Unchosen Champion

Amanda and Mikey B were leaving the terraced Amantaní settlement at the same time as Coop. The Outrider and her faithful partner would depart in the opposite direction compared to the Champion, fulfilling the directive of their own mission. They were just another example of the efforts being undertaken to unite humanity throughout the continent. Hundreds of others from Ghost Reef were exploring South America and networking with the various settlements and thousands more were supporting their expeditions while Coop drifted from place to place.

Amanda and Mikey were bound for the third destination of what was their fourth inland trip. After the settlement where they met up with Coop, they were meant to make contact with a series of shardless human encampments that had emerged to the north west of Lake Titicaca, starting with a place called Vinicunca, also known as the Mountain of Seven Colors.

Coop felt a wave of curiosity when they told him about their itinerary, immediately interested by their brief descriptions. A mountain that had two more colors than the River of Five Colors that he had briefly visited with Juliana and Sierra? He really wanted to know what the other two colors would be, but Amanda promised to let him know when they all met back up at home instead of letting him be overly distracted.

From there, the pair of scouts were heading through the ruins of Cusco and into the Sacred Valley until they reached Machu Picchu. They had plans to connect with the strongholds that had endured from the mountain tops while collecting any individual survivors along the way. Their circuitous trek was significantly more consolidated than Coop’s, but each time they left the coast, they still covered nearly a thousand miles on foot as they looped back to the waiting ships. It was far more than a normal person could have sustained.

The Tempest Fleet and the Lighthouse had established a rally point at an oasis settlement called Huacachina, which would be Amanda and Mikey’s final rendezvous point for their current expedition. When they told Coop about their first two beach trips, starting with Máncora, Peru, he couldn’t help but feel like he had missed out. It seemed like he had strayed too far inland to get a proper feel for the beaches along the pacific side of the continent. He thought it was a shame that he was southbound, since it was the opposite direction of the beaches the pair of scouts described.

Coop had to follow the Andes toward the bottom of the continent, through almost the entire length of Chile to reach the southernmost civilization shard in South America. It would be a long journey, potentially twice as long as any individual leg during his marathon across the continent, but there was no one better suited to make the trip without the aid of the fleet.

He had visited more than a dozen civilization shards on his winding journey, starting from La Piedra, and found close to three times as many unofficial refuges that were bolstered by mana pylons. There had been hundreds of examples of individuals and small communities holding out on their own without the taming effect of official territory who were evacuating to Ghost Reef instead, and there were a handful of extremely large bastions that had survived without shards that were discussing their options to relocate to safety or dig in with the help of the Lighthouse.

Coop thought it was a decently thorough trip, considering there had been less than 20 official settlements in South America by their count after the Underlayer Event. Between all the different groups that were contributing to the Lighthouse, he really believed that they had touched almost every corner of the continent, even if he wasn’t personally involved in every connection. Hopefully, those who were still isolated would receive word of the collective efforts being undertaken to unite people in the face of future threats.

His final destination would demand a huge journey from him, but after the distances he had already covered, he wasn’t discouraged. After saying his goodbyes, Coop mistjumped south from Lake Titicaca and quickly found himself in the driest environment he could imagine. The Atacama Desert was unexpectedly alien even by his standards. If Coop had been told he was on Mars, he would have believed it.

The entire landscape was a painterly study in the surprising breadth of ochre hues. Combined with the red tinged sky, and the landscapes were nothing like any he had experienced before. Rock formations that had been sculpted by wind and time stood like monuments that intended to outlast humans just as they predated them. Coop trekked across vast sand dunes, paused to gape at towering volcanoes with little clouds at their peaks in the distance, and admired the movie-like set that was the Valle de la Luna, according to one surviving sign.