The Firebird // Helena

[you feel a feeble tug and a whisper in the Firebird’s voice: please help…

if you follow, it will lead you to the Ring, which is now a pit filled with ankle-deep drifts of choking ash, mixed with fragments of black stone and shards of dead burnt wood. there is no sign of the runner or the people playing in the game.

however, there is a gigantic white egg in the middle of the ash . . . and eleven tiny, flickering, nearly insubstantial flames hovering around the edges of the pit. for now, nothing happens when you interact with the flames -- but they’re there for a reason, aren’t they?]

((Please join #embers on IRC OR email us with another way to contact you OOCly -- our emails are on Firebird’s journal profile.))

Note: these are just the ones I remembered well enough to fish out of my email . . . it is very likely I've done others and then forgotten.

( ... )

You're walking on a road of brass, over a sea of white fire. You hear the cry of two strange birds on opposite sides of you: one's voice is high and resonates strangely; the other's is a low, booming note. They seem to be holding a conversation, though of course you can't understand it at all. They do not answer you if you call out -- perhaps they're too far away to hear.

At a point in the path there are three objects hung suspended in the air, at the level of your chest:

- a miniature of the golden sword; it swivels in the air as you move, the point always aimed at your heart.
- a tiny golden mirror, with no glass; it's oddly disquieting to look into the empty frame.
- a melted golden statuette; most of it is a blob, but the base is intact enough for you to make out a pair of human feet fused to a stand.

Firebird's voice comes from over your shoulder. "Once, you asked me to change my story now that I know I am trapped within it. You asked about my role and games as well . . . they have grown both easier and harder to balance alone, since my change. I do not have all the answers; it is not given to me to see so clearly within myself. Perhaps if it were, things would be different . . . but for now, if you complete these three trials, you may win free to the sight of what I am blind to, and do what you would do . . ."

Choose your order.

♫