Loopshard

Adam and Emelia took the slow scenic route around the island from the Market to the Tavern, riding on the same barrier. She was in the middle of telling him about what to expect in the next Stage.

“Like Stage Six, the layout is always a bit different, so I don’t know where our objective will be. But the steps of the journey to find it are always the same. First, we have to find a settlement. There are a few across the Sea, but the biggest is Windtop Cove.”

“That sounds like a pirate hideout,” Adam commented.

“Oh, there’s definitely a pirate theme all around. We’ll even be fighting a lot of pirates on our hunt for the Godstone. Anyway, no matter which settlement we go to, we’ll be able to pick up the trail. It always leads to a bit of a goose chase of scouring rumoured locations. Normally, we’re meant to pick up clues from four different places, but if we just get two of them then I know a way to skip the rest, regardless of the clues.”

“How?”

Emelia tapped the side of her head. “Because I know a lot about the Stage. The four clues are meant to come together and implicate one specific pirate faction, of which there are seven, and if you know about each of them, you’ll be able to guess which one the clues hint at, so long as you have at least two clues.”

“What then? Are we gonna take on the entire fleet who has the Godstone?” he asked. It sounded a bit absurd, given that they would only have a single airship for their team.

“There are a lot of ways to go from there, but the easiest is to capture an airship from the fleet and use disguises to infiltrate their base of operations. From there, we can pick up the final trail of the Godstone after killing the fleet’s captain.”

“That actually sounds like a lot of fun.”