New Jersey had surfing, but I’d never gotten into the sport because I felt it lacked the spontaneity of skateboarding. Surfboards were bulky enough to make the entire day about them, and the only way to avoid crowds required early rising and water conditions often disappointed.

  Surfing doesn’t really translate to skateboarding, either. Though one activity inspired the other, they’re very different. Surfers can’t go whenever they want—their focus involves waiting for and identifying the right wave, and nature does all the pushing.

  Skateboarders mastered speed through pumping and friction, and land presented a wider variety of environmental factors to read. Surfers depended on external factors, whereas I could drop what I was doing and practice tricks whenever I wanted.

  I thought of my newfound locomotion as grassboarding, and it, too, differed from skateboarding. With no rumbling beneath my feet, I missed reading the pavement’s texture. Despite the crazy speeds, I heard no howling in my ears.

  I banked up hills to control my velocity, and the surreal smoothness of a Banished grassboarding made steering easy without worrying about rocks or divots on the surface.

  I did 180s with so little effort that performing tricks held no allure. If I built too much speed, I merely leaned uphill. I had no dominant foot, meaning I could lead with either leg, giving me an ambidextrous control—which might partially explain why I never wiped out. The activity more closely resembled snowboarding, though I couldn’t be sure since I’d never snowboarded before.

  Environmental factors occupied my attention as I flowed across the landscape, my elevation dropping as the scenery whirred by. Trees looked like blurred lollypops, and leaves haloed them like puffy clouds. Bushes and weeds featured the same transparency and repelled me when I approached them, but they never tripped me up or caused wipeouts.

  Regardless of the terms and techniques used to describe the strange activity, grassboarding sped up travel so much that it felt like cheating—and I leaned into it all the way.

  Sailing down the foothills of Mount Grenspur, I dove into the Orga River Valley. The day before, I’d looked down from a higher altitude after arduous climbing, slipping, and trudging uphill, giving me an excellent lay of the land.

  I followed my plotted course, letting gravity propel me, reading the topography and hazards ahead.

  It felt strange not hearing the wind whispering in my eardrums as I moved down the hill. I expected it to howl whenever I picked up speed, but neither the wind nor my improvised grassboard made any noise. My hair and robe never whipped behind me as I built up speed and flew across the meadows.

  I moved toward a dark smear that had to be a stream.

  Curving along the treeline slowed me until I spotted an opening. The bank reduced my velocity to almost nothing, and I resumed my descent at a more controlled speed.

  The ground dipped into a ravine, straight for the river, and I flowed with providence, pushing my luck by hippy-jumping over horizontal blurs that I guessed were fallen logs.

  I had Hot Air to save me, and whatever forgiving force suspended me carried me over small rocks and weeds with minimal resistance. Having grown up around aging sidewalks and uneven surfaces of a worn-down town, the slight shudders of my metal board barely bothered me.

  The Orga looked like a stretch of dark clouds flowing over rocks. My newfound locomotion carried me above its eddies and invisible splashes. The armor piece skimmed above the surface in a near-frictionless glide. Waterfalls proved easier to negotiate than stairs on a skateboard.

  At such a clip, I’d be within Hawkhurst’s boundaries within the hour.

  My vantage made the terrain unfamiliar until I reached the main fork, the one I had difficulty crossing before tangling with the bugbears.

  Tributaries and mountain streams widened the Orga as I slalomed downstream. As it grew, I had fewer big rocks to dodge around. After I passed the white water, the only stones breaching the river’s surface stood along its banks.

  The river’s dimensions looked the same, and I recognized ridgelines and distant mountains. It hadn’t rained once during my strange return trip, and when I passed the crate, which used to be Iremont, I saw no trace of the orcs’ docks remaining on either side of the crossing.

  I flowed past familiar rock formations leading up to the old goblin iron mine.

  Even though the river leveled, my speed remained constant. I moved about 20 miles per hour, though without the roar of wind in my ears, it wasn’t easy to judge.

  Since the settlement’s boundaries extended across the river, the interface elements for Holy Smoke and Glowing Coals ought to light up once I crossed its border. My heart rate increased as I spotted Otter Lake. If I didn’t see a change in my blessings, I wouldn’t know what to do about Banishment.

  As the riverbank rose, I knew I was getting close. Years ago, when orcs first paddled past our settlement, the same embankments stopped them from seeing the few buildings we’d had.

  Ahead, the open horizon of Otter Lake welcomed me home. I’d been gliding over the water for the better part of two hours. My legs were tired, and I looked forward to awakening inside Forren’s glorious temple.

  As soon as I crossed the settlement’s radius, the interface elements for my blessings filled with color, showing I could activate either at my leisure. Wasting no time, I invoked Holy Smoke.

  The soreness in my legs and other sensations vanished as I dissipated into an inky cloud of nothingness, erasing the world.

  The temple pulled me from the river and into its walls before the hard pressure on my back told me I was lying down on a blue granite altar.

  The ever-glowing candelabras we’d taken from the druid still brightened the building’s interior ceiling in verdant hues of light. Forren’s fireplace blazed, surrounded by a terrarium’s worth of potted plants, thriving from divine forces. Devotees had decorated the temple with strung beads, ribbons, and garlands. I recognized none of them. Why would I? If seconds passed as fast as day, then I’d been gone for many years. Spice pouches and personal tokens gave the place a perennial Christmas tree vibe.

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  After almost two weeks of a sterile atmosphere, the aromas smelled wonderful, and why wouldn’t it? I’d been a ghost for so long that drinking in the material world invigorated me.

  The temple’s ceiling opened to a dawning sky, reminding me of my first morning in Miros when I’d gotten up too soon to work in the library. Not even the work crews were up this hour. An unrisen sun colored the retreating night with morning gradients of pink and orange.

  Four waning crescents, as soothing as a lullaby, glowed beyond the clouds. Through the pungent smells of flowers and potpourri, I inhaled the brisk, familiar scent of lakefront air.

  My interface showed no debuffs, and my stats ballooned at the influx of magic gear. I regarded Gladius Cognitus. His item description bore the same powers and effects as he had on the day Rory presented him to me.

  All of my spells and items worked, although reconstituting with Holy Smoke had activated all of their cooldowns. I’d need another day to get the big ones back. Compared to what I’d been through, it was a minor detail.

  Alone, I rolled off the altar, thanked Forren’s idol with an affectionate pat on the idol’s shoulder, and strode through the doorway.

  The only thing about the exterior I recognized was a slate-blue castle wall that towered over an unfamiliar scene. Instead of disconnected buildings, a street ran along a row of structures. I spotted a counting house, a garrison, and an armory, all arrayed around a cobblestone town square revolving around a manicured park where a flagpole once stood.

  The bone pole with the wooden loop for Chloe’s perch no longer marked the settlement’s founding. Someone had replaced it with a smoothed metal rod painted in white. Charitybelle’s clumsy, hand-sewn flag of a bird flying over crude castle walls had been replaced by a crafted version with similar elements but tailored by an artisan’s hand.

  I looked east. Past a weatherbeaten orrery stood a palace where the great hall and manor had once been.

  I opened the settlement interface. Relinquishing my officer status disabled most of the settlement’s interface features, but I could still track its vital statistics.

  How many generations had passed? The game’s interface didn’t possess a calendar, and since I wasn’t an officer, I couldn’t use the settlement tabs to determine the passage of years.

  The blurring effect wasn’t visual effects from Banishment—it must have been a life force preventing me from interfering with the natural cycle of the living. Or maybe I perceived the world differently, like a time-lapse movie of growing and dying plants.

  Hot Air had taken 24 seconds to reset, but its daily cooldown description hadn’t changed. If each of my seconds matched an hour in Miros, then a full day’s travel under Banishment conditions equaled 86,400 hours or about a decade.

  I’d been traveling from the Gray Manors for about a dozen days, putting me well over a century into the future.

  Had Darkstep survived? The contest interface has not shown a single change since I last checked. If Darkstep had fallen, Crimson’s game technicians would have awakened me midway through my journey south.

  Not only had Darkstep survived, but his levels hadn’t changed. He’d obviously found a magical means to stay alive, perhaps through Fabulosa’s cloak that gave eternal youth. Yet, it surprised me he wouldn’t want to build up an arsenal of power points during my Banishment.

  Duchess claimed he possessed a speed hack and knocked her out. He hadn’t given up playing the Great RPG Contest. Was he that confident in his game, or had he been in a coma? Perhaps his battle with Duchess incurred a debuff that prevented level advancement.

  Every detail about Hawkhurst’s settlement profile hinted at a thriving city. Aside from the familiar surnames listed in the settlement’s leadership roles, as a citizen, I enjoyed the benefits of its mandates, and Seafaring and Traveled were new.

  I froze time and opened my character sheet. Both mandates appeared, and I inspected their details.

  A seafaring mandate? After Hawkhurst’s strategy to break Arlington’s maritime monopoly, it seemed crazy its citizens had directed their future toward the sea. Had someone found another use with the orrery to justify ocean-going trade? Maybe someone had contacted another continent.

  Turning to Otter Lake answered my questions. Even at this sleepy hour, cargo, fishing, and passenger ships filled the water with a forest of sailing masts—a marina with piers and docks sprawled along the north shore.

  A hundred questions assailed my imagination. Who were we trading with? The implications of the marina dovetailed into the decision made over the city’s tier 4 mandate.

  I didn’t know or care what Chancellor’s Scales might be, but the economic mandates invested by the city’s later generations testified to Hawkhurst’s security and prosperity. Combat abilities would have been useful, but who could begrudge the town’s descendants from following their own agenda? The settlement had graduated beyond the cares of construction schedules, mud, and morale.

  Someone had smoothed Hawkhurst Rock into the impression of cobblestones—the style was a decoration, not a practicality.

  The streets curved around a green park. Someone hollowed out cavities from Hawkhurst rock and filled them with soil to achieve manicured landscaping.

  A burbling sound from the park piqued my curiosity, and I entered its grounds to investigate. The watery sound came from a series of cascading kiddie pools. A central fountain fed them, and it included a miniature chute for excess water. A family of squeaking creatures scurried into a basin for a leisurely swim.

  I grinned. Charitybelle finally got water slides for her otter friends.

  The creatures bore names in their monikers, though none were Mara or Poppy—the otters we befriended over a hundred years ago.

  As I watched them, I sensed the approach of someone nearby.

  “Welcome home, Patch.”

  I turned to the unfamiliar voice. The speaker’s nameplate was that of a player.