Intro Story - Stay Away

Motion. From the top of Mt. Cyraille you can see the southern swan in the stars. You’ve smelled the perfume of yellow maidenflowers that open for ten minutes each day when the sun shines between the rims of Xiang Canyon a mile above. You’ve charted the path of scarlet wasps that know the hidden way to the meadow where ancient mountain bison come to die.

Come to the Forum in Soros.

Hypothermia nearly killed you after the swim to the bottom of Lake Jin—but you smugly proved to the other travelers the worthlessness of the “golden” lakebed with a handful of pyrite. They nod with worried eyes. By now you’re certain you’ve been muttering to yourself along the road, but that’s expected with so little sleep…

Come to the Forum in Soros.

This land is beautiful, but your food and money are gone. You take a job as a messenger to keeping moving, but even standing too long in a foyer brings back the music. You watch as the aristocratic recipient of the message comes in. Does he hear the song? Is it vibrating from your skin? He looks at you strangely as he takes the letter with the blue wax seal, but too late you realize you’ve been staring and humming to yourself.

He shortchanges you, but you leave without a word. You can see the song now, a trail of light that hovers near you, never falling too far behind, blue as wax.

The song was following you in the blue of wildflowers, the blue of jays, the skies, the streams. The song is scattered across the world you’ve explored. You can never move past it. Your eyes can’t see the black walls or people of the streets, just blue, blue…

Come to the Forum in Soros.

You’re not sure how much time has passed when you come back to your senses. Hours? Days? All you know is that it’s morning, you’re hungry and exhausted, and you’re standing again in front of that pine door with the handwritten sign.

You know with an alien certainty that if you don’t go through that door, you will surrender your sanity forever.