The day was almost gone as they neared the Gate at the end of the Virman Marsh. They stocked on boar meat again, much to the delight of Guss who apparently liked the way Jonas’ Flame Bolt could be used to make it into a sizzling pseudo-bacon almost instantly from the stripes he’d carved in the meat.

At the edge of the Gate, Jonas brought out a handful of wood gathered from the marsh’s few trees and erected another improvised sign.

 

“Do you think anyone will find it?” Ira asked.

Jonas nearly shot a dark look at his friend, carefully avoiding looking at Jonathan. But the man did not appear to take note of the question, expectantly looking at the Gate instead.

“We’ll make one on the other side before we move away, to be safe,” Jonas said.

He and Ira shared a last look at the marshes of Ovildian before they stepped up toward the lighted disc of the Gate.

 

The thing Jonas noticed first was that there had been no notification about acquiring a Gate or anything. Whatever had prompted him for the Gate for Zolferras was absent this time.

The second thing was that Othary wasn’t what he had been expecting.

Based on the marsh of Zolferras and the marsh side of Ovildian, he had been more or less anticipating sound kind of similar flat terrain. Some kind of plains or marsh. This would make sense if they were wandering across some great Labyrinth continent, in enclosed spaces along the way connected by magical Gates.

Othary was all mountains, as far as he could see from there. The Gate on this site was located on a slightly flat small plateau, but there were mountains all around them, most sporting a white top. The setting sun made for shadows growing all over the place already. For Londoner-born people like them, the spectacle was extraordinary. The air there was slightly cooler and drier than the damp and warmer version from Ovildian’s or Zolferras’ marshes.

Jonas checked his location descriptor to confirm their arrival.

 

 

“Whoa,” Laura exclaimed as she joined them.

“That’s… something,” Ira said.

“What’s the peaks’ top?” Alton asked.

“It’s snow. It’s still winter, after all,” Jonas replied.

“Uh? It doesn’t feel like it’s real winter. Not like London,” Alton countered.

“No, but I heard in school that the Highlands are so high, they get snow before anyone else, and keep it much later. There were even years when they kept snow all year long.”

“Oh,” Alton said drily.

Jonas realized suddenly that, although he seemed to know his letters, Alton probably did not saw much more of school. School might have been made mandatory and free by the King, but that didn’t mean everyone attended it as much as they should.

Then again, he’d been doing okay in school, but he had never been a studious child either. Their teacher had done its best to tell them all about the various lands of the British Empire, but Jonas had never expected to leave London anyway, making even the distant provinces of the British Isles exotic.

“So. What do we do now?” Jonathan asked as he joined them.

“Same thing as Zolferras. We make a sign just in case, find the border and try to follow it to find the Gates out.”

Jonas thought for a second.

“There’s certainly the one for Zolferras. But then, I don’t know what the others will be. More tier-ones? Tier-two? Maybe tier-three…”

“As for the border, that won’t be hard to find,” Guss said.

Jonas turned his head, searching for the Mender. He saw him looking in the distance behind the Gate. As he came along, he immediately saw what Guss meant by that remark.

The flat top on which they stood gave way to a downward slope, but what made it distinctive was that the handful of small trees and bushes on their plateau immediately ended, and the slope became smooth, lacking loose rocks, and merely covered by some familiar-looking greyish moss further downslope.

Jonas walked a bit, hands in front of him and was not surprised to feel the spongy invisible presence of the zone border wall.

“You are right. This time, we’re right next to it.”

Jonas turned, taking the growing shadows across the mountains in the zone.

“It’s getting late. I suggest we make camp here at the Gate, and start tomorrow.”

 

After lighting their campfire, Jonas pondered their new location.

“I didn’t expect this,” he said, looking at the greasy pig cooking.

“They say you can find everything in the Labyrinth,” Ira said.

“True,” Guss confirmed.

“Does this change anything?” Jonathan asked.

“No. It’s just going to be slightly slower to go around. Looks like we do have some trails and game paths around, which makes things reasonably easy. Hopefully, there’s more plateau and valleys. There are people who go on top of mountains for a living, but that’s not us,” Jonas mused.

“As long as we don’t get lost.”

 

This time, Jonas stayed awake for a good reason. The weather was distinctly chillier than in Ovildian. Alton had snorted, saying it wasn’t worse than some of the winters in London. Jonas decided it would be much better to keep a small fire going through the night. They instituted a rotation and Jonas had insisted on taking the first part of the night. He’d wake up Alton just before midnight – hopefully – for the second part, and then Guss would keep watch over the fire for the last part.

Of course, after everyone had fallen asleep, he realized they could have simply walked back to Ovildian and slept in a much warmer night. Well, that was a bit late. Chalk it up to taking the right habits for the rest of their stay in Othary… however long that would be. They wouldn’t have a Gate to cross every night.

The Moon was rising from behind the mountains. Nearly full this time. Jonas found this reassuring. The moon was the best night light. New moon nights were awful, but this moon was…

He peered more carefully at the celestial spectacle. Then frowned. He did not watch the Moon every night, but it was still familiar enough that something was bothering him. Then, he was struck with an idea. Rising, he checked the camp, making sure the fire was still going, and everyone was okay. He then walked to the Gate.

Back in Ovildian, the marsh was lit by the Moon’s light as well. He turned, searching for it. Unlike Othary, where the Moon was rising in front of the Gate, on this side, it was well to the left. He watched it carefully, trying to memorize every detail. He then walked back to Othary.

 

He had been right. The Moon looked familiar, but he had noticed that it sported… some more splashes. The northern side had a large circular indentation with lines radiating all over, tucked between two of the seas. There was another big circle near the edge, and one of the large seas seemed smaller. He spotted more circular spots – craters if he remembered the names from school lessons.

How could the Moon be different? The Moon was the Moon, the eternal watcher over man’s nights. Yet this one was subtly altered.

A stark reminder they were no longer on mundane Earth. It was the Labyrinth. It might look like Earth, but it wasn’t. Each zone was different… each zone was its own world?

Jonas realized his imagination, back in London when he had indulged in Ira’s gatespotting hobby, had been lacking. The Labyrinth was not an exotic country, a new Africa. It was far stranger than the handful of stories they heard had hinted.

He settled back next to the fire, contemplating this strange new Moon.

 

 

The team started toward the right from the Gate. The path Jonas had noted yesterday was looking a bit easier that way, leading across a small valley before going up. Now that he knew they were next to the zone, the end of the mountains at the edge was clearer. The high peaks with scraggly vegetation were inside the zone, bare slopes going down led to the emptiness beyond the border walls.

They did not go far before spotting their first local form of life in the zone. A cat, again.

 

 

“Wow. Level 27?”

Jonas commented, “we’re in a tier-two zone. That means it’s going to be harder than a tier-one, obviously.”

“What does this mean? Are all the creatures around are going to be that high?” asked Laura.

“I think so. But the vital levels for that cat are… okay. That’s not too dangerous yet.”

“Well, okay is still higher than half of us. For a normal cat,” Jonathan said, worriedly.

“Yea, I wouldn’t want to meet this ‘leopard’ alone. But there’s still six of us.”

“It’s like a veteran dog from the lake. We took two-three of those all the time,” Ira added.

The white cat had not been looking toward the team and had failed to notice them so far. But that didn’t last, as some instinct or a noise carried by the wind alerted the leopard. The cat’s ears flattened as his head turned, and he finally spotted the six stopped on their trail.

The cat was fast. They had barely time to reorder themselves across the sloping flats before the cat arrived in their midst, intercepted by Ira as the critter made a beeline toward Jonas.

Leopard rakes you for 18 (21-3) damage (32 defence)

“It’s okay. This one does not hit too much,” Ira announced.

“It’s a normal type,” Jonathan said. “Of course it’s not that bad.”

“It’s still twice what the other did before,” he replied.

The team crowded around the cat and pulled out their weapons, quickly ending the fight.

Young Snow Leopard: 339XP/6 contributors = 56XP

“See. It’s not hard,” Jonas said.

“A bit lacking in XP maybe?” Guss countered.

“Cat meat!” Alton exclaimed as the beast started to decompose, to the groans of everyone else. The former scavenger had been chiding them regularly for their fussiness, although three weeks of living in the wilderness had mostly cured them of anything of the genre. Not that Jonas wouldn’t have appreciated civilized comfort, even his minuscule room near the leather shop.

Cat meat, though…

 

 

They had made their way around one sharp peak when Jonathan pointed to the distance. There was a small glint off in the distance.

“Looks like a Gate.”

Jonas looked around. There was a small gorge between them and the other side, and the probable Gate was off in another valley branching from that gorge.

“Okay, let’s find a path down.”

It took them most of the afternoon to make their way to the distant spot, slowed by a score of cat encounters, including their first lone veteran.

 

 

“At least we get some decent experience around.”

“It’s not as good as a lair, but it does add up,” said Jonas.

 

 

“Well?” Jonathan asked as Jonas got turned back from the Gate.

“It’s the one to Zolferras,” Jonas replied.

“Uh? We’ve been to that zone already,” Guss said.

“Yes, but not from here. Apparently, we do need a lair in Othary to use this Gate in particular.”

Jonathan sighed. Jonas shrugged, adding “it’s not as if we need to go there anyway. It’s a dead-end.”

“Signpost?” Ira asked.

Jonas looked up to the surrounding peaks, judging the time.

“Let’s make a sign, and the day’s already mostly gone anyway. Let’s head back to the gorge, and we’ll camp there safe from the wind.”

 

As they made the camp, Jonathan came to Jonas, asking, “I don’t understand how this could be the Zolferras gate? I mean, it was to the other side of Ovildian…”

“The gates are not in the same order, you mean?”

“Yes. I’ve been trying to see how they could be set up, but it doesn’t fit.”

“If you remember where the sun was when we went into the Gate in Ovildian and when we exited, you’d have noted it was in a different place because we had a different orientation. The Gates… are not aligned or anything. Each zone is self-contained. I think they can be anywhere, facing any which way. So finding Zolferras on this side of the Ovildian Gate means very little. We could find another Gate next to it, or somewhere further. Or both.”

Jonas put his hand on the other’s shoulder in reassurance.

“We’ll have to see.”

 

 

“New Gate,” Jonathan announced.

After two days, they’d made their way across maybe a third of the border, by Jonas’s reckoning. A new gate might be promising. At least, it would be a Gate to a new zone, since they had already found the Ovildian and Zolferras ones.

 

 

“Tier-three this time,” Jonas announced.

“And we need three lairs?” Jonathan asked.

“And we need three lairs. But we’ve still got some terrain to cover. Let’s put a new sign, and keep going. And we’ll have level 23 by the evening, at this rate anyway.”

 

 

As they were filing out of the windswept top with the Gate, Jonas looked back at the Markandon gate. He hoped they’d find another easier Gate, but his intuition was telling him their luck wouldn’t be that good. Unlocking Markandon would be necessary, he was betting. And if everything in this new zone followed the outdoor rules… It would be hard, if not outright impossible, at least for a long time.

 

 

The massive gorge was blocking their way. Its steep walls did not offer any visible path down, and from the distance, one could see water swiftly moving along the bottom.

“Anyone sees a way across?” Guss asked.

“Nope,” Jonathan replied, scrutinizing the crags. None of the other team members found a workable pathway either.

Jonas looked to the side. Part of him wanted to see if the river could carry them across the invisible border. The saner part worried that they would get locked into the wall, unable to escape, and dying… drowned.

“We’ll have to follow the river up. Let’s hope we can cross it at one point.”

He looked toward the peaks from which the river came.

“And who knows. Maybe there’s a lair along the way?”