Chương 114: 4.4 Roads - Portishead (5:03)

Z3ke (Original Poster) I'm gonna ramble for a bit and you all can read it or you can skip it. I don't have an update or anything important to say, I just need somewhere I can dump my thoughts and this tech slate doesn't have a text document thingy. I'm gonna just start typing and I'm not even sure if I'll post this or not. I've been thinking about Game of Thrones recently. I watched the last season with some friends back in the day.

I remember heading to this chick's apartment every Sunday and watching the new episodes as soon as they dropped. During the last season, I remember sitting there and thinking "is this really it?" The first few seasons of GoT were some of the best tv I'd ever seen, second only to The Wire. It was just the last two seasons which soured me on everything. There was this scene from the first season that keeps popping up in my head. Bobby B was drunk and he was chatting with Barristan and Jaime, sharing old war stories.

He said that he could remember the faces of everyone that he's ever killed, and that his first was a Tarly boy back during the Rebellion. The boy had come running at him and Bobby B slammed his warhammer into his chest and caved it in. Then he talked about how the songs never tell how people shit themselves when they die. I've been thinking about that line for the past day. I don't think I really understood the scene the first time. Or maybe I did and the meaning has just changed with me.

I remember thinking that Bobby was pining for a simpler time. It was a bunch of nostalgia about the war and the only time in his life he'd ever felt alive. He was a pretty shit king. War was the only thing he was ever any good at. Then the camera cuts to Barristan and you can just see the disgust on his face. It's like he's listening to a man romanticize a war that was filled with killing, and he's thinking of the king he's serving and making the same face that I did while watching the last two seasons. Is this it?

Barristan was a warrior. He fought in the War of the Ninepenny Kings and he fought during the Defiance of Duskendale and he fought against the Kingswood Brotherhood. He'd killed a ton of people over the course of his life. Now he's sitting there listening to his king reminisce over old memories of smashing people into the mud. I don't know where I'm going with this. I don't know if I'm Bobby B or Barristan or… ugh.

Jackie and Elnor and I have been riding through the Deadlands all day and everything feels normal now. Maybe that's why I'm writing all this. I'm in the backseat and nothing is chasing us or trying to eat us or trying to kill us and I've got all these thoughts racing through my mind and nowhere to put them. Everything feels normal and that's wigging me out. I think I've gotten used to all the pain and suffering of this world. I'm like Bobby now in that I can remember the faces of all the people I killed.

I can remember the two bandits from the train and what it felt like driving a knife into them. I can remember Corva and the man I kicked off the tower in the Under-MIZ. I've been warped by this world, but I keep coming back to something that Malv0lio said when he was trying to convince me to head to Emberveil. He said that it's peaceful there and people don't have to kill to survive. My question now is: am I really able to live that kind of life now? Maybe I'm not completely messed up. Maybe I can adapt.

The last couple times I'd gone out and had "adventures" as you all call them, there was some downtime in between them. I escaped the Eaters and the bandits and spent a few days in The MIZ trying to get my feet under me. I dodged Corva stealing my body and then had a couple days to wander through the Deadlands and talk with a trader caravan. I punted a guy off a tower in the Under-MIZ and then spent some time sitting around and selling stuff.

Maybe I'm only freaking out now because this is the first time since I got kidnapped that I've been able to sit around with what I'd just done. I'm decompressing and maybe everything will turn out okay over the next few days and I'll be back to my normal self. I don't know. Hell, it could even be that I never came to terms with anything that I'd done and it's all just piling up and I'm slowly going insane. Again, I don't really know where I'm going with all this other than to say that I'm comfortable right now.

I'm comfortable and I'm not sure if that's what I'm supposed to be feeling. Jackie is driving and Elnor is staring out at the passing Deadlands and it's all a little bit odd how quick the three of us have settled into a comfortable silence. We're all just sitting with our thoughts. Every now and then someone says something and we all add to it and then go back to watching the empty highways roll past. We've only known each other for about two weeks.

That doesn't really sound like much until you remember what happened during those two weeks. Now we're all just sitting here on a boring ass roadtrip and, after everything we've been through, boring is exactly what we needed. Jackie broke the silence an hour ago by saying that she stank of diesel fuel and the Deadlands and the first thing she's gonna do when she gets back to The MIZ is to take a shower. We all enthusiastically agreed with that.

Then, about thirty minutes later, Elnor picked up the convo by saying he was looking forward to sleeping in a real bed instead of trying to catch naps in the jeep. Of course he followed that up by saying he was planning on searching the city for the portal that we'd all be shoved into. The one that let us out into the Chapel Pit. Is it weird that I'd completely put that out of my mind? Ugh. Whatever. I'll leave that to Elnor to deal with. I think my adrenaline is burning out.

I don't know what I hoped this would accomplish. In fact, just ignore everything that I wrote. I don't want to highlight all of it and press delete so I'm just gonna post it and move on.

Z3ke (Original Poster) Still alive, and feeling more living by the minute. We got back to The MIZ yesterday and I got a shower and a hot meal and slept and changed into some new socks. It's surprising how much all that can turn a person around. Jackie dropped me off at the Roaring Drake and was gonna take Elnor off to see his people. When I got out of the jeep she leaned out the window and pointed a finger at me and told me to stop disappearing into apocalypses for at least a week.

I told her I'd do my best and she just rolled her eyes at me and wished me luck before driving off. The Roaring Drake looked like it normally did. There were people coming and going and the conversation from inside was spilling out into the streets. The one thing missing was that there wasn't an ogre standing guard outside. When I got inside I realized I didn't recognize most of the staff.

I stood in the doorway for a bit, trying to figure out if I accidentally went to the wrong bar, when I remembered that Patch had been talking about moving more and more of the bar to the Under-MIZ. I did recognize some of the workers, but most of the faces were new. Before I could make out who was still around, one of the bartenders - this guy named Keith - spotted me from across the room and waved both his arms over his head to draw my attention.

"There he is," he said as I walked over.

"Bossman said you'd be showing up roundish about now."

"Uh, yea. I've been gone for a bit. It looks like I missed a few things," I said as I looked around the place.

"Yea. I'd say. You missed a ton," Keith laughed.

"Bossman runs practically everything from downstairs now. He left instructions though." Keith reached under the bar counter and grabbed a key that he slid over to me. He told me that Patch was lending me one of the rooms in the bar and that I should get cleaned up, get something hot to eat, and get some sleep. I wasn't gonna argue with that. The shower alone was worth doing. I washed the Deadlands off me and ate the food that was put in front of me.

Let me say again, you don't understand how good a fresh pair of socks feels until after you've been running around the Deadlands. Then I laid back on the bed and passed out. I was dead to the rest of the world. When I finally woke up I was feeling a little bit more normal and ready to find Patch, but before that I wanted to give him a gift. I've been thinking about what you all said about Patch, telling him about the forum and everything. He already knows about you guys.

I told him way back when Binary tried to get me killed, but I don't think he really understood. I said how you all were dicks and that you had information I didn't and I mentioned the concept of NPCS and I don't think he really took me seriously. His thoughts were, and I quote, "I know I'm not an NPC." But… does he really? How do you explain video games to someone from a post-apocalyptic society? How do you explain that his whole world is a piece of entertainment for others to consume?

I've been thinking that I should just give him a tech slate and let him check out the forum himself. That should be enough, right? It would be helpful. If I had someone who fully understood that I'd been isekai'd here and that person could check up on the information you all give me and he could also be the one who you all bother about lore and whatnot, that would help. So I made up my mind and headed to the Tock & Spanner to see Riley and pick up a Tech Slate.

When I got there I found her hunched over a workbench with a half a dozen tools scattered about. It was like when I first showed up at her store where she didn't even bother glancing up when I stepped inside. But unlike the first time, she wasn't alone. There was a guy standing a little off to the side and when I stepped over the threshold he looked me up and down. We just looked at each other for a good few seconds before Riley finally looked up from her workbench and saw me.

Then she turned to her new security guard and said, "he's fine. Relax." The guy gave me one more once over before nodding and going back to just… standing there. Man, security guards are kinda odd.

"Are things still bad?" I asked.

"Well, last week was rough. There were a lot of desperate and stupid people around," she explained.

"Before you left to wherever you went, I told you how things in the city were getting rougher. They were, but now everything is beginning to settle now. The neighborhood's been calming and now that I've got someone who looks intimidating, nobody has tried anything."

"That's good…that things are calming down. Do you know how long it'll stay that way?" I asked. She shook her head.

"No. But from what I hear, whoever was stirring shit up just up and disappeared. So maybe things will get back to how they were."

"Well, I got a feeling I won't be sticking around for that. I'm heading out again. But before I go, I was hoping to buy another Tech Slate." She smiled and went back behind the counter to grab the box that held all the tech slates she'd been fixing up. She spilled them out on the counter and I started picking through them, trying to find one that wasn't too banged up.

"You know, that guitar you made me ended up saving my life." She blinked and looked like she wasn't sure if I was joking or not.

"Seriously?"

"More than once, actually." She stared for a second before a small grin spread across her face.

"That's probably the best product review I've ever gotten." I paid her for the Tech Slate and slipped it into my dimensional storage and then turned to leave. I figured I'd save all my goodbyes for when I was sure that I was leaving The MIZ. I was almost out the door when I turned back around.

"I almost forgot. I ran into that Alderman guy out in the Deadlands." She looked genuinely surprised at that.

"You…did?"

"Yea. He seemed pretty pissed at me for some reason but…well, he's dead now so I don't think he's going to be coming around to bother you anymore." She seemed stunned for a second before the tiniest smile crept across her face.

"Oh. Such a shame." I couldn't help but snort and smile back. Then I gave her a little wave, stepped out of her shop, and was back out into The MIZ. Once I was outside I pulled out the Tech Slate and started it up. The screen flickered to life and then glitched for a bit and then, in the upper-right hand corner of the screen, the little DeepFracture icon popped up. I let out a little sigh and slipped the tech slate back into my storage space and made my way to the Under-MIZ.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. It had been a while since I'd last been in the Witness Chambers. Patch and I had been working on setting up his bar and I was eager to see what all had changed since I'd been gone. I could hear the place before I saw it. There was raucous laughter and the sound of music and some cursing. When I rounded the corner and came face to face with the bar, I was able to see the place in all its glory.

People were packed shoulder to shoulder next to the bar. Every table in the place was taken and servers were weaving their way through the crowd, carrying trays over their heads. The only way I was able to make my way into the bar was by turning sideways and slowly picking my way forward. The first time I'd come to the Under-MIZ, the Anchor Guild had been the undisputed center of life for mercenaries and adventurers.

If you wanted work or information or protection or just a place to sit back and relax, you made your way to the Anchor Guild. Now… not so much. Seeing the crowd at Patch's new bar, I realized that he wasn't really competing with the Anchor Guild. He'd completely eclipsed them and created something entirely new. Patch was a natural at running a bar, and I knew that if he kept going he'd probably end up running the entire Under-MIZ from his bar.

Eventually I fought my way through the crowd and slipped into the back hallway. The noise from the bar faded behind me as I made my way into the small room of the Witness Chambers. The whole place still felt strange to me. I remember when Patch and I first found the place and I still wasn't really used to the whole thing yet. Patch was right where I'd left him. He was seated in the Witness chair with some cables disappearing into the wall behind him.

His eyes were closed and, if I didn't know any better, I would've thought he was asleep. I dragged a chair over next to him and sat down without a word. About a minute later his eyes opened and he turned to me with an easy smile.

"I knew the Black Teeth weren't going to be the end of you."

"Yea. Well. That makes one of us," I sighed.

"It was kinda touch and go for a while there. And it wasn't just the Black Teeth either. I ran into the Shard Choir too and, holy hell are those guys completely batshit insane. Then there was this weird goo thing growing inside a pod in the middle of the Janus Storm. Neither of those two things are around anymore so…I guess it worked out." Patch chuckled.

"Sounds like you had an interesting few days there."

"You've got no idea." He smiled a bit wider.

"Oh, I think I have some idea." His answer made me stop and brought up a question that had been rolling around in the back of my head ever since the Chapel Pit.

"Hey Patch. How much can you actually see now?" I asked.

"With your Pathfinding at Rank Eleven." He looked at me before sighing.

"Ask the question you're actually trying to ask."

"It's just that…if your Pathfinding is as good as I think it is, why didn't you warn me? The Black Teeth kidnapped me. Or someone working for the Black Teeth. It was a five or six guys and they bundled me up in the city and stuffed me through a portal that led to the Chapel Pit. Should you have seen that coming? Shouldn't you have…I don't know…told me to be careful that day?" Patch nodded slowly. He didn't seem offended by the question. If anything, it looked like he'd been expecting it.

"It doesn't really work like that. Though, part of the answer has something to do with that little gift you picked up at the Tock & Spanner." I blinked. Of course he'd known that I'd visited Riley. It was a weird feeling, knowing that a friend of mine had become something like the Big Brother of The MIZ. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about that. Patch noticed my expression and waved it away.

"We'll come back to that, but first I need to explain what Pathfinding actually is because most people get it wrong. They think it's an exploration skill. And it is that. A Pathfinder is most useful for delvers when they're finding hidden passages, secret doors, shortcuts, and the safest route from one area to another. It's an incredible skill for explorers, scouts, and couriers." He paused for a second before shaking his head.

"But that's only at the start. The higher your rank gets… no. That's not the best way to explain it." He sat there quietly for a while, obviously trying to figure out the right words to explain what his skill did. I got the feeling he'd had this conversation before but could never really make himself be known. While he sat there I started wondering about his skills. If Patch could see as much as I suspected, couldn't he have warned me about Corva?

Couldn't he have gotten the Pale Regiment to send reinforcements to the Dead Corridor before everything fell apart? Couldn't he have helped with our escape from the Black Teeth and the Alderman and his mercenaries?

"Okay," he finally said.

"Every has roads branching out from them. They're not physical roads and they aren't set in stone. It's more like they're possibilities. Every decision that you make creates more possibilities. Every conversation you have, every fight, every time you turn left instead of right, every moment you hesitate and every moment you commit. All of it branches into countless other roads.

"If I were actively looking at you, I'd see thousands upon thousands of possible versions of you stretching out beyond this conversation. Some of those roads would split apart and some would circle back together. Whenever you made a decision, new roads would appear while old ones quietly vanished. That is what Pathfinding is." He leaned back and rubbed at his eyes.

"Pathfinding lets me see all those roads. Or at least, it lets me see the possibility of those roads. From the outside, some people say it looks a little like I can tell the future, but that's not what's happening. Instead, it's easiest to think of it like I'm playing cards. I'm calculating possibilities." He was quiet for a moment, trying to figure out how to explain it. Eventually he looked at me and then pointed at the ceiling.

"Imagine that you're at the top of a really tall tower looking down at a valley. Most people are down there, walking on the ground. They can only see the road that is directly under their feet. They know where they've been and they know where they're standing and, if they're lucky, they can see the next bend in the road." He spread his hands apart as if he were looking over an enormous landscape.

"But a Pathfinder is at the top of that tower. He can see every trail weaving its way through the countryside. He can see where they split apart and where they reconnect and where they dead-end and where they disappear over the horizon. I don't know which road a person is ultimately going to walk. Nobody does. Even with Pathfinding 11 there are some limitations. But I know those roads exist, and I can watch them change as people make decisions." I frowned.

"So…you can see everyone's futures." Patch laughed.

"Yes and no. The first thing you need to understand is that seeing something and understanding it are two completely different things. Pathfinding doesn't just dump information into my brain. The Skill shows me possibilities, but I still have to look at them and interpret them correctly." He leaned back in the chair and gestured vaguely around us.

"There are billions of roads crossing this world at any given moment. Every person has them. Every person and every animal. Trying to look at all of them at once would be like trying to listen to every single conversation happening in The MIZ at the exact same time. You're not gonna be able to do it. And even if you could, it would just sound like a bunch of noise."

"So…you can still miss things."

"I miss things all the time," he shrugged as if that should have been obvious.

"I can still be surprised. People make choices that I wasn't expecting because I wasn't watching their paths at that moment. Plus, I'm still reading probabilities. Think of it as something like 80% chance that Zeke takes a shower and falls asleep instead of heading down to visit his friend stuck in a chair." I snorted and shook my head at that.

"Rank 11 helps me with it. And this chair helps even more. Both of them let me process more than I otherwise could. If I focus on a particular person, the skill starts revealing the roads around them. If I focus on a place, I begin seeing the possibilities centered on that place instead. The paths are there, but until I actually look at them they stay buried beneath everything else. I'm not omniscient, Zeke. I'm just very very good at deciding what deserves my attention. I nodded slowly.

"Okay. So you just weren't looking my way when I got caught. I can understand that."

"Well, there is something else that makes my job considerably harder. It also happens to be the very thing you bought from Riley about an hour ago."

"The Tech Slate?"

"No," he shock his head.

"The slate that lets you access your forum." I pulled the tech slate from my dimensional storage space and just held onto it. We both looked at it for a few seconds. The muted sounds from the bar leaking into the Witness Chambers were the only noise in the place.

"You have paths just like everyone else. I can see them branching and reconnecting the same way I can for anybody else. But you also have something that nobody else has." He clicked his fingers and pointed at the tech slate.

"The first time I noticed it was when you went into the Deadlands with Cole and Corva. I kept trying to follow your probable futures and there were…interruptions might be the best word for it." He paused and drifted off before shaking his head and turning back to me.

"At first I thought I was just making mistakes. It had been a while since I'd last read the roads coming from an outsider. So maybe that was what was messing me up. But then I realized that your interruptions were…odd. Your paths would suddenly shift in ways they shouldn't have. Entire branches would collapse while brand new ones appeared out of nowhere. It took me a while to realize why."

"The forum." He nodded.

"You told me that you post information and a whole host of people reply to you and give you advice. Every time you post and every time someone replies and every time you read something that changes your mind or gives you new information, your possible futures shift. Advice that shouldn't exist suddenly exists. Information from people who aren't around changes decisions that you haven't made yet. It's like trying to predict the route of a river while someone upstream keeps digging entirely new channels."

Patch let out a tired laugh.

"Honestly? It's maddening." But there was something about his laugh and his face that made me think he didn't entirely mean that.

"It's also impressive. I've spent years learning how to read possibilities. I've gotten very, very good at it. Then you come along and for the first time in a long time I don't know what someone is going to do. Do you have any idea how rare that is?" he asked.

"For someone like me, surprises don't happen very often. They still do, but it's normally because I wasn't paying attention. You though…you keep surprising me even when I am paying attention." He rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"I didn't know about the kidnapping. I would have warned you if I had. Something changed somewhere and then you were gone. I started looking for you, but by the time I finally narrowed down where you went, you'd already escaped the Chapel Pit and were on your way to Devro by then."

"You found me in Devro? But then why not warn the Pale Regiment? Why not have them send reinforcements or something?"

"Again, it was something with the forum. Your paths were still a mess and there were possibilities all jumbled up together…but I figured you'd be alright."

"You figured?"

"The probability of you surviving was higher than of you dying. And when your roads were all jumbled from the forum, well I didn't want to just start adding a whole bunch of extra variables. What if I told the Pale Regiment you were down in Devro and they decided to kidnap you? What if they came running to the rescue only to decide to lock you and everyone else in a lab somewhere. I had to trust that you could handle it."

Silence once again settled over the room and Patch let it reign for a beat before speaking up again.

"Now, say what you came here to say."

"I'm thinking about leaving. Not just The MIZ. I'm thinking about leaving the Deadlands."

"Yep. You're looking at heading north to Cliffhaven. And then from there…more north." I know I shouldn't have been surprised but, how could I not be.

"Does your Pathfinding reach that far?" He snorted.

"Distance isn't really the problem. My Pathfinding can reach astonishingly far. Especially with this chair boosting everything. I can see for miles beyond The MIZ. But the problem isn't distance, it's where you're planning to go."

"You know where I'm headed?"

"Well, I can see Cliffhaven well enough. Its roads are connected to The MIZ. People travel back and forth often enough that I'm able to map out the place. But beyond Cliffhaven…everything starts to blur. I don't know exactly why, but my Pathfinding doesn't reach there. I don't really have an answer for that and it's pretty interesting."

"What do you mean blur?" I asked.

"Like, you lose track of people?"

"Mmm, it's like the whole place is wrapped in heavy fog. I can't make out any details. I know something is there, but I can't really tell you what I'm looking at anymore. What I do know is that if you head to Cliffhaven and board a ship there, there's going to come a point where I just won't be able to see you anymore. I'm not saying that you stop existing or anything like that. It's more that you just slip past the horizon."

"Well," I sighed and leaned back in the chair.

"I guess that makes this next bit easier. You already know that I bought a tech slate from Riley. Well, another one. I still have my other one. If I leave it here with you, you can log onto the forum. Even if I'm halfway across the world and you can't creep on me, we'd still have a way to keep in touch." He smiled at my joke about him creeping on me, but then his smile slowly faded and he pursed his lips.

"I don't know about that. It can work, there's no doubt in my mind. But I already told you about how the forum is odd. It is jumbling up your paths and…I'm not entirely sure I want to involve myself with it."

"Yea. There are times I don't want to be involved with it either." He let out a short burst of laughter and then his smile faded as he looked down at the Tech Slate resting in my hands.

"Whatever magic lets you connect with that forum…it's obviously not from this world. And it plays havoc with my skill. Hundreds of minds from somewhere outside our reality are constantly feeding you new ideas, new knowledge, and new ways of looking at problems. None of those thoughts originate with people whose paths I can observe, so every piece of advice gives you new roads that I can't predict." He laughed softly and shook his head.

"It's like I spent years mapping out all the roads everywhere around me and I finally started feeling like I knew how everything connected. Then I woke up one morning and someone snuck in and drew entirely new highways straight through the middle of my map."

"So, what you're saying is that I'm a pain in the ass."

"You're an absolute nightmare," he laughed.

"From a Pathfinder's perspective, anyway." I laughed and held out the Tech Slate to him.

"Well, nightmare or not, it's yours if you want it." There was a brief moment of hesitation in Patch before he grabbed the Tech Slate and then put it off to the side.

"I'll keep it. But I'm not going to make any promises about whether or not I'll actually turn the thing on."

"That's fair." He folded his hands in his lap and then gave me a long look before nodding like everything was finished.

"Now, enough about my skill and people from other worlds. If you're really planning on leaving for Cliffhaven, and beyond, then you're going to need to take a few things with you.