[Player Log Start!]

[Log Holder: Verity Monroe]

[Level: 2]

Verity stared at the spot in the air which they had fallen out of, waiting for the ripple of a person coming through. The spot remained still. Unbothered.

Where was Ben?

“I’m going back.” She decided, readying herself to run straight through the Warp Point. Something must have gone horribly wrong while they had passed through. There was no other explanation as to where she could have disappeared.

“Don’t think that’s smart…” Terry tried to stop her, before the glowing panels popped up, doing his job more effectively.

[Players Cannot Regress to a Lower Level Until All Levels Are Cleared!]

“Fantastic. So, she’s trapped in there forever!” Verity growled, kicking at the ground, which just resulted in tossing up sand everywhere, “She could be dead for all we know.”

“She’s not.” Michael interjected, eyes flashing the same green and purple they always did when he activated Computer Affinity, “Her profile on the Console still lists her as Active. Not even Wounded or Incapacitated. She’s find in there, no matter what’s holding her back.”

“You all are being very calm about this.” Verity pointed out. The air cooled rapidly around them as Tench stared at her, enraged.

“Is that an accusation you want to make to my face?” He asked, “Because whatever she’s dealing with, we’re going to have to trust in her ability to handle herself. Right now, we’ve got our own problems to get under control. For example, why are we on an islet archipelago? How do we survive this?”

Right. Because Verity had been so distracted by keeping the team together, she had forgotten about the very real Apocalypse that they were sent here to stop.

This place wasn’t as upfront about its deadly nature as Wayside, or the Tracklands. Like ZombieWorld, it was more on the subtle side. If it hadn’t been for the yellowed sky trapping them in an eternal twilight, she would have considered it to already be clear of any bad things. What had this place been called, again? CephaloRaven? What was that about? There was ocean all around them, and no mainland to speak of. Not exactly good living conditions for ravens, from what she knew.

“So, we search for shelter, yes?” Asadullah checked, tilting his head, “Then, once we’re settled, we can look into the requirements for clearing this level.”

“Yeah, sounds good to me.” Jared agreed, “You think we can find any humans living around here? Quaint place like this must be crawling with tourist traps and hotels and all that junk.”

“And where are we getting the money for it, brat?” Tench asked, not unkindly.

“I’m sure we can work something out.” Jared replied, not so subtly running his hand over the Card of Compulsion, “But first, we’re going to have to find places like that.”

Which was where Verity and Asadullah came in. She closed her eyes for less than a second, tapping into an Ability that felt like second nature at this point.

[Applying Tracking…]

The world melted into grayscale, leaving behind only faint tracks of red as scents and footprints, left all over the scene. Except it was all small. Nimble. Tiny little tracks made by… birds, if she was reading this right. Not a single human trace.

One glance at Asadullah, whose tail was standing at attention, and she knew that he could feel the same thing that she did.

“Oh, great, they’re making catastrophe faces.” Michael sighed, “What’s the matter now?” Verity pondered on how to break the disturbing truth that seemed to be written out by her Ability. Maybe they were just making incorrect assumptions over flawed data? It was possible that something had slipped their notice, even after all the points they put into leveling up the Tracking. Best to say this in a way that didn’t make them panic even more.

Asadullah, lacking all of her self-doubt, told them bluntly, “There aren’t any people here. Haven’t been for months, at the very least.”

“Right…” Jared licked his lips nervously, “Maybe they’re hiding? This could be some… nuclear fallout world where everyone is living in bunkers.”

“Are you currently dying of radiation poisoning?” Tench asked, “Because this isn’t what a nuclear fallout world is meant to look like.”

“I’m sorry, didn’t realize you were the nuclear winter expert-”

“Guys.” Terry interrupted, signing along so that the caption would enter their field of vision and distract them, before continuing in spoken word, “We search by foot, then.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“Right.” Tench nodded, recomposing himself, “Everyone, fan out. We’ll regroup when…” He squinted at the bright spot in the yellow sky, trying to judge whether it was early morning or evening, “At dusk.” He settled, “Or just come back whenever and leave a sign on one of the trunks to let everyone know you’ve been by.”

“Works for me.” Asadullah agreed, “You guys think you can make the jump to get to the other islets? Or maybe wade through it? It doesn’t look too deep to me, but you never know.”

Jared frowned looking at the spray being kicked up every time a wall of water slammed into the rock. He rearranged one of his crutches to let him bend down and pick up a rock, before straightening up and chucking it into the crystalline teal waters, tinged mustard by the sky.

The splash was heavy, and the waves immediately whisked the rock away.

“I’m not risking that.” He announced. Everyone was quick to back him up on that.

“I’ll see if I can set up some bridges or steppingstones to make this easier for the ones who can’t do it.” Michael suggested, much more confident about his Sorcery skills after the time they had put into training.

“Which means that you and Asad can scram now, Vera.” Jared added, “Put in some effort for once.”

Verity laughed, turning around to head in a random direction. Calling this place an island was a bit rich, in her opinion. It was more of a rock covered in sand and trees, surrounded by several other rocks, separated by a good ten feet of rapid waves.

She jumped over the barrier easily, landing onto the islet beyond, and cast her gaze beyond the archipelago. Except there was no end. The islets continued far into the horizon, hundreds of speckled islets, covered in flora, and some slight shifting of wind and living creatures, scurrying about their day.

Birds were flying overhead, seagulls, letting out their piercing calls.

She hadn’t seen a seagull in a very long time, even after the months in ZombieWorld had reacclimatized her with living creatures, they hadn’t found any oceans there, which had been odd. When she had asked Tench and Ben and Terry if there had been an ocean, only to be met with mystified confusion.

So, no, aquatic fauna wasn’t something she was familiar with.

Her stomach grumbled. She held herself back from reaching for her knife and flinging it out at the sky. Probably wouldn’t manage to hit them anyway. If she felt hunger seeping in, there should be something closer to the ground for her to help herself to.

Now that the thought had occurred to her, she looked around, trying to see if there were any critters around that would be safe enough to eat. A quick scan of Killer Instinct revealed nothing on the island, but the waves beyond was flooded with red mists of tempting blood. It was filled with soft, easy prey.

Logically, Verity knew that the ocean was filled with creatures she hadn’t seen in a very long time, but it was still enticing to lean down and get a better look at what lay below the shimmering waters. Something squirmed through the waters, and she took out her blade to stab at the moving creature.

She pulled the knife back out, please to find a small creature speared on the end. It looked like a… she ran through her memories of all tentacled sea life and decided on it being a cuttlefish. Those were safe to eat, if she was remembering right, but it sure didn’t look like it. Gross, it was still twitching.

The eyes of the cuttlefish twisted into a glare, even as bluish green blood leaked out on the blade. The tentacles flapped, and a warbling sound was coming from its mouth. On second glance, as she paid more attention, she realized with a jolt that the cuttlefish was forming words.

“We… will not… stand… for this…” It croaked. In a voice that was most definitely inhuman, yet those eyes had an intelligence that reached into her soul. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up straight as she stared at it.

A large tendril erupted out of the waves, reaching forward to whip the knife straight out of Verity’s hand. She didn’t let the knife go, though, even when the clammy pustules of the limb left chills going down her skin. However, she let the cuttlefish go, watching it flop back into the ocean with its giant guardian.

Right. Talking cuttlefish. If not a sign of an Apocalypse, it was still weird enough to mention.

Verity turned tail and made to head back to the islet where they had started off their journey, but paused as a trail of green smoke went up in the sky from the other direction. A flare from one of the others. Maybe Michael? He could remotely access the Console’s Inventory to grab one.

She didn’t pause to contemplate her options. If the cephalopod monsters would go after Michael next, he needed all the backup he could get. Or, at least someone who wouldn’t freeze when being lunged at by a swarm of angry cuttlefish.

By the time she got to the spot where the flare had been fired from, she was panting and out of breath, the jumping requiring a strain that she hadn’t needed to use before. Thankfully, Michael was standing there alone, not being apprehended by these strange hyper-intelligent animals, otherwise she wasn’t sure how helpful she would’ve been to the fight.

“Are… are you okay?” She wheezed out, bent nearly double from the stitch in her side.

“Shit, are you?” Michael asked, moving to hand her some water. She waved him off and helped herself to some from her own canteen. Michael took the hint and backed off, instead gesturing towards a spot in the corner of this islet which was in all ways indistinguishable to the thousands of islets hat surrounded them, “Okay, so, we at least have proof of human civilization.”

Verity squinted at the structure, unsure of what she was looking at. The pieces clicked together in her mind embarrassingly slowly, as she realized that she wasn’t looking at seaweed encrusted rocks and barren trunks of palm trees. This had been a house once. A real, brick and mortar modern one, too. She resisted the urge to run her hands over it, feeling as if the stone was ready to crumble into nothing after all these years of decaying in place.

“How old do you think these are?” She asked, trying to eyeball it from a distance, instead. There was the smoky outline of a photo frame burnt into a chunk of wall that was lying on the ground. No glass, no photo, not even any splinters of wood remained. Just the burnt outline, and the rusty metal hook that the frame had hung on.

She wondered morosely what had happened to them.

“I don’t know, I’m not a search engine, or an archaeologist, Vera.” Michael frowned.

“It’s at least a hundred and fifty years old.” Another voice spoke up, throaty and hoarse and sounding like it was being spoken through a voice recorder. Verity looked up, tense, and beside her, Michael had already readied his Fireball Sorcery Ability.

The speaker was a crow, looking down at them from a palm tree. There seemed to be a lot of talking animals in this world.

“How do you know that?” Verity asked, feeling more than a little stupid for addressing a bird like it could understand her.

But understand it did, as it tilted its head and responded, “Because that was when the last humans were wiped out.”

[Player Log End!]