Chapter 23: A Whole New World

As she made her way back to the portal she thought about the Guide’s description, about what it meant to enter a Tier 1 portal. The place beyond the prompt. Especially when she didn’t quite know what Tier 1 really meant in general. When she’d queried the guide before it had given her some trite response about how it was a level of advancement above Tier 0, which, yeah…

She knew she was Tier 0, only what was Tier 0 How did it measure against Tier 1 Was it an insurmountable difference, and if so, by how much

She was a Tier 0 entering a Tier 1 portal, and she had no clue what that meant, and no way to find out until she went in. She had no way to verify the scale of potential danger, nor the potential rewards. The only real consolation she had was that so far, the System was fairly balanced with its risk-reward ratio. If the pattern held consistent with everything she experienced so far, then if she succeeded – whatever that looked like in this instance – the material gains alone would probably make it worth it.

She thought about Maus, who was currently tucked away in her shirt. About how if he wanted popcorn she’d make him perform a trick or do a complex task. Something to prove he’d earned his prize.

“Mother fu-” she cut herself off, took a deep breath, and ruthlessly choked down the emotions that were simmering under the surface. Such invectives would be a sign of lost control. Scarlet didn’t lose control.

She’d stopped walking the moment she realised the System was treating her like a performing animal. Why else give rewards. If this whole System only offered people an opportunity to grow, then there would be no need for material benefit. Each person would rise or stagnate on their own merit, their own innate drive to progress. However, that was not the case. These ‘rewards’ were just that. Little treats for completing a task. A pat on the back. A cosmic ‘good-girl’ from an entity (or force or law, or whatever the hell the System was) so profound that she couldn’t even begin to form conjectures about why it felt the need to offer rewards at all.

The worst part was, she would keep performing. To stop would only be to her detriment. Even if she weren’t swayed by the promises of wealth, knowledge, and power, it didn’t mean other people wouldn’t be. If she didn’t push herself to succeed, she wouldn’t just be actively hindering her own growth, she was accepting that she would eventually end up subordinated by a greater power, by someone who took the reward, asked no questions, and progressed.

By then she’d have no recourse, no way to catch up without some sort of miracle. She would have wasted the greatest opportunity she had to reclaim her own agency, to truly take advantage of this new era before everyone else realized that the past day wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg – that the world hadn’t finished changing, it had only just begun. And she’d do it out of what, petulance? Some juvenile delusion of justice, or righteousness?

Her grip shifted slightly on the cane, fingers tightening on the handle as she began to cautiously make her way forward once more.

In the end the why didn’t matter. Not when she was still so weak. Yes, she had her strengths, but in the grand scheme of things, if literal push came to shove, Scarlet would be flattened. That needed to change.

Scarlet slowed well before the trees began to thin.

She didn’t step into the clearing immediately. Instead, she stood at the boundary’s edge, her gaze fixed on the space ahead. She could feel the otherness of the air around here. That subtle increase in the density of the world around her.

Maus poked his head out of her collar, his small paws clutching the top of her shirt as he looked around. Through the bond she could feel that he was alert but not distressed. That was good.

Her eyes flicked once more across the clearing, and into the tree line around it, confirming with her eyes what her senses had already told her. She and Maus were alone. Just them and the portal to another world.

She checked the contents of her storage bag. Then checked that she had both water, and some food outside of the spatial storage. Better safe and all.

She gazed into the ever-shifting energies, traced the colours and their patterns, felt the air thicken and warp as she put forward first one foot then the other until she was boot to border with the portal.

She allowed herself a moment to consider what she was about to do. To remind herself why she was doing it, and to make sure she was truly ready. Had she crossed off every item, checked every box, set the foundations she needed to before she left?

Closing her eyes, she sighed. No. She hadn’t.

Stepping back a pace, Scarlet pulled out one of her burner phones from a pocket. She looked at the screen, opened her messaging app, paused, typed in a number that she hated she knew from heart, and paused again. Finally, she typed out a message. Her thumbs felt like they’d been filled with cement as she tapped away at the screen. She must have stared for a minute before she mustered the resolve to press ‘send’. Then, while she still had momentum, she tapped out a follow up and pressed ‘send’ once again.

She watched to make sure the messages made it through, then dismantled the phone, broke all the important bits, put those into a resealable plastic bag, and disappeared that into her spatial storage. No signal would be picked up from in there. She’d checked.

There. Now she could enter without second guessing if she’d done everything she could to prepare, both for entering the portal, and for what came when she returned.

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She felt like an observer in her own body as she raised a hand and pressed it into the haze of energy.

[Enter Tier 1 Portal? ]
[Yes | No]

[Yes]

Then she was elsewhere.

There was no flare of light, no resistance, no sensation of passing through anything tangible. One moment she stood at the edge of the clearing, one hand past the boundary the next she just, didn’t.

She felt intense vertigo, euphoria, and profound pain all at once, and for a moment so brief she wasn’t sure her unenhanced mind would have even registered it. Then it was over, and Scarlet had maybe a second to realize that she was no longer on solid ground and brace for impact as she dropped the short distance.

She braced just before she hit the ground, landing on the balls of her feet, her knees bending with the momentum, and a dull pain shooting through her injured leg as she absorbed the energy of the short fall. Straightening out, Scarlet stood in place, not even letting the but of her cane touch the loamy ground as she took in the space around her.

She wasn’t sure what she expected, yet for some reason she still found it surprising that she was in a forest. It was quite obviously different from the one she’d just come from, but it did make her wonder if all portals had some relationship to the places they were formed, or if this was just a coincidence.

Perhaps, if she survived this, she would find out.

Tall, straight trees stretched upward around her, their trunks pale and dusted faintly with what looked like chalk dust, despite there being no visible powders or dust in the air. Perhaps a type of spore? She reminded herself to be careful as she summoned – summoned! Just one moment no mask the next – a mask from her storage bag, which she strapped over her face.

The ground beneath her boots was both firm and brittle. The forest itself was a disorienting inversion of the usual ocean of green broken up by loamy browns and greys. Instead, this forest was all earth tones broken up with some greens and sparse sprinkling of other colours. It was like perpetual autumn, only the reds and oranges were made up of shades of grey.