Ultima: Howls from the Moongate

It's yet another Friday night, and I've gotten bored of playing the usual Fallout New Vegas and Doom 3, and I was in the mood for an older RPG. I had a small collection of retro games and there weren't any RPGs worth playing in there.

"Jake, you still there?" I got a message on Steam, it was from my friend, Damien.

"Yeah" I texted back. Damien was my best friend since the beginning of highschool, he was kind of a wierd guy, but a good friend.

I was searching my NES collection for a game to play, when one game caught my eye. Ultima: Warriors of Destiny. It wasn't a very good game in my opinion, but then again I didn't play much of it, and maybe if I put some more time into it, my mind would change. I popped the game into my NES which was hooked up to my PC set up, and turned it on.

"You wanna play some GTA later?" Said Damien.

"No, I'm gonna play some NES" I replied.

"Can you stream it?" He texted back.

"Sure," I began a stream on Twitch, Damien was the only one watching.

With a few blows into the cartridge, and a few restarts, the title screen appeared. The options of 'Journey on' and 'Begin a new journey' were present. I chose to begin a new game, and the character generation screen popped up.

In the beginning of the game, you have to answer a few questions to determine what your stats would be. These questions would ask what you would do in hypothetical situations such as: Thy commrade is injured in battle, but thy enemy is close by, doth thy retreat, or help thy friend.

"Wow, pretty creepy questons," Damien typed. I didn't know what he was talking about, the question wasn't creepy in any way, but I ignored it, I knew what I was reading, and I moved on. I finished the character generation and the game started. My stats resembled the stats of a Thief, high Dexterity, but not much strength.

"What the hell?" Damien exclaimed.

"What, its just the stats screen," I replied.

"Don't you see that face?" He typed.

"What face, that's just the Avatar," I typed with a sigh. The Avatar looked normal, blonde hair, heroic face, nothing wrong.

"Don't you see that?" He typed.

"Whatever," I kept playing. After traveling and looking for my objective, an enemy appeared, and began to attack me.

"Holy shit!" Damien piped up.

"Seriously, stop, it's not funny anymore," I replied. I was getting tired of his shit.

"That's it, I'm outta here," Damien left. The next day I went to Damien's house, and asked him about what happened. I was just playing the game normally, and I was curious to see what he was so scared about. The night of the incident he recorded a majority of the stream.

The video was completely different from what I was seeing. The Avatar's face didn't even resemble a human face, it was thin, doglike, and with wide, detailed eyes. No matter what angle you looked at the picture, it always looked as if it was staring into your eyes. Damien sped up the video to the part where I encountered the enemy. As I was walking about the woods, there was no cheesy, high fantasy music, only a deep rumble that occured at random intervals. Out of nowhere, a large, lanky, and grey, figure, pounced on the group and defeated them in no time at all. I could see the chat in this recording, and all those messages made since. After the creature was done with the group, it stopped for a moment, then turned its head towards the screen, as if it were staring at me, or rather Damien, shortly after, the video ended. Needless to say, my blood had ran cold.

I apoligized for being such a dick and not listening to him, and we never understood why that happened. In fact, we haven't spoken about it since the day he showed me that video, but occasionally, it'll cross my mind, and those eyes will keep me up, that empty stare. When I think about it, it makes me feel as if it is still watching me, and when I close my eyes to sleep, I see those empty, souless eyes, staring at me.