Stumbling Up: A Loser's Guide to Progression - Chapter 34: Mapping it Out

"So this is your childhood bedroom?" Meredeath asked, as we sat stretched out in the loft of the barn. The gambrel roof sat above us with several murals sketched out in grease and paint. "It's not what I would have imagined."

I blushed. Meredeath struck me as a refined city girl. She probably couldn't imagine growing up in a hayloft.

"Don't feel too bad for him. Share always complained that she got twice as many indoor chores because Cole wasn't in line of sight every day." Tandy stretched out on her back between Meredeath and me, her hands crisscrossed behind her head with elbows poking out.

Share had many reasons to complain about me over the years.

Can we look at your dad's map?

I didn't want to. As a kid, it was known that if any of us took the map outside, we'd be on latrine duty for months. Opening it up in the loft seemed like a profane sin in a barn smelling lightly of dung, on top of a rough wood floor covered in straw.

Unfortunately, Richard had used his newly discovered [Party Speak] ability, and so I couldn't just ignore the question.

"Yeah, I guess." I took the roll out of my bag. The leather fiber had become thin after many years of being rolled and unrolled. I untied the leather strap and unrolled the masterpiece for everyone.

Meredeath's gasp was gratifying. The map was filled with black ink outlines of cities, mountains, and roads. Details were highlighted in gold filigree, and many places were shaded in with light colors.

The base of the map, Dad always said, was done by an artist in Filidelfya. He'd added bits to it over the years, like the city of Woodsten, etched in a less practiced hand. I unrolled the last bit to show the local map that Dad had added. If he'd had another passion besides farming, it would have been his interest in cartography.

Meredeath ran her hand across the leather, just above the ink, as though she was afraid to touch it. She traced the line of the Ursine Wall south, the mountain range extending all the way to the southern sea labeled Yaris.

"Your world is so big," Meredeath whispered.

Tandy, you should use your [Map] skill and see if you can absorb it into our [Party Map].

"Can you actually do that?" I said, having completely forgotten about our mapping skill. Bringing up the interface, I could see we'd uncovered a clear path from Woodsten to Bear Ridge to my family home.

Richard's antennae were focused on Tandy. She sat with her eyes closed, a clear sign she was navigating menus.

"I think, yes. I've got it," she said with her hand over the map.

Our interface filled out majestically, including trade routes, rivers, cities, and roads. The new information was shaded in a dull grey. A pop-up informed me that the information was several decades old, and data may have changed in the last thirty years.

It was a giant leap forward for us. The map included almost all of our district, and it detailed the winding path my folks had taken when they immigrated from the west. However, it also incorporated the general attributes of the map as a whole.

"Does this mean we can just... look at people's maps to fill in the blanks?" Meredeath asked.

It seemed like a cheat code to me.

No.

“Just no?” Meredeath asked. She was getting as tired of Richard as I was.

Richard eyed her with his stalks, and Meredeath stared him down, her eyebrow raised in judgment.

The banana slug eventually shrunk, relenting, he gave us a bit more.

It’s enchanted. An [Adventurer’s Map].

Before our eyes, my dad's map updated with a title [Your Mom's Party Map]. I watched in stunned silence as it transformed to show the crater on Bear Ridge, and moved the dot labeled 'Woodsten' to the right a quarter of an inch.

"He gave us a bigger treasure than he knew," Tandy murmured.

Perhaps.

I traced a path from Woodsten to the Bear Ridge Crater, seeing but not believing.

You can touch it. It’s enchanted against dirt and water.

I did something I'd never dared, I let my finger drop and touch the old leather. It was smooth, silky almost, as I ran my hand across it.

"Do you see this?" Tandy asked, pointing at the localized section. Her finger touched a landscape labeled 'The Bone Lady Swamp.' "Well, this confirms what we'd already thought."

A skull and crossbones sat at the entrance, the universal sign for 'keep out.'

We all stared at it.

"My uncle once got drunk and told me a story about the swamp," Leo said. It was unusual for him to volunteer information from his family, so neither Tandy nor I interrupted him. "He and my dad had gone to check it out on a full moon. We've all heard the stories, right? But who's actually seen the bone lady?"

"I'm not sure why Uncle Ardie told me this story, but he never repeated it. He said the moonlight made the forest glow, but as they drew closer to the swamp’s border, everything grew darker. It'd been spring, but the trees had lost their leaves. Clouds crept over the moon, and they both began second-guessing their desire, as swamp water soaked their boots, to continue. Ardie took out a torch and lit it. The soft glow, comforting both, they decided to continue. That's when they saw the lights dancing above the swamp."

"The ghost lights?" I whispered.

Leo shrugged. "They didn't know. Uncle Ardie said that he wanted to turn around, but that my dad had his head stuffed with wool. Dad insisted on going forward, on catching a light. So he moved forward, while Ardie stood watching. The swamp got wetter, with great sucking steps trying to pull my dad's boots off his feet. Uncle Ardie picked a tree to stand by, high ground."

"The further Dad got away, the more Artie noticed the ground. It sloped towards the dancing lights, pulsing like it breathed. He tried calling out, but the words stuck in his throat. His feet were locked, and he couldn't move or yell. He tried to pull his hand away from the tree. It was covered in a black sap, glued to the tree."

"Growing more frantic, he pulled harder on his hand, the dark sap pulsed in time with the swamp, climbing higher to his wrist.”

“Artie twisted, getting leverage with his feet on a rock he pulled. But it only made it worse. Each tug forced the sap higher on his hand.”

“He yelled for my dad, but the fog was getting denser, muffling the sounds.”

Leo stopped his narration, leaning back against the barn wall. His face was white. I'd never heard this story from him.

Richard sat across from me, his head lying against the floor as though in a torpor.

"What happened?" Meredeath asked, sounding more curious than afraid. Maybe her world didn't have ghosts and bone ladies.

"He had the torch." My mind clicked into understanding. Ardie Patch had always existed on the fringe of the village. The nicest thing anyone'd ever been able to say about him was that he'd taken Leo on after his parents passed. Taking him on had been generous. Leo had a roof over his head and sometimes food, but for the most part, Ardie had ignored his nephew, leaving him to fend for himself.

No one would own up to why he was the town drunk, but I'd always assumed it had to do with the scars that covered the right side of his body. Long, gnarled ropes that ran down his arm and what was left of his hand.

"My dad ran back to him once he heard the screams. The lights followed him. Chasing him to the tree. Roots tripped his feet, trying to drag him back."

“Artie said my dad saved him. Dragged him out of the swamp screaming for mercy. Neither of them was the same.”

Tandy and I looked at each other. This is why our adventurous friend had never had a remote interest in going into the bone lady's domain. It was an unspoken rite of passage to dare the fringe of the swamp in Woodsten, but Leo'd always talked them out of it.

Leo looked at the rest of us, in the faint glow of my hammer.

"Artie said that Dad also had an experience. That the lights were ghosts that spoke to him of an early death." His voice trailed off.

That was not Rhi Voss. It sounds like you've got a tidemaw in your swamp.

"How do you know it's not the bone lady?" I asked, not willing to call the horror of our childhood by her first name.

Richard lifted his eyestalks for the first time since we sat down in the barn. He looked straight into my soul.

Because they'd be dead.

We were all silent at his proclamation. What was there to say? Leo's story was messed up, but Richard, the self-proclaimed immortal, deciding we were doomed, gave us something to think about.

"What's my alternative?" Meredeath asked, her voice angrily breaking the silence that'd settled on us all.

Richard's eyestalks swung to her, his brow downcast.

You don't. That's the stupidity of it. If you're going to survive your initiation into this world, you need a sponsor. The only one in reach is Rhi.

Meredeath voiced the thought I hadn’t dared say, "Then I should go, everyone else stay. I'm the only one who needs a [Sponsor], it doesn't make sense for you to all risk yourselves."

The platitude of 'sticking together' gummed in my throat before the likelihood of death. I searched for the words to reassure her, or back out of the deal.

"None of that," Leo said, his voice clear, the ghosts of his uncle's story leaving his face. "You saved us how many times in the Leviathan? I don't think I want to be an [Adventurer] without you protecting my back."

I found myself nodding, adding in, "Yeah, plus imagine how powerful you'll be once she does [Sponsor] you." They all nodded, buying my glib platitude. My stomach clenched, though, noting my insincerity. I was scared.

"I wonder why none of the rest of us needed a [Sponsor]," Tandy asked, thankfully changing the subject. It was a good question.

"Could it be because I'm from another world?"

It's not.

We all looked at Richard as he innocently began grooming himself. We hadn't shared notes on our classes, still held back by courtesy, but if [Your Mom's Party] was going to survive, we needed to trust each other. My heart still ached that I hadn't spoken up sooner in Meredeath's support, so I decided to make amends by doing something brave.

"My class is [Dead Wrong] and somehow seems to be related to Richard. I think if I needed a [Sponsor], it was probably him." As I said the words out loud, I knew they were right. Richard was my [Sponsor]. Another piece of the puzzle snapped into place.

"That's an odd class name," Tandy said thoughtfully. "I've got [Magic Weaver], which, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with magic or weaving. But, since I was such a high-level [Weaver], I'm getting the impression that I might qualify as my own [Sponsor]."

It made sense if the purpose of a [Sponsor] was to somehow ground us in progression and knowledge. Tandy obviously knew how to progress in her class.

All our eyes swung to Leo.

"I'm just a [Fighter]," he said. He shrugged, "Nothing special, but it's a class." It was a class. Generic, but solid. We needed someone capable of dealing damage. My class was specialized, but I wasn’t sure it was helpful.

Maybe Leo didn’t need a [Sponsor] because his class was so basic?

Richard continued to groom himself. His only contribution was the sound of his sandpapery tongue as it was applied to his body. Eventually, I turned off the molten quality of my hammer. The barn was stuffy, but we'd gathered some hay to pad under our bedrolls. It was comfortable enough.

Exhausted, I began to doze off.

I woke to screaming.