Your character has just arrived in a swampy, dim town. As they look around, their gaze is met with shacks and cabins. It smells of rotted wood and wet moss. They duck and step into a tattered tent, illuminated by a series of candles suspended in the air. At the back of the tent, an old hag raises her head, “What brings you to this dingy town? She begins, then pauses to study your face—”Ah, it’s you. I’ve been expecting you. Sit,” she gestures at a cushion, “Tell me your story.”
((How do you respond?))
"I'm here so you would tell me that, hag, " Ars said, digging in his pockets until he felt the cool metal of the coin. He placed it in front of the hag and sat down.
Ars had heard of the fortune teller around these parts for days; he had expected her to look more like some mystic—draped in strange silks, adorned with charms and trinkets, eyes clouded with prophecy. Instead, she was just an old woman in a threadbare cloak, smelling of damp earth and candle smoke. No different than any other hag he has seen before.
The hag’s lips curled into something that wasn’t quite a smile. "I only know who you will be , Ars Vursira," she said, her voice carrying the weight of something distant. "Not who you are now."
Ars sighed, he somehow had a felling that she was lying about the last part, yet he decided to play along.
"Ars Vursia, grew up on a farm a few days of travel from here. Me, my dad and my mother. Sometimes also some of my father's old friends, would tell me stories of their fights and stuff. Heard the war is boiling over, thought of coming here and seeing if could get something out of it."
"Fortune?" the hag asked, faking intrigue.
"I don't know, just had a felling. Is that enough to hear my future? "
The hag chuckled, " You will be hated and hunted by many, even loved by some. however, the line between the two will be thin."
"Who exactly will be hunting me? and why?" Ars asked, failing to mask his curiosity.
"Those whose blood you will spill, of course " the hag chuckled only for a second before her eyes refocused on distant again, "You will stand among ruins, some of your own making, others not. "
Ars was starting to feel a knot tighten in his stomach, the weight of her words settling in like a damp chill creeping through his clothes, "Ruins of what?" he asked, not expecting a response and not getting one.
"While standing between those ruins, you will fell hunger. A great and heavy hunger. In those ruins your hunger will become stronger, unbearable and unsatiable. And you will fail in satiating it, for you will not know what the hunger is demanding. You will try feeding it still, with ruin, blood, you will even try feeding it ... yourself." the eyes of the hag seemed to lose grasp on the distant they were so focused on, taking a tint of fear in them instead. She looked up towards him.
Ars stared as well but only for a moment, he was irritated. He had come here for answers even for guidance if he could find it, yet this hag was not telling him anything useful. Who will he kill, what ruins will be among and more importantly what ruins will he create. What would this hunger of his demand, if not more more ruin or blood. Would the two choices even be two to begin with? What will he feed of himself to this hunger?
"What does the mean hag! " he yelled, the hag didn't flinch. Her eyes focused on him, piercing trough and seeing the working of his own mind that not even he could.
"You must not witness it, Ars Vursira, you must not!" she yelled back.
He stopped, confused. She did not speak of anything to be witnessed. "Witness what?"
"Their deaths." she whispered, looking away from him downwards.
Ars did not get to ask whos death before the hag got up with an uncanny speed for her feeble body. She rushed towards one of the tent flaps and went outside.
He followed a second behind her, but the hag was gone.
She hadn't even took her payment off the floor.
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