You feel a drop of cold creep down your fingertips. The jagged, cool marble against your face barely tingles, threatening frostbite if you overstay your welcome. You carefully push yourself up with exhausted hands, feeling the dampness of the stone beneath you. A breeze wafts past you, with the scent of crisp evergreens.
You look to see a ruffles of white and gray, drifting into the faint amber glow of the sun. You turn your head to see where they are migrating, but all you can catch are the carbon-black tips of mountaintops. The sky is a bleak shade of blue, both an aura of calm over your cliff, and an expanse of dark unknown.
You briefly close your eyes to shield your face from a sudden gust of wind carrying stray bits of moss, feeling your feet spread into a wide stance on instinct, as if this small wind threatens to blow you off into the abyss. It doesn't, but it still cuts into you with its cold. Your rags are hardly enough for this climate... You now hear a slight hum from seemingly underneath the earth as well, somehow beating against the wind itself.
"Hey! Don't just stand there!" You turn around and see a trail of moss lead upwards, meandering towards the figure of a massive tower of dark-grey stone, almost camouflaged against the sky. And walking down it is a man wrapped in a searing red cloak, patterned with a crisscrossing mess of hair-thin orange and yellow lines. "You're going to catch a nasty cold like this."
He takes off his cloak and drapes it over you - it's an assault on your eyes, but your body welcomes the sudden warmth. You can see that the man is tightly framed, dressed in plain gray, but half-torn soldier's garb: armored vest, belts and their pouches, and a jet-black sword sheathe with a hint of an orange light near the hilt. "There, that'll help you until I can get you back to the gates. Then we're gonna get you the hottest bowl of oatmeal I can grab from the kitchen. If, uh, they'll let me grab one. Chin up, will ya?"
There are a lot of questions you have swirling in your mind. You start with who and where.
"The name's Russel," he offered. "Might wanna remember that one, 'cause it's a small world, and this probably isn't the last time we're meeting. And uh, yeah, where we're at... Everyone that gets pulled along with the split way back when ask that, but the answer's actually pretty simple. Just take a deep breath - so you don't faint or something, we've had that happen once - and look ahead."
You look ahead as Russel escorts along the moss-covered road, making sure you take steps half as short so you don't slip and tumble down the mountainside. That tower you spotted earlier comes more and more into focus, as it seems a previously unnoticeable fog parts solely for the sake of your sight. A sheer fortress of cobblestone, towering towards the midnight heavens, seemingly striving higher and higher behind its world-encompassing walls. The breeze cuts through once more, but this time, instead of cold, it feels like untapped ambition.
"This," Russel proclaims, "is Castle High. And since you're here, mind if you could help us out? We've got a really important job here."
You look to see a ruffles of white and gray, drifting into the faint amber glow of the sun. You turn your head to see where they are migrating, but all you can catch are the carbon-black tips of mountaintops. The sky is a bleak shade of blue, both an aura of calm over your cliff, and an expanse of dark unknown.
You briefly close your eyes to shield your face from a sudden gust of wind carrying stray bits of moss, feeling your feet spread into a wide stance on instinct, as if this small wind threatens to blow you off into the abyss. It doesn't, but it still cuts into you with its cold. Your rags are hardly enough for this climate... You now hear a slight hum from seemingly underneath the earth as well, somehow beating against the wind itself.
"Hey! Don't just stand there!" You turn around and see a trail of moss lead upwards, meandering towards the figure of a massive tower of dark-grey stone, almost camouflaged against the sky. And walking down it is a man wrapped in a searing red cloak, patterned with a crisscrossing mess of hair-thin orange and yellow lines. "You're going to catch a nasty cold like this."
He takes off his cloak and drapes it over you - it's an assault on your eyes, but your body welcomes the sudden warmth. You can see that the man is tightly framed, dressed in plain gray, but half-torn soldier's garb: armored vest, belts and their pouches, and a jet-black sword sheathe with a hint of an orange light near the hilt. "There, that'll help you until I can get you back to the gates. Then we're gonna get you the hottest bowl of oatmeal I can grab from the kitchen. If, uh, they'll let me grab one. Chin up, will ya?"
There are a lot of questions you have swirling in your mind. You start with who and where.
"The name's Russel," he offered. "Might wanna remember that one, 'cause it's a small world, and this probably isn't the last time we're meeting. And uh, yeah, where we're at... Everyone that gets pulled along with the split way back when ask that, but the answer's actually pretty simple. Just take a deep breath - so you don't faint or something, we've had that happen once - and look ahead."
You look ahead as Russel escorts along the moss-covered road, making sure you take steps half as short so you don't slip and tumble down the mountainside. That tower you spotted earlier comes more and more into focus, as it seems a previously unnoticeable fog parts solely for the sake of your sight. A sheer fortress of cobblestone, towering towards the midnight heavens, seemingly striving higher and higher behind its world-encompassing walls. The breeze cuts through once more, but this time, instead of cold, it feels like untapped ambition.
"This," Russel proclaims, "is Castle High. And since you're here, mind if you could help us out? We've got a really important job here."