32: The Banner

I climbed the cleft for two in-game hours and slept for one in a small dry alcove three meters above the cleft's floor that I had picked for the simple reason that nothing in the launch-week wildlife pool of the foothills could reach a three-meter ledge without making a noise I would hear, and when I woke at the change of the in-game small hour I came out of the alcove in the long thin pre-dawn cold of the cleft and into a launch-week pass-through that had, in the hour I had been asleep, picked up a small new ambient note that the pass-through engine had been carrying since I had crested the second turn of the cleft.

The new ambient note was a low thin dry bell.

The bell sounded once every forty seconds, very faint, from somewhere ahead and above me on the cleft's western wall.

It was not, by any property of its tone or rhythm, the bell of an NPC vendor or the bell of a launch-week dungeon's entry chime. It was the slow ceremonial bell of a small encampment — the kind of bell a small in-game settlement rang at the change of each in-game hour and at the half-hour to mark the watch rotation. It was, in other words, the bell of a player camp that had been set up in the cleft at some point in the last several days.

The cleft was, by every old-timeline source I had ever read on the launch-week Black Castle Foothills, supposed to be empty.

I drew the Black Iron Heavy Blade and went forward at a slow careful walk.

The cleft narrowed at the third turn into a small natural amphitheater perhaps thirty meters across, ringed by slate buttresses that climbed in uneven steps to a height of perhaps twelve meters, with a small flat clearing in the center that had been, very recently, the site of a small organized encampment. There were six tents in a half-circle around a central firepit. The firepit was banked low — coals, no flame. Three rough-cut wooden benches arranged for council. A small rope corral on the eastern lip with no horses in it. A small earth-packed altar against the western wall with the stub of a candle on it. The bell hung on a small wooden frame at the southern lip of the clearing, just inside the cleft's continuing path.

Six players stood in the clearing.

They were not Lv 17 bandits. They were Lv 19 to Lv 22 swordsmen and one Lv 23 mage, in matched dark grey tunics with — at the right shoulder — a small embroidered emblem I had never seen in old timeline.

The emblem was a black sword-stroke against a small amber field.

The same icon as the chain-quest icon in my UI.

I did not move.

I held the Black Iron Heavy Blade low and to the side, the position the launch-week swordsman avatar registered as *not attacking, not sheathed, considering.* The pass-through caught the small shift of the six players' postures as they registered my approach; the lead swordsman lifted a hand to halt the others.

He stepped forward. He was Lv 22. He was tall, slim, with the small pre-rendered set of a young IRL face — perhaps mid-twenties — overlaid on an avatar that had been faithfully built. He had not paid for the opt-in voiceprint upload; his voice came out of the launch-week voice-actor pool's mid-tier register, polite, even, slightly hollow.

"Pioneer," he said.

He had, in the single word, identified me.

I did not answer immediately.

I held my eyes on his eyes. The pass-through caught the small calm composure that had been on his face since before I had come around the third turn of the cleft. He had been waiting for me. The whole encampment had been waiting for me. The six players had been at the ready since the bell had rung two minutes ago — not in the alarmed way of a camp that had detected an unknown intruder but in the small ceremonial way of a camp that had been expecting a specific visitor.

I said, "You know the title."

"We know the title."

"Most players who know the title pretend they do not."

"We are not most players. We have been told, by the chain itself, that you would come up the cleft this week. We have been here since Monday at second-bell. We have been ringing the bell at watch-rotation specifically so that you would not be surprised by us at the third turn. We are — Pioneer. We are the small remnant of a thing that has not had a name on this server before today. The chain has called us, on its own, to the foothills. We do not know why. We only know that we have come."

He inclined his head a precise half-inch.

"We will not attack you. We will not impede you. We do not, ourselves, hold the title — we are the small grey vessels that the chain has used to lay an offering at your foot. We have one request, and one warning. May we deliver them."

I held the Black Iron Heavy Blade low.

I said, "Deliver."

The lead swordsman inclined his head a fraction lower.

"Request. We ask you, when you complete the trial, to acknowledge our existence on the public chat scroll. We ask only that you say, in writing, *I have met the small remnants of the Severing Path at the foothills' edge, and they did not impede me.* Eight words. We do not ask for protection or alliance. We ask only that the public record of the launch-week server know that we exist."

"Why."

"Because Tianxia has been hunting our pseudonymous accounts on the public forum for nine days. Because three of us have already been doxxed and one has been visited at his IRL university dormitory by a Tianxia recruiter in a pale grey blazer who knew his name. Because if the public record knows we exist, the Tianxia recruiters become more careful. Because if the public record knows that the Pioneer has acknowledged us, the Tianxia recruiters become — tactically inconvenient. The public acknowledgment is, for us, a very small civic shield. Eight words. We do not need more."

I looked at him for a long beat.

I looked at the six of them. The lead swordsman. The two flanking swordsmen at his shoulders. The two younger swordsmen behind. The single mage at the back, in dark grey robes with the same shoulder emblem, with her hood half-up and her hands folded inside the long sleeves of the robe and her face mostly hidden in the launch-week pre-dawn cleft shadow.

"Warning," I said.

"Warning." The lead swordsman's voice did not change. "The trial of the gate has been visited, in the last two in-game days, by a player you should know about. We have not seen this player. We have only inferred his presence from the small marks he has left at the cleft above us — boot scuffs on the third pre-shrine ledge, a small offering of black iron dust at the second cairn, and the small tracks of someone who climbed the eastern buttress yesterday and who watched our bell for at least six in-game hours from a position above us before withdrawing at second-bell of yesterday evening. The player is, we believe, a Tianxia inner-circle scout. We do not know the rank. We do not know the name. We only know that someone above the foothills has begun to read your trial route. The shrine itself, when you reach it, may have been read."

I did not say anything for a beat.

Read shrines were the launch-week design team's failure case. Read shrines were the failure case I had not, in old timeline, ever encountered, because in old timeline nobody had known about my Pioneer status until well into the third year of the game. The launch-week patch cadence was tightening. Wenqing had identified two patches. The cleft scout was a third small thing the dream had not contained.

The amber-emblem cult had given me the warning. The amber-emblem cult was — the small remnant of a thing that had not had a name on this server until today.

I lowered the Black Iron Heavy Blade.

I sheathed it across my back.

"Lead swordsman."

"Pioneer."

"Your name."

"Lin Mo. In-game. *AmberKnot*. The cult is the small voluntary mutual-aid network of players who have, in the last week, picked up the chain's call as a small private DM hint. We do not know the chain's mechanic. We only know we received the hint and that the hint named the Pioneer and that we are to wait for him at the foothills' edge."

"How many of you."

"Six in the cleft. Eleven scattered across the launch-week server in small private hold patterns. We expect more this week."

"Mn."

I looked at him.

"Lin Mo. I will write the eight words on the public chat scroll when I complete the trial. I will also, when I have founded my guild — which I expect to do within four IRL weeks — extend a formal invitation to the cult to dissolve into the guild's membership. The terms of the dissolution will be on a per-member basis at standard guild-charter rates. You are not obligated to accept. You are also not obligated to refuse. You will have time."

"Mn."

The lead swordsman did not, in his face, register any visible reaction to the offer. He did, very precisely, incline his head a third precise half-inch. The mage at the back of the group, with her hood half-up, lifted her face for one full second and looked directly at me. The amber-flecked iris that the launch-week build offered as a premium tier cosmetic option was the same iris cosmetic option that the Bai cosmetic profile had defaulted to. She was not Bai Yueran. She was not Bai-tier. She was, however, paying for the same opt-in cosmetic. She held my eyes for one second. Then she lowered her face into the hood again.

I noted the look. I did not push.

"And the warning."

"The shrine may have been read."

"I will assume it has been read. I will adapt the trial route accordingly. If the cleft scout returns, will your bell ring."

"The bell will ring three times in succession."

"Acknowledged. Walk safely."

"Walk safely, Pioneer."

The six of them inclined their heads. The lead swordsman stepped back into the line. The encampment did not move otherwise. The bell did not ring. I crossed the small natural amphitheater past the firepit and the wooden benches and the small earth-packed altar with the stub of a candle on it, and at the far edge of the clearing I started up the cleft's continuing path toward the abandoned shrine.

The bell did not ring.

***

I climbed for another in-game hour. The cleft narrowed at the fourth turn into a small staircase of slate steps the launch-week artists had cut by hand and that I had, in old timeline, never reached because I had taken the eastern bypass route that the launch-week wiki had recommended in year two. The eastern bypass route had not, in old timeline, contained the small details the staircase contained: a small NPC water bowl set into the third step, a small carved relief of a sword on the seventh step, a small offering plate at the top of the staircase with two small pre-rendered flowers in it and a small pile of black iron dust beside the flowers that had not, by any of the launch-week design's published mechanics, any reason to be there.

The black iron dust was the cleft scout's offering.

He had been here. He had left a small clean pre-rendered token. The token meant — in the small careful syntax of player-to-player intra-server signaling — *I have been here, I am letting you know, you are not alone on this route.*

The token was hostile. The token was also polite.

I did not touch the dust.

I left a small pre-rendered token of my own beside it. I crouched and used the tip of the Black Iron Heavy Blade's pommel to draw, in the dust of the offering plate, a single horizontal line.

The line was the small clean countersign I had developed in old timeline year two with a small private network of indie scouts whose pseudonymous accounts had operated a similar countersigned alert system across the launch-week-extended period of the second-month patches. The line meant, in the syntax we had developed: *I see your token, I acknowledge your presence, I will not interfere with you if you do not interfere with me, this is the only acknowledgment you will get.*

Whoever the cleft scout was, he was a player old enough — or well-traveled enough, or well-read enough on the small launch-week intra-server forums — to recognize the countersign.

If he recognized it, we would have an understanding.

If he did not recognize it, I would, at some point in the next nineteen in-game days, have to find out who he was the harder way.

I stood. I sheathed the Black Iron Heavy Blade. I started up the cleft's continuing path.

> *Ding!* [Trial Phase 2 Initiated: Approach to the Mirror Gate.]

The path ahead opened into a long pale corridor of slate the launch-week artists had given a particular soft pre-dawn cold blue to. At the corridor's far end, perhaps a hundred meters distant, a small narrow stone gate stood in the cliff face. The gate was carved with the same small concentric circles I had seen, three weeks ago, on the gate stone of Withered Hollow at the start of the dungeon that had, in two small careful exchanges, become the small foundation of the entire trajectory of the next twenty-one days.

Three circles.

*Memory. Vigil. Return.*

I walked toward the gate.

The bell, far below me in the cleft's amphitheater, rang once at the change of the in-game small hour. Once. Not three times.

The cleft scout was not, this hour, watching.

I had, possibly, until the next bell to learn whether he had recognized the countersign.

I had, possibly, until the next bell to figure out which of the six in the amphitheater had been the mage with the amber-flecked iris and the half-hood and the one-second look, who was — I had now decided — almost certainly the small private operative through whom Tianxia was watching the cult's bell, and who would, when she returned to her own dorm IRL, file a small clean report to a Tianxia ops desk in Beijing about the Pioneer who had walked through the encampment without drawing his sword.

I had a great deal to do in the next twenty-one days.

I went to the gate.