The rich black soil of Black River Point was soft underfoot, and easily held impressions of animal tracks and the adventurers’ footprints. The roots of the young redwoods bulged slightly out from the ground, forming curving and twirling patterns through the forest floor. The trunks were much more crowded than their larger ancestors of the old growth forest, but their smaller size still allowed for ample space in the young forest. The bugs here were smaller, though Iris found that somehow made them worse, as they had turned from monsters she could fight to pests that could evade her swipes and swats.
"No one's taken this path in a while," Eli observed as they followed a trail south from the dam, which led into the woods at an angle away from the cliff's edge.
"Makes sense," Victoria said, "the quest giver said we're the first ones they've sent to check on the lodge, and there's not much more to come here for unless you know what you're looking for."
"Speaking of that," Iris said, blipping up beside Victoria, "you two keep talking cryptically like you know some we don't. What's up?"
Autumn perked up at the question and jogged up beside them to eagerly await an answer with Iris.
Victoria looked towards Eli, who replied after a sigh, "might as well tell them, we don't have to worry much about word getting around all the way out here."
"We're not just here for a quest," Victoria said, "there's a Thread of Power here."
"Seriously?" Iris asked.
"Whoa," Autumn whispered.
Titus looked their way with sudden interest.
"How do you know?" Iris asked, "are we going there now?"
"Not yet," Victoria said, "I plan to absorb it when I'm ready, but I'm just shy of the threshold. Hopefully, completing this quest will get me there."
Iris fished around in her bottomless bag -- she wasn't actually filtering through items, or even touching anything at all, but the motion helped her think while she tried to recall the exact item she was looking for. Finally, she pulled out an adventurer magazine that had seen much better days. Dirt smeared the cover and all the corners were bent. She generally tried to take better care of her literature, but this one had spent a lot of time in her old backpack before she got her bottomless bag familiar.
"Do you know what kind?" she asked as she flipped through the pages.
"No," Victoria said, "it's a gamble. It might not be one that I want, but threads are rare, so there aren’t many I’d pass up."
"Worst case scenario," Eli said, "we keep it a secret and come back for it when I reach the threshold myself."
"You'd like that, I'm sure," Victoria rolled her eyes.
Iris finally found the page she was looking for and waved gnats away from her face as she read through it to refresh her memory. It described how when an adventurer reached the experience necessary to cross over from Level 29 to Level 30, their progress would stall and they wouldn't actually level up. It provided a brief explanation that experience points were a measurement of magical potential, and that a Threadbearer's body could only contain so much potential with the power of only one thread. When scholars had first developed the leveling system to track magical potential, they designed it so that each level would coincide with the distinct incremental increases in power that Threadbearer's naturally experienced as their potential grew. It just so happened that the upper limit of the 29th increment coincided with the point at which an adventurer would need to absorb a second thread in order to reach the next increment of power, thus marking the threshold between the first and second tiers of power: Hero, and Champion.
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"We're going to have a champion on our team," Autumn said while Iris was reading, "that's so badass. We're gonna be unstoppable."
"Even if we were all champions," Eli said, "we would still be out of our league in Giantrock. Don't forget that."
"Yeah, yeah," Autumn dismissed him with a wave, "you always have to be a kill joy, we know."
Eli didn't take the bait for an argument, instead he kept his attention on following the trail through the woods. Ambitious shrubbery sprouts combined with the winding nature of the rarely used path made it sometimes hard to tell it apart from the unkempt forest around it. This was made worse by the fact that animals had clearly been using the trail as well, along with frequent off shooting paths that first appeared to be the main trail before sharp turns or lower branches overhead gave away that they were animal paths.
The sun was getting low in the sky and evening was fast approaching, so the party cut off their conversation and increased their pace. Camping in the wilderness was an option, if needed, but they had all agreed they'd much rather reach the lodge before nightfall if possible. There may not be space there for them to sleep indoors, but even pitching their tent on the lodge's grounds would be safer and more comfortable than an arbitrary point in the forest.
The first sign that they were growing close to the lodge was the appearance of redwood stumps which had clearly been cut with saws, and soon afterwards the path became wider and noticeably more worn. Long ruts cut through the soft ground where logs had presumably been dragged away, and for the first time the boot prints of strangers were visible in the soil. As the ground became more and more disturbed and the number of stumps increased, the lodge soon came into view further down the long dirt boulevard.
The entrance was framed by two tall logs posted in the ground with a thinner horizontal log nailed and bound in place near the top. A simple wooden sign hung from the horizontal log by short, frayed ropes, and read GRANTWORTH in hand carved letters. There was no fence on either side of the entrance, but several rows of trees had been kept as a natural border around the camp. As the party approached the entranceway, they noticed wood debris scattered across the ground just inside the camp.
"What happened here?" Victoria wondered aloud, inspecting the shattered remains of planks still nailed to the vertical posts of the entranceway.
Eli crouched and picked through a few pieces of debris, "A smashed barricade, maybe? What would they be trying to keep out that couldn't just go through the trees?"
"Look at this," Titus said, holding up a plank that was splintered from a break on one end, just past a black handprint.
"Is that dirt?" Eli asked, eying the handprint.
"Yep," Autumn said, standing beside Titus and looking up to inspect the plank.
Eli turned back towards the camp, from where they stood they could see two buildings. Straight ahead was a long, low roofed building with many windows and an outhouse placed just behind it, he guessed that to be the logger's barracks. To the left, in front of and a little closer than the barracks, was the back and side of a two story building of slightly better construction, with fewer but larger windows and an angled roof. The front of the building wasn't visible from this angle, nor were much of the grounds at the center of camp and to the east. Even if they were done with work for the day, he expected signs of loggers by now, the smoke from a fire, the sounds of conversation or laughter, something. But the camp seemed quiet and still.
"Keep your heads up and get serious," he said, "I don't like this."
They slowly made their way deeper into the camp and the main courtyard came into view as they rounded the large building. The dirt here was beaten and disturbed from frequent traffic, with crisscrossing and overlapping footprints and cart tracks covering every inch of ground. The two story building had a large roofed porch extending out around its front door, which was slightly ajar. Near the center of the yard was a large, uncovered cart, which faced toward the barracks as if were driven into camp from the east. Beyond it, on the southeastern corner of the camp, was a large platform with a tall awning roof, presumably the sawmill.
"See anything?" Eli asked Victoria.
Her eyes were glazed over as she panned her gaze around the camp, "seems empty."
"Hello?" Eli called out, his voice echoing slightly.
It was still quiet. The sun was below the treetops, but the sky still glowed with its rapidly waning light. Eli inspected the cart in the courtyard, it was designed to be pulled by an animal but the harness had been cut. The tracks behind it were messy and inconsistent, as if the cart had entered the camp at such high speeds that it was bouncing behind the animal that pulled it.
"We need to secure the camp before it’s too dark, whatever happened here might not be over," Eli said, "let's split up. Iris, Autumn, check the barracks. Titus, sawmill. Vic, you're with me."
The adventurers nodded their understanding, split into their groups and dispersed throughout the camp.