Broken Lands

Chapter 413 – In the Roots

They made a detour by the market to pick up a few last things for the trip; the others had been ready for weeks, but Sophia had expected some lead time. All she needed was some mundane supplies she hadn’t replaced since they came through the Gateway; she didn’t really expect to need anything other than the food now but preparation was a good idea.

While they walked through the open-air market, Xin’ri reminded everyone of what she’d learned about the World Tree. It was a review, but Sophia appreciated it anyway; she hadn’t paid much attention the first time. She hadn’t wanted to hear about a place she wasn’t allowed to go.

There was no entrance fee to enter the World Tree; you could simply climb or fly in through any of the entrances formed by the way the roots met the ground. If you climbed high enough in the tree, you could enter through the branches, but that wouldn’t work for the Flying Stars. 

Entering through the openings in the roots didn’t get you into the Moonlit Branches. That required entering through a pair of doors that only opened when the fee was paid. That was apparently true whether you entered from outside the Tree or from the inside; if you saw a door that showed a moon shining on tree branches, it was a door to the Moonlit Branches.

Like the Kestii Tower, the base fee was a single leaf of aurichalc. Xin’ri had most of the costs recorded, but they probably wouldn’t be important any time soon. They planned to avoid the Moonlit Branches for as long as they could. There was very little waiting for them there until they reached high enough to need a safe space or finished the trek to the level where Issvako hid herself away.

The tokens they gathered in the Maze were a mixed bag. Most of them would probably work exactly as they had in the Maze, opening up an entrance to a predefined Challenge. That made them surprisingly valuable on Arcatiz; there were people who would pay decent amounts of aurichalc to be able to open a Challenge in the World Tree when they wanted one rather than having to search for one or wait for it to cycle. They were routinely sold, which gave them a steady price as well.

The fact that they were all second or third upgrade Challenges that were accessible to landbound people was a bonus, especially for the ones where there were recoverable materials. The World Tree was reliably accessible for the landbound only in the lowest areas, the ones that could be completed with no upgrades at all. People figured out how to deal with that, of course, but it was still a huge disadvantage for the natives who were not Archons. 

As a sort of a balance, many of the non-Archons made very good money as material recovery specialists. It was far easier to carry materials out of a Challenge if you could use wheels, a travois, or even a sled; while those could be powered by magic, draft animals were rarely possible in the World Tree and non-Archons were almost always stronger than Archons. Archons were built for flight, not carrying heavy loads. That meant that the landbound Challenges had a ready audience of people who were extremely happy to buy them.

The Flying Stars were significantly wealthier after several months on Arcatiz than they had ever been in Mazehold. Xin’ri didn’t see any reason to hang on to valuable tokens that they couldn’t use.

There were a few tokens that didn’t fall into that category, of course. Some tokens simply wouldn’t work in the World Tree. Almost any token that went to a Hub, such as the Library of Monsters, fell into that category. Hubs were usually unique to their Tower, with different setups, so gaining access to one didn’t grant access to all.

The only exception to that rule that the Flying Stars had access to was the Night Markets. Those tokens would still work. They simply weren’t considered particularly valuable because anyone who could get into the Moonlit Branches could walk into a Night Market if they wanted, as long as they went at night during the correct phase of the moon for the particular Night Market they wanted to visit. The tokens meant that you could enter at another time and reach the desired Night Market regardless of the phase of the moon. The single-use tokens could be sold for far less than they were worth in Mazehold and Sophia’s multi-use token to the Eidolon’s Night Market would be single use for anyone other than her. They weren’t worth selling.

The Eidolon’s Night Market was famous in the more accessible markets that surrounded the World tree for two reasons: first, you could find almost anything there if you looked hard enough. If it wasn’t there the first night you visited and you asked about it, there would be someone there selling it the next time you went, even if it was the following night. 

The second reason wasn’t as nice: the thing you wanted would be there, but you probably wouldn’t be able to afford it. Trinkets like the ones the Flying Stars bought on their visit were affordable but more expensive than the same trinket bought from a merchant outside the World Tree. Things that couldn’t be bought outside the World Tree were simply impossible to afford, insanely expensive and pointless to look for unless you could trade for them, and that required having or knowing something incredibly esoteric.

That was what the merchants outside the World Tree told Xin’ri when she asked about it, at least. From the way Xin’ri repeated their knowledge, it was clear that she didn’t entirely believe them and also remembered how Sophia had easily impressed the Eidolon in the Maze. 

Entering the World Tree for the first time required traveling to its base. That was easy enough for the four remaining Flying Stars; even though it was a mile or so below the clouds around the Et’Zin island, it was well within their range. 

The roots of the World Tree looked like softly glowing frosted glass. A little dirt clung to the roots, which made the entire scene feel slightly surreal as Sophia clambered over one, then ducked under another. It was like making her way through a glowing obstacle course. An easy one, sure, but it was still strange.

Sophia slipped past another root and found herself standing a few feet above plains. The World Tree’s roots continued off to the left and right like a wall made of giant glowing entwined fibers. The plains continued for at least a mile before they seemed to turn into a perfectly normal forest. The sky was bright, with clouds but no visible sun. A number of birds of prey circled up high; Sophia couldn’t see them well enough to tell if they were actually birds or Archons.

The World Tree was large but it wasn’t even close to large enough to contain what Sophia saw. That wasn’t a surprise, really; the lowest part of the World Tree was supposed to be gigantic, completely different from the links in the Maze. Like the links, the interior of the World Tree linked to different Challenges. Everything else was different.

Sophia hopped off the root before she remembered that she was supposed to be feeling strange because of the loss of the connection to the Archons on the outside. Moving from one Lifeweb to another was supposed to be difficult and Shaman Venique warned Sophia that morning that the Lifeweb in the World Tree was fractured. 

Sophia didn’t feel particularly fractured. The Lifeweb she was used to was distant, even faded, but it was still there. She could feel that there were dozens of Archons scattered across the area, as well. That felt sort of like what Venique warned her about, a thin Lifeweb, but it really wasn’t a problem. If anything, it was easier.

Maybe she hadn’t needed to worry after all.

“It’s supposed to be like this no matter where you enter the Tree as long as you haven’t passed the first Challenge set,” Ci’an reminded the rest of the group. “Anyone want to pick a direction?”

“We have to find … what was it, three Challenges in different Challenge zones?” Sophia looked around the plains and tried to find the Challenge zones. They were supposed to be surrounded by environments that connected the floor to the zone. Many of the Challenges were even supposed to take place in the outer region rather than in a separate Challenge area. “I was expecting them to be closer together somehow.”

“I think you’re expecting too much difference between the zones,” Dav said with a grin, then pointed off to the left towards a small, scrubby tree. “Over there, near that tree, the one with the two branches shaped like a Y? I see a statue or something sitting on top of the fork. And then, to the right and past that, you see where the ground dips? It looks almost like it’s leading to a stream but it’s just in that one area, so it’s probably a sinkhole or something. Just beyond that, between there and the forest, there are at least a dozen horses. I don’t see horses anywhere else, so that’s probably a zone too. At the back of that area, it doesn’t just look like forest; it looks denser, maybe like a thicket? It’s pretty large, too.”

Sophia sighed. She couldn’t see as well as Dav, but he was right about the horses and that stretch of forest did seem different from the rest. He was probably right about the other two, which meant he’d found four different Challenges in about a third of the space they could easily see without even considering the forest. 

“At least three connected Challenges in different Challenge zones,” Ci’an corrected Sophia. “There are supposed to be clues in whichever Challenge we complete that lead us to the next zone, but we don’t have to follow the first set we find and some of the chains are longer than three Challenges. That’s supposed to be rare when you are stronger than the local monsters. We know we’re done when we find an exit marked with an ascending spiral.”

Sophia nodded. That was close enough. “Then how about we check out the statue? That feels like it could easily be the beginning of something bigger.”

Ci’an shrugged. “Any of them could be. The statue sounds fine.”

Xin’ri nodded. “I talked to everyone who was willing to tell me about what they’d seen in the World Tree. A statue means we could be hunting for the person who left it behind to save them or it could be nothing more than a small version of the monster we fight in the zone. There was also one person who mentioned some sort of magic puzzle, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t talking about a statue like that; before he found it, he’d already fought his way through a series of tunnels …”

Dav was already a dozen steps ahead. Sophia hurried to catch up but continued listening to Xin’ri. Unlike Mazehold, the Archons didn’t seem to maintain a central repository with records of what you might find in the Maze. You were expected to go out and talk to people and find out what might be in a zone from their experience. 

Xin’ri ran out of possibilities almost exactly when they moved from the brightly-lit entrance area into the dimmer and cooler space near the tree. It felt like a cloud went in front of the sun or they stepped into a shadow on a warm day, but neither was true; the sky hadn’t changed. It was just dimmer.