Tario quickly disappeared as my portion of the Labyrinth rose high up above. I limped to the edge of the puzzle piece and lightly pressed my hand onto the invisible barrier that stopped me from reaching past the edge. I hesitantly looked over the edge, the barrier would stop me from falling off but that didn’t mean it wasn’t terrifying to see.
From what I could tell Tario’s piece had not moved. In fact from what I could tell a third of the pieces stayed in place. Meanwhile hundreds of squares moved upwards into the air the clouds parting around them. As mine shot through a cloud a dark shape moved out of the way and for the first time in my life I saw a dragon.
It’s scales were a deep bloody crimson with flecks of orange and its burning yellow eyes met mine. It belched a plume of bright red flames. The wave of flames splashed against the barrier, wrapping around the upper edge.
I laughed somewhat mockingly at the big lizard, then the invisible barrier cracked slightly, but before I could really process that we had already begun to move away from the dragon. I looked up at the crack a dozen feet above me. It was a shining blue white light that reminded me somewhat of Tario’s arrow ball thing.
The crack in the barrier healed itself quickly and I suppressed a shiver. Apparently the barriers were not impenetrable.
Huge rectangles of landmasses began to move in the air. I saw some that held water others that were deserts and some that were nothing but stone with holes burrowed in. I had heard stories of parts of the Labyrinth like that and they were always extremely dangerous.
It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen, in the sky was hundreds of moving magical blocks and down below was a land of flat rocky stones where the pieces used to be with several blocks still in place.
My piece moved eastward and I saw for the first time what a Safe Zone looked like. We flew above a huge circular wall and inside were buildings. So many buildings. They were compacted together like a beehive and there looked to be what I assumed was cropland dominating half of the circle. A single building dominated the center of the buildings with spires and its own wall stopping the buildings from spilling over too close.
Was that a castle? That is so cool, it was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. Hell every building was bigger than I thought, and a lot more complicated. The tops were not flat like I was expecting instead slanted and some even had what looked like columns coming out of the top. Why?
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I figured out they were like the holes in the tops of our tents back at the tribe when I saw a few of the columns pushing out plumes of smoke.
My section of the Labyrinth sped across the world and the hours swept by.
I used my Far Away Hands to once again help me climb to the top of the wall so I could watch from as high up as possible. From what I could tell the terrifying birds, dragons and wasps could not reach me at the moment.
Down below I saw different pieces of the world slowly sink into place, each piece melded with the one next to it, shifting the environment and walls of the Labyrinth so that it would seem almost natural the way a desert would shift into a plains or a forest into a rocky expanse. When a water piece would meld with non water piece it was usually in a lower elevation than the others but the area around the water would become sandy. Weirdly enough there was even a piece that was water all the way up to the top but when it set into place the water didn’t spill over and instead just stayed in place.
I also passed over many Safe Zones and the different types of cities amazed me. Even the Safe Zones themselves were not all the same. Some had the top covered so that it looked like a gargantuan Pillar instead of a city, only a few holes with man made structures telling me differently. Others were ringed in a square wall instead of a circular one, or even sat on top of a plateau on the Labyrinth.
One thing I noticed was that a lot of the pieces that were next to the Safe Zones hadn’t moved at all while the further out ones were more dispersed in which moved and which didn’t. Did the closer ones have a higher chance of staying in place due to the static nature of the Safe Zones?
Eventually after so long that I was able to go to sleep and hunt for food, my piece finally settled into place. The moment it did I felt the wall beneath me shift and I had to hold on so not to be thrown off the side. The pathways were shifting so they would line up with one another properly.
I watched as trees began to grow further down the path, but at the same time the rocky expanse from the other piece pushed further in as well. Making it look like the tree’s had grown out from the rocks instead of dirt.
I got down from the top of the walls, anything that lived up there could still kill me without a fight. From what I could tell I was on the other side of the world, a few times the red thread that connected me to Tario would show up but now it pointed down instead of to the side.
I didn’t know if the guy would follow me all the way across the world, but if he did then I needed to be ready. Getting my Cards to Uncommon with the Meta Card would be amazing, but I needed to fill out my other slots as well.
I was going to have to kill a lot of things if I wanted to be able to protect myself.