My feet touched down on a metal platform. It was solid, but wobled under my weight. The platform sink under my feet and a sharp hissing noise followed. Suddenly, the bright light in front of my eyes was interupted by dark lines that rose from the floor to the ceiling. There was a clanging noise and everything was still.
I shook my head clear and I checked my surroundings. I was in a small capsule with the only opening directly in front of me, now blocked by iron bars. Beneath me the floor shifted with every footstep. It took me a moment to realise that I was in a trap.
Anyone that would link to Riven using the Descriptive Book would arrive at this very point. So someone had constructed a cage surrounding the area. The moment a weight was present on the floor, the bars in front of me would raise blocking off the only way out.
I tried to look around the confined prison for some kind of release mechanism. There was always the possibility that someone could accidentally be trapped in here, so maybe there was a means inside the cage to release myself. I performed a brief surface scan of the cage with my hands, but didn't find anything.
Outside the cage about ten feet away was a large switch set into the ground. It looked like it could be the mechanism to open the cage. Maybe that was the key to opening it.
I heard footsteps arriving and I backed up against the curved wall in an effort to hide. From the right side of the bars a man appeared dressed in some sort of official uniform. He wore a heavy ivory colored coat with long tails, and a brown leather cap with earflaps and a pentagon symbol on front, possibly denoting some form of authority. His tanned face and long hair appeared weathered as if he had spent a good deal of time outdoors. He wore brown pants and leather boots with strange decorations on the shaft, making jingling noises as he walked. At his side was a sword in a leather sheath. I assumed from the way he was dressed that he was a guard of some sort. It took me a second to realize that this was the first new person I had come in contact with in almost twenty days.
The guard walked almost in a daze. He glanced around the area not really expecting to find anything out of the ordinary. Suddenly, his eyes turned to the cage and he snapped back to attention upon seeing me inside.
He cautiously approached the cage and spoke up. "Chooh?" He took another step closer. "Fa'lleah?"
I couldn't comprehend the language so I remained quiet. He repeated "Fa'lleah" again making me wonder if this was a greeting of some sort.
The guard noticed my hesitation and appeared to be slighly frustrated with my lack of acknowledgement. This time he began to carefully choose his words. It was as if he knew I didn't understand their language. I imagine he knew that anyone caught in this trap would be an outside of some sort. "Tagamma", he said. "Tachoa".
"Tagama, le so megohah," he said. His eyes then looked down to the linking book that I held in my left hand. "Lesesip," he said. He walked closer to the cage with his arms held up as if I was a wild animal. "Mutigoto," he said as he moved closer. "Mogo boani, mogo boani".
His hands then darted inside the cage and grabbed the linking book--the prison book I need to trap Gehn. We both struggled for the book and he started yelling, "Mogo boani!" The book slipped from my hands and it clanged against the cage bars as he pulled it outside.
The guard backed away as I reached my arm through the bars. "Give it back!" I yelled. I didn't know if he knew English or not, but he was well aware nonetheless that in my current confinement I was no threat to him. He stood just out of my reach flipping through the pages of the prison book. I wondered if he could even read the writing.
Off in the distance I heard a whooshing noise. The guard flinched and reached up towards the back of his head. The book dropped from his hands onto the ground and he began to stagger. He turned towards the right side of the cage beyond my field of vision and collapsed on the ground. I could only see his lifeless legs from the cage and the linking book that sat right next to his foot.
I heard more footsteps, and I noticed the body of the guard was slowly being dragged off to the right. I tried to get close enough to the bars to see what was happening with little success. The sound of the body being dragged stopped and suddenly another man came into my view.
He appeared to be a guard or a solider of an army. The shirt appeared to be a studded leather armor with a red sash going diagonally across his chest. On his head he wore a leather helmet that covered his eyes with protective goggles. In his hand was a large sickle blade, and strapped to his back was a long, thin blowdart gun. The man was silent as he picked up the linking book and walked back to the large lever. He pushed the lever in the opposite direction and the cage in front of me began a slow descent.
As the cage lowered the man crouched down and placed an object in the switch mechanism. He then used the blund end of the sickle blade to pound the object into the switch. He replaced the blade in a holster, picked up the book, and ran off outside my field of view.
"Wait," I yelled. The cage had only halfway lowered at this point so there was no way I could stop him. As soon as my legs had clearance I jumped out of my cell and looked off to my right. My rescuer was nowhere to be found.
Directly in front of me was a set of stone steps that climed up the side of a steep hill. Figuring this was the way the attacker went I ran up the steps. At the top of the steps was an entrance to a cave recessed into the side of the mountain, and a bridge crossing a ravene. Ahead of me the stairs continued down along the side of the mountain. I went down the stairs thinking the man went down this path as well. The stairs lead down to a small landing. At the side of the mountain was an entrance to a cave blocked by a wooden door. The door was kept shut by a padlocked chain. I pulled at the door to test the strength of the padlock but it wouldn't yield.
I looked along the rocks on the ledge and out to the ocean. The masked man was nowhere in sight. I had been on Riven for less than five minutes and I had already lost the linking book to trap Gehn.
This was going to be much more difficult than the other Ages.