The warm summer sun beat down on the waters of Giantrock Lake, reflecting brightly off gentle waves and bearing down harshly on the band of adventurers crowded in a small wooden sail boat. Fish could be seen leaping from the waters in the distance, birds crowded the cloudless sky, and a healthy breeze carried the boat forward. Their guide, a scraggly old man with a wiry build, steered the boat with a short pole attached to the rudder and controlled the sails with a horizontal beam attached the single mast, taking up much of the space at the stern of the boat and leaving the passengers to cram together near the bow. They were occasionally forced to duck when the guide whipped the sails to catch the changing wind.
Upon returning to the city, Victoria had confided in Eli about the map she had received to a Thread of Power, which only cemented his plans to take the party out on a quest. Even just one of the party's members reaching Champion rank would be a massive increase in their collective power and grant them access to more opportunities, and opportunities for threads were rare to come across. With Victoria already at level 29, and simply needing to max out her experience to reach the threshold, they had decided together to combine the quest and search for the thread into a single journey.
The thread was located on a triangular peninsula at the convergence of two rivers east of the city and north of the lake, which the combined rivers eventually fed into. The peninsula was most commonly called Black River Point. The Spine, a mountain range that marked the northern edge of the Great Forest and separated it from the Craggs beyond, served as a natural border that cut off Black River Point from the greater landmass beyond it, leaving it isolated on all sides by either rivers or mountains. They had been lucky enough to obtain a quest also located there, which called for investigating a logging operation that had missed its last two scheduled shipments of lumber to the city. The quest had been deemed urgent enough to be approved for Grand Hunt incentives, meaning the party would get a nice bonus from the city on top of the normal pay out for completing the quest.
Eli was reading over the quest slip for the dozenth time when he glanced up and spoke to the guide, "what can tell you us about Grantworth Lodge?"
"Pay's good, from what I hear," the guide said, not looking away from the lake as he spoke, "still not worth it to work on Black River Point, if you ask me."
"Why's that?" Titus asked.
The guide took his eyes off the lake to look at the adventurers for the first time since they set sail, "you kids've heard the stories, haven't ya?"
"We traveled here for the Grand Hunt," Eli explained, "we don't know much about the region that's not in the pamphlets."
The guide laughed, "you really oughta ask the locals before traipsin' off into the wilderness. I happen to be a local, so how ‘bout it? You kids wanna hear a ghost story?”
Eli leaned forward interest and Autumn nodded in excitement. Victoria seemed disinterested, while Iris and Titus exchanged a worried look.
“The story goes that two-hundred years ago, when Giantrock City was just Giantrock Camp, Black River Point was filled with ancient trees just like the rest of the Great Forest. They say that somewhere in those woods lived an ancient titan who yearned for godhood, and would abduct wayward frontiersmen for experiments of untold horror. It’s said the river would carry their screams out onto the lake, where they echoed for miles."
"That sounds ridiculous," Autumn interrupted.
Eli sharped shushed her, and nodded for the guide to continue his tale.
"Well, late one night, the frontiersmen on the beach below the rock heard a boom all the way from the point that shook trees clear across the lake, and saw a bright flash that drowned out the stars. For weeks afterward, the point blazed with a ghostly white fire that consumed every livin' thing it could, stoppin' only when it reached the rivers' edge. You should know, redwoods don't burn easy to a normal flame, but this fire was somethin' different, I guess. Consumed the woods all across the point, covering the ground in a layer of ash that stained the rivers black for years. The titan who lived out there was never seen again, but folks steered clear for a long time regardless. Nowadays the woods have started growin' back and the young trees are easy loggin', but people come back from there with tales of screams in the night and an uneasy feelin' that the ground itself don't want them there."
"We could turn back," Iris suggested.
"Yeah, I'm sure there's some other quests--" Titus began.
"We're going," Eli said sternly, then turned his attention back to the guide, "thanks for the history, but can you tell us anything about the lodge itself? Or what kind of wildlife we should expect?"
"Well, seein' as how I can't sail upriver, I'll be dropping you off on the shore near the river's mouth. You'll have to trek north and cross Big Beaver Dam to cross the river. Now, those guys look intimidating, but they'll let you pass so long as you behave. Just don't look 'em in the eyes, and don't touch anything. When you make it 'cross the dam, you'll go back south along the water until you find Grantworth Lodge just north of where the rivers meet. Can't tell you much about what's in those woods, though.”
The guide turned his attention to sailing the changing winds carried them closer to sandbars along the northern shore of the lake, while Eli's attention returned to the quest slip in his hands.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
"Screams in the night, mysterious backstory, sounds like you really picked out a good one," Victoria said, restraining a smirk.
"Hey, we both agreed on this quest," Eli defended.
"I had nothing to do with this," Victoria held up her hands as she declared her innocence.
"We're literally here for your--" Eli stopped himself with a glance towards the guide, then fumed silently as Victoria smiled.
"Personally, I'm up for the challenge," Autumns said, "but it does kind of sound Eli's trying to get us haunted."
"Wait," Iris said, her eyes growing slightly wider, "you don't think there's actually ghosts there, right?"
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It proved to be an especially hot day in Giantrock as the region entered the depths of summer. Iris had spent all her life in a mild climate, where the coldest days rarely brought snow and the warmest days were uncomfortable at worst. In Giantrock, however, the weather was more extreme. The breeze had kept them cool on the lake, but now as they trudged through the forest in the late afternoon the air was hot and stuffy, and the rays of sunlight that cut through the canopy left mirages of quivering air in their wake.
She was reminded of her first days in the region, when minimizing exertion and sticking to shadows wherever possible had been the only way she survived the otherwise deadly heat of the western desert. That had only been the spring temperatures in the desert, and she couldn’t imagine how hot it must be there now. As it stood, in the densely vegetated area cooled by the lake’s winds and with the greater endurance that came with being level 10, she found the summer heat potentially dangerous but not life-threatening so long as she stuck to the shadows and blipped more than she hiked. To her higher level companions, the heat wasn't dangerous at all, but it still certainly wasn't comfortable. This was made worse by the constant uphill incline they traversed, along with Titus insisting they all wear their packs on their backs, rather than storing them in Iris's bottomless bag, lest they get soft and spoiled by the convenience. Victoria and Autumn had complained, but Eli sided with Titus. Iris was blissfully exempt from this, as she had no pack to carry.
Oversized mosquitoes buzzed through the forest with sharp, rapier-like proboscises. Titus and Eli took on the responsibility of mosquito duty, blasting the bugs apart with ranged magic attacks whenever they flew too close. Accompanying the giant mosquitoes were equally oversized dragonflies that hunted them, large bees that lingered on the flowers the size of human heads, and an assortment of enormous bugs. At one point, they were forced to detour around a trail of dog-sized ants that systematically disassembled the carcass of an elk and carried the chunks back to their colony elsewhere in the forest.
By late afternoon they found themselves standing on the edge of a ravine just downriver of Big Beaver Dam. It was a towering structure built of redwood branches and logs, standing a hundred feet tall from the wall-to-wall river at the bottom of the ravine, up to the rocky cliff edges of the forest. At the bottom of the dam was an opening, which gushed a constant roar of water that fed the downstream river at the bottom of the ravine. They watched as a pair of beavers -- their size incomprehensible at such a distance -- swam effortlessly in the rushing waters below until they reached the base of the dam, where they each grabbed hold of a thick redwood log on either side of the opening and pulled them back, enlarging the hole and widening the outflow of water.
A short while later they reached the dam, which appeared from the top as a broad bridge built haphazardly of driftwood and raw lumber. As they approached the entrance to the bridge, they found it guarded by two bipedal beavers the size of large bears, each wearing armor carved from wood and wielding long wooden spears. Their wide, flat tails were augmented with solid chunks of wood that had been carved into rows of spikes on their outward face, held in place to the tails with crude but thick leather straps.
"Kys t'ou my veg!," one of the beaver's spoke in a rough, yet sing-song language.
The party stopped in their tracks, as even the more experienced adventurers were taken aback by the giant talking warrior beavers. Autumn and Iris stared with mouths agape, Titus positioned himself between the beavers and his party as if ready to fight them hand-to-hand if necessary, and Victoria nudged Eli to say something.
"We seek passage to Black River Point," Eli said, uncertain if the beavers would understand him.
The beaver turned to his fellow guard, "Veagh cair?"
"Cre gys?" the second beaver seemed to ask the party.
"Uh," Eli stalled, looking to the others for help.
"He's probably asking why we want to cross," Autumn said, muscling her way past Eli and Titus to speak to the beavers, "we're here to check on the Grantworth lodge."
"Abber eh, beggan boirey," the beaver nodded, and then turned to his companion, "veagh cair."
The two beavers stepped aside, and motioned the adventurers forward. With great wariness, they shuffled between the two imposing giants and onto the Big Beaver Dam. To their right was the long, sheer drop of the dam down to the ravine far below, while to the left was the upstream river, which filled the ravine nearly to the top and not far below the edge of the dam.
"Remember, don't touch anything," Eli said.
The passage was rough and uneven, comprised of many overlapping logs with the gaps formed by the curve of the logs packed with smaller branches. Each step risked a twisted ankle, and there many gaps smaller enough to swallow a foot. As they crossed, they came upon a beaver carrying a section of thick redwood branch gnawed to a point on either end. They followed at a healthy distance until the beaver moved to the edge of the dam and lowered the branch onto the bridge. He grabbed hold of the splintered remains of a damaged branch on the upriver side of the dam, ripped it free and effortlessly tossed it across the dam into the ravine, then got to work positioning the replacement.
As they crossed the dam, they saw the tiny silhouette of Glimmer soaring high above, her shadow briefly swooping across the dam not far ahead of them. The view to the south was gorgeous, revealing the true magnitude and depth of the ravine as it carved through the land. From the side they had come were ancient and towering redwoods that crowded around the edge of the ravine, their roots intertwining with each other to stay upright on the edge of the eroding cliff. In front of them, a wide expanse of younger redwoods populated Black River Point, rather than dense and multilayered canopies, the trees instead had conical shapes with no real canopy to speak of. Their dark green needled leaves and rich red bark, however, still gave them away as redwoods. Those few similarities alone weren’t enough to dissuade the feeling that they were entering an entirely new forest than the one they’d grown accustomed to.