Between life and death
Battles in imaginary dream worlds, eerie sea monsters, the loss of eyesight, and now thousands of magical birds swooping down from the air to attack everything – our four friends haven’t had many pleasant experiences with Grete’s potion puzzle so far. After deciding last time to spend the night in the cave and continue thinking about possible solutions the next morning, this plan also goes completely awry.
In the middle of the night, Aldric wakes up with a start and hears a strange clinking sound. At first it is occasional, then it becomes more frequent. Restless, he gropes around to wake one of his friends. He grabs Kel’s arm and shakes him until Kel finally wakes up. Still half asleep, Kel asks why he was gently awakened, but before Aldric can answer, Kel hears the noises himself. He jumps up, lights Löwenzahn’s oil lamp and creeps cautiously to the entrance of the cave.
What he sees there leaves him speechless at first. Piece by piece, the black birds fall like stones from the moonlit sky to the ground. Each one shatters on the ground into thousands of pieces, which then disintegrate into a fine black dust. Happy that no new danger awaits them, but rather that they have gotten rid of one, Kel returns to the cave.
Theo and Löwenzahn have also woken up in the meantime and ask uncertainly about the reason for the strange noises. Kel briefly explains to them what he has discovered outside. But despite the good news, sleep is out of the question. More and more birds are shattering on the ground, making so much noise that no one can get a wink of sleep.
After a restless night, our friends finally hear no more noises from outside after what feels like an eternity. After enjoying the peace and quiet for a moment, they decide to go outside to the clearing and treat themselves to a rudimentary breakfast. In order not to lose sight of their mission, Löwenzahn prefers to take the potion with him again and place it next to him.
Breakfast passes, and when Kel Theo throws his water hose, Aldric suddenly recoils. ‘There was a shadow!’ he cries out, and indeed, the water hose flew right past Aldric’s face and cast a shadow on it. Excitedly, our heroes try to cover Aldric’s eyes – and Aldric can perceive that too.
And that’s not all: over the course of breakfast, Aldric’s vision slowly improves, and after an hour he no longer notices any impairment.
Totally euphoric about this turn of events and their new streak of luck, Kel grabs the first potion he can find – in this case, the green one – and simply drinks it down. Not wanting to leave Kel alone, Aldric and Löwenzahn decide to drink something too. However, Aldric has become a little more cautious in the meantime. So he and Löwenzahn share the shiny silver potion, leaving only the golden potion in front of them. Less than two minutes later, he is lying on the floor convulsing, vomiting blood and foaming at the mouth. Although they administer healing potions to their friend as if there were no tomorrow, Kel’s condition does not change at all. After another ten minutes, he finally loses consciousness. Feandal, the fisherman they had met right after their escape from Chiraque, had given them a purple nirnroot as a reward, which is said to be effective against all poisons. They immediately begin searching all their pockets and bags, and finally Theo finds the plant in the last corner of his alchemy bag.
He immediately stuffs it into Kel’s throat, but nothing happens at first. The three friends look at each other with concern before turning their gaze back to their fourth comrade. Suddenly, he gags and coughs up the soggy nirnroot from his throat. ‘Phew, that really wasn’t great,’ Kel Tuh Las coughs to his friends.
After Aldric, Theo and Löwenzahn explain to Kel in detail that he almost kicked the bucket, they look exhausted at the last bottle, its contents glistening golden in the midday sun. ‘I guess it’s my turn,’ Theo sacrifices himself, already resigned to his fate. But to his great surprise, this potion tastes surprisingly good.
He takes a second big sip with relish before explaining to his friends that they have probably earned a good bottle of whisky with the potion puzzle. With a stunned ‘Are you kidding me?’, Kel snatches the bottle from Theo’s hand, and the others are also somewhat upset about Theo’s outrageous luck.
Now that all the bottles are finally empty and they have access to all the metal parts that were at the bottom of each bottle, it’s time to figure out what use these parts are to them. But here, our heroes fare much better than they did with the potion puzzle itself – which, of course, isn’t really difficult.
Nevertheless, after a few minutes, they have assembled the pieces into a key that will presumably give them access to the next location. But they have no idea where that is. After puzzling over it for a while, they decide to make something to eat first and continue thinking about their problem on a full stomach.
While Theo prepares the cooking pot and Kel rummages through their rucksacks for a few of the packed lunches they brought with them, Aldric and Löwenzahn set off in search of firewood. However, this proves more difficult than expected, and the two soon find themselves in desperate need of a toilet.
Since there is obviously none available here, the nearest stream has to serve. So they stand comfortably next to each other and pee. But then something eerie happens: downstream, something silvery seems to be collecting in the water, and suddenly silvery shimmering wisps rise from this liquid. The mysterious liquid evaporates faster and faster until it finally forms a thick fog.
Suddenly, a glowing blade cuts the fog in half, and a silver ghost knight strides towards them. Shocked, our two heroes pull up their trousers again – but you’ll have to wait two weeks for the next blog, ‘Arkanthia Pen and Paper’, to find out what happens next.
