A dark shadow swooped over the fortress, and all the prisoners ducked. There was a loud “whump," and the top of one of the towers exploded, showering us with shards of stone. The bulk of the debris fell outside the castle walls, carrying screaming raven guards falling to their deaths.
"This way!" one of the prisoners cried. There was a mad rush towards an open doorway on the side of the keep. My user interface still had not appeared. We charged through an open dining hall. Halfway across the room, the whole keep shook. Shafts of light darted down from above, and chunks of the roof fell on us. The prisoner running on my right was crushed by a falling beam. The one behind him leapt over the beam and kept going. My hands, like theirs, were still bound, and none of us were armed.
At the end of the room, one of the raven people stepped out of a doorway. "Halt! Prisoners escaping!"
The leader of our group barreled straight into him, knocking him flat. The prisoner fell too, but rolled and came up, holding the guard's sword. He stabbed down, killing the humanoid raven. I was right behind him as he took off running down the hall. There was only one other prisoner still with us, hot on my heels.
The building shook again, and a section of wall in front of us crumbled. "This way!" the lead prisoner called as he veered into a doorway. I followed, and we started up a narrow spiral stair. The stairs came out on top of a tower high above the battlements. Shouts and cries rang from below. In the distance, a large shape was swinging around for another pass. A few feeble arrows rose to greet it as it came barreling in.
Still no user interace. This was getting ridiculous.
“We're trapped!" the third prisoner cried. "Look out!"
Something whooshed past me, and the birdman simply vanished, along with a section of wall, struck by something large that carried man and stone away into the abyss below.
"What the hell was that?" I asked the sword-wielding prisoner who had led me this far.
"Watch out for its stuffing breath!"
"Stuffing breath? You’re winding me up!”
The man ignored me. He was wrestling with a piece of equipment attached to the side of the wall. It was a compact ballista.
"Help me with this thing!" he called. He swung the weapon around to line up on the dragon as I moved to assist. He quickly spun the windlasses and put an arrow into the trough, then stopped.
"Get ready to fire!" he said. As I stepped up behind the massive crossbow, an interface box popped up near a lever. [Squeeze here to fire!]
I rolled my eyes. The scene was still on rails. The other bloke was adjusting the aim, so all I had to do was put my hand on the trigger. My chains clanked as I wrestled to get a decent grip.
A reticule appeared in front of me that moved to follow the dragon, the turducken. As I peered at it, my vision expanded, zooming in towards where the ballista was pointing.
The creature was massive. It had the fat body and broad wings of a turkey, and not one but three heads. One was a turkey, the other had the broad bill of a duck, and the final one... At first, I thought it was a smaller turkey, but then I realized it was a chicken. Of course.
"This is the most ridiculous load of bollocks,” I commented.
"Now!” the prisoner cried, just as the reticule turned green. His sudden shout in my ear surprised me into firing even before I realized. The ballista thwanged, and the large bolt arced away. My vision was still zoomed in, and I clearly saw the heavy bolt slam into the beast's side. It screamed and plummeted down below the wall, out of sight.
"Good shot!" my companion said. A moment later, a turkey head poked up above the battlement below us. It had landed outside the keep, but the monster was so huge it was having no problem climbing over the walls now. Guards screamed and battlements crumbled as it heaved its fat turkey body over the crenellations.
"Get out of here!" The prisoner ran over and grabbed a rope that was tied on the edge of our tower. I moved to follow him, and my interface popped up with a window saying, [Grab here!] This scene was either one of those that was so on rails it would sit and wait for you to do the directed actions, or it was a gauntlet and if you didn't do the directed actions, you would instantly die. Either way, there was no point in hesitating.
I reached for the rope. As I did so, the chain between my manacled hands looped over it, seeming to flicker out of existence and reappear on the other side of the rope. The tower shook violently, and stones cracked under my feet. I fell forward, off the edge of the tower. My chained wrists caught me, and I went hurtling down the rope with my fellow prisoner less than a meter in front of me. We whipped down from the tower onto a stretch of wall below and landed in a tumble. Somehow all my wrists were no longer wrapped around the rope.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
My companion was already on his feet, holding out a hand for me. "Come on!" There was a silly dialogue pop-up next to his outstretched arm that said, [Take his hand.] I didn't pause to roll my eyes as I grabbed it. He hauled me up to my feet, and we took off running down the battlement.
I glanced back to see the tower we had been on crumbling to rubble as the turducken smashed its way through. Its gobbling scream rent the air and sent shivers of pain through my ears. My feet slipped out from under me. I went sliding along the stone walkway. It was covered in some kind of extremely slippery brown grease.
My companion was still on his feet. He had reached the end of this section of wall and was standing by a door. He had a torch in one hand. "Fire the gravy!"
I carefully got to my feet and took a hesitant step towards him. What the hell did he mean? Was there some kind of gravy gun here? I looked around but saw nothing other than a pile of barrels just behind us on the wall. The turducken was moving down the battlement towards us, still gobbling. One of the barrels had spilled open, and from it, brown liquid spilled.
My companion shoved the torch in his hand toward me. "Fire the gravy!" he called again. And then the pop-up appeared. [Take the torch and light the gravy!]
Oh, for fuck's sake. I took the torch.The floor of the battlement was clear ofbrown sludge where my companion was standing, so I hopped over there before dropping my torch in the puddle.
The turducken had reached the puddle and was slipping and sliding its way through it. Its huge body was more than twice as wide as the whole battlement, so it was having a difficult time.
The torch ignited the brown sludge with a whoof. The billowing smoke smelled delicious. Then, a moment later, it smelled of burned feathers as the turducken screamed in rage and thrashed. The wall under it crumbled, and it toppled away into the keep.
A distant voice called, "Archers, fire!" And from somewhere else in the keep, a rain of arrows showered on the smoldering monster.
"We have to get out of here," I said to my companion, who ignored me. "We have to kill it. Leave it to the Imperials and let's make a break for it." Somehow my companion suddenly had two swords in his hands. He thrust one at me.
"Here, take this! For Duckrym!" my companion cried and leapt off the battlements to land on the back of the monster.
"Oh, hell no!" A pop-up filled my screen.
[Leap onto the turducken!]
I tried to turn away, but my feet wouldn't respond. Seriously, there was no fucking way. Below, my companion was shouting battle cries and hacking at the monster as he stood on its back like the deck of a ship in a storm. The dialogue box in front of me started flashing red.
[Jump on the back of the turducken!]
"Go fuck yourself!" I called.
The box flashed faster.
Oh, whatever. I jumped.
The next few minutes were pretty chaotic. We were bouncing around on the back of the bird. Dialogs kept popping up telling me which place to stab or slash on wings or necks. It was all a jumble. Then we were knocked down and subjected to a mini-game of giant stomping feet trying to squash us as we rolled back and forth on the ground and stabbed upward with our swords.
I barely had time to catch my breath as the turducken moved away.
“Halt! Both of you, wings up!”
I turned slowly as a pair of ravenguard approached us, weapons lowered. I’d barely gotten my hands up before the huge shadow swooped down. The guards were hit by a spray of chunky brown material breathed from the mouth of the turducken. The impact splattered the guards against the wall and left the stone covered in chunks of what looked like delicious stuffing.
"It's stuffing breath," I muttered. “It really does have damned stuffing breath.”
The hunks of stuffing left cracks in the walls where they hit. I turned and dove to the side as another blast hit the spot where I had been standing. Another guard was struck down, and the impact of stuffing and body hit the wall with stone-cracking force.
The turducken’s health bar was well over halfway down, and now it blinked from green to yellow. Around the keep, scattered guards were still fighting. Some were throwing spears, and others were shooting arrows that looked much too feeble to do any damage, but the creature's health ticked lower and lower. I just needed to hold on a little longer.
I turned and ran for the largest group of guards. They was just a few feet away but before I could reach them, a stream of brown liquid wreathed in fire shot over my shoulder. Heat scorched my face. The burning stream struck the guards, and they were engulfed, screaming. I skidded to a halt. One of the guards, completely drenched in burning liquid, ran past, waving his arms, his agonizing shrieks echoing. I turned and ran the other way.
As I dashed away, I found myself trapped in a corner of the keep with no way of easy escape. A pop-up appeared next to a torch, telling me to throw it. It wasn't obvious why, but I did. The torch spun away, past the turducken, and landed in a pile of barrels that I was pretty sure hadn't been there a few moments before.
The explosion was spectacular. The turducken was blasted against the wall of the keep, and an entire tower fell on top of it. I was slammed against a wall and blacked out for a moment.
When I came to, the monster was twitching its last as the few surviving guards ran from the fire. I staggered to my feet and took two steps forward. Yet another pop-up appeared in front of me with a choice: [Absorb the power of the turducken? Yes/No?]
That was interesting. I paused to consider. I had seen similar mechanics in other games before, and it was usually a powerful set of abilities often leading to an entire quest chain to develop them. Tantalizing, but I was going for a more non-traditional build, less combat-focused. The associated quest chain was almost certainly one to hunt down and kill turduckens or some other crazy bird monsters. I wanted to take my time and build my build right. I was expecting to do some serious min-maxing, and I didn't want to be locked into a quest like that, that almost certainly everyone else would be doing. I selected NO.
As soon as I made the selection, the body of the three-headed bird monster boiled away into nothing. When it was gone, it revealed a hole in the rubble behind it.
On the other side of the hole, I saw my fellow prisoner. How had he gotten out there? "Come on! Let's go!" he called through what was clearly the pre-scripted path of escape. I went through the hole, and we disappeared into the forest beyond.