Enter the fourth trial

The nausea fades as the white flames begin to disappear. Before the flames fall low enough for you to see anything, you can already smell the salt water in the air, and hear the ebb and flow of waves. The sounds and smells are so similar to those you left behind, in fact, that you wonder for a moment if the teleportation even worked. Those thoughts are quickly dismissed, however, as the circle of flames falls away. Rather than on the deck of a ship, you find yourself standing on a long, thin bar of sand amid a vast, blue ocean. The strip of sand stretches to your left and right as far as your eyes can see, without a single rock, tree, or other landmark to suggest which direction you’re meant to go. The ocean ahead and behind is almost equally barren, apart from a single island off in the distance. It’s pretty far, you think, but I could swim there if I rest a bit first.

“The fourth trial is one of the body,” says a familiar, warm, and matter-of-fact voice. You blink, and suddenly Blue Cloak stands before you. As usual, even broad daylight is not enough to reveal the face hidden under the shadow of their hood. “You stand at the beginning of a three-step journey.” Slipping one of their slender, dark-skinned arms out from under their garb, Blue Cloak extends an upturned palm as if to offer you an invisible apple. Then, without any incantation from the cloaked figure, mana begins to visibly flow from their palm and transform itself into a glowing, golden thread. The thread spills forth as it continues to grow in length, and once it is long enough to touch the sand beneath your feet, it seems to root itself there. The other end of the golden thread then slips from the cloaked figure’s palm and glides out over the water. It magically extends, and arcs clear over the waves, heading straight for the island that you noticed before. Once it reaches land again, the thread snakes its way up the beach and beyond the tree line, out of sight. “Follow the path to complete the trial,” says Blue Cloak as they once again hide their slender arm away beneath their signature garb. “Should you not reach the Wizard within four hours, the trial will be reset, you will be returned to this point, and you must try again.” The mysterious figure turns to face the island in the distance, then stands there as if contemplating something. The silence grows between you, until something causes the figure’s head to jerk suddenly to the left. You follow the motion, but all that is revealed to you is the same, endless strip of sand stretching beyond the horizon.

What’s over there? you wonder.

“All participants must reach the Wizard within the time limit,” says Blue Cloak.

After hearing those parting words, you blink, and Blue Cloak is gone. The golden thread remains, although you have no intention of following it right away. First of all, if the trial has a time limit, then it would be best for you to toss out this first loop and fully recover from the crazy end of the last trial. You’re fairly confident that both Blythe and Lia would come to that same conclusion, so there’s no need to throw yourself into the water straight away. Second, and more importantly, Blue Cloak reacted to something off to your left. Even if you can’t see anything, that doesn’t mean nothing is over there.

If it caught Blue Cloak’s attention, it’s probably worth investigating.

No sooner than you think this do you try to take a step, trip over the pants currently draped around your ankles, and fall hard against the sand. You manage to twist on your way down and land on your side, saving both your manhood from being crushed and the wind from being knocked out of you, but your pride still takes quite a hit. Laying on the sand, your brain finally slows down and registers everything that has happened in the last five minutes.

You were on the merchant ship Ishelle, fighting for your life against giant crab men. Alicia got possessed, then tried to kill you. She separated you from the girls by throwing up a wall of ice. Miraculously, you turned the tables on her thanks to Alicia’s thorough sex **** training. Somewhere down the line, you dropped Jas’s {if@ sword = true}sword{elseif mace = true}mace{elseif spear = true}spear{endif}, and it doesn’t seem to have teleported with you this time. You’re also missing your rucksack, which you left in the captain’s quarters along with your phone, wallet, keys, the glass eye, the magic book, and all of your other supplies. Where those things have gone, you have no way of knowing. If I’d known the trial was going to end, I would have grabbed all my stuff, you think. At the end of the labyrinth, you and the girls stepped into a rune circle together; you controlled the action back then. You chose when you wanted to move on. With the Earth and Water Elementals, you were forcibly teleported the moment you “defeated” them. It doesn’t seem fair. Why should a dark, tentacle monster infested maze deserve a proper send off, and not Hes or the merchant ship? Not Jas and Alic— or, uh, Neró.

As your thoughts drift to the NPC women you’ve left behind, you’re reminded of the real ones who are still around. Blythe and Lia are here in this trial, somewhere. Probably on a beach just like yours, if you had to guess.

The sooner you find them, the better.