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The rest of the voyage passes uneventfully, for the most part. A storm threatens from the East one day, but breaks and clears overnight. The adventurers bang out the broad strokes of their new plan, and supplement their burritos and cheeseburgers with fish caught on the poles stowed below-decks. Alice sails the whole way, as she needs neither sleep nor food. She answers the occasional mechanical question from the boys as they continue to read On the Nature of Humanity, and also gives extemporaneous world history lectures from their questions about the map. For once, she’s glad to satisfy even their idlest curiosity, as it gives her something to think about beyond the rarely stimulating task of sailing the boat.
Phyr occasionally powers down to stir up some wind on calm days, then switches back to Hellphyr to recharge his mana. The Solar Powered feature only regenerates 2 MP per turn (a turn being three seconds); but his enchanted earring makes it ten times more efficient, just as he had suspected on the voyage to Salinas, so it’s not an issue.
One evening late in the voyage, just after the Sun has set, Alice catches Phyr staring off into the distance while Vector is below-decks. “Penny for your thoughts,” she offers.
“I was just thinking,” he says. She refocuses on her sailing to give him space. After a long beat passes, he continues: “I think Dee just gave me a giant mana pool so I wouldn’t get frustrated with the game rules and bail. And it was fun, at first. But now it’s just kind of boring. I mean, Nathanael had his Spellfeast bullshit that forced me to work around my one super stat, but that made me realize I don’t really need it to solve problems. And I’m kind of brokenly overpowered now. So I’m trying to think of a way to fix that, but I don’t know how.”
“There’s a way to do that,” she says, “But there’s no going back, even if you change your mind.”
Phyr answers with no hesitation, “Let’s do it. I think I’ve got the hang of this world by now, and well as I know Dee, this is gonna bite me in the ass if I keep abusing it.”
“Good thought,” Alice says with a nod. “Overpowered characters tend to attract overpowered problems. Vector!”
A moment later, the hatch opens and Vector pops his head up. “Yes’m?”
“Do me a favor,” she says, “And cast Rearrange Attributes on Phyr.”
“Uhh… OK? Will that work?”
“It’ll work enough,” she says. “You can’t rearrange someone else’s attributes, and they can’t shuffle around their stats, but Phyr will be able to deactivate his oversized mana pool. Which, y’know, is the goal here.”
Vector balks for a moment and asks, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Yes,” they say in unison before sharing an awkward glance.
“Well, if you say so. Rearrange Attributes!” Phyr sees an option appear on his character sheet to rebalance his mana pool, and he picks it. Then he feels the excess mana drain out of him, like a burden that had been weighing on him so long he’d forgotten it was there. He woozes for a moment, and steadies himself on the rail next to where he’s sitting - but the feeling passes in a moment, and then he feels better than ever.
Then Alice faints. She falls from her seat next to the rudder, and the boat begins listing to one side. Vector rushes up to the deck and sweeps her into his arms. “Alice! Can you hear me?” Her eyelids flutter briefly, then she squints hard before opening the empty holes where her eyes should be. “Are you all right?”
“The ley lines,” she mutters weakly. “There was… a disturbance…” She trails off, then takes a deep breath, followed by another. She pushes Vector away, and he gives her the space she needs. After a moment, she takes up her place at the rudder once more, shaking off the last of the episode. Phyr and Vector look at her with concern, and after she corrects their course, she says, “Sorry about that. Something… big happened. Not sure what.”
To READ FOR YOURSELF what caused Alice’s episode, put a tally mark in the Sneaky Peeky box and click here.
“Is everything OK,” Phyr asks.
“I don’t know,” she says. She shuts her eyes in concentration as she holds the rudder steady. “It’s Noob Town,” she continues after a tense moment. “It’s… hidden from me. I can’t see it at all.” She fishes out a speaking stone from her pocket and says, “Derek? Derek, come in!” There is no response, and agitation creeps into her voice. “Derek, can you hear me? Derek? Can anyone hear me? Hello?!” She concentrates on the speaking stone for a long moment, then slumps in her seat as she stows the stone.
The boys prod her with questions until she can’t take any more, but she is unable to provide more information than she’s already given. “Look, I’m sorry I can’t be more specific,” she says at the limit of her patience, “But Seeing is really more ‘general impressions’ and ‘educated guesses’ than satellite photography. So would you kindly lay the fuck off?”
“All right,” Vector says. “Sorry we pushed so hard.”
“It’s… OK.”
“Do you think we should head back,” Phyr asks.
“No,” she says. “We don’t know what we’d be heading back to, and we have a plan to move forward right now. We can try to get more information when we’re back to civilization, which should only be another few days.” The boys accept that, and let the issue drop for the time being.
True to her word, they spot land the morning after next. Over the course of the day, the hazy rim of Altilluvia grows and grows in their view, until the ten-thousand-foot cliffs are nearly all they can see as the Sun is finally setting that evening. They’re a good ways East of where they need to be, all according to plan, so they coast along the current until they spot a suitable seaside cavern to moor the boat. They mark the location on the map, zoomed all the way in, then Phyr uses Etherwing and a dual-casted Ethergrasp to get them all up to the mainland. He takes it slow, not wanting to induce altitude sickness as they rise into the thinning air.
They hike over the high plains for a long while into the evening, crossing streams and creeks by hopping over stones and walking across fallen trees, until they find a wide river with a large enough sandbar to accommodate them overnight. It has formed between two trees that have fallen from either bank, creating a V where sediment has piled up, making a rough arrow shape in the sixty-foot-wide stream. Alice produces a pup tent from her pack, and then stands watch while Vector and Phyr sleep soundly until morning.
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