Interactive Quest the cave full of ravens

In Sussuro Fields is a cave and a tree. Within the tree rests a raven. She sits upon the cuckoo’s nest and watches you draw near. Within her beak is a crimson jewel, bright as a droplet of blood. Her eyes glitter as black beads may. She watches you from where you stand gazing, up, up, up that reaching trunk. Her stolen nest is the crown atop the ascending black trunk. Branches reach as twisted, gnarled arms and bear a thousand more black nests. Yet she sits in the best, the thickest nest of all.

Below her arching branch, the cave maw opens wide its mouth. From within that gaping maw gold glitters like a tongue. Diamond pillars hang like teeth, glittering, coaxing.
The crow tilts her head and her gaze is bright and keen. Down from her stolen nest she swoops and where she sat are jewels aplenty. Golden chains, diamonds and strange things, wonderful things that gleam and dance between the spring sun’s glow. Into the cave she flies, her ruby still gleaming, blood red and savage within her beak. She streaks like a shadow through the black cave’s maw. Her silhouette dances over the sea of jewels like a witch over hot coals.

The raven caws and the cave repeats her cry. It beckons, no, summons you forward. It demands you step within the cave to view her wares. Step in, step in... her raven voice sings, desiring.

She keeps her ruby in her beak and in the dim light it blinks, wet like blood. With each step you take into the cave, bravely, boldly, candles light along the rough hewn walls. Deeper and deeper the cave sinks darkness swallowing stone until the cave’s throat disappears.

So many gems cover the floor that to walk here is to stand upon a carpet of treasure. Every piece gleams and begs you to pick it up, in the reflections of their gleaming sides are the wings of ravens and of crows. There is a chink as the crow at last drops her ruby. It skitters and tumbles down, down, down the mounds of treasure.

The carpet of loot begins to rattle and rise as something moves beneath the surface. It slips and weaves it’s way closer, closer to the fallen ruby. Jewels part and from their midst a serpent rises to swallow down the ruby like a mouse. From its parted teeth (layers of two and three and four fangs - sharp and wicked) are strings of beads of gleaming poison. They are pure like pearls.

The serpent disappears and your eye land upon a filigree statue. It is a raven with outstretched wings. It reaches into the air, though vines are tied about its limbs. One look closer reveals they are not vines at all but serpents, serpents that wrap tight, right about the gilded raven’s feet. It is immortalised in its struggle to be free. In its mouth is a gem - another ruby, bigger, brighter - a pool of blood. Instinct has you reaching for the ruby, and you take it from the gilded raven’s beak.

But, oh, soon the cave begins to echo with the noise of falling gems. And the serpents about the frozen raven begin to stir, they unwind from the creature’s feet and suddenly the gold bird blinks, its eyes, its feathers, its wings begin to turn to black. Rapidly he returns to life as ebony paints him like ink. Metal wings turn to feathers, black as pitch, and suddenly the bird is free. The serpents that held it captive spin away, slithering eagerly and rapidly toward the fallen ruby resting at your feet. Others begin to look out from the now clattering, trembling carpet of treasure. They surge toward you and the raven who lead you here is swooping toward her newly freed partner. They caw in laughter at you as the serpents loom, with mouths parted and fangs that promise poison bites set to turn you to gold. There is no escape on foot, all the carpet is moving as the whole floor slithers with hundreds of serpents racing toward their ruby prize.

Fly! Fly! the freed raven caws as he swoops with his mate from the cave. The serpents close in, desperate for their ruby, desperate for another statue of gold.