I might give it to him when this is all over. It’s not like I’ll have a need for it back in Court.
Once he returned, it was quick to get going. Me, Silver, and Helen had already done our supply run, but if he needed anything, Brandon didn’t say. It was a hug for Sam as goodbye, a promise to stop by if I come back this way again, and we were off.
That first night was oddly quiet for us. We made camp away from the trade-road, and while I had a stew going, Helen had me and Silver practice our Aether skill. After eating, I practice my archery, focusing on the quick draw, not just the arrow, but equipping my bow. Without a third equipment build, I have to will my sword and shield back in inventory and summon the bow, and there’s a few seconds of disconnect once it’s in my hand, as if my mind takes its time registering it. I’d never noticed that until the dungeon where I found myself trying to switch from close combat to range after dispatching a creature that attacked me and the others were far enough away. The same happens when I switch to my sword and shield, but my skill’s higher there, so it hasn’t been affecting my fighting.
Through all that, Brandon is quiet. Not entirely silent, he thanks me when I hand him his food, minimally answers questions, but that isn’t our usual loud and vibrant Brandon.
The next night puts us close enough to a travel stop we could have reached it, but we camped well before it. After so many attacks in populated cities, or being conned away from the group, being among strangers no longer equates to being safe.
Over the fourth day of travel, Brandon regains some of his outgoingness. He asks me to predict the weather again, after we’ve eaten, offers to spar with me. He tells me to keep the ring on when I offer to take it off. I’m concerned he’s looking for payback for that punch, but it goes much the way it went before Louisville.
I end up on my ass just about every bout, but he doesn’t go for any underhanded, painful hits.
As we pack up on the fifth day, he looks at a map. “You should be getting close.”
I don’t ask where he got it. I mainly don’t want to know he manhandled someone for it. “How should we proceed?” He is the expert here.
“This old map has the city of Fort Knox mainly on the East side of the highway the trade road used to be, so we should get off it and head in that direction.”
“Aren’t ruins kind of hard to miss?” Silver asks. “There is a decent amount of traffic on this road, right? It wouldn’t be a trade road otherwise. Wouldn’t someone have seen a city that’s become a ruin?”
“Nothing says the entire city became the ruin,” he says. “Ruins tend to exist around a center point that was meaningful before the system, and spread from there. They act somewhat like civilizations levels of settlements and roads in that they keep the wilderness away, but they replace it with their own environment that is no safer. Without knowing what generated this ruin, there’s no way to know how close to the highway it was, and how far it spread. The more significant the location, the larger the ruin tends to be.”
“What are we looking for?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Ruins have a theme, but without knowing what’s at the center, what point of interest created it, there’s no way to tell what that is.”
“But it’s going to be surrounded by some sort of city, right?” Helen asks. “Like that Disney place. You talked about the city around the castle, with the weird creatures. Whatever made this ruin was in a city, so it will have kept that, won’t it?”
“Likely, but not certain. We don’t know the rules that govern how ruins come to exist. It’s going to take them forming while we are alive to study that, and I’m not going to be the one dealing with it. We don’t know enough to take anything for granted except that it is going to be a dangerous place, that it’s going to get more dangerous the closer we get to the center, and that it’s where the reward will be.”
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“Sounds like a dungeon,” Silver says.
“Yeah,” then he whispers, “except you can’t kill a ruin.” He puts the map away. “Best bet is to get off the road. Like Helen pointed out, if it could be seen from here, someone would have mentioned it at some point.”
The packing done, we head into the forest.
*
I had forgotten how exhausting bushwhacking was. We haven’t done any since Detroit, and the novelty of it then helped somewhat, I think. The woods also weren’t as thick, or as populated with wild, high-level animals. So many that I reach the sixth tier for my fighting creature quest. I need two more tiers before I get an ability point, and in this forest, that might happen a lot faster.
There’s still sunlight when we call it a day. There’s no telling if we’ll find another one before dark. It also has a stream close enough we hear it, and after the day it’s cool water is welcome. Brandon doesn’t tease me when we’re both in it, naked.
That takes me by surprise and I can’t tell if it’s because he isn’t back to his old self, or…I don’t know why. He knows I had sex with Sam and Silver. Maybe that’s it? I’m no longer a virgin, so teasing isn’t as…amusing?
After Silver and Helen have their turn, we fall into our usual camp routine, only we have more time for it. Food prep, training, eating, more training, reading. We take turns standing guard, and it isn’t the light affair it was in Ontario.
There are constant sounds. Not only the insects and rustling of the branches, or small animals scurrying in the underbrush. I feel something watching, hear its ponderous steps circling the clearing. Then it walks away.
What attacks the camp is a direwolf almost as tall at the shoulder as I am, and if not for my armor, it would have bitten my arm off. It still almost ripped it out of its socket before I managed to kill it. It’s fast enough it’s over before the other exit their tent, and they return in when I assure them I’m fine.
After a healing potion and a breather, I butcher it, get stew going for breakfast, and set the rest to dry.
Helen looks like she’d rather stay asleep when I wake her for her turn, but I don’t let her. I need my rest after that fight.
*
Brandon has me climb trees every few hours and look for any sign the forest gives way to something, but it’s just trees as far as the eye can see. He makes additions to the map and we continue.
It’s now obvious he doesn’t know how to search for it anymore than I do. Helen says we need to be systematic about it, but doesn’t have a workable way to do that. The work their parents do never involved something on this scale, so using ropes to mark out the area and subdividing that isn’t going to be doable.
I doubt we can find enough rope in Louisville to subdivide this entire forest. And after four days of this, and the fighting the animals, and the standing guard, it feels like that’s what it’s going to take. When Brandon mentions hearing a large animal during his turn standing guard, we all reveal we’ve heard it too, on different nights. We also all share the sense that it was watching.
Brandon doesn’t know what it might be, and without seeing it, we can’t identify it.
*
It might be following us.
It’s now been nine days since we left the road, and each night, one of us hears it, feels its eyes on us. That it hasn’t attacked speaks to either a level of intelligence wild animals aren’t supposed to have, or that it’s vegetarian.
That sparks a near argument. Why is it following us, Brandon argues, if we’re not a meal? Why hasn’t it attacked already, if we’re food? Helen counters. Silver suggests that it might not be the same animal, that maybe we happen to be traveling along a trail of them.
I stay out of it because the only thing I’ve been left certain of after the three ‘encounters’ I’ve had with it, is that there was intent in that sense of being watched. And intent means intelligence, not animal cunning, intelligence. Me and the others’ kind of intelligence. But animals aren’t supposed to be intelligent. Nothing in the wild is supposed to be.
Except, it’s not like we know everything about what the system did to the world when it arrived.
I don’t sleep well that night.
And the fact I don’t feel its eyes on me while I stand guard, don’t hear it walk, doesn’t help.
*
“It’s just trees,” I call from the top. “All the way to the mountain in the distance, trees. If I’m supposed to be able to see where the ruin is going to be, it’s not here.”
“Anything that looks like clearings?” Brandon calls back.
“Of course there are gaps here and there, but you said the ruin would be surrounded by something like buildings.”
“I’m guessing at that, Dennis. Just like we’re guessing, this is the ruin Aaron hinted at. The Nox might mean something entirely different.” Even he’s starting to sound discouraged.
Tonight is going to make the thirteenth night in the forest looking for something we aren’t even sure is there. A full treen of days and nothing to show for it.
I climb down. “Do we call this a bust?”
“You tell me. Poop’s on your case, not mine.”
“But if it’s not here,” Helen says, irritated, “wandering around isn’t helping anything.”
“Do we even have a hint as to where else it might be?” Silver asks.
“No.” I look at the sky. “This was the closest thing to a clue I came across. There’s still four hours or so before sundown. There’s a clearing in that direction. Let’s make camp there. Once we’ve rested and eaten, we’ll be in a better state to decide what to do.”
It’s about an hour in that direction before everything changes.
All of a sudden, I’m no longer in the forest. I’m standing at the edge of town straight out of a disaster movie.
“What the fuck?” Brandon says, appearing next to me, followed by Helen and Silver.
Author's Notes
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