Pan, faun, Cursed -    Cards in deck: 40

  Cards in hand: Pox, Forgetfulness, Wicker Man, Gibberer, Mirror

  Pan awoke to the jostling that came part and parcel to being dragged while completely bound in rope along a rough volcanic stone floor. His head was free, so he could see the branches above him as they passed overhead. Beyond them, the dots of glowing crystal embedded in the roof of the tunnel.

  The back of his head was tender, hitting pits and bumps as he was dragged. A sick feeling washed over him, the Infected debuff still plaguing him like a hangover. He tried to hold his head up, but his neck muscles were tired too. It was wildly uncomfortable, but he found he couldn’t free himself of the ropes, so he was resigned to holding his head up until he tired, then letting his head drag on the ground until he couldn’t stand the battering further.

  He noticed ahead of him was the entity made of ropes. It was to this creature he was bound, being dragged by a rope coming out of its back, pulled taut by his weight. His eyes traced two similarly taut ropes, which ended in cocoons similar to his own. His friends.

  Both were silent, and Pan thought they were also unconscious. Athena was immediately beside him, glaring at the sky with what Pan suspected was begrudging resignation, and Apollo on the other side of her and not as easily seen.

  He thought for an opener, something to say to pull Athena out of whatever reverie she was in, and settled with, “So how’s your health?”

  She didn’t look at him, merely shushed him.

  “But-“

  “Shh!” she shushed again.

  He studied her longer, trying to find a reason why he shouldn’t be talking, when he saw the ropes moving slightly around the area of her hips. The ropes there pulsed slightly, rhythmically.

  His eyes went wide. He might have guessed from the design of the women and feminine creatures in this game, but was it really one of those kinds of games? If Arctus was to be believed, he thought, then we aren’t really in a game, are we? This is some kind of afterlife. An extension of the real world, if you think about it.

  “Athena, is this thing… Is it hurting you?” he hazarded.

  “Pan, shut up. I’m trying to free my hand.”

  He did his best to keep his face neutral, but inside he breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Aha!” she said. He looked down and saw, sprouting from between the ropes, two fingers sticking out. “This thing sure squeezes. But I think I can…” Between the fingers appeared a brown card. “Yes! I can get things out of my inventory.”

  Then the feeling of motion stopped. Athena and Pan froze.

  “Are we there yet?” Apollo asked.

  The creature had turned around. Its non-existent eyes were locked on Athena. The card she had pulled out was another Campfire, which Pan could just barely see.

  Maybe she thinks it’ll burn the ropes? he guessed.

  The ropes around Athena began to move again, and in the same split instant Athena cried, “Let us go, motherfu-“ but her words were cut short as the rope cocoon travelled up over her neck, mouth, and head. The cords around her hand moved, drawing her fingers back inside, clamping on the card. The Campfire card sparkled, and then vanished.

  But there was no resulting campfire.

  Pan noted that the sparkles, into which the card had disintegrated, travelled along the ropes a little ways before winking out.

  The Athena cocoon wiggled and emitted muffled sounds as she struggled against the creature. The entity turned forward again, having been frozen in its stride for these events, and resumed walking.

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  Pan watched the wiggling cocoon, helpless, horrified his friend might be suffocated to death. The wiggling continued as she fought from within, but which got weaker with time.

  And then the cords at the end separated as she pushed her head back through. This time Pan audibly gasped.

  “You’re alright!” he exclaimed over her own labored breathing.

  She screamed wordlessly before shouting, “It ate my Campfire!”

  “What?” Apollo said. He slurred a bit as he said this.

  “It ate my damn card! I was about to use it, but then the ropes touched it and it just disappeared!”

  “It…ate your card?” Pan said.

  Athena screamed again in response.

  What is this thing? Pan thought.

  As it turned out, he didn’t have long to wait. The ambient strings of rope which wound about the trees of the Deadwoods here and there had grown more common by stages. Now, there were trees bound up entirely, looking more like tree versions of the entity dragging them along. The ground was now a coarse netting of ropes of varying tautness, which spread over the black volcanic rock of the forest. There were things hanging from the roped-up trees like fruits of varying sizes.

  Cocoons like ours? Pan wondered. He felt queasy, and not just from the Infected debuff.

  Some ropes were strung between the trees like one might string fairy lights. And there were nodules knotted in them at regular lengths, also like fairy lights.

  But these weren’t colorful electric bulbs. One gave off some light of its own, and it was the only one Pan could see clearly. It was a glowing liquid in a bottle, knotted in the rope.

  Some kind of potion? He wondered, but then what are the other things it’s got tangled in it?

  They passed under one such stringing. The dark and irregular lumpy shapes in this one made themselves clear.

  One was a skull. Another was a fractured bone. Yet another was a rib cage, held together by the rope into which it was tangled. His time in Gravestone had gotten him somewhat accustomed to dealing with the undead who lived there, who were mostly skeletons already. But seeing these unmoving bones of someone who was likely ripped apart by living rope was affecting him altogether differently.

  “It decorates with the remains,” Athena said, drawing Pan’s attention away from the grisly omen.

  “You think these are….” he fought for words through the queasiness and slowly setting panic, “these are the remains of its past victims?”

  “There’s some of their equipment,” she said, nodding. Further down was a scrap of cloth similarly knotted in the rope. A yellowed and decaying toga, Pan suspected. Further down was a skeletonized foot with a rotten sandal clinging to it.

  Silence returned as the entity dragged them ever onward. Pan’s mind went to his cards, and they rushed from his periphery to meet his glance.

  He selected Forgetfulness, Wicker Man, and Gibberer. He gritted his teeth as Mirror and Pox were discarded. He was hit with a renewed wave of nausea as Pox gave him another stack of Infected as a parting gift.

  He may need his hands to use Inventory cards, but he didn’t need them for most of his curses. They didn’t require direction or the use of a weapon, like Apollo’s elemental attacks or Athena’s melee ones. He could cast them by thought alone.

  He hovered over Wicker Man. Being wrapped up in the rope, a stack of Immolation would likely spread easily to something made of plant fibers. Or so he hoped.

  But he remembered how Athena’s Campfire was “eaten” by the entity, and wondered how that would affect his strategy.

  One the one hand, it could neutralize my one source of fire. But on the other, maybe I could have it permanently get rid of more curses. He found the thought exciting, despite the looming threat of death.

  He got Athena’s attention. “I’m going to try and cast something.” He described to her what he was going to test for.

  Once he quelled her protests long enough to get the plan out, she became suddenly accepting. She relayed this to Apollo.

  “Thumbs up emoji,” came his reply.

  Pan asked, “What’s wrong with Apollo? He’s acting a bit strange.”

  She rolled her eyes. “He gets like this when the blood rushes to his head.”

  Pan’s blank look prompted her to add, “You know? Because he was upside down for so long?”

  “That’s a thing?”

  “For him it is. He never got it checked out. Now are you gonna do this thing or what?”

  Pan cast Gibberer. The card flashed and was not disintegrated by contact with the rope. He sighed.

  Or tried to sigh but found he couldn’t. His mouth had disappeared.

  He went immediately into a panic, and was once again interrupted. Big red cartoon lips had appeared in front of him, seeming to sprout from the material of his bonds.

  They began to speak, revealing a dark mouth and a pink tongue behind white teeth. It didn’t so much as speak as it sang.

  Bypassing the rest of the song, it began to belt the chorus for Defying Gravity which Pan recognized from an old musical.

  Another pair of lips, similar to the first, appeared on Athena’s head even as the first pair announced their rebellion. These appeared without any obvious pain given the Hoplite’s face, though she did look angry again. This pair began singing the lyrics for Turn Down for What.

  All over the trio, and along the ground beside them, these lips began to appear. Some talked, some sang, and others merely made senseless noise. Worst of all for Pan, he couldn’t defend himself from Athena’s accusatory glare.

  Amidst the cacophony of noise from months which sprang up from surfaces like mushrooms, Pan lay noiselessly, dragged to his demise alongside his friends, unable to speak. He wondered how things could get worse

  He was about to find out.