Prologue: The tabletop game of doom

The man carried a suitcase into a sales meeting where a hundred and five people discussed a contingency plan. All of them stared at the man in a suit when he opened the door, sat with his back against the PowerPoint presentation and opened his suitcase.

This building required ID. Nobody doubted that he was supposed to be inside, but in this room, he certainly did not belong, and even less in that position. The suitcase opened side to side and a relief sprouted from within with the shape of a landscape. It seemed to be sunny and there seemed to be air and clouds floating above the suitcase. It looked like a miniature greenery lit by a floating light bulb simulating a tiny sun.

"Gather around! Let's play a game!", the man said no more than ten seconds from having sat where he was not invited. People were actually interested and the words of rejection that would have naturally come were instead substituted for an unnatural interest to witness this unnatural phenomenon.

"What is that?", asked a short woman who could not see due to the dense crowd, but found no response. And as they neared the front, the man pulled a tiny bag from his pocket and from the bag extracted a deck of cards. He spread a group of four cards in front of the landscape on his suitcase, right on the table, and they also had reliefs, each carrying a different figure. There was a fat joker with a serious face, a smiling skinny masked man in purple, a butterfly-winged fairy in black and white, and a lion-headed burly man.

"Whoever wins this game shall live for all eternity", he announced. "The rules are simple." When he finished speaking, he raised his arms side by side as if to fly and the four cards started floating. Then, they faded into nothingness.

Nothing happened at first, but the sound of the wind was increasing in volume. Dampness filled the air and a strange smell of vegetation was brought to everyone's nose. In a few seconds, they noticed that they had unknowingly been transported into a new world. There were no walls around them but an endless sunset sky and a valley filled with countless tiny rivers that led together into a forest.

From the sky echoed the words of the man in the office.

"Live and you shall live", he said and spoke no more, leaving a feeling of impending doom into these hundred and five men and women who stood alone and disoriented in a strange land.

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Chapter I: The wandering joker

Chapter II: The smiling bandit

Chapter III: The fair fairy

Chapter IV: The lion's head

Epilogue: God's hunger

(Soon...)

_{Image taken from Pixabay}