Having a walking truck, Corvayne discovered, had it's ups and downs. Literally, as the entire carriage strapped to Juggernaut's frame now swayed and dipped a little as the monster moved to the next door.

It had been four days since they had fled into the Tower. Corvayne was in the back, helping Preshe Mend Lady Blood Claw. His warrior friend was laid out on a bed with a slight gyroscope so that she stayed somewhat still but her skin kept spiking deep camo patterns with shades of lime green, red, magenta, and other colors that suggested constant pain and negative emotions. Oddly, when Corvayne and Preshe were sitting with her and holding her hand she sometimes turned plum for a few moments of relief.

"Water." She called out, and before Corvayne could get up Spears was there, water in hand.

They helped her sit up to drink, sometimes hearing the snapping of wood inside her as old roots broke. Through [[Unity]] Corvayne sometimes would draw some of the pain and turmoil she felt, but could do little to break the feelings that were bleeding out from the hole he had felt through his power. Worthless. Helpless. Abandoned.

Preshe looked tired, "Mo- Lady please, we will be okay. We haven't seen them in a few days." The girl had gone out with Corvayne to gather herbs every time they stopped to let the Juggernaut take a break. Even in an urban theme Corvayne and her sometimes could find medical ingredients growing through cracks in concrete or hidden in lockers during one segment that resembled a high school with halls sized for giants.

They then would take turns brewing potions and using whatever piety they gained to keep healing her. It was hard to find other things that worked for piety worthy creation when they had to gather quickly and keep moving.

Corvayne could see LBC's hair was matted with sweat, and he took a cloth that June had given and dabbed her forehead. It didn't stop Lady Blood Claw from glaring at them. "We can't assume they will give up even if they don't see us for a few months. If the Magus tells them to look for us, they will never stop. We also need to stay away from Cascadia towers. He can't come in but he can pull things out."

Corvayne nodded and quietly drew off the top of the feeling of something impaling her gut, while also calling for Mending. He wished Mosh was able to help, but the goblin was in charge of keeping the Juggernaut running and running fast. Even now they were bounding across a titanic rope strung between floating rocks near an endless waterfall. There shouldn't be a roar given they could not see a bottom, but the sound of churning rapids followed them as they climbed. Corvayne was pretty sure they were on the 8th floor of some Tower, but the repeated movement through huge doors over the last few days had pushed them from Nel'Ferral environments he knew.

There was a ding as he was called up to the front and he could feel the Juggernaut slow and level. They had reached another island, and Corvayne moved out of the body of the truck, across the armored neck of Juggernaut into his helmet/cockpit.

Mosh was there, clearly having slept while Juggernaut kept Corvayne's directions to keep going up and what he had dubbed 'Rightwards' since the only thing to orient in the mist shrouded world was the always visible waterfall.

"Hey Boss. All the ropes go other directions. What's Compass saying?"

Corvayne did a pair of quick requests, which included nearest world-door, second nearest world-door, and third nearest world-door. It helped make sure they were not backtracking, and he didn't want to be one hundred percent predictable by running through the closest sideways portals, hence why they had started going up.

On the fifth floor, they discovered Juggernaut could enter a boss fight and more then pulled it's own weight when it came to clawing things apart, even with their home on the road strapped to it's back. He suspected that there was more to it then just a monster with a truck harness, but Mosh had told him that they would go over what was going on when they were safe, and until LBC felt it, Corvayne would go with her gut instinct.

Anyway, staggered compass power uses pointed him to a door likely on the island, given it didn't have an up or down tug to any real degree. The floating island they had driven/crawled up to at least was close to a real piece of land: Some of them were football shaped rope wrapped rocks and required lots of careful climbing by their dragon-vehicle to not wobble off into the abyss.

"Looks like we are level with the gate. It's going to be off to the left side of the island we are on."

There was some shifting as they crawled over the knot that bound the rope to the island, tilting the entire vehicle up before it flopped downhill to land on a stringy grass platform. The islands were crawling with monsters, mostly lanky apes and ultra thin and tall birds. Neither had resistance to teeth or dragon fire, so they more or less threw themselves into the truck's front. Corvayne did not ask Mosh if they came out the back, as some things are better left not asked.

Old wood temples dotted the forest landscape of the landmass, also marked by ropes with wards that the Juggernaut was surprisingly careful not to break or disturb as he put on his wheels (or turned his legs into them) then glided along the ground. A wide open temple with double doors acted as their passage to the next 'type' of tower, with hints of purple and orange colored bricks around the portal. It was a sort of hint to where the doors went, with Nel'Ferral's steely gardens as an example having a doorway made of wrought iron roses.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The doorway between worlds felt like the longest tunnel ever and at the same time felt like it was over in a blink. The landscape was sun draped and resembled a sort of video game to Corvayne's mind, abet one with lots of color and attention to detail. Everything seemed to be moving in a gentle loop, with a few moving actors like dragonflies. In the sky single yellow and blue dots acted as stars, which he shouldn't be able to see with the sun setting in another direction.

The cockpit of the Juggernaut had all it's buttons, but some of the panels seemed to be an odd set of navy and marine blue that didn't actually conform to the lights on them. Mosh looked to have been given 'mean' white eyes like a cartoon. June had a bounce and was given extra big eyes.

"I don't even want to know what I look like."

"It made your hair really spiky boss!" A little ! appeared above his head.

"Does it hurt?" June asked as she tilted her head. A ? appeared above hers.

He touched one, and it felt soft despite retaining it's spikes. "Odd. Anyway, the compass for the closest two other doors is... hmm. One in the direction of that mountain... how far is it? Hard to tell. The other close one is down." He checked the readings for atmosphere and the letters just looked like lines and squares, but somehow he could read them despite not being able to get more detail when he focused on it.

It said that it was safe, so he went out of the truck and climbed the stylized ladder, colored like he would paint it but simplifying so many details down to a hint of scratch here, a dent there, then flat orange for the color of the setting sun. He felt a little sick, to be honest, as his brain kept trying to get his eyes to focus more. He could make out details much much further away but the pixels of things close to him didn't change.

"Gary would probably like this." He noted as he surveyed the land around them. Grassy plains with rivers of sand and water crisscrossing on rocky trails. There was a crystal spire on a lower island that had little flat white stars appear as if it was glowing, but not actually giving off more light then everything else.

Gylwin popped her head out of the truck, looking more happy then she had in a long time as her game-y purple hair swayed in the wind, parts of it blue or red depending on lighting in a way Corvayne knew didn't really work in reality. "Isn't this great? It's like an old point and click adventure."

Corvayne covered his eyes a moment, thankful that total darkness was the same no matter what. "I don't like it. Do floors like this have lasting effects?"

"Nothing I've seen, but I also have excellent control over my genes." The elf-spider woman pulled a flute from her robe and started playing. The sun had set enough that it was no longer simply an orange ball but now a circle with purple lines crossing as it neared a sort of endless line of mountains that Corvayne couldn't peg the distance of.

Gylwin was looking as well. "I think we should camp here."

Corvayne crossed his arms. "I hate it."

Preshe loved it, as did Spears. Bell didn't care, and [[Unity]] let him see a trio of curved red lines that he somehow knew meant she was angry. "I don't care, I want to know if Hylal is safe. Can you lock onto her?"

He gave it another check. Then tried to find a pillar. Both were uncertain, but not a complete blank. "It's still giving me... something. I need more levels in the power or we need to get closer. No pillars either."

For Bell's sake he planned to risk hitting that level 20 town they had marked as a meet up spot. Worst case, they could teleport back out and try to meet at the backup gathering spot, a two day trek from a different waypoint they had all tagged on floor 15 of a tower sideways a few doors from Corvayne's house.

Preshe and Lady Blood Claw and Spears all looked way too colorful, with Spears rendered with really cute button eyes, Preshe's tail developing a non stop bob that he had never seen before, and Lady Blood Claw being given extra long ears above her normally sharp ones, weirdly flowing silver hair and a sort of distressed look on her face. She also didn't shift colors while he was looking at her. Weirdly, the 'world' decided to give her more detail then some of the other people. Bell, for example, had a sort of weird line for a mouth and wasn't given a nose, even though Corvayne (after asking!) could FEEL it when he touched her face.

"I don't like this digital world."

LBC opened an eye, face blushing and somehow looking embarrassed. "I don't feel that bad..."

There was a flash of black and white and a sort of crunchy sound. She suddenly was touching her stomach.

"Ahh, I can feel it digging inside me... was this what your knives feel like when you..."

Corvayne shook his head. "I'm sure yours is worse. They are very sharp compared to a root."

Preshe looked between them. "What can we do to make her better d... Corvayne?"

He needed to give her a better nickname. "We can try to figure out what a plant based curse would need for her to do, but it's hard if we can't see what the system takes points off for, and we don't have an expert like Hari or Leigue."

"You said you could... pull it out?"

"It works on some people but Lady Blood Claw... I can try again, if she's willing."

Her eyes closed and faint red lines appeared over her face. Why did the world render claw marks on her cheeks? Oh. He could feel through [[Unity]] that she was embarassed, in pain, and excited for something. He could also feel Bell was annoyed, Spears was excited, and Preshe was just worried for LBC.

Bell was looking between them. "You've tried this before? Of course."

He felt a hint of jealousy. "I also did it to you before we started dating." Corvayne said coolly, but strangely it felt like an excuse.

"And her sister!" Spears added.

Preshe was looking at him. Judging in some way. She then nodded as if it matched what she thought of him. Somehow, it felt really embarrassing that she felt confident in whatever she was thinking, and pleased by it.

"You have a giant sweat drop coming from your head Corvayne."

He pulled open her shirt and tried to ignore the pixelated sweat drop, that she was extremely hot, and that he could feel sharp things trying to pull out of her. He pushed against her skin, the flesh for some reason parting as he gripped something that felt like writhing razor blades. He pulled, and sinister red vines came out of LBC, for a moment resisting then snapping. She wheezed and bucked.

"I didn't get it all..." Corvayne felt weak himself. It wasn't like the other curses he had pulled out and he could feel it surging into him like a torrent of filth crawling up his arm.

A moment later he felt a few splinters in his guts and took a deep breath while he waited to be nearly torn apart... but in a moment Preshe was helping Lady Blood Claw button up her shirt and he could feel relief from her, even though there were still jolts of pain.

"I can... feel it still but... it's better. Thank you for going deep-"

Spears threw a blanket over her. He really couldn't get used to seeing her eyes as little buttons. That's not what they looked like! "You rest, we'll work on getting out of here. Corvayne, you okay? Don't give me that look. You should have hearts for eyes when you look at me, like this!"

She somehow DID have pink hearts grow over her face. Corvayne looked at everyone who was grinning at him. A few of them had little lines in place of their eyes. Lady Blood Claw had her face buried in a pillow. Bell had a little cloud over her head and was glaring. Enough was enough.

"I'm going to get us through the nearest portal. Now."