The basket that lowered me to the sanctuary was no longer there. Above, the crane and platform loomed, and I realized Toadkiller had probably raised it back up. After moving beneath its general location, I grabbed stones and tossed them upwards. Judging by their fall, I determined where to stand to be directly beneath the platform above.

  My positioning needed to be precise with Hot Air. Without magic in my repertoire, I didn’t have Slipstream for a safety net. If I only had one shot with Hot Air in a world without a sun, I needed to use it with precision. If it bore me into the air and the cliff’s top lay beyond my grasp, other magics couldn’t bridge the gap.

  I fashioned a double-bowline knot in the way Lloyd had taught me. Half of his sailing lessons revolved around passenger-overboard drills, insisting every Hawkhurst citizen understood the basics of retrieving someone from the water. Part of the process involved knowing how to make the proper knot, which I wrapped under my legs and shoulders for a primitive harness.

  I tied my grappling hook to the other end. Hot Air might raise me to the correct height, but I’d need to pull myself horizontally to reach the cliff’s safety.

  The platform stood about five stories high. Hot Air gave 10 seconds for every blessed follower. With Fabulosa gone, it reduced my hang time to 70 seconds for a maximum of 210 feet.

  The blessing bore me upward, and I double-checked the lines to make sure none of them entangled after lifting off the ground. Lloyd had also taught us how to toss lines, so I correctly carried them in a loose loop to maximize my reach with the grappling hook.

  Luckily, my precautions were unnecessary, as my accuracy in hitting the platform proved almost dead-on. Hot Air lifted me beneath its lower supports, which I could easily climb.

  Before I canceled the effect, the blessing’s interface element showed over a minute left on the blessing’s duration—20 seconds longer than it should have been. I shrugged off the discrepancy, happy enough to have reached the platform.

  After I put away my rope and climbed up to the platform’s supports, over the rail, and to the upper level of the mesa. I gauged the distance. It looked like about a five-story drop. Did Banishment somehow augment blessings?

  I checked my interface clock, but none of the numbers worked. Being Banished obviously affected time, which made sense—how could we have clocks without days or nights?

  Another confirmation about how time flowed came when I noticed Hot Air’s cooldown had reset. Not only did the blessing last longer, but its cooldown had collapsed to less than half a minute. I invoked it again and mentally counted off 24 seconds before it reset.

  I connected the dots to solve the mystery behind my inconsistent cooldowns—for every second I spent in Banishment, an hour passed in Miros.

  With only two players left, I might not make it to Hawkhurst before winning the contest. Darkstep might die of old age. Did this mean that time was back on my side? Somehow, it seemed too good to be true. Why would Darkstep send me to Banishment if he knew I could outwait him? No, he had aces up his sleeve. He probably figured out a game mechanic that gave him eternal youth or figured out how to freeze himself in suspended animation.

  With only two people left, Darkstep wouldn’t have taken chances. If my opponent planned for longevity, so too did I need to survive.

  Standing at the top of the mesa, overlooking the bughouse, I still couldn’t hear the howl of wind in my ears. It felt like I’d stepped into a surreal, artsy-fartsy foreign film. One that critics and historians lauded but needed explanations.

  If I could thaw out Dead Ice, I could survive Banishment.

  With only two players left, I needed to reach Hawkhurst first. Everything depended on returning to my old settlement, where Holy Smoke would deus ex machina me back to Miros. Starving in a wasteland without my void bag was no way to lose the contest. Without access to food and water, I saw no reason to delay my journey.

  Even though I knew it wouldn’t work, I tried to summon Jasper. After Familiar fizzled, I walked back to Oxum beneath a silent and vacant sky. The walk back to town measured the same distance, though the blurry vegetation made it difficult to remember the scenery—even though I’d made the same journey earlier this morning.

  The grass and weeds were slippery, and the greenery blurred my vision and undermined my footing. When I reached down to feel, I felt resistance to feeling individual blades or leaves. It wasn’t a hard barrier, like a Wall of Force, but a slippery evasion, as if my fingers couldn’t touch anything alive.

  When I found a depression in the mesa that had once been a small pond, I felt the same slippery force instead of wetness. I cupped my hands and dripped my canteen in the space where a pond had been. Only a vacuum of resistant nothingness stirred against my fingers.

  Returning to Hawkhurst wasn’t possible. With only a week’s worth of food, I could ration my supplies, even though journeying meant heavy exertion. But not having access to water meant death. I wouldn’t be able to make it to Hawkhurst without more water.

  I achieved surer footing on the flagstones of Oxum’s ancient road. The theory of being out of phase with living creatures gained more traction when I reached the town’s empty center. Oxum gave the impression of being a dead town, but Banishment made it really fit the description. Parts of its buildings shimmered and blurred, but their heavier components, like chimneys and foundations, stayed in focus.

  I found no food or loose artifacts in Oxum. The interior features were dark blurs, and not even glow stones gave definition to anything. It seemed living things muddled the environment, even in settlements as dead as Oxum.

  The town’s mailbox still stood by the pavilion in the town’s inner circle. Crimson had shut down the contest’s chat interface, but maybe Darkstep had sent me a letter explaining himself or congratulating me for making it to the final two.

  But the mailbox didn’t work. Either the system depended on magic or my state of being prevented its operation.

  Even though the sky didn’t darken at night, the day’s exertions wore on me. My Dark Room rope belting my waist offered no place to rest without magic to activate it. Instead, I returned to the rickety old barn I stayed in the night before. The hay made a strange, blurry bed, and climbing into it felt insensate, like floating on a cloud of cotton.

  The hay shifted and moved beneath me, and I slept poorly.

  I dimly hoped a full night’s rest would reset my spells or rid myself of my debuff, but the same bright sky glowered over me after I finished my nap. Had I even slept eight hours? I couldn’t tell without my interface clock. If people in the Arctic Circle could accustom themselves to months of unending sunlight without going crazy, I could make do.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  No sounds greeted me the following morning, not even animals. Banishment meant complete isolation.

  The rations in my inventory tasted good, but I ate without enjoyment and returned down the ramp to the marina at the mesa’s bottom. The marina presented another round of strange challenges. Blurry skiffs tethered to the docks disappeared or reappeared, often many times at once. The marina itself wasn’t at the bottom of anything. Without the aerocline, it, too, blurred. It hovered in midair 300 feet over a vast plain below.

  I checked all my powers, but Hot Air looked to be the only mechanic suitable for breaking my fall. Before using it, I tested the aerocline. Just because I couldn’t see fog didn’t mean I could breathe it.

  Standing at the bottom of the ramp, I looked down. No monsters, brill, or zombies occupied the space where the aerocline ought to be, so it seemed safe enough. Even though none of the dank, choking vapors assailed my lungs, I affixed the mask over my face before testing.

  More weirdness caught my attention. I activated Hot Air to test it, but the interface showed a 110-second duration, 20 seconds longer than yesterday. It seemed Forren had added blessed followers. It gave me ample time to return to the ramp if the fog still caused breathing problems.

  After hooking to the cliff wall, I descended 60 feet without problems. I removed the mask before returning to the ramp.

  I counted 24 seconds before the blessing returned. At least the cooldown remained constant. I took a running jump and cast myself into the aerocline. When I neared the bottom, I activated Hot Air and gently floated the rest of the way. No matter the elevation, I had no issues with breathing.

  After touching down, my first thought about returning home assumed a direct, southerly approach, but I needed food and, more importantly, water. It was cutting it close to travel with only one week’s worth of rations.

  Luckily, I knew of unguarded gear relatively nearby.

  Without the aerocline, Fabulosa and Audigger’s equipment rested near Farseed harbor. Though the bundles contained untold amounts of exotic objects, the most valuable items to me were their traveling rations.

  If I hurried, I could make it to Farseed in a couple of days. My map interface revealed the trail I’d sailed two days ago. Despite the strangeness of my environment, I wouldn’t get lost.

  The canyon to the south of Oxum also served as a subtle hint that the easier way out of Blyeheath lay westward. I began my hike to Farseed.

  Blyeheath’s topography looked like a cartoon desert, although it wasn’t as hot or as humid as my first crossing. Hot Air helped me make quick work of ravines. Buttes jutting up from the desert’s floor formed oversized forests of stone, and I walked through its rock pillars without incident.

  Without the danger of floating monsters, I crossed 25 miles of Blyeheath in a single day, sleeping beneath the sky’s relentless brightness with blankets over my head.

  I reached Farseed soon enough. Unlike Oxum’s marina, the town’s pier rested on ten-story pilings trussed by beams and supports. It looked too tall to support itself, yet it neither swayed nor showed signs of collapse.

  Using the coordinates I’d noted before, I searched the wide area beneath the eastern dock but found only two broken cores. I found nothing else. Without Mineral Communion, I couldn’t gaze into the past and see if Darkstep, Duchess, or Toadkiller retrieved them. Perhaps an enterprising NPC found the gear, dragging treble hooks through the area or wearing a suit capable of protecting someone in the deep aerocline.

  I had only five days of food and water left.

  After giving up my search, I ascended the steep incline to Farseed. The silent ghost town exhibited the same strange vacancy as Oxum. As I left the settlement, food and water capped my list of concerns.

  I turned to the southeast, circling the mighty peaks of Mount Grenspur clockwise in the reverse direction I’d taken before.

  Without the Dark Room, I camped beneath the unrelenting brilliance of the void. No insects bothered me. The food from my inventory and sore legs seemed my only tether to existence. Mile upon mile, I journeyed toward the settlement I once called home.

  Mount Grenspur’s silhouette served as a visual navigation point and a mark of progress as I wound south toward the Orga River valley.

  Not finding gear in the aerocline had dealt a significant setback, forcing me to test the limits of Dehydration by drinking less water.

  With lowered stats and only a health pool of 250, I couldn’t afford more than one day in a row of Dehydration. This wasn’t a debuff I wanted to risk stacking. Besides, I felt confident my stat losses compounded every day. The test taught me what I needed to know—I had less than twelve days of half-rations before I incurred severe penalties to my stats. The test results weren’t promising. It had taken me that much time with my magic the first time I’d made the journey.

  My situation worsened the further south I traveled. The blurry undergrowth became more opaque, making movement much more difficult. I recognized the conical shapes to be evergreens.

  Slippery blurs of trees, grass, and bushes slowed me. Foliage became a confused form of intangible obstacles. Dark blurs of tree trunks felt solid but not quite tactile, and my hands slid off their surface whenever I reached for them.

  I slipped down slopes of what should have been knee-high grass, stopping my momentum more than once with Hot Air. Greenery made it difficult to stand, let alone traverse. Fields that should have taken minutes to climb took hours, and I avoided them, favoring rocky terrain. It made for more strenuous hiking, but the solid footing more than made up for it.

  I couldn’t backtrack through Mount Grenspur’s deep elf tunnels, so I stumbled up and down unfamiliar mountain ranges. Supplies dwindled as days passed, yet I’d made it barely halfway to Hawkhurst.

  I had to crawl up inclines on my hands and knees.

  I passed rocky areas that must have been mountain streams, but my hands felt numb after submerging them into a white smear of nothingness. Worse yet, water only made for a more slippery obstacle than foliage.

  With only one day of food, I wouldn’t make it back in time to beat imminent Dehydration. And I certainly couldn’t travel in a weakened state. At this pace, I didn’t expect to reach the headwaters of the Orga River.

  Downhills made for even more reckless travel until I pulled out my Shield of Might and mounted it like a sled. The shield slid across the fuzzy ground without catching its edges on anything, supporting my weight like a cloud of air. I dragged my legs behind me, using them to steer.

  After sled riding down a couple of hills, I rummaged through my meager 32 slots of belongings and withdrew Tardee’s plate mail, the set that Charitybelle once wore.

  I withdrew a leg piece.

  Stepping into the armor piece, I wrapped its straps around my left boot and pushed off with my dominant foot. For the first time in days, I smiled as I glided. “Oh, this is too perfect.”

  Atlantic City wasn’t known for its downhill skateboard runs, but I learned the few that it had with aplomb. I knew when to tuck down to increase my aerodynamics and balance and when to footbrake.

  Sliding down on an armor piece felt like bombing hills on an expensive hippy-dippy longboard. The smooth ride felt like recently laid asphalt. Even though standing on the armor piece was steady compared to my cheap truck back home, I felt no guilt playing it safe and enjoyed the ride. Whatever mysterious force made vegetation slippery turned Banishment into a blast—especially on the downhill sections.

  Crimson’s PR lady said real-world skills didn’t translate to The Book of Dungeons, but she must have meant combat skills. Skateboarding techniques translated to this alien environment. I knew how to lean and survey the terrain’s grade. Bushes never wiped me out. I dodged the dark, blurry verticals of tree trunks and passing rocks—which appeared to be the only things in focus on the landscape. Instead of avoiding the foliage, I sought it.

  While sliding down a foothill, I spotted the dark oval shape of what I guessed to be a mountain lake. The blur wasn’t as fuzzy as the foliage, and its surface shimmered. I steered my downhill slalom over the shoreline and skimmed across the frictionless surface without getting wet or sinking.

  I ended the joyride softly on the far shore.

  If water was more slippery than grass, perhaps the Orga River might speed up my journey. With the entire length of the Orga River Valley ahead, I saw no reason to remain on dry land.

  It had been eleven days since my Banishment, and I slept another night on the ridgeline of the river valley. I consumed the last of my food and water, got a full night’s rest, and readied my boarding skills for the Orga River.