Chronicler Venno's audience stared in rapt attention. With his previous tale having gone down well, he felt confident to experiment a bit.
"Remember when we finished the croplands?" A sea of nods. The day of the first harvest when everyone got to eat something other than sourdough starter was etched on many of the people's memories. "And work began on the sundial, despite some difficulty interpreting the instructions of the great prophet Ikea. It seemed like the Ark was entering a new phase of enlightenment when the dreadful news arrived that the temple had been vandalised."
A susurrus moved through the crowd, but was silenced by a raise of Venno's hand. "Not only had someone destroyed all the work done on the temple so far, but they had defiled the sacred carriage by writing the word 'heretic' all over it. And worse still, they didn't even spell 'heretic' correctly!"
He paused for the inevitable gasp of shock. "No, they wrote it with a k on the end! And that's not the end of it. To write it, they stole a sacred artefact, the rattling can!" The gasps got louder. "Boss Briktoria initially blamed Zippo, who had stopped working on the temple in order to lend his expertise to the sundial, but as a loyal follower of the Seven Sisters, he had no idea what had happened."
"Zippo being dragged away was noticed by Lenny and Katin, who'd been out working on the croplands, and Silas, the chronicler who had been attempting to interpret the word of Ikea at the sundial. The three of them went to investigate, and concluded that the best thing for Zippo would be to find out who was really responsible so they could be properly blamed. They searched the carriage until Katin caught the scent of chemicals in the paint and set off to follow the trail.
Katin led them on a roundabout journey through the Ark, until they arrived outside the corrugated iron building that served as Boss Johammed's headquarters. Lenny persuaded the two enforcers outside the door to let them in, and a heated discussion followed. It was clear Johammed was not happy about having his plans for a slave market disrupted, and his words suggested that he and his people might in fact be heretics.
There was no use starting a fight while so heavily outnumbered, however, so the four of them left, tipped off Briktoria about the heretics, and then went to talk to the elf about hospitals.
The elf still couldn't remember anything before being brought to the Ark, but she was able to draw them a symbol that she said meant hospital - a large cross, which she then tore out of the paper, and held up to the Sign of the Seven Sisters to show that it should be red. With something to go on at last, the team stocked up on supplies and headed out into the zone.
The journey started quickly, taking the familiar path through the marshy grounds where they found the elf, but when the continued further, they found the terrain very different. Here, nature had returned to the land, and trees had grown, destroying the buildings. This all made sense, because the elf had come from this directions, and as the sacred texts tell us, elves live in forests.
Katin reminded everyone to be on the look out for giant spiders, trolls and unfriendly elves, but the creature she spotted was none of these things. There was some speculation that it might be a warg, but Silas recognised it as a devourer, a terrifying beast with huge jaws that could swallow someone whole. Lenny was ready to fight it, but the others were cautious and Katin suggested sneaking past it instead.
That might have worked, had Lenny not immediately fallen flat on his face and attracted the creature's attention. It leaped at him at once, its huge jaws open wide..."
There was a sigh as the audience realised Venno had stopped. He grinned. Nothing like a cliffhanger to bring people back next time.
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