Corvayne's foot landed on solid ground, and suddenly he was in a different place. The dirt he stumbled off the top of the stairway onto was a strange deep blue color. He couldn't hear anything because Wick was still screaming over his shoulder. Lifting his head he saw trees in pastel greens and pinks against a sky that was was a shade of light yellow. It was a momentary impression as he tried to get his bearings: there were too many details in the view he had that didn't work with what he understood landscapes to look like.

He was about to set Wick down when he saw the clearing they landed in had scattered bones strewn about. He identified the remains were human from a discarded skull and scraps of synthetic fibers they used as clothes in Cascadia. A shredded and blood stained flannel shirt, scrap of camo wrapped around a bush, a leg bone sticking out of a fur boot... He took a glance backwards and saw a solid door behind him. His back was safe for at least a moment but he was not going to wait for an ambush to start with him in the center of the clearing.

He strode forward and was ready but slightly underwhelmed as a wiry green figure with a spear lept out of a teal bush directly in front of him. Corvayne had a shorter one hand grip on his own spear so he kicked the weapon out of the goblin's hands then with two quick jabs killed it, then kept striding past the sputtering corpse as it writhed and started bleeding out. He moved between bushes until he found a solid green-grey stone to put his back to. He put Wick down then glanced back: Indeed there were seven more goblins, all with weapons who had obviously been waiting for prey to come wandering in from the door. Wick was obviously still trying to process the last twenty seconds since he picked her up and stepped through what must have been a portal.

“What the fuck!? What the fuck is happening!? What did you do?!”

Corvayne didn't look to her, instead watching the gobins. “Focus. Situation still dangerous.”

He stepped forward. All the goblins were equipped with crude spears, some made from steel knives lashed to sticks. They were all under four feet and had short reach. They had expected him to maybe be disoriented... they had a moment where they all looked at each other before one let out a tiny warbling warcry and as one they turned and started yelling nonsense and charging him in a semi-circle.

Corvayne waited then once again spun his spear.

[Cross Skill: Circle of Death]

All seven goblins collapsed, all of them missing parts of their heads and necks. The smell of the little monsters was pretty nasty. He swore he saw a faint black shadow trailing the blade, but it might have just been blood from the first one he hit.

Wick was pointing at him, glasses askance. She reached up and adjusted them with a shaking hand. “How did you do that?!”

Corvayne had to take a deep breath: using those moves was tiring. “I don't know.” He huffed. “I was just copying someone else.”

“You GLOWED when you did that! Your spear was glowing black!” Wick was pointing at him, the spear, the ground.

“Let's discuss it after we get out of here, wherever here is.”

Wick looked angry at him for the first time he'd been around her: “No, tell me! I want to do it too!”

Corvayne understood, he wanted someone to also tell HIM what was going on. “I don't get how I did it... some of those moves were things I tried to copy from someone a thousand times. And the weapon is all wrong, you can't cleave with a spear... Can we please talk about it later? I'm worried we are still in danger.”

Corvayne did a quick sweep of where they were as he spoke. There was an arch where they had come from with a barred iron door. Dirt was a midnight blue color all around. They were at the edge of a circular area with bushes, surrounded by a cliff with steep paths leading to the top. Other paths were ravines where other ledges were visible, some of them had sky peeking through where the ground should have appeared as a horizon. The bushes had light teal wood with weird neon pastel leaves: Pinks, teals, light blues, flashes of yellow, magenta. Thick enough to snag legs, could probably push through if needed. Hard rock surfaces were a light blue. Some of the trees had deep blue leaves with red highlights. Sky was yellow but not like dawn or dusk: just a single solid color. Dead goblins and dead hikers or lumberjacks. He could hear the wind rustling leaves, birds chirping, something like a crystalline chime. Wick, in her raincoat, eyes red under her glasses from crying and looking angry. Some blood on her from the previous fight. Blood all over his pants and shirt. Probably why The Watchers picked dark colors despite living in a desert.

Corvayne went up to the iron door blocking the arch and listened. He was pretty sure it was where they had come from, and his next worry was a few dozen giant monsters following them. After a few moments of listening Corvayne didn't hear anything on the other side. An orange glowing lock, drawn in floating lines, appeared over the door while he was near it. He watched a pictogram of a line zig zagging across what looked like floors and up stairs, all made of orange lines. 5 floors were displayed, as well as a door with 'Exit' over it. Then the picture repeated itself with the line zig-zagging upwards.

Corvayne didn't trust that they wouldn't be facing a swarm of bigfoot if they could open the door. If the monsters were as smart as apes they'd start looking around the top of the platform. Thus he was eager to get away from said door. Wick, on the other hand, was studying it intently. She stepped behind the door, then walked around from the other side.

“It's not connected to anything. I don't see how it's making the picture, but it seems pretty clear it wants us to go up to get out.”

Corvayne nodded and searched through the bodies of both the goblins and their victims. Some of the bodies were not that old but the scraps were just that. It was hard to tell how long the bodies had been laying there as they were picked clean. One of the goblin's spears had a pretty nice knife on it which Corvayne took, otherwise the spears didn't look fit to throw let alone use as a weapon and the other knives had been bashed into dullness or shattered.

There were really only three paths out: one further into the woods to the left of where he came in, and two paths branching to the right: one looked to be scaling the rock face, the other leading down into the rift valley. He decided to go up first: the door had shown him that's how to get out. The path was a series of switchbacks, with packed darker blue rock showing where many things had walked before him.

Getting more height above the trees on the ledge let him see that he was in a sort of floating archipelago of rocks: he saw floating dark blue cubes loosely connected by branches and thin blue lines breaking up the yellow of the sky. Looking down and seeing sky gave him a moment of vertigo. He turned back to land to steady and orient himself. From the higher vantage point he saw the portal had a clearing around it. Besides the dead goblins, he didn't spot anything else in the clearing.. With another hundred feet or so of elevation he could see further into the valley: it looked like it linked the cube he started on with another forming a clump of three, and had a little stream running along paths on the floor of the valley before the stream hit open air, pouring into a yellow hole between precarious looking land bridges. He could see a different spray of water landing in the forest they were walking up and out of. Interesting place.

Wick actually clamped onto his arm when she saw they were in an endless void.

“Are we dead? Where the FUCK are we!? Corvayne!” He didn't mind her holding on aside from impeding his attempts to make sure nothing hostile snuck up on them.

“Again, I don't know. I just knew it was the way out.” He knew staying calm would help her stay calm. He hoped staying calm would help her stay calm. He saw her glaring at him.

“How did you know that?” She said as she stopped and he stopped to avoid pulling on her arm.

“I had a hunch. I assumed it was the same feeling that lead you to the clearing.” He said, hoping she'd recall that she had taken him to the woods not the other way around. It seemed to work because she let him start walking again.

As they crested the side of the cliff they were on, the top of the cube was more grassland then forest, but no safer as another pack of five goblins were patrolling the blue path up there. With a screech they drew crude axes and spears, mostly made of blue stone and lashed vines. Wick tugged on his arm “They got weapons! What the fuck are they?!”

Corvayne extracted his hand and twirled his spear into a stance ready to skewer and retreat. “They are obviously goblins.”

“Well, sorry I've never seen one before!”

The chat ended as the goblins decided to charge, all five rushing forward in a mad haste. Corvayne ran ahead to grab as much space between him and Wick as possible, then pivoted and began back stepping and jabbing once the first goblin came into range. He kept retreating after each stab, moving in a sort of spiral that kept the Goblins from surrounding him as he jabbed whichever one was in the front of the pack. Rather then retreating after one of their kind fell they just kept pushing to get at him, getting in each others way more then his own and causing the fight to be over quickly. Once more he was a little sloppy and got more gore on himself when he hit an artery. The last one died to his spear finding it's heart. He felt sticky from his enemies blood, but a good fight was one where you got dirty rather then injured.

He could see Wick was watching him as he crouched and took a deep breath. She then walked over and examined one of the monsters up close, using her boot to move things rather then touching the monsters directly. A good idea: they reeked.

“So you fought goblins before?” She stepped away from one with a torn neck, putting her arm up to block her peripheral view of it.

Corvayne looked down at the creatures. “No, never fought these, but I mean, they show up all the time in books, right?”

“... and you assume all the books are true?” Wick was giving him a look that he couldn't figure out but was pretty sure he'd seen plenty of times on other womens faces.

He shook his head while responding. Did he look like a fool? “Obviously not. A couple of them strained credibility.”

She looked shocked “Only a COUPLE?!”

Corvayne nodded. “Yes: from some of the fights in them the author had never actually used the weapons described.”

“But you'd probably be okay with fairy handing you a magic sword from a pond or something?”

“Yes. I'm looking forward to it. Assuming it's a good sword.” Corvayne couldn't entirely hide that he wanted to see all the things the outside world might have that he had only read about.

Wick seemed to be thinking about something. She looked at him, then looked down at the ground, rubbing her temple for a moment, muttered something, then looked at him.

“Ok Corvayne. I've decided. You're my new partner.”

“Uh, you want to go out?” Corvayne felt his cheeks heat up. A lucky break!

Wick laughed a little bit. “No! I mean, partner in crime! I don't go on dates.”

Corvayne nodded, trying to hide his crushing disappointment that Wick was not interested in romance, and that she did not consider this a date. “I can understand that. Taking off all your armor and weapons around someone who you don't know is inadvisable.”

She laughed and smiled at that so some of the damage was mended for a moment. Corvayne redirected himself to the work at hand: surveying to find another exit to this weird space.

The top of the cliff had a few bushes and while not flat seemed to only dip or raise so much off the baseline. There was short grass growing all over the top, which made the majority of the surface the same teal color as the leaves. Slices of lighter blue marked places where the surface was jutting up or dipping down a few feet. He could see that there were two visible titanic vines growing from the flat top of the cube, winding their way to cubes above in an olive line through the yellow. Looking up he could see dozens and dozens of other island-cubes floating, tethered with the roots or by dirt paths to each-other. The closer ones he could make out that others also had paths around the sides. The further ones looked hazy in the yellow sky.

“Lets cross and go up. Just keep your eyes peeled for danger, and your ears.”

Wick pointed at her glasses. “My eyesight is lousy but sure.”

Corvayne nodded. He would have to adjust his scouting to the unexpected... he stopped himself from using the d-word to avoid jinxing himself with something silly like a big guardian at the end... he would have to think of a non-loaded word for the place they had arrived in.

Immediately after he thought about that Wick added “This is like a video game dungeon or something... there's no sign of the park under us.”

Corvayne bit back his annoyance. She had never heard of the rule of the unsaid: Bad things happened less if you didn't think of them or say them. Even Spaces-Torn-Asunder, who wouldn't take someone's word that the sun came up without his spectrometer, agreed that the universe was listening to anyone who opened their big mouth. Even if it missed one comment, saying 'Dungeon' also poisoned the well for him: He was now imagining a fat goblin three times taller then the ones they were fighting, sitting in front of the door out whittling while waiting for someone to stumble into his room.

Before they could take another ten steps she opened her mouth again “I wonder if at the end there's a drag-” Corvanye moved like lightning to put his hand over her mouth. She looked pissed for a moment but he pretended to be alert and put his finger to his mouth, then looked around while gently easing his hand off her mouth. The old hunters trick to silence a kid: she'd probably be pissed at him when she figured out what he was really doing. Either way, saying the two D words together was REALLY bad luck: in every story where someone was in D1 and mentioned or wondered about D2, it ensured D2 showed up, and Corvayne's data on D2s was universally that they were more then a match for a group of skilled warriors. Looking over at Wick...

He offered her a knife, pretending that something off to the side in the bushes was concerning him, then started walking with deliberate quiet to the nearest vine up and off the cube, perhaps a mile away if his guess about the cube's size was right. Wick followed doing an exaggerated sneaking half-crouch that just looked uncomfortable. It's not like lowering her head here made any difference: if something was looking for them they stood out against the blue like two sore thumbs.

The only other creatures they saw on the way over to the vine were a few badger sized blue-gray scaled armadillos that seemed content to ignore them while gorging themselves on leaves. Some of the crude armor the goblins had looked to have been made from the shells so that might be what the little monsters ate. Or perhaps they ate bright red fruits shaped sort of like a caltrop growing on some of the trees. Corvayne didn't want to try it right now: getting poisoned meant Wick would be defenseless. Or at the very least it would be very embarrassing when he had to stop their progress to puke or worse.

They followed a path of dark blue dirt worn into the grass that guided them through the bumpy top face of the cliff. The root between cubes was seamlessly connected to the path and had a worn trail to walk on as well. Wick grabbed Corvayne's hand in a death grip before he could step on the path.

“You are fucking CRAZY if you think I'm going out there.” Wick looked down as she was talking, a bad idea. To be fair, he also thought he was pretty crazy for going out into the void, but if one of them didn't take the first step, neither of them would. A spear drives forward.

“These roots are the only way to go up. I also want to be away from the door in case it opens again.”

“It looks like it goes on forever.”

“Look at the root. It's part of the path. The top even has a little lip on the side of the flat part. It's meant to be walked on.”

“If I fall...” Her eyes narrowed at him.

Corvayne nodded at her. “I'll pull you up if you fall.” willfully ignoring basic physics: If her weight pulled him to the side he'd follow her off. After a few feet of nothing bad happening he relaxed. The root wasn't sinking or swaying from him standing on it, it was solid. The view from the root was nice: a lot of open yellow sky. The path was a comfortably flat the entire time. It felt like walking on solid ground the entire mile and a half. Maybe two miles? He was glad it was only a slight incline: He didn't want to think about having to scale a mile tall vine going straight up and down to reach the bottom of a cube nor the mechanics of crawling along the bottom.

The root ended near the side of the cube and lead right up to a path under a pair of waterfalls pouring off the side. The light blue rock had green and yellow moss growing where the water splashed. Corvayne was still in his cloak so he just ignored the spray whereas Wick covered her head with her rain coat's hood and ran through. The path wound up and around the cube's corner and he saw there was yet another floating cube close enough to the next bend to form another valley. He kept his eyes peeled up and to the face of the cliff for ambush. No goblin murder holes. And the path seemed solid under his feet, even if looking over to a mostly empty yellow void sprinkled with blue cubes still was throwing him off.

Turning the corner into the valley he saw another pack of Goblins, sitting around a fire about twenty feet under the path they were on. Corvayne tapped his lips again and decided to try to creep to the ramp up to the top of the cube without engaging the little monsters. If they were alerted, they'd have to scale a pretty steep slope or run down to the end of the valley to climb a ramp up, so he'd have time to mount a defense. This time he did crouch low, as from where the goblins were they could possibly be missed if their attention was on the fire. If they got caught they'd just kill the little monsters, no big deal.

A minute later he checked behind him and saw that Wick was drenched in sweat and kept twitching and looking down and behind them at the goblins who were totally oblivious to them, focused on roasting a baby armadillo. He gave her a little thumbs up and kept creeping up the ramp to the top of the second cube. Of course, that's when she kicked a rock off the side and the camp turned as one to look at her, then started shouting. It was ok, they would just take out the five...

One of those little bastards grabbed a horn made of an armadillo tail and blew into it, the ugly noise surprisingly loud. Then Corvayne heard more horns join the first from up on the cliff. He thought about it for a split second then ran up the hill. He could see there were other camps of goblins, and about ten of them gathering weapons in two groups before him. There was a vine not more then fifty feet from where he had reached the top of the cliff that lead to a hole in the next cube.

“Make for the root there!” He gestured for Wick to see where to go, then moved to box out a group of goblins from attacking her as she started to swear and scramble across the blue grass and dirt to the olive root. The group closer to the root was four, and Corvayne used [Flow-Like-Water] to close the gap and get in the middle of their group. Not usually a good idea, but the initial two steps with their associated strikes left two of the monsters on the ground bleeding out and the other two surprised enough that he could kick one and then bring the blunt end of his spear around on the other. To the little goblin's credit the monster tried to parry with his own spear but the difference in strength meant the creature was sent rolling butt over tea-kettle off a small rise, his feet up in the air twitching as he yowled in pain. Corvayne continued moving, not letting the little monsters behind him get a chance to close in as he veered to the vine. He saw Wick backing down off the vine away from four goblins advancing with a pair of spears and knives.

[Juxtapose]! He swapped positions with her, the motion fluid, and then rushed three steps up the vine, willing himself to use [Cross-Skill: Shield bash]. The effect seemed to work even just swinging his spear like a staff: The goblin he hit was bashed into the one next to him, both them stumbling off the vine to fall into the valley below. Corvayne backed off when the other two stepped past the falling forms of their friends and tried to jab him with stone spears. He sensed that Wick was right behind him both from intuition and panicked shouting, and so he changed his grip and tried a different skill.

[Cross-Skill: Sweep]. His swung the spear out, and felt improved power in using it to sweep the goblins off their feet. They didn't fall off the vine but he stepped forward as his spear swing pulled his spear back and up by his side, and stomped one on the arm, causing it to drop it's spear. The other he brought his spear back across like a baseball bat, not aiming to cut but just hit it as it was standing, knocking it into the air and off the vine. The lone goblin left didn't have time to do anything before he booted him off the edge as well, then turned and used [Juxtapose] again to pull Wick away from a crowd of goblins who were jabbing at her. One blow should have grazed him but he was absurdly flexible for a moment when using the switch, able to almost slide on his heels around the thrusting spear. The vine was as wide as the one between cubes and he called out “Up!” to Wick. Hopefully more enemies were not pouring out of the hole behind him where the root rose to meet the cliff face, but with at least twenty goblins swarming their position, he decided the better plan was to chance it on the hole having less monsters. He darted his spear out at the leftmost monster's chest and used another cross-skill before the two goblins to the side of the one he stabbed could close in.

[Cross-skill: Thresh]

He used the spear while thinking of his practice with a battle scythe, cutting the monsters in front of him. The effect seemed to darken his spear with shadows for a moment, and those shadows cut a few goblins behind the front line while killing the first he jabbed and knocking the other two over, causing them to tangle the feet of the ones behind them. He risked a glance behind him: Wick had given him some room. Taking advantage of the space he backed off again, steadying his breathing. Using those weapon skills was taking it's toll again: he had only been fighting a few minutes today and already felt heavy and tired. Still, given the crowd of spear and knife wielding monsters ahead of him and the need to protect Wick, he needed to keep applying his technical fighting style, using the terrain and focusing on controlling the crowd of green monsters.

The goblins seemed to completely ignore common sense and kept climbing over their dead and dying friends to get jabbed before they had time to even orient their weapons. A few tried to leap over their fellow goblin's bodies and puncture him with wild two and one handed stabs. Corvayne used his spear's butt to send one flying back, sadly to the grassy edge of the cube a few feet down rather then fifty feet or so into the valley. The other one flying at him forced him to take a step back. It was worth losing some ground: the goblin's leap had overextended him and left the little monster face down. Corvayne wasted no time and stepped onto the spear with one boot and kicked out with his other foot, the little creature hurtled back into another pair trying to crawl over the prone and screaming form of their companions. A few more jabs and the goblins were tripping over half their own dead laying on the vine. Even with about twenty trying to attack at once, the extra reach and height meant he could skewer the monsters before they had any chance to stab him. He used some of the time after killing a trio of attackers to turn his head to make sure Wick wasn't in trouble: She was halfway up the vine and looking for anything coming up behind him. Good.

He suspected there was something wrong with the goblin's ability to reason as the last two injured monsters were struggling to crawl over the bodies of other goblins to attack him. Any thinking creature would get that the others in line had failed and retreat or played dead. No, they tried to rush him to the very last one. The root before him was covered in green and red. He had also got some more blood on his boots, pants, and cloak. The cloak did it's job well and the blood slid right off once he shook it but other then that he was starting to look like a steak before it was cooked.

Wick asked “Are you ok? I can't believe you killed, like fifty of them!”

Corvayne nodded. He'd have preferred to just leave the goblins be. He was surprised he didn't feel more shook after all the blood he'd spilled today, most of it from humanoids. Perhaps that's what everyone at the village disliked in him: did they sense his cold-blooded nature? On the other hand: Those goblins did kill some hikers near the entrance. He decided he'd worry about not worrying after they had got out of wherever the heck they were in.

Wick didn't press him further or comment on the fight, perhaps sensing that he didn't want to talk about it. Instead she lead them up into the hole, moving off to the side after they reached it so that he could step past her and lead the way into the tunnel ahead. The dark blue rock had moss growing inside the tunnel that lit up a well defined stone staircase going up and into the cliff. The dim path wound around a few turns and Corvayne stepped on to the top of the cube then stopped.

What he saw now was a vast vista of greens and blues with a few red trees and swaths of short grass peppered in, sloping up and away from him into patches of forest. It was impossible that he hadn't seen this cube was an order of magnitude bigger then the previous one. He could see both this island's bright blue peaks and ones on other huge tilted plates, somewhat faded against the yellow sky. In going up the stairs he had once more warped to somewhere entirely different.