Chapter 500 – What’s Going On?

“Any idea what’s going on?” Sophia looked from Xin’ri’s sleeping form to Dav and the Wanderer, then back to Xin’ri.

“No good ones,” Revanos stated seriously. “Her path didn’t look like she was lost, but it also didn’t look like she had a destination in mind. The best thing to do now is wake her and see what she says. Maybe she’ll know what happened.”

He knelt and put his actions where his words were with a shake of Xin’ri’s shoulder. 

She gasped and nearly jumped in place, like she’d been startled. She sat up and looked around, obviously puzzled and unsure. “This isn’t where I … why am I here? Where is here?”

“That’s what we want to know,” Sophia couldn’t help the immediate snark. She regretted it the moment the words were out of her mouth, but at least she hadn’t said anything too bad. “I mean, what’s the last thing you remember? We were setting up camp and then you just weren’t there.”

“The last thing I remember is a dream,” Xin’ri answered with a frown. “Or maybe a nightmare. A memory, or based on one. It doesn’t matter. Uhm, let’s see. We made it to Mimir’s workshop, right?”

Sophia nodded. 

“Okay, yeah. You spent a while looking at it, so we started setting up camp; we were probably going to be there for a few days, so it needed to be a proper camp. I headed out a little ways to dig the latrine. And then … I don’t remember what happened after that. I remember a dream, but it doesn’t make any sense.” Xin’ri shook her head. “Why can’t I remember?”

“What happened in the dream?” Revanos asked.

Xin’ri shrugged. “I only remember bits and pieces, it was like any dream. I was walking in a forest. It was a nice day for a walk. I don’t recognize the forest, but I didn’t realize that in the dream, it was just a forest. Some time later, I remembered why I was in the forest; it was after Jirret and A’lor ran, only this time I wasn’t injured. The angry beavers weren’t anywhere nearby; it was safe in the forest, you’d always hear the beavers coming and they were slow as they took down trees. A’lor was never very smart around the beavers. Anyway, I remember thinking that it was a little chilly and wet, so I’d better get some wood for a fire. I did that and cooked a little food then went to bed for the night. It all seemed like it made sense, but it was at least two or three different times all squished together. A dream, probably because we’re in a forest.”

Sophia shook her head. She didn’t believe that; it wasn’t enough. “A dream wouldn’t make you walk away from the camp. Not a normal dream, at least.”

“Heading out to dig the latrine makes sense. Do you remember anything between that and the dream?” Dav looked over at the fire then back at Xin’ri. “We didn’t find a latrine or any evidence you started digging.”

“There was a small hole,” Revanos disagreed. “A shovel or two’s worth of dirt, not nearly enough to be a proper latrine. I didn’t point it out, but her path went right by it.”

Xin’ri frowned, then shook her head. “I don’t remember. I remember that I was going to and then the dream starts.” 

She rose to her feet and held out her hand. A staff fell out of nowhere and smacked her palm. It was fairly simple, nothing more than a smooth wooden rod studded with a cluster of stones at one end, immediately recognizable as her earth and stone staff. “At least I didn’t lose this.”

The staff disappeared as suddenly as it appeared. 

“I don’t know what happened, but I’d much rather sleep in your tent than next to a fire. Why don’t we head back to camp?” Xin’ri proposed.

They talked in circles as they flew through the forest. They didn’t just need to know what happened; they needed to know how to prevent it. That was difficult without knowing the cause, and Sophia refused to believe there wasn’t a cause. 

It wasn’t caused by the latrine itself; they stopped at the hole and waited while Xin’ri used her staff to fully excavate the area and build the seat that would rest above it and make it easier to use.

Dav put together a meal while Sophia build a quick alarm ward with her wardstones that would let them all know if one of them stepped outside the area it enclosed. It was a fairly large sphere, but the limited trigger and complete lack of anything other than a mana-based alarm meant that it was still well within what Sophia could manage to create.

It didn’t go off that night.

Dav proposed an idea over breakfast: they should try to duplicate exactly what happened when Xin’ri disappeared and see if she fell into a dream again. If she did, they’d have learned something. 

No one had any better ideas, so they figured they might as well try. Sophia took down the ward and headed towards the workshop. She stopped when she was just close enough to feel the runes on the walls; that was more or less where she was when Xin’ri disappeared. 

She had it easy. All she had to do was go back to investigating the runescript. Xin’ri’s task was equally easy; she had to walk outside the camp and start digging a hole. Dav and Revanos had to try to figure out what they were doing when Xin’ri walked off, in case that mattered, and neither of them knew exactly when that was.

Sophia tuned out the discussion and focused on the spellform created by the runes. She was the most interested in the stasis part of the spellform, of course; it was the part she really had to break without destroying everything. The damage to the walls of the workshop might make that easier or it might make it harder; she wasn’t sure which yet.

She’d barely started when she heard Revanos yell. She didn’t make out what he said, but shouting was either very good or very bad and either way she needed to head that way immediately.

By the time she caught up to Revanos, he was standing with a dazed-looking Xin’ri about a hundred feet from the campsite, well beyond the location of the latrine but still within sight. 

Dav reached them before Sophia did. “Did it happen again? Did you figure out the trigger?”

“It’s not as obvious as I hoped,” Revanos answered, “but yes, sort of. Xin’ri walked a little farther away and started digging, then dismissed her staff and headed for the woods. I shouted at her since there’s no need to follow her again and you both came running. Xin’ri hasn’t said anything yet but she stopped almost immediately.”

“I’ve been trying to nail down the memories,” Xin’ri said clearly. “I came out here to try to get lost accidentally the same way as yesterday; the next thing I knew, I was headed into the forest to find some kindling for the fire and then Revanos shouted at me and I knew that wasn’t why I was here. We don’t even have a fire right now!”

All of the dead wood they’d seen was wet from the fog. They could dry it out and then start a fire, but it simply wasn’t worth the effort. Now that Sophia thought about it, that made Xin’ri’s fire the night before odd but understandable; if it was the only way to get things dry, maybe it was worth the effort and mana to dry the wood in the first place.

“It was as she took a step away from the camp,” Revanos added. “I don’t know why distance would matter, but I think that was the trigger. She was almost exactly as far from the camp as the latrine is.”

“It can’t be distance from the camp or we’d never have made it here,” Dav objected. “We came in from outside.”

“Yeah, but we were following the eclipsed moon and before that the key,” Sophia objected. “We definitely wouldn’t have found this place without the … wait. What if it’s not distance from the camp that matters but distance from the key?”

“It would explain some things,” Dav said thoughtfully. “No one tripped the ward last night, while you were in the middle of the camp in your tent. Xin’ri’s tried to wander off twice while you were on the far side of the camp. Hmm. Why don’t you walk that way and go about as far away as you were earlier? If any of us gets confused, that’ll say the key’s what it is.”

“You two should go with Sophia, or at least stay closer to her than I am,” Xin’ri objected. “We know I’m vulnerable to whatever it is; let’s not find out if both of you are by having all three of us affected.”

“I’d like to stay close to you,” Revanos disagreed. “I can be closer to Sophia than you are, but someone needs to be able to watch for when, if, you are affected.”

That was enough of a plan, so Sophia started walking in the direction Dav indicated. It was neither towards nor away from the workshop; Sophia was sure that was deliberate. It was the best Dav could do to remove the workshop as a variable.

Sophia was about the same distance from Xin’ri when Revanos yelled again. She might have been a step or two closer or farther away, but either way it was close enough to conclude that the distance between Sophia and Xin’ri was important. The key Sophia carried was the only reasonable explanation and it was enough of an explanation that Sophia was satisfied.

Well, she was satisfied that the key was some sort of protection against whatever kept people out of the area. She wasn’t satisfied with not knowing what that thing was. Would the key’s protection stay valid? What was it about the key that protected them?

Was the confusion the reason there were no monsters or were there really no monsters on Arcatiz’s surface? Sophia couldn’t remember asking, so she did when she caught up to Xin’ri and Revanos. “Do either of you know if there are monsters on Arcatiz outside the World Tree? I know we haven’t seen any, but that just means they’re not on the inhabited islands.”

“There are some,” Revanos admitted while both Xin’ri and Dav shook their heads to say that they didn’t know. “There aren’t very many and they’re more like magical beasts than monsters. Some are maddened but most aren’t. That’s pretty common on most worlds. They’re more common in areas that have more mana, and Arcatiz has more mana than any other planet. There isn’t as much near the World Tree as there is farther away.”

“Or maybe there isn’t as much near Mimir’s workshop,” Sophia countered. “I’ve been wondering how a stasis spell could last that long and the only real answer I can come up with is that it must tap into the planet’s ley lines. That might lower the amount of mana nearby.”

It also might raise it if the runescript wasn’t great; mana could leak out of a bad runescript and cause fuzziness in the mana around it. Over time, that mana might pool and increase the local mana levels in a way that wasn’t good for anyone or anything nearby unless there was a dungeon to make the stagnant mana move and clean the leftover bits of other Affinities out of it. At least, that was how it worked at home; here, they had Challenges and Towers. The World Tree had to be taking care of any leakage from Mimir’s workshop.

Whatever the reason for the lower mana level was, she probably didn’t need to worry about monsters and there was a very good chance that the reason for that was that they got lost somewhere on the mountain. That only made it more important for her to figure out why people got lost and what she could do about it other than carry the key.