The days that followed were hell for MarkT. The country through which he trekked grew more and more difficult, piled high in the shifting, crumbling ash and dust of the Addventure’s waste. Time and again he would toil halfway up a hill only to have it collapse beneath him, burying him in choking clouds of depleted mana particulates. The creatures of the wild too grew worse and worse; grotesque sexual monstrosities whose only features in common were their likeness to organs of generation—and lots and lots of teeth. He had no armored car to take the brunt of such horrors now, nor in the present environment dared he rely on his might as an Author. The antimana fogged the air as thick as soup now; using his power openly would blow up himself and everything around him, even if it didn’t cause a chain reaction that would destroy the world. He was effectively neutralized. The most he could do was channel his power into objects, altering them from the inside out before drawing it back into his body, never letting the energy come in contact with the air. Thus he was able to fashion weaponry and some body armor with which to defend himself. Otherwise he had to rely on himself and his wits, along with the tent and such intelligence on the land ahead as he had received from the native.
It was not a lot of help. This close in to the site of the flare, the land itself had been fearsomely warped and changed, its topography bearing little resemblance to what it had been. Fortunately, most of the predators he encountered seemed as lost as he was, and ferocious as they were, he thought there were fewer of them. Now and again he even encountered their dead carcasses, burnt, broken and left to rot, some hardly even scavenged. The blast must have taken its toll on all that lived here.
Enough of them remained alive to keep him on edge, and contest nearly every mile he progressed.
On foot, T did not progress many miles in a day, now. But bad as they were, the nights were worse. How the native had kept the beasts away from his (or her) tent, he could not imagine. The first night proved the futility of even trying; repose proved an invitation to assault, and so he got little. The next morning he abandoned the useless structure, and directing his power inward neutralized by an act of will the accumulated fatigue poisons in his body. In the same way he banished his weariness and purged himself of the need for sleep and food; henceforth he toiled on day and night, maintaining an artificial alertness. The ordeal felt endless....
Until he came to the Dropoff, an immense sinkhole extending from horizon to horizon, its fathomless bottom concealed by the gloom of extreme depth and swirling antimana. He looked to either side, but saw no way around. And his goal was still beyond. T groaned, hating this play with every fiber of his being. But there was no choice but to go on. Strengthening his hands and feet and transforming his nails into horny spikes, he prepared to descend into the abyss.
Meanwhile, his follower was not without difficulties of his (or her) own. Long familiar with the Null Zone as Joan was, the Flare had wrought changes extreme even for her (or him). The native was traveling light, with one saddle-Boobie and one pack-Boobie to bear the tent. The other packer and most of the warding gear had been left in camp. Thus the Morpher made better progress than the Author. But she (or he) did have to rest on occasion, and the shifting morass made T’s trail difficult to follow. Too, Joan was wary of what might happen when she (or he) managed to catch up, knowing his (or her) conditioning would kick in again when they met. To be effective the Morpher would have to disable it, and risk the Author reading all the Centerlanders’ secrets....
Joan thought T close at hand on discovering the Author’s abandoned tent, only to quickly realize no one was in it. And I can’t even recover it, it would overload the packer. What a waste! So the Morpher pressed on, confident at least of overtaking the Author soon, if all went well. If not—but that did not bear thinking of. But if I do—when I do—what then?
At the Dropoff, Joan lost the trail again. But it hardly mattered, knowing the Author’s destination. The problem was, how to get there!
Like T, Joan had a decision to make. And as for T, it was a daunting, yet simple, choice.
”Going in would be to court death,” the Morpher decided. “Only a fool would try it. I’ll have to ride around. If I choose the same direction he did, well and good, I’ll soon pick up the trail again. If not, I’m bound to find it on the other side.”
And in that confident but mistaken notion, Joan turned left.
It took two days to get around the enormous sinkhole. The Morpher did not pick up the trail, nor did he (or she) find it on the other side. Ultimately baffled, but still certain of T’s goal, she (or he) finally rode on south towards the broken Ringwall, now much closer than it had been. I’ll find his tracks soon, Joan thought, unaware of being well ahead of the Author now....
A day later a haunted and haggard T finally crawled out of the Pit.
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Wed May 31 00:10:11 2006
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