Broken Lands

Chapter 334 – Decoding Doors

The presentation of there being three outcomes jogged Sophia’s memory and she went digging for her notebook. It was easy to find, but once she had it, she needed light. Rather than light a beacon for monsters, she retreated into her tent. It could provide better light than her magelight and not leak any elsewhere.

The outside world seemed to disappear as she tried to figure out what the other two lines said. They weren’t directly readable the way Night Market was. Maybe it was scrambled?

She tried to rearrange the letters into something that made sense while she ate dinner. Nothing seemed to work.

She knew she was making an unsupported assumption that they’d seen all of the possible outcomes and that the possibilities were the same the other way, but it was the only starting point she had. It only made sense, after all; one of the exits was recorded, there were three possible routes, and the one that she’d deciphered was every third letter. 

Though, weirdly, it started with the third letter and ended with the third-to-last letter. That meant that whatever the other two phrases were, they had to be one letter longer. Or maybe they were shorter and repeated? There were an awful lot of duplicated letters.

Sophia wrote it out without the duplicated letters. This time, the word ocean jumped out at her. It didn’t even require her to rearrange the letters; it was right there. She just hadn’t noticed it because there were letters in front of the beginning of the word that didn’t make sense; she’d been trying to join them up with the beginning of the word ocean.

Sophia sighed and shook her head. She’d overcomplicated something easy. It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last, but it still made her feel like a fool.

Now that she knew where to start, she could read what that line said: Ocean Low. There were letters before and after those words, as if it was repeating the phrase to fill out the space, but the words themselves were clear and made sense. 

If she were to translate the phrase into English with what she knew of the two possible alternate paths, she’d say that it probably meant sea floor. That matched the descriptions she’d heard of the encounters with various sea creatures, though it didn’t sound like a real ocean floor to her. There weren’t any plants, which only kind of made sense since there wasn’t any light. Of course, there wasn’t actual water, either, so what could she say?

The important thing was that she now knew how the door’s encryption worked. It summarized the options, sliced those words up, then padded any that weren’t long enough. She ought to be able to translate the third phrase fairly easily now that she knew what she was doing; she just had to check each letter in the group she hadn’t yet translated to see if it started a word.

It didn’t take long to figure out that the third phrase was a single word, repeated three times: flee. It was so simple that Sophia wanted to scream about how much time she’d wasted trying to figure it out. Oh, it wasn’t four letters in Bridge, but it was still a single word. She should have seen it.

Sophia tried to focus on the real problem instead of her mistake. How did “flee” match the last group’s report? They hadn’t run; if anything, they’d skipped ahead. Could it refer to their speed?

No, wait, the answer was the location of the link-gate. It wasn’t on the link-gate the last group went through; they never used that one. They skipped it. That meant that either their path didn’t go through there or there was something else going on. Maybe “flee” meant that you’d skip something on the way out?

For that matter, Sophia was pretty sure the link-gate they used in the link before the cloud road was blank. The one in the Night Market didn’t have any clues either; it simply said that it was an exit. It was not particularly useful to be able to identify the meaning of the words on a link-gate only after she’d used it, so clearly she needed to know more.

Well, there was that one back on the snowy mountainside. She hadn’t translated it; maybe she should try, now that she knew it was three intertwined messages. She could also try to translate the gate that led to the crystal-tainted animals; she’d sketched it but hadn’t noticed any words.

Sophia decided to start with the first gate. There wasn’t any real reason to choose one over the other, and that one happened first so it seemed like a place to start. She separated the letters and tried to find words. Only one popped out at her, and she was pretty sure it was not intentional, because the rest of the letters didn’t form a word.

The link-gate in the Night Market that said Exit didn’t have other messages, now that she thought about it. That probably meant that three wasn’t required; it probably depended on what was on the other side. She already knew that the other side of the link-gate on the snowy mountainside where they fought the Hunger and its ice beasts was a link with only one other exit, so perhaps it was also a single message?

She couldn’t find one that way, either. It wasn’t easy like Exit. Worse, the letters didn’t repeat at all. That ought to mean that it was a collection of words, but it wasn’t. 

Wait, they wouldn’t repeat if there was more than one message and they were different in length. In that case, they would repeat - but only once you separated them out. That would be a way to figure out how many messages there were, even if you didn’t know the words themselves: you could look for the repeats. In that case, there had to be at least two messages hidden in the “decorative” words, didn’t there?

Now that she knew what to look for, the messages jumped out at Sophia before she even finished separating the letters. The phrase associated with the first set of letters was Opening Sort, which almost had to mean the way they responded to the fish. It was an odd way to put it, but that might just mean that Sophia was translating it strangely. The second phrase was Caravan Guard, which definitely didn’t have anything to do with what they went through.

That still left a problem, though. “There wasn’t a second link-gate, other than the one we came in through. Unless maybe there was a hidden one?”

“A second link-gate?” Dav’s voice made Sophia aware that she wasn’t alone. Well, she’d been at this for a while; it made sense that Dav would have joined her. Everyone else was probably headed to bed or on watch. “What do you mean? There are six here.”

Sophia shook her head. “No, back in the link between the mountain and the cloud road. The door we took out of the mountain had two phrases on it.” She went on to explain what she knew so far. The explanation led to another question. “The thing is, I don’t understand why it’s so inconsistent. The link-gate when we left the Night Market just said Exit, not what’s on the other side of the link. Most of those link-gates didn’t have words. The one we used to leave the crystal-tainted forest didn’t, either, and it doesn’t say anything from the other side, either.”

“It’s certainly not enough signs to be able to tell where you’re going,” Dav agreed. “It could be that there just aren’t always words or it could be that there are words only when the choice is important. That’s what Meadow said about it, after all, that the ones with the patterns are more likely to lead somewhere good. That probably means that not having a marked destination means it leads only to a standard area, while having something laid out means one of the options is good or at least different.”

“Maybe.” It sounded weak to Sophia. “Or maybe the ones without words are ones that no one got around to marking when they were made, whatever that means for the Maze? There’s definitely something controlling this space. It’s like the Challenges back in Izel.”

“You’re thinking of the forest with the crystal-tainted animals,” Dav guessed. “It definitely wasn’t natural.”

“None of this is. Not the mountain with the Hunger, the tests on the cloud road, or even the Night Market. It’s structured and it’s clear that it’s part of something bigger.” Sophia frowned as a thought occurred to her. “But maybe we’re overthinking it. What if it’s just broken? What if there are supposed to be destinations on all of the link-gates but they’re not all working right because this is the Broken Lands? The Eidolon said something was wrong or there wouldn’t be a Maze.”

“I hate that idea,” Dav declared immediately. “It sounds entirely too likely and unhelpful.”

Sophia stared at him in shock for a moment before his words fully registered. When they did, she snickered. “That’s how I feel about it, too. I guess the only way we’ll know is by looking at more link-gates. I should check the other ones in this link.”

“In the morning,” Dav said with a wink. “It’s too dark now. It’s time for other activities now. Care to join me?”

Sophia didn’t need the mind-link to know what other activities he was thinking of; his expression was enough, even without the way he patted the bed. Now that he’d invited her, it did sound like fun.

And it was.

In the morning, Sophia sketched all of the link-gates, even the one they’d emerged from. Two of the six had letters arranged around the edges, and that was enough for Sophia to know which link-gate they’d use when they got moving. One of the two marked gates pointed more or less towards the center of the Maze, while the other looked like it headed towards one of the walls. They were headed inwards, so they’d take the marked gate.

The only other link-gate that was notable was one of the unmarked gates. It had a small depression in the stone that filled the opening just the size for Sophia’s token, so it was clearly a token link-gate. She took a little extra time on that link-gate to sketch the magical characteristics, but they didn’t tell her anything yet. The places she needed to be able to see to control the gate either weren’t there or weren’t visible at the moment. That was easy enough to explain if it wasn’t active and hadn’t been active for a while.

Easy to explain or not, it was annoying. Sophia wanted to try probing it with her mana, but she wasn’t certain what would happen if she did. More likely than not, nothing would happen; she’d fail to connect to it. Almost as likely, however, was the chance that she’d hit protections against what she was doing. That could take any form, from an alarm to an active defense. 

She couldn’t dismiss the possibility that something would break, either; if they were right about the doors without text being broken, then another feature could be broken and she might trigger something. The most likely possibility was that she’d open the link-gate to somewhere, possibly somewhere it wasn’t supposed to connect, but it could just as easily release a monster. 

In fact, now that she thought about it, releasing a monster seemed likely. The monsters had to come from somewhere, after all, and the nodes seemed like the most likely place. The Maze regularly spat out mazestorms; those fits of wild mana might produce monsters on their own, but it was even more likely that something like the skyeagles or cling monkeys came from a node. 

In short, it was something to test when they were almost back to Mazehold, when they were in the area with solely second upgrade monsters, not after they’d fought their first third upgrade boss. Releasing a surprise third upgrade monster was not a good idea.