside but otherwise, it’s as silent as a tomb.

A familiar Avenged Sevenfold ring tone blares to life from inside! That’s Jordyn’s cell phone!

Without hesitation, you pluck out your own phone and use the flashlight as you plunge into the dark confines of the tunnel.

Thirty or so yards inside, everything changes. Faint light of unknown origin displays how the ground is layered in soft white pillowy webs, the walls are now covered in blankets of hanging webs, and the back exit is hidden under an extensive nest of human shape lumps, piles of garbage, animal carcasses, and the rushing swarm of angry, bluish glowing spiders.

As you prepare for the fight of your life, your eyes dart around trying to see where her cell might be and you pray she isn’t here with it!

Special — six successful hits means you are bound in webs!

If you do not escape the spiders, turn to 15
If you escape, head back, turn to 24

I hope you enjoyed this little off-the-path fiction!

Month: September 2021

Birthday Bonanza!! — Derek Barton – 2021

The Infernal Eternal — Derek Barton – 2021