Chapter Eleven: Untying the Knot
Written by Jeff
The Harvester had already stepped one leather boot through the portal when Torv approached from behind and reached out his hand. Ja and Kaia both let out barely-audible gasps, remembering what had happened the last time the barbarian had grabbed a powerful man who was exiting through a glowing hole in the sky. As Torv went to grasp the Harvester’s shoulder - which barely reached the Ulvson man’s waist - it was if his hand received an electrical shock. He pulled it back in surprise and began to rub at it wincingly.
“Is there something I can help you with?” the Harvester said with feigned courtesy.
“Why am I here, wizard? I asked for your help in reviving my forest, not to bring me to a different forest and then abandon me there.”
The Harvester looked up at the brutish man and studied his face before responding.
“I brought you here because I was going to feed you to my bugs. You have a certain resiliency that intrigues me. I noticed it the moment I saw you wandering through the Putrid Coast. I was curious what the sarva could extract from you, but now the sarva are all riled up, so letting them consume you wouldn’t do either of us much good.”
Torv’s face looked utterly perplexed as he processed this information. Was this small man threatening him? Showing him mercy? Torv couldn’t understand any of the subtext behind what the Harvester was saying. It didn’t take long for the look of confusion to be replaced with brimming anger.
“You all know each other, don’t you?” asked the Harvester, turning his eyes to Ja and Kaia. They each gave him a sheepish, affirmative nod. “Right. I thought so. You must be an Ulvson. And I’m guessing you’re the reason that Ja now has possession of artifacts that used to belong to a very powerful man who was residing on your world.” Torv said nothing, but Ja gave the man another slight nod of confirmation. “So why would I help you?”
It took Torv a while to get the words out, like they were stuck to the roof of his mouth.
“I...made a mistake,” the barbarian finally muttered. “My clan will all die without help from someone like you. I do not want their deaths to be caused by my actions. They do not deserve this fate.”
“I’m not entirely sure of that,” the Harvester said coldly. “I’ve heard about the Ulvson before. There’s little room for that kind of brutality in any civilized world. But I agree with you on one thing, at least: no group deserves to suffer for the sins of an individual.” The Harvester went silent and continued reading the face of the hulking man who towered over him. Eventually, Torv grew uncomfortable with the silence and broke it.
“So, will you help me?”
“I don’t know yet,” said the Harvester. “I’ll think about it and let you know when I come and find these two, once I’m done dealing with the sarva that Ja so virtuously liberated.” He turned again to step through the portal, but Ja cried out for him to stop as soon as he moved forward. The Harvester turned with eyes stretched wide in irritation.
“How are you speaking in a way that both Kaia and Torv can understand?” the young man asked.
The Harvester’s eyes narrowed and he let out a chuckle. “All of the unanswered questions between us, and that’s what you want to know most? You worried I’ve got something more powerful that makes your little tongue obsolete? I’m not using an artifact to communicate, Ja; I’m speaking a completely different language: Versaal. Every sentient being in the infinite worlds understands it. When you actually learn a skill instead of relying on a tool to do it for you, it’s not such a big deal when you lose those tools by lending them to Doro. Maybe I’ll teach you how to speak it later, if you stop being such a pain in my ass.”
He turned and walked through the portal without saying another word and the glimmering hole snapped shut behind him.
“Where do we go now?” asked Kaia. “Sounds like we just have to wait until he’s ready to see us again.”
Torv’s face scrunched and he looked to Ja. “I do not understand what this woman is saying.”
“I guess I’m going to have to play interpreter then,” said Ja. “Doro, you understand what everyone is saying, right?”
The enormous, naked child was sitting in the moss twirling a tiny clover between the ends of his thumb and forefinger. He responded without looking up, “Yes, I understand all of you, and you all understand Doro as well.”
“Maybe you should come over and join us,” said Ja. “You can decide if you want to come along, wherever we go next.”
With Ja acting as a translator, the four travelers chose what their next course of action was going to be. Wherever they went next, it was only going to be a temporary stop for Ja and Kaia until the Harvester found them again and finally revealed his intentions. Torv had no choice but to come along and wait, hoping that the powerful man would be willing to help him revive the great forest in his world. Doro agreed to come along as well, but not at first. Initially, he wanted to stay behind and guard the sarva again, as he had countless times before. This was what he knew best. It took Ja and Kaia an insufferably long time to convey to the giant boy that the sarva were going to eat him again if he stayed, and that - especially in their current, frenzied state - there was absolutely nothing Doro could do to help or protect them.
None of them had any idea how long it was going to be until the Harvester had finished his task. It seemed just as likely that it could take the man hours or weeks to fix what Ja had undone on this world. Regardless, their next destination simply needed to be somewhere safe and comfortable. This time, Ja knew to be specific when asking the mirror to create a portal: No predators that could kill them, no other intelligent lifeforms, plenty of food and natural resources, and a climate that all four would find pleasant. After so many failed attempts, Ja half-expected the mirror to sputter out again, but the jawbones whirred to life and began to glow, and the young man waved the mirror across the sky to create a doorway to another world.
The sound of seagulls and a warm, salty seawater breeze wafted through the portal. Ja stuck his head through first for only a moment before the rest of his body followed as if pulled through by the idyllic environment. It was a beach with softly lapping turquoise waves; the sky a soothing pink with pale tangerine clouds. There were palms that bore fruit emerging from the sand, and past the shore, a verdant jungle. As each of the travelers walked through the portal and saw the world that waited on the other side, they all knew without having to say it aloud: this was paradise.
Night was falling and Kaia insisted that they find shelter, but Ja reminded her that he had specifically brought them to a place without predators. There were three suns in the sky here, and as each set, the temperature didn’t drop. The group had already made a sizable fire on the beach by the time night had fallen. The warmth it provided wasn’t necessary for their comfort, but it did enhance it. They found several types of fruit in the trees nearby and each one they sliced open seemed increasingly delicious. The travelers ate their fill and then stretched out on the sand, falling asleep peacefully beneath a sky brimming with unfamiliar stars.
The next morning, Kaia took off to explore the coastline, still interested in finding shelter in case the weather eventually turned. But Ja wasn’t the least bit interested in sleeping in a cave ever again, not after what he had seen in the world of the sarva. Though he hadn’t even entered it himself before locking the Harvester inside, the plush, ornate sleeping chambers the man had assembled in that forest had left a profound impression on the young man. He had seen true luxury; now he had to figure out how to make it for himself.
After a few hours, Kaia surprisingly returned to the group from the opposite direction she had departed in the morning. Unsure of how this could be, Ja asked the tongue what kind of place this was, and it explained the concept of an island to him, which he then explained to the others. Once Kaia had grasped the concept of it, she decided to venture inland through the jungle to see if there was a high point from which she could get a lay of the land. She promised to catch some game if she came across any, and when Ja responded that she would have to catch a lot to satisfy their enormous companions, the Ulvson laughed aloud at the concept of a woman doing the hunting and dragging back the kill by herself. Ja was hesitant to translate the sentiment to his friend, but he knew that telling Kaia what Torv had said would only drive her further to succeed and prove the boorish man wrong.
As soon as Kaia left, Torv wanted to go and “catch something bigger than her’s” for dinner, but Ja explained that he had a different plan for utilizing the man’s strength. Ja sat Torv and Doro down and began to draw in the sand with a stick, explaining the structure he had seen in the sarva forest. Doro knew the building well and the concept was not completely foreign to Torv; the Ulvson built longhouses out of wood in his world. As Torv and Doro cut lumber and brought it back to the beach, Ja worked out building schematics in the sand, trying to figure out the most logical way to create pieces that would fit together to make a cohesive whole. As the suns began to sink down below the horizon, there was a loud rustling in the jungle outside of their camp. Kaia emerged from the fronds dragging a creature that was larger than herself, with furry, squat legs and dull, rounded horns that barely protruded from the sides of its head. She plopped it down next to the fire pit and gave Torv a self-satisfied grin. He looked at her with narrowed eyes and began chopping wood with overemphasized grunts.
The next day, Torv demanded that it was his turn to hunt and that Kaia should have to help build the shelter. Kaia taunted the barbarian, saying that he would never be able to bring back a catch as splendid as hers. Ja decided not to pass those words along, but Torv picked up their intent nonetheless. Once Torv was off in the jungle, Ja explained to Kaia what he was trying to build and she had some good ideas for improving his initial designs. It was the sort of feedback that Torv and Doro were simply unable to offer, which Ja truly appreciated. But when it came time to start building, they realized that Torv had taken his axe with him hunting. There was nothing they could do until they made an axe of their own, so they started searching for the right stones.
After their axe had broken apart against a tree for the twentieth time, Ja and Kaia begrudgingly accepted that weapon-making was something Torv was clearly better at. They would need to ask the man to help them make a second axe if the Ulvson was going to insist on hunting and work was ever going to proceed on the shelter. When Torv returned that evening from his hunt empty-handed, he said nothing to the others, and seeing him visibly fume, they knew better than to prod him. Except for Doro, who simply smiled at the barbarian and said, “I prefer fruit, anyway. Nothing has to die for me to eat that.” Doro smiled at Torv and the anger drained away from the gruesome man’s face.
In the following days, Kaia agreed to let Torv continue hunting to pacify the man’s ego and Torv agreed to show them how to make a durable axe of their own. In learning this skill, Ja realized there were ways to apply it to holding together sections of the shelter and began to reassess his blueprints in the sand. Torv was not so keen on acquiring new knowledge. He had no interest in learning how to hunt from a woman, and Kaia had no interest in teaching him. Doro was always happy to help with building when asked, though he would almost always lose focus on his task. Ja would ask the young boy to shape a piece of wood a certain way, and when he would return later in the afternoon, he would invariably find the chore incomplete and the boy off chasing insects or asleep beneath a palm tree.
Ja was happy to act as a foreman for whoever stayed behind at the camp. He was an idea man, much better at supervising tasks than physically completing them. Ja didn’t actually know what he was doing in building the shelter, so the process was essentially just trial and error, but Ja was adept at learning from his mistakes. Luckily, there was no actual need for the shelter, as the weather stayed warm and dry and the group slept comfortably every night on the soft, warm sand. After a few weeks, a proper shell was being constructed, and it was clear that everyone could now picture Ja’s vision for the shelter in their own minds and work towards constructing it together.
One morning, Kaia awoke and was surprised to find that Ja wasn’t at the camp. It was early - she always woke first in the group - and it was unlike Ja to leave unannounced. She assumed he had simply wandered off to relieve himself, but when he still hadn’t returned as the others woke up, she began to get worried. There were footprints in the sand from the place he had slept and she followed them down the beach. She found him curled up on his side on a rock, shaded by palms.
He smiled at her meekly as she approached and she could see that he looked sticky and unwell. It was tough to tell exactly in the shade, but his skin looked strangely green. Ja explained that he had felt progressively more ill for the last few days but hadn’t wanted to worry anyone; every morning when he woke he felt worse than the night before. He’d been able to hide his discomfort until now, but this morning he was feeling truly ill. Kaia pulled his arms out into the sunlight to get a better look and the young man’s skin was indeed a greenish hue, cold and clammy to the touch. That was when she noticed something even more strange: the mirror shard that had stuck to his hand back in Orn was gone.
There was thick scar tissue on Ja’s palm and he winced as Kaia prodded at it. She asked if he knew where the piece of mirror had gone, and Ja was surprised to realize that he hadn’t thought about it once since getting his body back from the Blood Summoner. He couldn’t even recall if the liquified shard had been there at all when they left Orn and traveled to the plateau weeks before. Kaia helped Ja back to the camp, insistent that separating himself from the others would do nothing to help, and demanded that work on the shelter be suspended until he began to feel better.
But the next morning, Ja looked worse than ever, struggling to even sit up properly or drink water. Torv insisted that the boy eat more meat - eating meat makes you strong - and Ja placated the man by nibbling on some cooked game, though like Doro, he usually just stuck to fruit. Surprisingly, he found that the meat did invigorate him a bit, though the sensation was unnerving. It was like his body didn’t just want to consume the meat, it wanted to absorb it. Ja said nothing to the others for the rest of the day or night by the fire. The next morning, Kaia awoke to find him missing from the camp once again.
Kaia was a skilled tracker, so what she found left her truly baffled. Ja’s tracks went down the beach again, just as they had two days before, but this time, they simply stopped. He had come to a halt in the sand, feet brought together next to one another, and then his tracks just vanished. It was impossible. Where could he have gone? She knew Ja well - knew that he had left so that she wouldn’t be able to see his suffering. But how had he just disappeared like this? Kaia shook her head from side to side as she figured it out, hearing in her mind the words that Ja must have said to the mirror: “Take me to a place on the island where Kaia can’t find me.”
She looked for Ja for a week straight but couldn’t find any sign of him. Torv simply shrugged in learning that the young man was gone, saying that if he wasn’t strong enough to survive here, he didn’t deserve to live anywhere. Doro, though well-intentioned, had a major flaw as an interpreter: He translated exactly what Torv said to Kaia. Without her knowing, Ja had always added a filter to the Ulvson man’s words, and when she heard his raw and brutish thoughts as intended, she found herself constantly wanting to strangle him. She seethed at his indifference towards her friend, but knew better than to confront the man physically. She knew the risks of stoking Torv’s anger. The sight of the grey-haired man’s head breaking open in Torv’s palm was etched into her memory.
When a portal opened up on the beach a few days later and the Harvester stepped through, he found Torv and Kaia screaming at one another, standing over an animal carcass. Doro had become uninterested in translating their argument and had wandered down to the water, where he was observing small fish in the tide. He looked up at the Harvester and then sullenly back down at the fish without saying a word. In different languages, Kaia was telling the Ulvson that if he wanted to eat meat, he could catch some of his own; Torv was demanding that the woman subjugate herself and treat him like the alpha he was. Behind the two stood the sad, abandoned shell of the shelter. Neither had bothered trying to construct it anymore without Ja’s guidance. Kaia and Torv were so caught up in their argument that they didn’t notice the small, well-dressed man approach the camp, only stopping their hollering when each heard and actually understood the words, “Where is Ja?”
Kaia explained the situation: Ja had gotten sick and disappeared almost two weeks before. She had searched for him everywhere but couldn’t find him. Based on his state when he had left, she feared the worst. The Harvester mulled this over and then made a portal and stepped through it without saying a word. Kaia and Torv had just enough time to start fighting before the portal appeared again and the Harvester stepped back through carrying a black stone. Kaia could see that it looked like a chunk of a star stone, but instead of holding points of white light, this gem was like onyx marbled with threads of emerald green. The Harvester held the stone out to the jungle and began to move it from side to side, as if looking for a signal. When he had gleaned some sort of information from the act, he began to walk forward, and Kaia and Torv followed behind. It wasn’t until the Ulvson barbarian began recklessly chopping at the palms in his path that Doro’s attention on the fish was snapped and the giant boy skipped along to catch up.
Holding the stone out in front of him, the Harvester walked a straight line through the jungle, passing through the lowlands until the grade began to rise. Kaia, Torv, and Doro followed behind silently, climbing up to the edge of a lagoon that was being fed by a waterfall in the hillside. The Harvester stopped and peered down; the water was so clear you could see all the way to the bottom. He held up the stone again and began to walk around the perimeter of the lagoon to the base of the waterfall. Without looking back at the others, he stepped directly under the streaming water and disappeared from sight.
A soft blue light filtered through the waterfall into the cavern behind. Ja was sitting by a small fire, surrounded by discarded fruit husks. His eyes were red and bloodshot, face sallow and sunken. The young man’s skin was green and slick, arms unnaturally extended with fingers that seemed to ripple in the air as if they had no bones. The others passed beneath the waterfall and into the area hidden behind and were visibly shocked by Ja’s appearance.
“How long has it been since you slept?” asked the Harvester.
“Days, I think,” Ja responded. “But it’s hard to keep track of time in here. I’ve been using the fire to singe myself when I start to nod off.”
“I’m surprised you were able to figure out that sleep advances the transformation. Your body can’t properly resist when it’s asleep.”
Ja gave the man a look that was too exhausted to be properly indignant. “I’ve always been good at solving problems. What took you so long to find me? Were the sarva so hard to deal with?”
The Harvester crossed his arms and hesitated before answering. “No, I had them under control in a day or two. Honestly, I got sidetracked and kind of forgot about you all. I would have come earlier if I’d known that the Ghora had entered its assimilation phase already.”
“Ghora,” Ja repeated. “So that’s the name of the monster I’m becoming. That tentacle monster from the ruins outside of Orn is assimilating me.”
“Be thankful it hasn’t absorbed you fully yet. You only started to change when its assimilation phase began, but that was long enough ago that you should have completely transformed by now. Figuring out that you needed to stay awake saved your life, Ja. Honestly, I’m impressed. Where’s the shard that you brought along with you from your world?
“It was attached to my hand,” Ja said, holding out what was now essentially a tentacle. “But there’s nothing there now. It wasn’t there the last time I had normal skin, either.”
“Your body must have absorbed it.” The Harvester held out the black stone and began to incrementally move it up Ja’s outstretched green appendage. As it inched towards the shoulder, the green marbling within the black stone began to illuminate, then emitted a pulse as it reached Ja’s neck. The small man took out a thin metal blade from his pouch and Ja winced and gritted his teeth, knowing that an incision was coming. The Harvester sunk the blade into the slimy skin just above the collarbone and hovered the black stone over the slit. Silvery liquid pooled out instead of blood. The Harvester put the knife away and grabbed a glass vial, then used the stone to guide the liquid into the container. He popped a cork stopper into the top and handed it to Kaia, saying, “Don’t lose this.”
“Am I going to be stuck like this?” Ja asked, looking over his monstrous body.
“We’ve halted the transformation in time, but I’m afraid you’re never going to be exactly as you were before. Without the Ghora’s influence coming through the shard, your body will begin to revert back to normal, but you’ll always be a bit green around the gills from now on. Sleep will help reverse the transformation as well. You certainly need the rest.”
Ja looked at the man intently. “I know you didn’t come back here to help me. After all this time, you still haven’t said what it is you want from us.”
“You sure you want to get into all of that now?” asked the Harvester. “I’m happy to give you time to heal up from this mistake before you start rectifying another one.”
“No. I’m tired of waiting. Tired of guessing. Tell me, Harvester, what is it I can do for you?”
The man chuckled at Ja’s stern tone. “You’re right, Ja. I didn’t come here to help you. I came to hold you accountable. You’ve done some things since leaving your world with serious consequences that ripple out much farther than Orn. Now, I know you didn’t do these things on purpose, but that doesn’t mean you’re not responsible for cleaning up the messes that you’ve made. Like I mentioned the last time we met, I’ve caused all sorts of messes myself, and a lot of my time these days is spent trying to set those wrongs right. You’ve made two big mistakes. One of them you have to fix, and the other one is up to you.”
The Harvester paused to let Ja speak, but the young man chose to stay silent. From his pouch, the Harvester pulled out a simple piece of string.
“The jawbone mirror that you possess is attuned to you,” the Harvester continued. “And the mirror shard that I just pulled out of your body is attuned to your world. Specifically, it is attuned to the Ghora’s presence on your world. That creature was a serious menace - at one time, it threatened to consume everything. But with the help of powerful men and women from other planes, the Ghora’s specific frequency was imbued within a mirror. When that mirror was smashed, the creature went dormant.”
“And I put the pieces back together,” said Ja. “Waking it up.”
“Yes. But worse than that, you brought a piece of that mirror with you to a number of other worlds. It wouldn’t have been a problem if you had brought the whole mirror along with you - in that state its power is contained - but individual pieces are connected to one another by incredible energy. They will break the laws of nature to become whole again.”
Ja remembered what had happened when he arranged the mirror shards on the stone table in the vine-covered ruins. The solid glass had become liquid and pooled together as the dried-out vine frame came back to life. The Harvester held out the piece of string he held and pulled it tight.
“There is an energy in the shard you carry that is connected to the rest of the mirror,” he continued. “If you move the shard, the energy follows behind it, attached like a string. But traveling through the portals isn’t the same as simply moving from one point to another, Ja. It’s quite literally going through one hole and coming out another.” The man made a loop with the string. “You went through several holes. Do you know what happens when you pull a string through several temporally-connected loops, Ja?”
“I’m guessing you make a big, tangled knot.”
“Yes, if the energy connected to the shard were purely physical, like this string. But in this case, the really dangerous part is the tension. The farther you move that shard away from its source, the more tension you create. And when you move in erratic paths, jumping randomly from place to place, other worlds get caught inside of the loops you’ve created.”
The Harvester reached down and picked up an uneaten piece of fruit from the side of the fire. He had Kaia hold one end of the string and wrapped it around the soft, yellow sphere. The Harvester yanked his end and the string tore through the center of the fruit, sending juice and seeds cascading onto his hand as the flesh was severed in two.
“Create too much tension and the loop is going to collapse. The sort of power that connects that shard to the rest of the mirror will do unimaginable damage if it is pulled too tightly around an inhabited world. Luckily, the ‘knot’ you caused can still be unfurled easily enough. All you have to do is take the shard back on the exact path that you came and return it with the rest of the mirror, where it belongs. Do that, and the loops you are pulling tighter and tighter across multiple universes will come undone. This task is not optional. Making sure you do it is why I am here.”
“So what task is optional?” asked Ja.
“I think you know what you’re going to find when you put the shard back. Waking up the Ghora is your fault too.”
“There is nothing that we can do to fight that vine monster,” blurted Kaia. “That thing is enormous!”
“Once we put the shard back with the rest of the mirror,” asked Ja, “couldn’t we just shatter it again to make the Ghora go dormant, like they did before?”
“Unfortunately, I think the time has passed for that,” sighed the Harvester. “And that’s kind of on me for taking so long to get here. The reason you started transforming into the Ghora is because the creature has entered its assimilation phase. It’s sort of like a reverse hibernation, where it starts unrelentingly eating and absorbing everything around it. Because it’s assimilating again, its frequency will have changed by now, so smashing the mirror likely won’t do the trick. Previous generations on your world did a good job of keeping the creature penned in after it devoured an entire city, but I doubt those fortifications are going to do much to hold it back anymore. I mean, you two were able to get past the walls and down into its cave to wake it up. I don’t think the barrier is going to hold for very long once it leaves its pit.”
“What will happen if it escapes?” asked Kaia.
“You know exactly what’s going to happen. It’s going to absorb Orn, and eventually, every other community like it on your world. It’s your choice whether or not you want to try and stop it; depending on who you ask, total destruction might even be inevitable. Your people have been prophesizing about it forever. Most who believed in the prophecy left through portals generations ago. Those who stayed behind ended up being easy prey for that horrible cult, the Great Serpent. Blood magicians are the worst.”
“We met a spirit, on the edge of the town that the Ghora destroyed,” said Kaia. “A buru. It told us, ‘This world is lost. The time for migration is upon us.’”
The Harvester chuckled. “It sounds like that spirit had a premonition Ja was about to accidentally kick off the apocalypse.”
“If we do try to stop the Ghora,” said Ja, ignoring the man’s slight, “will you help us?”
“Nope! To be perfectly honest with you, I’m not all that fond of your world, or at least what the Great Serpent has done with it. I know I said earlier that no group deserves to suffer for the sins of an individual, but that doesn’t mean I’m personally going to put myself in danger to save them. I don’t care if you inadvertently destroy Orn, Ja - I just don’t want you to tear holes through the fabric of space and time. You’ve already made energy loops around two of the worlds I harvest. Ripping them apart affects me directly.”
“What about my world?” boomed Torv. “Are you fine seeing it destroyed as well?”
“Yeah,” said the Harvester. “But it’s not like I want that to happen.” The small man could see rage building in the barbarian’s face and hands clenching furiously on his axe handle. “But I’ll tell you what: if you help Ja and Kaia save their world, I’ll help you save yours. You can atone for your sins and save your people. How does that sound?”
The barbarian’s eyes narrowed and after some consideration he nodded his head. “This is acceptable.”
“That is, assuming you two are actually going to try and save your world,” added the Harvester.
“Of course we are!” Kaia insisted. “I am a huntress of Orn. I will not let my fellow hunters be absorbed by some tentacle monster.”
“Yeah, of course we are,” said Ja, much less enthused. “It’s important that we take responsibility for the problems we’ve caused, whether we did them on purpose or not.”
“I will help as well,” said Doro. He glared at the Harvester. “We all have a choice to do what is right when given the opportunity, even if it doesn’t directly benefit ourselves.”
“Ok, I guess we better come up with a plan then,” said Ja, looking across the faces of his friends.
“Not before you get some rest and start to recover,” said Kaia, placing her hand on Ja’s slimy shoulder. “There’s no point rushing into this when you’re in such bad shape.”
“I agree,” said the Harvester. “Get yourself right first, Ja. Taking on the Ghora is no small task,”
“If you won’t help us in Orn, then I think you can help us here,” said Doro. He placed his hand on the Harvester’s shoulder, just as Kaia had done to Ja, and crumpled the small man down to his knees. “Ja needs his rest. You can teach us how to create a comfortable shelter to help him get better. It’s the least you can do.”
FATE INDEX:
1. Messiah-like figure attempts to remake society
2. Character loses one of their senses
3. Protagonist finds a source of healing/resurrection
4. Include a historical figure
5. A hidden foe is revealed
6. An obscure side character suddenly gets a crucial role in the story
7. Traditional gender roles are switched
8. Character finds a large egg of unknown origin
9. The inevitable end is actually a rebirth
10. A member of the community who was heavily relied upon disappears
11. Discovery of higher technology
12. Monotony is broken
13. Character has portentous visions of a world they don’t recognize
14. A catastrophic end
15. Too many cooks in the kitchen
16. Bodily functions begin to cause eerie physical changes
17. A stranger shares consequential information
18. Ghost story
19. A dam breaks creating massive flooding
20. Cat eat food
Outcomes Used:
10. A member of the community who was heavily relied upon disappears
16. Bodily functions begin to cause eerie physical changes
Added outcomes:
Physical confrontation with an inanimate object
(thanks to Sean)
Torrential rain causes big problems
(thanks to Annica)
