Diven jolted awake, his eyes darting left and right, trying to figure out where he was. The snow, the black stone, and the guardians all came back to him, and his heart calmed.
He had been reckless, falling asleep so close to them. But he had been too tired to control his body.
These guardians had kept their word and didn’t attack him while he was asleep. If he was honest, he knew they could easily beat him when he was awake so it wasn’t too much of a surprise. Nonetheless, it was a relief.
He brushed the snow off his ragged clothes and stood up. He needed to find the guardians again.
It was easy, he found them at the same spot he had first met them, leaning on the hot stone. Their masked faces turned toward him.
Did they stay here all the time?
It wasn’t important, Diven had questions to ask them.
“Sir guardians, may I ask you something?”
“You can ask,” Dog said.
“Will the mist ever dissipate?”
“No,” Feline answered.
Diven shoulders’ sagged down. He didn’t want to return to the mist. But he would have to. He hadn’t forgotten about the quest the guardians had given him, he needed to complete his Facet of the Survivor. However, while it had been progressing fast in the mist, the branch’s growth had come to a halt when he reached the stone.
“Thank you,” Diven said. Despite his disappointment, he made sure to remain polite with the three mysterious guardians. He didn’t want to give them a reason to retract their offer for food.
For a moment, he considered his next steps. The idea he had to return to the fog was hard to swallow. But did he have another choice?
No, he didn’t.
If he stayed around the stone, Facet of the Survivor would not progress. Assuming the guardians let him stay forever, he would never be able to leave this place.
He could not bring himself to do so.
The branch representing his new facet had already reached half the size of the one for Facet of the Hoplite. He reasoned that just as progress on Facet of the Hoplite depended on him fighting with his spear and shield, progress on Facet of the Survivor depended on him surviving dangerous situations.
Simple enough.
However, his situation had been dangerous because he was lost without anything to eat or drink. Now that he had both, and could follow his footprints back to the stone, it would be much less risky.
It would be slower but, for Diven, it was reassuring.
However, the guardians had mentioned monsters. So he would need to be very careful.
Having collected his thoughts, Diven left the safe zone around the stone and entered the fog.
This time he had no trail to follow. He chose to go in the opposite direction from where he came.
His senses were quickly overwhelmed by the lack of stimulation and if not for his own tracks leading back to the rock, he would already be completely lost.
He stopped.
“Now what?” He wondered aloud.
He wasn’t heading anywhere specific. He didn’t know if there was anything to find in this rift aside from the rock and the guardians. He could simply stay still and wait for either a monster to appear or his facet to progress to 100%. He had some fish and water with him, nothing was stopping him from doing just that.
It would be incredibly boring—then again, so would walking in the mist.
Diven pondered for a moment. He could try it. If it didn’t work, he would walk.
So he sat on the floor and started waiting. While doing so, he listened for any noise.
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
He could hear himself breathing, see his breath turn to mist as it left his mouth.
Well.
Soon, he realized it wouldn’t be tenable. His sense of time was already all over the place. He knew he had barely begun waiting, but it was unbearable.
“Walking is better,” he admitted to himself.
Diven walked for a long time. At least, it felt like a long time. The only indication of time passing was the growth of his facet’s branch. But watching a plant grow wasn’t exactly interesting.
There didn’t seem to be a day-night cycle inside this rift. The light never changed and if a sun existed behind the wall of fog, Diven couldn’t see it.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
It was exhausting.
He didn’t know where he was. For all he knew, he could have walked in circles around the stone.
The good thing was that his time alone in the Wildlands seemed to have somewhat prepared him for the experience. He was lost, alone, and uncomfortable.
Nothing new.
Still, the boredom was several orders of magnitude higher than in the forest. Deciding he had enough, Diven changed his course. His idea was to create a mental map of the area. Since he couldn’t see very well and there was no distinctive feature, he had to be methodical about it.
He started by drawing a cross in the snow and walked three steps forward. Then he stopped and turned right and repeated his actions, paying close attention to keep the distance traveled with each step roughly similar. He did this two more times, expecting to be back at his starting position.
Yet there was not a trace of his passage here. The snow was immaculate, as if he never was there.
Well, that was strange. Even if he didn’t make a perfect square he should not be too far off. He should be able to see his starting point. Or at least his original trail of footprints.
Puzzled, he traced back his route, making sure the steps were evenly spaced. After twelve steps, he was back next to his cross.
Something wasn’t right.
Going back and forth between the two points, Diven couldn’t figure out why he was not landing on the right mark. His steps were forming a square. Since he wasn’t measuring things properly, it wouldn’t be perfect, but not to the point he couldn’t find his starting point. The area was too small for that.
Standing near his starting point, he decided to walk diagonally. If he was right, he should find his footprints after just four or five steps.
After ten steps, he saw nothing.
Diven didn’t understand.
Something unnatural was at play.
Now of course he had been told stories about labyrinthic rifts filled with space magic. But those were myths, legends. However, after his encounter with the behemoth, he wasn’t so eager to dismiss the possibility.
If such a beast could exist, a weird spatial fog wasn’t too far fetched.
Another possibility was that his senses were lying to him. This seemed more probable because of how monotone the rift was. Everything was the same, there was no sound, no change in elevation. Only snow and mist.
Regardless, his plan to map the rift would not work.
Scratching his head, he wondered if he should just keep on walking in a random direction or go back to the stone. He was getting tired and wouldn’t mind sleeping in a warm place.
The guardians seemed to tolerate him. So it would be safer than the complete unknown he was in at the moment.
The journey back took a while. He wasn’t sure how long but when he reached the stone, he was truly spent and fell asleep instantly.
When he woke up, he spotted the feline-masked guardian looming over him.
Diven scrambled to stand up and greeted the figure, “Sir guardian.”
Through the mask, the guardian looked at Diven for a while before speaking, “You can’t clear the mist.”
“I know, you told me yesterday,” Diven answered.
“You can’t clear the mist, but you can see through it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Good luck,” Feline said, disappearing behind the stone.
Diven didn’t know what to make of it. The guardian had given him a clue but he didn’t understand. See through the fog? He squinted his eyes. Of course, it didn’t help.
See through the mist…
Diven racked his brain but couldn’t make sense of what Feline wanted from him. Switching gears, he focused back on his task: completing Facet of the Survivor.
He could repeat his actions and explore the fog. It would take one or two months to complete the facet this way, assuming he didn’t encounter a monster. This was both a very good time and way too long. If he wasn’t forced to spend all his time alone with no outside stimulation he would be satisfied. But as things were, he wasn’t sure he could mentally handle two months like this.
Actually, he was convinced he would go mad.
He had to find another solution.
He needed to think. To do so, he figured he might as well walk into the fog so as not to waste time.
Getting ready to leave again, Diven started walking away from the stone.
After only a few steps into the fog, he turned back to peek at the indistinct shape of the rectangular rock behind the nascent fog.
He had an idea. Now, wasn’t he precisely seeing the stone through the mist? Was it what Feline hinted at?
With a point of reference, maybe he could understand better what was happening to him.
He had time, they had promised to feed him.
Plus the outside of the rift had been chaotic when he fell inside. Maybe he should wait for things to calm down before leaving.
And nobody was waiting for him.
He could see the stone through the mist. But it was because he was standing on the edge of the mist-free area surrounding it. Diven didn’t think looking at the stone this way was what Feline hinted at.
He had to try new things.
First, he decided to repeat his experiment from the previous day. The difference was that this time, he would keep an eye on the black rock as he was drawing the square.
He traced a cross into the snow to mark his starting point. Then started stepping, turning, stepping again. In twelve steps, he had completed the square.
The issue was that everything was normal. He had returned to his starting point. There was a little deviation but it could be chalked up to him not being perfectly precise with the length of his steps and the angles he took.
Nothing was out of the ordinary.
It raised more questions than it answered.
Had his mind been too confused by the dullness of the environment to notice his mistakes when he tried his experiment previously? Or maybe whatever was happening with the fog wasn’t affecting him here?
It could also be that seeing the stone canceled the effect.
In short, Diven didn’t understand.
It was fine. He wasn’t expecting answers to come easily. He would have to continue testing. The only issue was that this close to the safe zone, his Facet of the Survivor wouldn’t progress much. It was too close to the guardians, monsters would not dare to approach.
Or maybe they would. After all, he didn’t know how guardians affect a rift. This was the first time he heard about them existing at all. This was valuable information, he had to take it back to the clan. It could even be enough to trade for their forgiveness.
Yes, it was a good plan.
Still, it was something for the future. Now he had to focus on solving this puzzle.
If a square with a side of three steps didn’t work, he could try making a bigger square. He would lose sight of the stone on the far end and see what happened.
Not being hindered by that horrible fog would be so nice. He had two more facets to complete after Facet of the Survivor. It would take him months, this was a certainty.
He had to solve the fog problem.