Chapter Five Hundred and One - For Want of a Thousand Nails

I was expecting my new... not-a-friend-yet to lead me to my friends. I didn't expect it to take as long as it did.

Orange's light lit up more of the tunnels as we dove deeper in. Stairs led us down, down far more than a single floor, thin, narrow steps, the middle of which were ground down by time and constant steps.

I followed the shadow of the figure ahead of me until we came to a small landing. There was an open door here, thick wooden boards held together by cold iron straps as wide as my handspan. Strangely, the door was free of both rust and rot, unlike almost everything else I'd seen in the mine.

"Here," he said simply as he passed the door.

I paused, looking for a moment at the space in the wall where the door's latch would be. It was carved out and destroyed.

"Is this where my friends are?" I asked as I followed.

"In a way," he said.

"What way?" I asked.

Instead of answering, the figure disappeared. I felt a chill from behind me and spun around. He was by the door now, and I saw its shadow shift as the door slammed closed. "This is why I'm trapped here. Why I became trapped," he said.

"This room?" I asked. If this is where he was trapped, why did he lead me here? I didn't think he would agree to help me, then take me on a wild goose chase. He didn't seem interested in roundabout plots like that.

"Behind you," he said.

I didn't want to turn around. I felt an instinct to keep an eye on him, but he was so much stronger than me that turning my back on him wasn't going make my position any worse.

I turned.

There was something in the centre of the room. Something still shrouded by the dark until I took a step closer to it. Then I recognized it.

Or, I recognized similar things because I'd seen more than half a dozen by then. A large, perfect sphere on a plinth. The pillar holding it up was covered in thin, careful carvings, each one precise and meaningless to me, but they thrummed with magic, and the ball... the dungeon core, was the same. I could feel the hairs on my arm and the back of my neck rise as I looked at it.

"A dungeon core," I said.

"I think I first came here to destroy it," he said. "To scramble a bit farther up the ladder of power."

"You didn't," I said.

"It enticed me instead. The secret of a tiny, forgotten nation's power. Hidden out of the way, in a mine that no one cared for, a temple hidden from the World itself."

I felt him come closer behind me, Orange's light dimmed.

"Touch it," he ordered.

I swallowed. I was very worried that the order was absolute. There wouldn't be any refusing it. Not easily. So I shuffled Orange in my grip a little, then carefully reached a hand out towards the dungeon core. It didn't feel as alive, as powerful, as a real core. Or maybe it was less that the core was unreal, and more that it was inactive?

My fingertips brushed the core.

It was like I'd shuffled over some shag carpet with socks on, then touched a metal doorknob -- a jolt shot up my arm, up my spine, up through my head until my ears tingled all the way to their tips--

...

...

I saw ... what I saw next ...

It's hard to explain. I'm not even sure it was real.

It was ... me. At some point I closed my eyes, And I saw me.

Not the me in this not-dungeon, but me of a while ago. Me standing next to a great tree, and I knew two things right away.

First, I wasn't the only one seeing this. The shadow man was there too, although he was looking rather less ... shadowy.

He was standing off to the side. An older man, the age I could last remember my grandfather being before he passed away. Leathery skin, lots of wrinkles, a slightly stooped back, and too-thin... everything.

He was standing next to this tree as well, watching it.

The other thing I knew right away was that the tree was more than just a tree. It was a display of branching paths. Every path that wasn't taken, every missed opportunity.

The me next to the tree opened her eyes, and our gazes met.

I, and I think the old man too, saw it all unfold all at once.

I can't explain all of them, there were too many, but I can explain some of them.

Imagine me, Broccoli Bunch, newly arrived on Dirt. I woke up in a tower in a mysterious town filled with ghosts. I met Bonesy... only I didn't.

Instead, this me didn't make that first friend. I was harassed by ghosts and hurt by them. I ran. Not east towards the Deepmarsh, but west, deeper into the Darkwoods.

I met pixies, and with nothing to offer them, was rebuffed. I met dryads, but they didn't care for my sort.

Deeper and deeper into the woods. Hungrier by the day.

Lonelier.

So I made connections in the wild. Somehow, I lived long enough to turn Cinnamon Bun into Wild Hair Hare. A class that grew my hair out until I could wield it like thorns and tentacles. I explored the Darkwoods with two locks of hair sticking out of the top of my head like bunny ears. I made the woods home. And when I saw what the people of the west were doing, with their industrial clearcutting and colonization campaign, I had to choose between friendship for all ... or helping the friends I already had.

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I chose to help my friends, and led the rebellion against the west.

Needleford fell to a tide of friendly woodland creatures led by a bare-footed me, with support from dryads and bees and all sorts of monsters that called the Darkwoods their home.

...

Another me, another situation that felt surreal. This one split elsewhere, further into my adventure. I never became an explorer. Instead, I discovered Port Royal and made it home. The big city wasn't a place for a bun with no money, but there were opportunities there still.

I met Booksie, and decided that I could still be a good person even if it meant doing things that were maybe not as legal.

When I hit my class evolution, I did so to become a Cinnamon Bundit, a thief and highwaybun that stuck up nobles for their money, who fought the gangs of Port Royal by night, and who sank all of her time and resources into making the uglier parts of Port Royal a little nicer.

Eventually, I was kicked out of the city, but I didn't take my exile alone. The slums left with me, a great exodus that sent the city's economy into freefall as half the workforce vanished overnight. It was okay, we were the biggest, happiest of families, a band of self-reliant nomads in search of a place to call home.

...

Another.

Instead of picking Wonderlander, I took up the mantle of a Puppeteer, just like Amaryllis picked for her second class, but instead of only using it tangentially, and to empower her magic and tricks, I went hard into the hobby.

We stayed in Rosenbell for a few weeks more so that I could learn from puppetmakers there and train a little more.

When we restarted our journey, I was a little more reclusive. I'd found a new passion, one that I really wanted to master.

Then Amaryllis and Awen both died.

It happened suddenly. A surprise attack by a Living Diamond Sandstorm on the route that I only barely survived.

But I could help, I could bring them back. Bodies were like puppets, weren't they? So I raised them up, and we kept on going, kept adventuring and being the very best of best friends who never argued unless it was in jest.

I spent more and more time fixing my friends and replacing parts until I needed a small carriage to travel with. When war broke out in the east, I was somehow there.

There were so many parts for my friends on a battlefield...

...

I get lost in the Darkwoods and meet Laine early, becoming a Darkbun Witch and learning old magics.

...

Bastion and I succeed in capturing Rainnewt at the Harpy Ball, putting an end to his badness early.

...

I foiled Rainnewt early, by accident, and so he confronts me early, and we become friends, of a sort. I join him, acting as a restraint on his ambitions and pushing him to be better even as he encourages me to be worse.

...

We never pick up the Beaver Cleaver. Instead, we grab a brand new Albatros Cruiser. A massive warship that marks us as a threat wherever we go. Soon, I'm not a captain, but an admiral.

...

Awen fails to defuse the bomb in Sylphfree. I almost die. The king does. Caprica takes the throne, and in her anger at losing her father, at losing Bastion, she declares war on everyone. The first world war Dirt has ever seen begins, and I take too long healing to stop it.

...

I tell the grenoil party about the Wonderlander dungeon, and how I broke its core. They drag me back to be executed in Port Royal.

...

Bonesy lives... for a certain definition of lives, and my magic combines Cleaning and Necromancy into something holy and not. I make friends with a thousand ghosts, uncovering their pasts and settling their angry souls until they congregate around me as a band of ghostly mercenaries.

...

After talking to Rhawrexdee's mom, I somehow convince Cholondee to join our party. Having a dragon in our group changes the dynamic a whole lot, but it's fun all the same!

...

Another...

Then another, then another.

I gasped as I stumbled back and away from the orb. "No!" I said before shaking my head. There were tears in my eyes, and I only realized then how much my head was splitting.

"Incredible," the old man whispered. Now that I'd seen him, sorta, I could better fit what I was seeing in the shadows to reality. "A thousand possibilities, and yet you so often remain impossibly naive and pure."

"What, what was that?" I asked.

"A test. One that I and so many others failed," he said. "Sit. I will explain."

***