Alesha glanced around furtively, eyes scanning her surroundings. Hisss.
Stones.
Not what she needed. Gasp.
Trees.
Not what she was looking for. Pant.
Bushes.
That wasn't it either. Hiss, pant, hiss.
She started running around, tripping over herself in her reckless pursuit of that unknown something, breathing in quick, shallow gasps.
She needed it, she needed it!
But was it she needed?
What was it her instincts craved?
It wasn't food, it wasn't sleep, it wasn't companionship.
So what was it?
All she found were more stones, dirt, trees and bushes.
None of it was what she longed for.
If Rogork said anything during this time, she didn't notice.
She had descended into irrationality, unable to process conscious thought.
In this way, driven by instinct, Alesha wandered in a frantic, drunken-like state in search of her unidentifiable craving.
--
She woke up some time later in the most bizarre ruins she'd ever seen.
As she looked around, what Alesha saw both awed and terrified her. It was a barely-recognizable wreck... albeit a chaotically beautiful one. Buildings were crusted over with an incomprehensible array of substances -- some reflective, some matte; some voluminous and soft, others dense and hard; in every color of the rainbow.
The city had turned into gold, charcoal, oxidized copper, metamorphic rock, somehow-still-fluffy cotton balls, chitin, sponges, mica, ruby, bone, basalt, petrified wood and more. In some places, the buildings had strange holes with unreadable remnants of... something. It was hard to say what had caused those bizarrely shaped holes, even up close.
What remained of the city's inhabitants, and perhaps the participants in a war long past, gradually revealed themselves as she navigated the ruined city. Bleached skeletons of alien beasts and humans alike littered the streets. Statues of people ran, screamed, or cowered in fear.
Some of these statues were partially decayed, as if a person had been petrified only halfway, died, and either been partially eaten or left to rot many years ago. Alesha came to this conclusion after discovering one particular statue. The man's lower two-thirds was made entirely of obsidian coated with blue glass beads, but in a steep jagged diagonal going from the left shoulder to right hip, the statue ended. Where the shoulder was, the scapula and half-broken clavicle jutted out from the obsidian. The same was true of the partially torn-off rib cage, vertebrae, and unbroken hips; some scattered bones that might have been the man's lay nearby, but most of them were missing.
Alesha shuddered. What an unpleasant way to die.
Before she had traveled far from the partially obsidian man, Alesha's heart skipped a beat when she rounded a corner and found a six-legged beast frozen mid-lunge almost directly in front of her.
It resembled a wingless dragon with four forelegs. One of its clawed hands was fully extended towards a statue of a woman, who cradled her arms as if to protect a child, although nothing was there. The beast's greedy maw glinted bronze, almost on top of the woman, its polished surface contrasting with the dull green of her huddled figure, which was coated with decades-old felt. The sight was striking. If it weren't for the fact that this was the aftermath of an actual battle, Alesha might have mistaken the pair for a high-end art display at some famous museum.
At this point, Alesha was beginning to wonder where she was. Zorhellian had claimed he'd send her near an inhabited zone, but where were the people?
[Correction: he said he'd send you near a "habitable" zone, not an "inhabited" zone. Looks like you've been baited!]
Alesha groaned, realizing Rogork was right. She'd been tricked. And it was such a cheap trick, too! Was Zorhellian being petty about her having won the Games after Toltura pulled strings?
That wasn't even her fault!
Sighing, she returned her attention to the ruined city.
Plants of species she had never seen before grew large, as if they had been there for a long time. A towering sunflower-like plant with petals that looked like the night sky and a chalky white stalk, its bark textured with intricate embossed swirls, was the tallest of these.
An entire block had been overgrown with periwinkle blue vines that pulsed like blood vessels, and a chorus of eerie whistles in discordant tones came from the stalks of orange-tinted hollow grasses off to her left as the wind blew rustled their open tops. In the distance, a beautiful golden tree grew elegantly, its large white leaves growing in such a way so as to create the illusion that the tree's boughs were actually several sets of wings spread protectively over the rubble.
"There's no way, right?" Alesha muttered, a suspicion gnawing at the back of her mind. "That'd be way too cliche."
Still, she approached the marvelous tree, half expectant. She searched underneath it.
"Haha, didn't think so," she laughed, feeling disappointed nonetheless. She shook her head and told herself it had been a childish suspicion to begin with. Why would the egg of a mystical creature appear here? It was the aftermath of a war, not a video game or some protagonist-centric book.
[I wonder...] Rogork said pensively.
"Don't get my hopes up," Alesha snapped.
*****
[Ding! New Quest Available!]
[Quest: Egg Hunting
Goal: Find an egg hidden under the tree
Quest Conditions: Within the next ten minutes, locate the hidden egg
Reward: A confetti popper
Penalty: Rogork spends 15 Chaos Energy for you
Failure Condition(s): Fail to find an egg near the tree within the given time]
*****
"Seriously??" Alesha asked, padding over on all four legs. She hadn't tried polymorphing again since the first time had gone so poorly.
For the next ten minutes, Alesha spared no effort in searching for the egg. She tried sniffing it out, peeling away moss and digging up dirt, even looking in the tree's boughs. But nothing worked.
Eventually, she failed the quest.
"Be honest, was there even an egg there to begin with?" Alesha asked.
[Nope!] Rogork said cheerily.
"Great. You can assign fraudulent quests now. Whoopee!" Her sarcastic reply came.
[Penalty complete!] Rogork said. [You now have one more Chaos Skill, you're welcome!]
Alesha sighed and pulled up the relevant information.
*****
Chaotic Hypnosis
--Host can hypnotize people, targeting specific memories/actions, but what exactly happens is more than a bit random. How it makes them behave, what they believe as a result of the hypnotism; they can even get minor powers or curses from it.
*****
She really didn't see the use for such a skill, but it was definitely in line with what she understood about Rogork.
"Congratulations," she muttered. "Yay me! I'm a little more chaotic now! Woohoo!"
Rogork, wisely, did not respond while she was in such a mood.