###''[1]''
Finally you see the golden glow of the sun highlighting the jagged walls of the tunnel several feet in front of you, alerting you to an upcoming sharp turn to the left, but more importantly promising you an exit from the cramped space you have been moving through for the past twenty minutes. The walls of the tunnel close in on each other again the closer you get towards the light, forcing you to turn your back against it as you side step slowly one foot at a time. Edging towards the light, the final squeeze means that the first rays of the sun will warm your face whilst it gives you an instant view of your new surroundings.
You emerge from a crack in the rock face and are forced to stop dead in your tracks; firstly by the beauty of the scene stretching before your eyes, and secondly because your foot dislodges a clump of earth that crumbles beneath it and falls away, causing you to look down at the edge of the cliff you are standing at. You look around.
The sky is a clear blue; wisps of crisp white cloud move slowly within like gentle brush strokes. The horizon is a straight line where the marbled effect of the encroaching cloud coverage sits on a deeper blue of the calm ocean. As you lean forward, you can see the white sands of a perfect beach. The entire scene looks untainted, new. Undiscovered. You are completely mesmerised by the landscape; its entrancement captured in the pulse of your body. You don’t know why, but you want to stand on the virginal beach below you.
//Do you climb down the cliff face to access the beach [[(turn to 2)->2]].
Or do you look for another way to get there [[(turn to 3)->3]].//###''[2]''
The desire to feel the sand under your feet grips you like a fever, you crouch down and peer over the ledge, scrutinising the patterns in the rock below. The rock face is not smooth; jagged pieces jut out at regular intervals, promising you ample hand and foot holds.
You lower yourself over the edge as you find the first foot holds. You feel confident as you begin to descend blindly, feeling for the next hold with your foot, before repeating the action three more times for your second foot and two hands. The beach is calling you, the sea is calling you. Spellbound, the gentle lapping of the sea against the sand whispers to you like a lullaby, or the hushed murmur of singing voices.
Pausing to catch your breath, the desire to see the paradise behind you surges through you and you turn to look. Releasing your hands from their grip, you spin your whole body around. You do not notice that you are falling. You feel completely calm, at peace in the knowledge that you will never have to leave this place.
''GAME OVER''
//[[Return to the Beginning->Index]]//###''[3]''
You look to either side of the ledge upon which you are standing, searching for a way to gain access to the beach below. You don’t remember there being any hidden passageways on your way to this point, so you know that the way has to be around you somewhere.
"Look carefully," a whisper that feels like a command. It causes your heart to skip a beat, but you dismiss the sound as your desire trying to lure you over the edge of the cliff; you look from left to right again and see nothing. The paradise you see, although right there before you, feels thousands of miles away. You decide to return back through the crack in the cliff face that brought you here, but before entering you take in the bewitching scene around you; it pulls at your soul, trying to wrestle a portion of it free so that once you turn your back on it you will never feel complete again.
"Look carefully." That whisper again, but there is no one here but you. You stand alone on the precipice of perfection; a voice that low, that alluring could only be breathed into your ear whilst entwined with a lover. "Look carefully." You feel like you know the voice, that you have heard it calling out for you since you first saw the crack in the wall that lead you here. Your thoughts drift away from you, all you can think about is standing on the beach below, feeling the sand beneath your feet.
You close your eyes in an attempt to focus your mind. If there is no way down, you need to go back.
"Look carefully." You hear the whisper again, and then it is replaced by the constant gentle lapping of the sea against the beach. "Look carefully. Look carefully." Your eyes snap open. The whisper is not followed by the sound of the sea. This whisper is the sound of the sea. Each word its ebb and the flow. You watch the waves as they roll in to caress the land. "Look." The kiss of land and ocean, then the sea withdraws. "Carefully."
Desire grips you again and you chastise yourself for even thinking about giving up and leaving without at least touching the beach. You decide to carefully move to each side of the ledge. The left leads to a dead end, the ledge ending abruptly. Which means… Your excitement quickens your pace, and as you approach the end of the right, you see that although it thins to only a foot wide, it does curve around into a second crack in the rock face. You will need to get on all fours to crawl through into the unknown. //[[(turn to 4)->4]]//###''[4]''
Beyond the crack, the tunnel barely widens, forcing you to continue to crawl as it cuts into the cliff face. You trust your instincts and allow yourself to be engulfed by the complete darkness ahead of you. You can feel that the ground beneath you is descending at a comfortable pace, taking you closer to the ground level you need, but as you crawl forward you pause at intervals to feel the tunnel’s sides to check for any branching connections. You do not want to travel in too deep and move too far away from where you want to arrive, to do so would mean you that any backwards journey would be difficult given that you have no space around you to fully turn your body to face the opposite direction.
After what feels like ten minutes, you feel a breeze coming from the blackness in front. It gently brushes past you and you are thankful for this cooling air, pausing for a moment to breath deeply and rest whilst you replace the stuffy damp air in your body and allow it to lower your body temperature. The break in movement allows you to think clearly. Since leaving the ledge and the paradise it offered, you have been continuing through the tunnel on determination alone, a sense of urgency that has gradually diminished with each moment surrounded by nothing but the inky black silence. You wonder why it was suddenly so important that you stand on the beach, why you needed to feel the sand under your feet. What about it was so essential that it clouded your mind and pulled you away from the completion of your original journey? The more you think about it, the more it feels like a dream, like someone or something subtly took control of your senses and demanded that you obey. A weird sensation causes goosebumps to prickle across your skin, the sensation of awakening from a dream state, the blurry fuzziness of waking up in the morning from a deep sleep, only it does not leave you feeling refreshed, instead apprehension grips you tightly as you realise that the only way forward is the only way forward. What lured you down here and, more importantly, why?
Breathing deeply, you continue forward.
<br>
The tunnel continues for five metres, the rock above you rising up rapidly, allowing you to rise into a crouch and then allowing you to walk at your full height. You come to solid face of rock that allows you to go no further, and you grope around blindly until you feel the surface change under your right from cold stone to grainy wood. You turn towards what appears to be a door frame built into the rock, and search for a handle. You locate it.
//Do you turn the handle to open the door [[(turn to 6)->6]].
Or do you take advantage of the space around you and return to the cliff ledge [[(turn to 5)->5]]?//###''[5]''
You turn away from the door and spin around the black space with your arms outstretched, searching for the way you came. No matter how far you turn, with the exception of the wooden door, you feel only solid rock. The path that lead you to this place has disappeared, you only have one option to progress. You grip the door’s handle tightly. //[[(turn to 6)->6]]//###''[6]''
The door opens into an empty room. On each of the four walls is a single burning torch which causes you to squint momentary as you step into the room and allow your eyes to adjust to the sudden change from darkness. As you move forward towards the centre of the room, the door closes behind you with a thud. You ignore it, your attention focused on the markings on the floor, deep grooves carved into the stone that point towards two other closed doorways. The door on the wall to your left painted a deep crimson; the door on the wall to your right painted the colour of the clear sky you had witnessed from the cliff ledge. You look from door to door, from your calculations, the crimson door would lead back to the way you had come from when you discovered the original crack in the mountain; the blue door would lead to towards the beach that had tempted you to end up in this room. You look around for any further clues but see nothing. An empty room filled with only one decision.
//Do you choose to leave the room through the crimson door [[(turn to 8)->8]].
Or do you choose to leave the room through the blue door [[(turn to 7)->7]]?//###''[7]''
In your mind you picture the paradise you saw from the cliff, instantly your heart pounds, the desire to stand on the white sand erupting with such energy that you race towards the blue door and swing it open without question. It opens smoothly, almost smugly, and even though only darkness is visible on the other side you know that at the tunnel’s end there will be bright sunlight, so you begin down it without removing a torch from one of the walls. What is a few more moments of darkness before the light of paradise?
You find yourself running through the mountain, desire pulling you blindly along, your pace increasing when the first beams of sunlight penetrate the blackness before you. "That is it," you hear the whisper again in the sound of the blood pumping in your ears. "That is it, come to me. Come to paradise." The tunnel opening approaches, a sliver of bright white, that grows with every second. Without pausing you run out from the tunnel and into the light.
The sand is soft beneath your feet, your eyes adjust and before you is the spread of the ocean. The ocean that meets with the marbled blue sky on the horizon. You have made it. You have...
Your mind suddenly clears. It feels like someone has snapped their fingers and you have blinked from a dream to reality. You wonder why you are standing on the beach. Why was it so important to you? Why had you ignored all the realisations you had had before you entered that room?
"Welcome," the whisper of the gentle waves of the ocean against the beach. You stare at the sea, at how close it has swept inwards from where you had seen it from the cliff. "Be calm," two more words as it flows and ebbs closer towards you at an unnatural pace. "Hungry." Panic takes hold of you and you turn to run back to the empty room, but you cannot move, you have sunken below the sand so gently that you did not feel a thing, buried up to your knees. You struggle to free yourself, look quickly around you for something to help pull you free. That is when you see them. Skeletons, bleached white by the sunlight, their bones scattered around the bumpy tips of femurs trapped within the sand, buried and pointing up to the sky. "Relax now."
You feel the ocean reach you, it brushes against you. You turn to face forward. Complete calm comes with the water’s touch; peace in the knowledge that you will never have to leave paradise.
''GAME OVER''
//[[Return to the Beginning->Index]]//###''[8]''
You take a torch from one of the walls and walk over to the crimson door. It opens with a deafening creak, it almost sounds like a scream of anger, of disappointment and rage. You step into the darkness beyond and as you do so you suddenly feel lighter, as though you have been unburdened of a weight you were unaware of carrying. Your thoughts clear completely, freed from the hand of a hidden puppeteer. You slam the door behind you and lean back against it. Someone, or something had tried to take control of you, and they had done so with complete ease. You do not want to stand around and work out who or what it could have been, incase it uses your confusion to regain control of your mind. You walk away from the door as quickly as you can.
''CONGRATULATIONS, YOU SURVIVED.''
//[[Return to the Beginning->Index]]//##''The Call of the Ocean''
###//A Micro Story Arc by Dominic Lyne//
The following text features the micro story arc written by Dominic Lyne for ''Connor A. Wilkinson's //The Artifice Archipelago//'' 'choose your own adventure' game-book.
---
####''ABOUT //THE ARTIFICE ARCHIPELAGO//''
An adventure lies before you in //The Artifice Archipelago//! It is up to you to choose your own path as you encounter villains, discover new lands, and gather items, all which will lead you toward your ultimate goal: the true ending!
With over four-hundred unique scenarios, you will need to keep your eye out for clues, as well as any artefacts that will help you progress and stave off the plethora of game-ending events.
You will lose time after time, however you must persevere through each failure if you wish to discover the secrets of the archipelago!
//The Artifice Archipelago// is a ‘choose your own adventure’ game-book written by Connor A. Wilkinson, consisting of over 250 pages and 50 endings.
//The Artifice Archipelago// is available to purchase at:
''<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086PNHW5Q/" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a> | <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B086PNHW5Q/" target="_blank">Amazon.co.uk</a>''
---
####''[[BEGIN YOUR ADVENTURE->1]]''
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