Furry-Within

Avast, I'm bored. So I'm doing this thing. A choose-your-own-adventure where you fools vote for the outcome. The poll at the top of the thread will be updated with the latest choices as they become available.

Let's see how this all works out.

The last thing you remember. You recall pounding music and alcohol that flowed freely. You were celebrating the New Year's with friends in Rome, a massive get-together of thousands of people with full intent to get wasted. You seem to remember some sultry young minx getting your attention and peeling you away from your friends, a girl in red. Her face was blurry, as was most of the night. As the night got more blurred, darkess fell over your vision. You're not sure if you went blind for a short time or if someone put a blindfold on you. People were speaking in a language you didn't recognise, and then you fell unconscious.

The sound of rusted hinges crying shrilly in protest fills your ears, rousing you from sleep, shortly after followed by the resounding boom of heavy doors finding their homes in their frames. You can hear the sound of a large barricade being pressed against the door and hushed whispers telling one another to hurry.

You place your hands on the ground and push yourself up. The ground is cold and hard, a compacted dirt floor. Before you lays a flashlight on the ground, its beam piercing the inky darkness of the otherwise unlit room. You pick it and yourself up from the floor and dust your clothes off.

You make your way to the door and feebly attempt to open it. It doesn't budge.

Your flashlight sweeps across the room. It appears be the mouth of a cave of some sort. The floor is dirt, but the walls are rocky and covered in moss and mould, and the ceiling is only a foot or so above your head. In the far wall appear to be three holes. You approach each one cautiously. There's no breeze, no sound, and your flashlight only seems to penetrate about 10 feet into the unnatural darkness. There are crude carvings above each of the doors, giving each one a number. I, II and III.

Well, there's no going back through there. You tell yourself that this is some stupid prank your friends paid some locals to enact, and that moving forward to yeild some answers.

Your head is throbbing. You take a moment to consider your options; which path do you take? Path I, Path II, or Path III?

---

You are wearing [Jeans], [Red T-Shirt] and [Sneakers].
You are wielding a [Flashlight] in your right hand.
You are affected by [Headache].

As you walk past the path marked as II, you feel the faintest kiss of breeze against your skin. You've made your decision. You step through the hole and begin walking down the narrow, rocky path, your flashlight dancing over the rough surfaces of the walls and floor.

You're only a few feet from the maw of the path when you hear three resounding booms behind you in quick succession, and the impossible darkness somehow becomes darker still. You spin on your heal, flashlight focusing on where you just came from. The pathway is blocked by a rough slab of rock. Your throat tightens as you swallow, but decide to just press on, turning back around to begin walking down the pathway, flashlight in your right hand, while your left guides you along the wall.

The sound of your breath and the crunch of tiny pebbles underfoot are all you can hear, the sound amplified by the long stone corridor. It feels as though it could stretch on forever, leading you on a terrible journey of nothingness until you're too exhausted to press on, and die in a collapsed heap in the corner, forgotten by the world.

You quickly shake the thought from your mind, your rational brain telling you that it's just because the flashlight can't shine too far ahead that it feels like the tunnel goes on forever, and it will soon come to an end. You're still relatively certain that your friends are just toying with you.

It's only another five minutes or so until the tunnel begins to widen and eventually deposits you in a large room. As your feet hit the floor of this new chamber, torches mounted on the walls burst into flame, giving off the acrid scent of ancient oil and incinerated cobwebs and dust. Your nose wrinkles at the unpleasant odour before your eyes adjust to see the spectacle before you.

In front of you are two polished stone pillars, and each one holds a single item. A brass plaque adorns the top of each pillar. You step closer and examine the items.

The first is a large knife, about as long as your forearm. The blade curves upward, almost looking like gold in the ambient light of the fires. The handle seems to be carved bone of some sort. You can vaguely make out depictions of a gruesome event, the knife likely ceremonial, people having their throats cut and blood pouring into jugs.

The second item appears to be a book of some kind. It's bound in some kind of animal skin and has a thick iron lock on the front to seal the book. A key protrudes from the lock. You can see that the pages within the tome are yellowed and thick like parchment, but you'd have to open it to know the contents.

You lean down to examine the plaques. They're identicle, and have text engraved into them. "TAKE BUT ONE ITEM OR SUFFER".

You roll your eyes and decide to have a look around the room before making a decision. There's a doorway with a sealed door beyond the pillars. You approach it and give it a shove, but it doesn't budge. There don't appear to be any handles or hinges visible.

As you continue looking around, your flashlight falls upon the hole where you came from, but it's no longer there. Your heart skips a beat as the beam of light illuminates a skeletal figure in a standing sarcophagus. The figure looks to be partially mummified and has a large, rusted axe embedded in its chest.

You're slightly less convinced that this is your friends playing with you now. You'd like to just take your item and leave.

Your hand hovers over the knife and then the book. Which one do you take?

---

You are wearing [Jeans], [Red T-Shirt] and [Sneakers].
You are wielding a [Flashlight] in your right hand.
You are affected by [Headache].

Your hand hovers over the book for a brief moment before quickly snatching the knife up by its carved bone handle. You're surprised at how light the weapon feels, as though it's made from some cheap wood. You run your finger gently along the edge of the blade, just to see if it's real. You recoil your hand quickly with a hiss. This thing is sharp, and your finger is going to be sore for a while.

You hold the knife in your left hand, mostly because you value your pockets and there was nothing else to put the knife in. You keep it a short way from your body so you don't accidentally cut yourself.

The room rumbles and dust falls from the ceiling as the door on the far room opens. You take one last look at the book before you step through the now open door. You hope you chose wisely for... Whatever is ahead.

You expected to find another pointlessly long corridor, but instead more torches burst brilliantly to life, carrying with them the same pungent odour from earlier. You surpress a gag at the stench and move into the room completely.

The door slams down behind you with a monstrous boom and you spin to look at where you just came from. When you turn back, a figure is before you. The figure is tall and cloaked in a dark purple robe. Gold thread on the hemline glimmers in the orange light from the flames. The figure's hands are folded into the sleeves of the robe, making them look like a monk.

You're somewhat relieved that there's someone here in front of you. You begin to ask who put them up to this and where your friends are, but a voice suddenly surrounds you.

The voice is harsh and raspy, and always seems to be coming from behind you, no matter which way you turn your head.

"You have chosen to be baptised in a trial of strength. You hold in your hand your weapon. Destroy your opponent and consume their life."

You look back to your 'opponent', wanting to know just what is going on. They're already sprinting towards you, a knife much like your own in their hand. They swing it towards you in a vicious arc, the blade whistling through the air. With a cry, you leap back. The knife slices horizontally through your shirt, but doesn't come into contact with your skin.

The realisation that this is not a prank bears down on you. You quickly weigh up your options. You can only think of three things to do in this situation. Fight, run, or talk.

You step backwards, knife held out to try and ward the cloaked figure away as you try to determine your course of action. Your back presses up against the stone door you came through moments ago.

What do you do?

---

You are wearing [Jeans], [Red T-Shirt] and [Sneakers].
You are wielding a [Flashlight] in your right hand.
You are weilding a [Ceremonial Dagger] in your left hand.
You are affected by [Headache].

With your back pressed against the wall, the figure lunges at you. There's intent to kill in their actions, and you realise that your only course can be to respond in kind. Your heart is pounding in your ears, blocking out all other sound.

You duck left as the knife slices past your face. You feel the edge of the blade just barely brush your ear. With a yell, you bring your right hand up and smash the head of your flashlight into your opponent's face. You feel a sickening crunch as the heavy flashlight collides with the figure, and they're flung back with the force of your blow.

Your attacker now lays on the ground, groaning in pain. You let out a breath you didn't realise you were holding and look down at your trusty light. The bulb is shattered from the blow; it's not going to be much use to you any more as a light, but as a club it seems to work nicely. Your grip tightens on the handle of the light as you cautiously approach the figure.

The hood had been flung back when your opponent had landed, and you could now see them clearly. The blood drains from your face as your eyes fall upon him. The entire right side of his head is missing, like someone had taken an MRI cross-section and put it where this man's head should be. You could see bone and muscle and brain. Whenever he swallowed you could see half of his tongue flexing in his mouth.

Your blow appears to have broken his jaw, because blood is trickling out of his mouth, down either side of where his face should be. He's probably concussed as well. You're disgusted by what you see before you.

You hear the voices in the room again, whispering to you from all sides. "Kill him now. End his suffering, consume him."

Consume him? Kill him? Even in his sorry state, you doubt that you could do it. You begin to step back when a sudden pain from your left hand interrupts your shocked state. You look down at the blade you'd forgotten about until now and your eyes go wide. Blood from the man's broken jaw is slowly trickling upwards through the air to the tip of the blade. Where the blood contacts the metal, there's a faint glow, but you can't see where the blood is going after that.

You drop your broken flashlight and try to pry the knife from your hand, but you find that your fingers won't let go. Your hearbeat increases in panic as you look down at the man. He's slowly withering and dying before you, and the rate of blood flowing through the air to your knife is increasing.

The pain intensifies, traveling up your hand to your shoulder, like someone is beating your arm with a hammer. You drop to your knees in pain and watch helplessly as the man's blood is drained. His skin begins to dissolve, and then his organs and then his bones. The entire process takes only a minute, but as you watch in horror as the human body in front of you is disintegrated, it feels like hours. The man's knife also seemed to melt, bubbling into the dirt floor and leaving a black mark where it lay.

When it's completed, there's nothing left of the man except for his robe. The pain fades away and you look down at your arm, shocked and nauseous. Your eyes widen and a scream of shock escapes you, filling the room. Your arm has changed.

On your arm, from your wrist up to your shoulder, black chitinous plates are now jutting out of your skin, forming what looked like a heavy gauntlet. Your arm didn't feel weighed down at all. What made you scream, however, was not the armour you've apparently grown; it was instead another feature which had appeared on your inner forearm. The face of the man the knife just drank was now under your skin, shrunk down and inside of you.

You hold your arm away in disgust for a moment and you see that he's bulging out of your skin. You drop the knife and try to claw at the face, but it shifts up your arm whenever you get close, causing a searing pain.

You stop after a few attempts and hold your pained arm, trying to calm yourself. The voices from earlier speak once again as the door on the far side of the room slides open.

"You have triumphed, and your dagger has tasted blood. You may proceed. However, you have earned the right to ask a single question. Speak it now."

You're dumbstruck. You just witnessed a man being sucked into a knife, his face implanted in your arm and some kind of armour growing out of you. You're silent for a long moment as you compose yourself. A few questions are in your mind, but as you only get one, you have to choose carefully.

Your head is still pounding from earlier, clouding your thoughts. The fight hasn't seemed to cure it at all. You take up the dagger again, but leave the flashlight. You figure that to proceed, you'll take one of the torches from the wall. You don't have the pockets to carry everything.

---

You are wearing [Jeans], [Red T-Shirt] and [Sneakers].
You are weilding a [Ceremonial Dagger] in your left hand.
You are affected by [Headache].
You have [Bone Armour] on your left arm.