So...I tried playing Avernum, both the original and the reboot...couldn't get past the gameplay in the first one, and the reboot had such crappy dialogue boxes when the original had a great story. I just couldn't get into it. I wanted to, because the story was interesting, but alas. Said interesting story spawned this: the first-person tale of my four Avernum characters after they get thrown into the pit.

This was really an experiment in style: I tried some serious present-tense narration with first-person POV, in addition to creating four separate characters who (I hope) have their own voices, while still keeping with the same style. Let me know what you think.

Enjoy!

Zephyr

You are dead – it's quite simple, really. For all intents and purposes, you no longer exist. Even if you did exist, it's desperately dark, and you can't see yourself, so really, how do you know you're actually there?

Perhaps you know from the smell – there is blood, damp air, and perhaps a dead animal. You smell sweat, stagnant water, and … mushroom soup?

The home-like smell of mushroom soup is ruined by the stench of mold and man-sweat. And you know it's man sweat – one of those beefy, over-muscled, small-brained soldiers, looking down on you with beady, glazed eyes, whiskey on their breath…

You're sure of this when you hear the hiss of a weapon being drawn, perhaps somewhere to the left of you. But it isn't the smooth ssshhhh you're used to – it is a rough, gargling sound. A crude dagger, perhaps.

There are footsteps. Earth and sky, are you about to be mugged? The footsteps stumble, and a man grunts quietly in pain. Good. Perhaps he'll fall on his blade and save you the trouble.

For it will cause you an enormous amount of trouble – you were an archer in the imperial army, and you're fair with a javelin, but you are unarmed. You are stringy and lean, young, with a mop of straw-blond hair and awkward limbs. Perhaps you could wield a dagger well enough, but you'd grip it too tight, or you'd sweat so much it fell out of your hand, and this is assuming you could even wrest it away from your attacker –

Focus. You snap back when you hear someone cursing loudly – you think it's a woman, but it's very unladylike language. You doubt you've even heard one of the army whores say such things, and they'll say anything for a fistful of silvers.

The loud proclamations only distract you for a moment. Very suddenly, you realize that the groaning man is somewhere to your right, and that bothers you because …. because whoever had the weapon is on the left.

It's like you've been trapped: trapped in a dark, vague world with nothing but smell and sound. You can't feel the air, or the ground beneath you, or the vibrations the sounds make as they ripple through you. But when you realize you are still in danger, you sit up, and everything comes back in a rush. The taste of mold. The steady clink of water dripping. Dirt on your skin. Stagnant, moist air, pressing in on you, smothering, like a cloud of smoke, invisible poison, crushing your lungs….

Rock. You can sense it. It's below you. It's above you. It is around you.

You're in pain, and it's not a big deal, but you don't even register it, because there is rock everywhere, on the fringes of your consciousness even when you can't see it, and it will always be there. You wonder if your skin will turn a ghastly shade – if you start to glow like a strange fungus, you swear you'll … well, you don't know you what you'll do. You've never had the courage to do much of anything.

But you're here, anyway.

The thing that scares you the most about Avernum is that the rock is always there – it bears down on you, and you miss the heat of the sun.