Chapter 27 Waypoints Ahoy
The next morning, we took to the road again after wishing the Wildings well.
“We appreciate your help,” Sen-ti said as he walked us to the portal. “We’ll spread the word among the other Wilding groups, should you come across them in the future.”
After bidding him farewell, we headed forward on the trail through the forest. The key was weighing heavily around my neck.
It wasn’t any One Ring, by any means, but it carried its own form of oppression, especially since I still couldn’t get it off.
There was a part of me that harbored a secret hope that the key itself would get tired and just fall off by itself, but so far, that hope seemed dim.
“So, we must be near the Waypoint for the Dark Woodland,” I said. “We’ll want to activate it before heading on through the forest.”
“We’re right on track for it,” Reggie said. He was carrying the map. We’d marked the approximate areas for the Waypoints on it, from Liesel’s employee map. Without this map, we’d be out of luck.
“Where does the Waypoint go? I mean, I know to other Waypoints, but how does it work in the game here, as opposed to in the online version?” In the online version, when you activated the Waypoint, a screen popped up showing you the Waypoints that you’d already activated so you could choose where to go.
We hadn’t activated any Waypoints so far as I knew, but I couldn’t imagine a hologram popping up, offering us a touchscreen.
“I don’t know. To be honest, I’d forgotten about them when we decided to sign up for an adventure,” Thornhold said.
“Well, I guess we’ll find out,” I said, pointing to a sign by the side of the path. It read: waypoint ahead, to the left.
“Well, that makes things easier!” My spirits lifted when I saw it.
“They can’t make everything a challenge, or people would get frustrated and quit playing,” Brynn said as we paused by the sign. We were only a few miles into the forest, but it seemed that the Waypoints were always a mere few miles into the new biome.
We turned left, following the side path through the towering conifers.
The forest biome in Abarria wasn’t exactly accurate—the mixture of deciduous and coniferous trees didn’t match forests in the real world all that much, with trees that didn’t normally grow together sharing space in the Dark Woodland.
But that didn’t matter—it was all beautiful, regardless of whether it was logical or not.
About half a mile down the side path, we saw the Waypoint.
It was a large platform on the ground, made out of what looked to be a dark bronze.
It was square, with a clockwork-like design etched on the bottom.
The platform was enclosed by what looked like a glass booth, but as I reached out to touch it, I realized it was a strong acrylic.
“Well, let me check it out,” I said, stepping forward.
I stepped into the chamber and a clear door slid shut from the left, enclosing me within.
I looked around and saw a large button on one side of the acrylic dome.
I reached out and pressed it. The next moment, the base platform lit up, glowing with a golden light.
I gasped and jumped as a screen flickered to life against the acrylic door. It was a touch screen!
The screen was easy to read, and it had a list of ten Waypoints on it. The Dark Forest was second. I looked at the first. It read Launching Area. Wondering, I reached out and pressed the image of a button next to it.
The next moment, everything whirled and outside, a whirlwind of colors streamed around me.
I felt like I was in an elevator that was going too fast. I reached out to steady myself, but before I could even touch the walls of the dome, the colors fell away and I found myself staring at a wide, expansive lawn.
I was standing near where we’d first appeared when we entered the game.
“What the…I’m back at the start!” I thought about stepping outside, but then asked myself if I wanted to take a chance on running into anybody or anything while I was by myself.
But then again, this was a chance to check out the departure/arrival pods to see if, hope against hope, they were working again.
I opened the door and hurried over to the arrival pods.
They were dark, with none of the lights or sounds that had been active when we entered the game.
At that moment, I truly understood that there was no out, not until they fixed the software.
I headed back to the Waypoint. I had to get back before they panicked.
I jumped onto the platform and, as the door slid shut, it lit up the screen.
I could choose the second Waypoint. The other designations were dark and would remain so until we’d activated them.
I pressed the button and, once again, the swirling colors appeared and I steadied myself.
The next moment, I was back in the forest, stepping out of the dome.
“Where were you?” Thornhold rushed over. “There was a bright flash and you disappeared.”
“I ended up back near the arrival pods. Apparently that’s where the first Waypoint is located. The choice appears on the door once it closes. There are a number of Waypoints, but we do have to activate them before being able to use them.”
“At least this one works,” Brynn said.
“Yeah, though if we want to visit Liesel, we might do better going back to the start. It’s about the same distance from there to her place, as from here to her house. Six of one, half dozen of the other.” I sighed. “I guess, our next goal is to reach the Cryptic Marshes.”
“And from there, the Mountains of Kartell, and then the Summer Kingdom,” Brynn said. She examined the map. “This is going to take awhile. Unless they fix the game in the meanwhile, I swear this trek could take us months of walking.”
“The Waypoints only go backward—to places we’ve already been. If we could jump ahead, it would be so much easier,” Thornhold said.
“Yeah, but that’s not how it works. We’ll be traveling through the harshest months,” Ray said. “But we have to do something. We can look along the way to see if we can find a witch powerful enough to break the spell, but we can’t count on it.”
I thought ahead. It was late October now, and we’d probably reach the mountains by winter, and then—how would we fare? It was one thing to view the snow-capped peaks from a postcard, quite another to be hiking on foot over them.
“We need winter clothing,” I said. “Keep an eye out for villages. Once we get nearer to winter, we’re going to need protection from the elements.”
“Noted and agreed,” Ray said. “And we’ll need a way to make fires, we’ll need a tent, or two. We won’t survive if we go into the mountains without being prepared. I’ve talked to plenty of players who kept dying in the mountain biome.”
“Yeah, it’s rough, and not only are there mountain trolls, but abominable snowmen, lycanthoids, dire wolves, dragons, and the high nomad tribes—and they can be scary.” Brynn shivered. “Not to mention the storms, the storm elementals, and all sorts of natural forces to fend against.”
“We could backtrack to Dusmaria. We can take the Waypoint back there, though I don’t know if they’d have everything we need,” I said.
Ray scanned the map. “There are several villages ahead of us, both in the forest and scattered throughout the marshes that are closer to the mountains. I think we should wait until then before spending money on snow gear. Chances are we’ll find more choices ahead on the path, than behind us.”
“True that. We should do what we can to pick up extra gold before then. We have a decent amount of money, but we can always use more.” I sighed, looking around.
The forest was in full autumn but winter seemed so far away, and the realization that we would probably still be here when it hit made the trees loom so much larger.
“How long until we reach the Cryptic Marshes?” Brynn asked.
Ray consulted the map again. “I’d say at least two weeks.
The forest goes on, and there’s a patch of plains in between the forest and the marshes.
There’s a blurred line where the marshes and the plains meet, and it’s hard to differentiate the two, so we’ll want to go through during the day because we could easily fall in during the dark and I think there are a lot of quicksand patches there. ”
Images of Frodo falling into the Dead Marshes flickered through my mind.
“Daytime it is. I don’t think they based the Cryptic Marshes on Lord of the Rings, but there are plenty of folklore stories to make me think twice,” I said.
“Okay, we’ve got a long journey. The moment we reach the marshes, we start looking for the Waypoint.
It looks like—according to the map—it’s about four or five miles in.
Unfortunately, the marshes themselves stretch over what looks like thirty or forty miles, and the mountains… that’s an entire region.”
“Maybe while we’re in the village shopping for our winter gear, we should think about looking for horses? Or mules? We might need them,” Brynn said.
“We’ve got some time to think about it. We’ve still got a couple weeks until we emerge from the forest. It looks like there’s a little settlement about three days from here. Let’s set that as our first goal. It will help to make smaller goals to keep us from getting overwhelmed,” Thornhold said.
“Okay, then let’s get a move on. We’ve still got several hours of light before nightfall.” We gathered our things and headed out, shivering as a cold wind began to blow through.