ZE: Stronghold Sneak Peek

The following scene has been reworked since the last time I provided a demo of Stronghold. This is one of my favorite scenes so far. It happens if your group travels through the underground tunnels.

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You push deeper into the tunnel and the temperature drops fast. A chill seeps into your clothes and crawls over your skin. The dark thickens around you, until a faint band of light appears ahead. It cuts through the gloom in a hazy strip that slowly brightens, like the tunnel is cracking open just a little. The usual scuffling of rats fades away, replaced by a silence so complete it presses against your ears, broken only by the echo of your group's footsteps.

"Damn it, will this shit ever end?" Harmony mutters, her voice bouncing off the concrete.

Aldor turns toward her. "Want me to carry you, or give you a piggyback ride?"

"Aldor, I love you, and I know you mean well, but I'll crawl before I get a piggyback ride from anyone," Harmony says.

You round a corner and the light ahead sharpens, bright enough to make you think you have finally hit the exit. But something feels off. The glow shifts and thickens, and a shape begins to form inside it. At first it looks like a smear of motion, flickering and unstable. You narrow your eyes, trying to force the pieces together, and the silhouette slowly resolves into the outline of a young girl.

A sound drifts toward you, soft enough to raise the hair on your arms. You hear a melody so delicate it feels like it is floating straight through the cold air and settling into your bones.

Ring around the rosie,

pocket full of posies,

ashes, ashes,

we all fall down.

Your eyes go wide before you can stop them, because the scene in front of you feels like something your brain should not be processing. There's a child at the end of the dead-silent tunnel, glowing like she wandered out of someone else's nightmare. For a second you honestly wonder if you nodded off standing up and slid straight into a daydream.

"Is anyone else seeing a little girl?" Aldor asks, rubbing his eyes like he expects her to disappear if he blinks hard enough.

Julian clamps onto Aldor's arm and whispers loud enough to echo. "It's not a little girl. It's a ghost. Well, it is a little girl. A ghost girl. Bloody perfect."

Siena's face drains of color, and you can see every muscle in her jaw tighten. "What in the world is happening here?" she says, the words thin and shaky.

"There are no such things as ghosts," Alex snaps, though his voice cracks just a little. He steps forward like he means business. "We need to go over there and check on her. What the hell is she doing down here?"