text: With extreme caution, you bring your vehicle up to the edge of the airship and climb aboard. This man looks dangerous, and you feel as if any moment he's going to suddenly snap and lunge at you to consume your flesh for himself. Nobody could possibly be so calm munching upon the flesh of the dead. You hold your sword out in front of you and keep your distance from him.
  
  "You need not fear me," he says. The sight of your weapon does not appear to worry him. "I have no intention of feeding on you, girl. There is more than enough food to go on already." He nods towards the mound of rotting carcasses piled up across the ship.
  
  You gag on the smell, trying not to breathe. "What happened here?" you demand. "Are you responsible for all this?"
  
  He laughs shortly and takes another bite out of the severed arm at his feet, chewing slowly. "Unlikely. A third of the crew had already died before they let me out of the brig." The man gestures at the black spots covering his body. "Worked it out yet? It's a disease. I contracted it from one of the islands to the south, whilst on an exploration mission for the captain. Itches like hell."
  
  "And yet you're still alive."
  
  The man smiles. "That's the thing. I'm just the carrier, but I suffer no ill-effects apart from...what you see here, but...it's very, very contagious. The rest of the crew received a fatal dose of the infection as soon as I returned to the ship. It attacks the vital organs, you see. Shuts them down, one by one. Body stops working. You hardly know it's happening to you at all until the starvation starts settling in. You live a long time, but you're...not really living anymore..."
  
  He licks his cracked lips. "You asked me if I was responsible. Take a wild guess."
  
  You stare at him for a few moments, sitting here surrounded by bodies. The bodies of people who died as a result of the disease he brought on board. Slowly, the real horror of his words washes over you, and you start to back away. Have you been infected, too, just by coming on board this ship?
  
  "Oh, don't worry," the man says reassuringly. "I haven't infected you. Actually, I can't. The virus itself isn't active anymore. I think it's to do with the amount of dead tissue that I've taken into my body lately...but it's fine now. I can feel it. Doesn't get rid of the black spots though." He rubs at his cheeks self-consciously. "Still itches."
  
  You don't want to trust a single thing he says. Your life could be in danger, just by standing here talking to him. Is the virus spread through the air? You shuffle back towards your vehicle, not wanting to have anything more to do with this...this cannibal.
  
  "Why did you invite me on board?" you ask quietly. "Did you really think I wanted to hear your life story?"
  
  "No," he said simply. "I want you to do something for me." The man gets to his feet, and you tense unconsciously. "I've been here for so long, feeding off the dead. Too long. I want you to get me out of here. That vehicle of yours can support another passenger, so long as you don't go too fast."
  
  He takes another step towards you, eyes burning into yours. "I don't weigh much. Not anymore. I want you...to take me with you. You're a wanderer too, girl. You're trying to survive. I...can help you."
  > refuse and drive away from here as quickly as you can
  The sight of this cannibal gorging himself upon the bodies of his dead comrades sickens you to no end. You're not staying here a second longer. Without hesitation, you strap yourself back into your vehicle and fire up the engines, speeding as far away from the airship as you can. You can feel the man's gaze burn into your back as you depart.
  > proceed
  You continue to fly forward for about an hour, mindful that your craft is now losing altitude at a rapid pace. The gauges on the dashboard are showing warning signs, but you still don't understand what they mean. Power? Are you losing power now? You still haven't seen a single island since the last one, and there's nowhere for you to land at all... 
  
  The vehicle falls through the clouds, and you realise you are getting dangerously close to the surface. No. No, you can't go this way. You've already seen the kind of chaos that's happening down there. You saw every little part of it with the captain on the airship. Your place is up in the sky, among an island where you belong... 
  
  Your vessel runs out of power, and now you are veering towards the rocky ground below at a deadly speed. Frantically, you try every button and dial which makes any kind of sense. Anything. There has to be something which can slow down your descent. This isn't what you wanted at all. Parachutes? Destabilisation of air pressure? No, of course not, of course this type of vehicle isn't designed for going anywhere near the surface... 
  
  You're so close to the surface of the planet now. You can see people down there. Buildings burned to the ground, screams and crying, the lava flow from an erupted volcano, mass flooding from the rising sea level... It's not a place where you could ever survive. You need to stay in the skies. You need to stay up here... 
  
  The noise from below gets louder and louder until it becomes almost unbearable. Your vehicle is not going to stop. Praying very slightly, you brace yourself for a crash landing.
  > proceed
  The impact is tremendous sending multiple shockwaves through your vehicle as it crashes into the ground, continuing forward for several more metres before coming to a grinding halt. Waves of pain wash over you, and for several long seconds you cannot move at all. You feel as if you have broken several bones in your body. Smoke billows out from the front of your vehicle, and you see that the exterior has been completely ripped apart. At the same time, it has cushioned the blow for you.
  
  You are alive. You can hardly acknowledge the fact, but you are alive. Sparks fly from the dashboard, igniting another smaller fire within the interior, and you force yourself to get to your feet. Agony rushes through your body at every little movement, prompting a scream from your throat. You grit your teeth and keep moving. You need to survive.
  
  You manage to force open the door. It's so badly damaged from the crash that it practically falls off its hinges. You can hear the screams from here.
  
  The ground is blackened and burnt, and not because of the impact of your arrival. No, it was already like this. You have landed at the edge of what used to be a peaceful village. Buildings lie in ruins, farm animals lie dead on their side or half-devoured, and any crops have long since been the victim of multiple fires which raged here.
  
  There are people around you.
  
  They do not look like people. Humans, yes. You haven't seen a human being for a long time, but you know what a rational person look like and these are different from that. Their clothes are ripped and torn, their skin covered by a mesh of angry black spots which suggest the telltale designs of disease, and there is a frenzy in their eyes which frightens you beyond anything you have witnessed so far.
  
  The people around you have not reacted to your crash landing. They are screaming at the top of their voices, wielding vicious blades in their hands, and killing each other on sight. Countless corpses litter the blackened ground as far as the eye can see, like the gruesome remnants of some kind of battlefield. It's as if a war is going on, but you can see here that the war is purely internal.
  
  You see two men beating another to death with a hatchet. A crowd of children have surrounded a woman and are stabbing her repeatedly, all with the same murderous frenzy in their eyes. Three girls are gouging out the eyes of a bystander. A strange haze has settled upon this place, this peaceful village that saw no such violence before. Everything has gone out of control. You knew the situation on the surface was dire, but you had no idea that it had escalated to such extremes...
  
  Desperately, you run for the safety of your aerial vehicle, even though there is no chance of getting it off the ground anymore. You can't take this. This is not an atmosphere in which you can survive. The people around you do not look as if they have eaten for days, a fact which hardly seems to bother them as they repeatedly murder each other on the spot with little regard as to the consequences. You are stranded on the surface of a world gone insane, and little hope remains to you at all.
  
  You limp forward a few more steps before the pressure on your broken leg sends you crashing to the ground. The pain flares up anew, and you claw at the dirt around you. Your hands grasp at the morbid remains of a grinning human skull.
  
  The humans turn around at the noise of your fall and shamble forward slowly, before charging towards you in a frenzy of bloodlust. All of them are already covered by vicious cuts and wounds which would usually kill a normal person, but these people do not seem to notice their injuries. They are far too gone. No semblance of reason remains in their minds. Not anymore.
  
  The last thing you see is the irrational hatred and rage burning in their eyes, before your body is hacked to pieces by the inhabitants of the surface. Your screams are lost in a storm of mindless insanity which has already engulfed everything around you, mind and soul. You perish here, upon arrival.