“We put the sign up at the Plaza, another at the Gate, and we move on. That wolf pair of elites was underwhelming. If I’d known, we would have done the lair earlier. Even the loot was mostly useless,” Jonas said.

“Even that crow trio was better,” added Ira, hinting at the ‘mysterious’ box in the mountain pass whose guardians they’d finally met.

As they came out of the cave and turned toward the Plaza, he spotted the figures first. People. There were indeed people at the Plaza… sitting, and seemingly waiting. He turned to the team and pointed.

“They’re here! They found us!”

Ira slowed, seemingly confused. Guss and Laura exchanged glances. But Jonathan whooped in glee. This cry was noticed, and one of the figures stood up. From the distance, Jonas could see an armoured figure… and then he realized that the people at a distance were familiar in some way.

“Ira? Isn’t that the team we saw? Back in London, at the attack?”

“God, you’re right. What was her name, what the Frenchman called her? Cowen? There’s the sailor with the mask and the green leather swordsman…”

“I recognise them as well. I think the other woman must be their Aetherist. Or whatever at her tier,” Laura said.

Cowen turned her head when the shout came from the distance. She spotted the gaggle of people next to the river, going down toward the Plaza. From that distance, it might be hard, but she could… yes, find descriptors. Names, tier-two classes, for all of them. A tier-two team here. Against all possibilities. Habborlain would probably have laughed if he was prone to.

“There’s the team of six. Just as they wrote on their signpost.”

“Now to find the shape of the piece,” the Physics commented.

Now that they were at the Plaza, Jonas slowed, unsure. After these weeks of loneliness and Labyrinthine pressure, they had finally other people. Real Professionals. And he didn’t know how to properly…

The woman, Cowen from the London team, brought out her hand, slightly turned in an odd way he could recognise. The Professional salute, it was called. He brought his own hand and clasped. The woman’s descriptor came up… a tier-six. Ten Professions. 700 levels, an insane amount of… everything, potentials, vitals, skills.

“Jonas Sims, m’lady. But I guess you can see that already.”

“Of course. And you are really just at tier-two. Brand new Professionals in a place where you shouldn’t even… What in the high tiers is THAT?”

“What ‘that’?” the green-clad man next to her asked, surprised.

“What is… Adjustment? WHAT ARE THOSE MILESTONES FROM?”

Jonas blinked, then realized suddenly that no one might have ever had Adjustment. Their circumstances were so unique, it was possible nobody had ever been forced to Adjust. Everyone else had been entering the Labyrinth normally because the Gates had never been subjected to that kind of attack.

Jonas found his hand being kept in a vice. Hundreds of Strength worth of hand grasp keeping him locked as the Imposing Knight perused his descriptor further.

“We all have it. We got it when we became stranded in the Labyrinth,” he tried to explain.

They were all sitting on flat stones, next to the Plaza. Well, almost all. The weird hooded figure with an invisible hand holding a staff stood aside unmoving, like some mannequin sporting Professional garb. Meanwhile, the high-tier Professionals were all looking at the six, while letting Cowen do the questioning. And Jonas was answering for the team. Two team leaders talking to each other, exchanging information.

“So the Gate is down in London,” he lamented.

“Yes. The Grailburg side is active, but you can’t use it to get to London, it’s just available for Fast Travel to, or from, other Gates,” Cowen replied.

Jonas stopped a small look at Jonathan, but Cowen’s gaze noticed that slight hesitation.

“I know. London is barred for us, that’s right. For now, the only way you can go between the Labyrinth and Earth is if the United States allow us to use their Federal Gate. And that’s mighty complicated. My team have one Fast Travel option to use there if needed, but nobody else can. And if we keep doing it, those colonials are going to extract their pound of flesh from us.”

“Can we…”

“Use that? No way. Not now. I’m sorry, but that’s going to be complicated like I said. Even if you show up at their door, they’re not going to be happy. And frankly, at tier-two, there’s nothing you can bring in to sway them. You’d need an official mission, one they agree with.”

Cowen shrugged in apology.

“Anyway, I will get a report in. Then, the next thing we need to do is get you back into normal British Labyrinth sector, I think.”

She looked at the surroundings and shook her head in half-disbelief.

“I can’t imagine how you got around. Even when the Labyrinth opened up and nobody knew anything about it – and I was there, I remember those days – we always had London to fall back, once we found out where the Gate was from the Plaza.”

“Uh?”

“Yea. At least one thing is the same. When we entered the Labyrinth, we ended up in the first zone’s Plaza with our Profession and all that. But we needed nothing special to get back to London. Then, we started to figure out the rules of the Labyrinth. The idea of lairs, the equipment you could sometimes get.”

Cowen’s eyes got dreamy, as memories of two decades past flowed back in her mind’s eye.

“Believe me, getting into your first lair with nothing but improvised stuff, zero defence rating and the rest…”

“Uh… you never got starter equipment?” Ira asked.

“Starter equipment? What’s that? You mean basic…”

“No, starter. The stuff that comes out of minion-type creatures when you kill…” Jonas stopped when seeing the look of incomprehension from Cowen.

“Minions never drop anything. Except for some foodstuff, if you’re lucky.”

Jonas looked at the rest of his team before replying.

“We got items from every creature we killed until we had one of everything. Starter from minions, basic for normal, common from veterans…”

“What? That’s not how it works. That’s not how it ever worked…” Cowen’s voice trailed as Laura dug her first hammer from her bag. The Knight unfocused, looking at the descriptor, before adding, wondering, “Nobody has ever seen a starter item. Zero. None. And you say you got…”

“Got my staff from the first elite we ever saw outdoor. At that point, every creature was still dropping equipment for us,” Guss added, showing out his boar-headed staff.

“Quality gear at level 1 from outdoor. Never happened either. Maybe for unbalanced Artefacts or Heroics in a lair, but the lowest elite drops require at least level 5 or 6,” said Cowen.

“Adjustment,” the rasping voice of the hooded monk figure announced.

Jonas watched as Cowen’s head shook in confusion.

“Okay. We’re heading to the Markandon gate. You are qualified yet?”

“We just did. We were going to leave a message at the Plaza saying we were going there, and then you were waiting for us.”

She grimaced.

“You’re insane. Fighting non-stop, like you did to get level 50 and tier-three access in a mere six weeks, it isn’t good for you. Even with high Fortitude. There have been some people doing that in the early days, and none of them has ended up well.”

Jonas looked around, slightly guilty.

“We take the Lord’s Day off. But since we had no way to leave otherwise, we couldn’t let us slack in our efforts.”

“Anyone died yet? I know it might sound strange but…”

“Me and Jonathan. Underestimated Elders twice and tackled those too early.”

“Ah. So you know about Sacrifice then.”

“Yes.”

“It’s a big trap for Professionals. Gives you a sense of invulnerability, and then you die. And one day, most or all of your entire team dies as well, and you stay dead forever. True Death comes for the unwary.”

She stood up suddenly.

“Let’s go. First, once we’re at the Gate, I’m going to send a report. Then, I’m betting that we’ll get ordered to escort you to Grailburg.”

“Escort?” Jonas asked, rising from his sitting stone.

“Yes. Her Royal Highness will absolutely want you there to ask more. I don’t know, but we have impossible Gate shutdown and impossible Professionals roaming the Labyrinth, and if there’s any…”

“Piece. Just have to fit,” the voice came.

“Yes, Habborlain. You are right. Somehow. Probably.”

Cowen sighed.

“Let’s go. Unless you have something to do first…” she tentatively asked.

“As if we did,” Jonas said.

As they neared the Gate, Cowen paused. Then, to Jonas’ surprise, she ripped apart the sign and threw it across the plateau.

“Uh?”

“Just in case someone else comes around. Nobody does, but I’d rather avoid your existence being common knowledge. We’re not that far from the USA sector.”

“We’ve put signs at every other Gate.”

“No time to clean those. They won’t stay for long, and nobody will come here, I hope. It’s a useless section.”

“Why?” Alton asked, speaking to the Knight for the first time since they’d started out.

“Imbalanced stuff. The whole area is typically a bit too low level for the tier. The tier-one below should cap around thirtyish, not twenties. And this should be going up to mid-eighties or maybe nearly a hundred outdoors, not this low. Same for lairs.”

Seeing the team’s incomprehension, she helpfully added,

“By the time anyone can come here from England or the USA, they’re likely to be vastly over-levelled compared to the zones. No interesting gear options, and very little in the way of Power Crystal sources given the paucity of lairs. So it’s a kind of dead sector.”

“Until we landed in here.”

“Well, you made your way up to tier-three zone. Which is impressive, even with that Adjustment experience bonus and the easier levels. Markandon is more classic, with low-hundred to two-hundred lairs. You’d have struggled there for a very long time. And worse, you wouldn’t even have known which way to go.”

The Gate on Markandon’s side was in a small clearing, surrounded by dense woods made deeper by the fading daylight. Jonas blinked, startled by the difference between the ice-cold mountains and the warmer forest. The rest of his team was looking all over the area.

Location

Zone: Markandon (tier 3)

Locale: Gate to Othary

Recall: Ovildian, The Plaza

Recall: available

Gates: 2/2

Tier 1: Zolferras

Tier 2: Othary

Fast travel: 3 charges, next in 12 days

Jonas didn’t get a Gate prompt this time, but he hadn’t expected one. Until he got tier-three, he couldn’t, he supposed. But when he remarked the fact to Cowen, she immediately had a suggestion.

“Head back into Othary, and change the Gate. This way, you get this Gate as your waypoint rather than whatever Gate you used to go in tier-two.”

“How does that work?”

“You focus on the gate list, and mentally erase the one you want to remove. It will notify you again as soon as you enter the proper tier. Oh, and don’t use the Recall. We’d need to get you back, and we don’t have time to waste until you come back.”

“Can you change that Recall?”

“Yes”, she confirmed. “You need a Recall stone… and I think we’ve ripped off the one in Othary. We reuse them to set Recall to various outposts and Labyrinth important lairs. They’re wasted on Plazas. Until we’re back in British zones, you won’t be able to change it. So… just don’t use it.”

She turned back to the Gate as the team headed toward it for the flip.

“Once you’ve done it, let’s wait here. Emory will report soon, and hopefully, we won’t have to wait over much.”

The green-clad man – Emory Foale, if Jonas managed to remember all the names right – came out of the Gate as the last rays of the sun were settling down on the clearing. Cowen’s head turned immediately, somehow warned of the arrival. Her team descriptor, Jonas guessed.

“Her Royal Highness concurs with your assessment, Augusta. We’re to go back to Grailburg with those lost six as fast as we can. There have been minor clashes at a tier-four zone with a French team. They retreated immediately, but the situation might be getting complicated fast.”

“We’re not recalled yet?”

“No. Her Highness wants a weekly report until we arrive. Given our levels, we’re the fastest way we have to get them back home.”

“Okay. People, listen to me,” the Knight called out.

Jonas and the team gathered around Cowen.

“This sector of the Labyrinth is called the Great Line because it’s a long string of tier three zones, each connected to the next. We actually don’t know how long it is… to one side, we have the French, so that’s a bit hard to get beyond. The other side is the American sector, and from our intelligence agents, we know they have Chinese Professionals lurking further down the Line, but that’s all we know.”

Jonas found himself nodding his head to indicate understanding. Cowen’s authority shone a little through her gruff countenance. You could avoid that, but you had to make an effort.

“We’re nearly midway between England and the USA. We’re all enabled now across this section, but you are not. Not yet, at least. So we are going to power-smash you through the zones. What I mean is I am going to switch teams and join yours. Then we’ll go through three lairs of Markandon until you’re good to go, then we’ll move to Vuneras, and we repeat that. We have four zones to cross along the Line, then we can go down toward Grailburg.”

She stopped to speculate, “I wonder if you will need a Grailburg Lair to go to London… when we manage to reopen it. Or… does it count as tier zero?”

Jonas shrugged, “You don’t need a Lair to get into the tier-one zone, so I guess those main Gates operate with different requirements.”

“Anyway, as a level 700, none of these lairs will cause me any trouble. I’d rather get Habborlain joined as well to help you in case of troubles, but you’re already a team of six, and that’s a problem.”

“Problem how?”

“Lair completion. We’ve found that, beyond six people, you start missing out on completion. If you go into a lair with eight, then usually two people, sometimes even three, don’t get completion. Seven is more random. Sometimes you get completion all right, sometimes one person fails. If that happens, we’ll run you through a fourth lair, with one person who had completed the three sitting out of that lair. Any questions?”

Jonas looked around, but the rest of the team didn’t seem to have things to ask. Ira almost raised his hand but lowered it after careful consideration.

“Now, make a camp here. It’s a bit late to go hunting for the first lair, so we’ll do that tomorrow.”

For once, Jonas didn’t use his Bolt to light a campfire. The Indomitable Spellthrower’s hand started to flame, without it even affecting her gloves and she simply shoved the flaming hand into the wood bundle. The fire caught immediately, and she pulled out and turned off her hand’s flame. The team started to pull out their old cloth bundles to get asleep. Cowen shook her head at the sorry state of Jonas’ team camp arrangements.

“Should have asked Emory to bring camp gear,” said the Knight sadly.

Despite the darkness, nobody had taken a watch. Jonas supposed that any creature finding them in the night would be hard-pressed to do anything before those five slaughtered it before being fully awakened. But, as usual, he couldn’t really sleep. The Tired status flickered from time to time, without sticking.

The circle of trees made for deeper obscurity than they’d usually had in Othary. But there was a bit of light above, so Jonas waited until the moon rose over the foliage. Besides, he was curious. He’d never spoken about the weird craters, and no one else had made any remarks.

This moon didn’t have strange craters. It had zig-zagging red lines and, at the edge, visible even in the darkness of the quarter moon, a patch of reddish glow, like embers. Jonas looked for what felt hours – and was probably much shorter – at this mixture of familiar Mare, and weird glows as if the Moon burned.

Then it was dawn and he was lying with his head on his damp cloth bundle.

Indomitable Spellthrower

(tier 6)

Required: 235 INT, 188 FOR, 116 FOC

Provides:

+17 health/+13 endurance/+20 mind/+40 aether per level

+1 Milestone per 10 levels

Indomitable Spellthrower Milestone: +15 INT, +10 AGI, +6 FOC, +4 CON, 0.5 aether/FOC

Skillset: Aether / Control