NOVEL NEXT Chapter 52: Errantry
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x_TremeSnooze: It's like watching a toy dog trying to hunt. She's 'precious'. That's different from 'good'.
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Sol 495 FY 26, 16:18 Mars time, Ghostlands, Grey Wastes
Marie envied the Earth Server. Everything was so close together.
Her delve tome? It indicated a spire in the depths of the cold side of the planet, deep in the red-tinged ice, a frozen desert.
Ghostlands tracked food, energy, water, and temperature. Also pressure, pain, pleasure, and moisture—though if she ran into those, she was probably doing the delve wrong. Somehow, she had to cross the wastes. Her mother's herbs had been sufficient material to restock her potions supply—she'd owe them later, but that was how things worked when you, more or less, gamed as a family.
But there was no potion to speed one across a desert.
The cold sand stung against her cheeks, and she tied a scarf over her face—imperfect cover, but it would have to do.
> x_TremeSnooze: No camels in ghostlands. Fun fact: the ghouls ate them all.
"Very helpful," she grumped. She had no idea if it was true—there being no camels—and anyway, there weren't any settlements for a day's walk—of course, a Ghostlands day was only about three hours, but that was still not happening. Better to risk the desert. Probably.
Gallant's comforting presence made itself known behind her and to her left, a light pat on her shoulder blade to remind her where he was. It never failed to blow her mind the depth Gordon had included in his creation.
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The sky above her was velvet, devoid of stars.
A red light from the horizon limned the ice sculptures around her, casting long, slivered shadows that shifted as she walked. Some looked like frozen trees, others like twisted glass—brittle remnants of a world too cold to rot.
A frosty wind whipped chill grit into her face. She adjusted her scarf again, eyes narrowed against the sting.
And there, at last, she saw it.
A glittering spire—obsidian, or quartz—nearly black, nearly transparent. Faultlines within the matrix caught the dying light, reflecting the bloody horizon in mirrored crimson.
It rose like a needle from the depths of a fathomless valley, its base swallowed in shadow and black, windswept sand.
Her feet felt frozen. She wiggled her real toes now and then—just to remind herself they were fine. It didn't help. The pain was real. Step after step. Even Gallant's armor hurt to touch, now—so cold you could stick to it. His avatar, like hers, would've been taking damage by now—if not for the mirrored enchantment shedding cold, but that just made touching it that much worse.
He'd tried, once or twice—offering his cloak, leaning close, even trying to lift her. But she'd pulled away each time. Eventually, Gallant seemed to decide she didn't want to be touched. Gallant walked close, but not within easy touching distance, one hand on his sword, shield on his back. It made her feel safer. She wished she could get him to carry a torch—but of course she'd forgotten to pack one.
She drank her umpteenth health potion. Then a stamina potion. They tasted, respectively, like black licorice and cherries. She breathed in, a breath full of frozen fire, with sweetness and cherries and sand for aftertaste.
Yum.
As they got further down into the valley, the ice gave way to carven stone—redveined, icy translucence. Invisible in the dark, but for the sullen glow of reddish braziers smoldering in wall sconces. She could hear again—the howling wind was, if not mute, muted.
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The air echoed with the groan of stone-on-stone.
She slowed as the valley opened into a plateau of carved stone. The ice here was thinner, pushed back, or sculpted away. The wind had gone quiet. The only movement came from her breath, the flicker of braziers, and Gallant's silent tread at her side.
The complex was massive. Multi-tiered, vaguely symmetrical—temple-shaped, though it had no windows and too many entrances. Every level wound around the central spire like coils of a fossilized shell, each layer pocked with shadowed doorways and torchlit causeways.
Statues lined the stairs. They looked humanoid at a glance, but the proportions were off—arms too long, faces too smooth, joints barely visible beneath sculpted robes. Some bore weapons. Others simply watched.
Braziers were everywhere. Dozens, maybe hundreds. Some burned low, others hissed faintly as they caught the valley's wind. Their placement wasn't decorative. They looked strategic—like someone, or something, needed them to stay lit.
She crouched behind a broken column and pulled up the delve pane. No additional clues. Just the spire icon, pulsing faintly, and a list of survival parameters: temperature, stamina burn, elemental suppression.
No light-based warnings. No resistance flags.
Just cold.
Statues and fire, she thought grimly. Probably linked.
Puzzle dungeon.
> MarsGirl: Sorry for the build-up, you guys, I know you were all hoping I'd jump straight into it. But … it's got to be one session, and I have work. Tomorrow, for sure. I've already taken off work.
> Blue_cornish_chips: I speak for us all when I say we'd rather you do it right than f*** it up, you do what you got to.
> Randoon_the_Wizard: Eat, sleep, make a base, and grind them down from cover. We don't mind. Keep safe, and clear it!
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Marie logged out of Ghostlands. The HUD dimmed, the login scaffold dissolving to black, and a moment later, the helmet hissed as the seal disengaged. The real world swept in too fast—dry, cool, humming faintly with the pressure cycling of her Mars pod. She exhaled, rolled her shoulders, and peeled the helmet the rest of the way off, setting it carefully on its hook.
A familiar stiffness tugged at her spine. She stretched until her back popped, then tapped the slim black band on the outside of her left wrist. It glowed to life with a chime, projecting a faint blue holo-display into the air just above her hand. The flickering window of her personal OS hovered like foglit glass—tabs open, alerts queued, a background of Gordon's dumb face caught mid-blink from some old vid call.
She flicked her fingers through the menus. Colony notices. An herb shipment delay. A failed license application from Director Flowers—again. She rolled her eyes and dismissed it. The man had a personal vendetta against her, or at least against the concept of her ever driving anything with forks.
One more gesture, and the interface tunneled into a connection. Gordon's desktop loaded remotely, a touch lagged, a little fuzzy. It didn't matter. Her lips curved into a smile.
He'd left her a new folder. Labelled in all caps:
"MARIE, OPEN THIS IF YOU'RE SAD OR BORED OR ANNOYED AT ME."
She opened it. Inside: a flurry of new memes.
A slideshow of Gallant and his "Lady" fighting zombies—cartoonized, with fan submissions for his dialogue. Very sappy.
A short clip of a golden retriever wearing a wizard hat, following a frazzled-looking woman around benignly.
Randoon_the_Wizard. She grinned at that one.
Then she opened their text thread.
[2:20] Marie: "You seem distracted. Everything okay?"
She tilted back in her chair, fingers tented, eyes tracing the light patterns flickering on her ceiling as she waited.
The reply came quickly.
[2:23] Gordon: "Sorry—just got a number of texts from one of the board members, Joe. Apparently, he thinks 2 AM is the perfect time to dump six months of material discrepancy reports on me."
Her expression twisted into a sympathetic wince.
[2:24] Marie: "Do we like Joe?"
Beat.
[2:24] Gordon: "Joe is sometimes creepily intense."
"There he goes again."
Another ping. New file dropped into the meme folder.
She tapped it.
A screencap of Joe's barrage of messages, annotated in red: "Sir, this is a Wendy's."
Marie snorted, then typed:
[2:28] Marie: "Careful—the message is coming from inside the house. O.o"
Her smile lingered as she let the holo screen dim slightly, its reflection ghosting against the smooth metal rim of the curved glass wall beside her.
She slid down into the bunk, propped a tube pillow beneath her neck, and closed her eyes. The fan buzzed gently.