The GP Advent Calendar - Door 9

You resolve to cross the drawbridge into Lord Boniface’s castle. Some of you go out of duty to your friends. Others to exact revenge. Stepping out onto the black drawbridge, you feel it stretch out before you. What used to span a 12ft gap now seems to stretch and wind into the distance. You follow it, conscious of the black misting moat beneath you. You can’t see anything, but you feel a lumbering alien intelligence resting just below the surface. The water laps, and moves at times, drawing your gaze. The drawbridge winds left, and right. At times it feels like you’re walking in circles. Eventually, you arrive through the gate. You look back over your shoulder at the path you just travelled. You only travelled a short distance!

Even as the warmth of the castle welcomes you, the strangeness of it fills you with confusion and dread. The ceilings now vault thirty feet high, the stonework is black, and everywhere yellow candles flicker, casting the halls in a haunting, sickening illumination.

Mist erupts from a wall of stone. It swirls and dances, caressing the structure like a living thing. When it clears, moments later, the wall has become an archway. Beyond it lies a spiral stairway leading upward into a tower. A pair of heraldic banners hangs on either side of the archway. Their dimensions and quality identify them as the banners of a king, while their emblem, a single enormous Yellow Sign, proclaims just which king.

"Welcome back!" a loud, merry voice calls from behind you. Turning, you see a jester with a yellow mask over his eyes and a veil over his mouth. His clothing is rich and colored in black and gold, decorated with silver bells. He wears a hat with three long points. The jester’s shoes are long and curl upward at the toe.

"Please, follow me. The King wishes to see you. I’m to guide you to the feast hall, otherwise you might get lost. We can’t have that now, can we?"