Jace Option A: Follow Them
Welcome back to the second post in the adventure. So far you’ve taken your friend, Jace, camping and he’s been kidnapped by slavers. Now you’re following them. Let’s see if you can save your friend!
Jace Option A: Follow Them
You can still see the boat meandering away down the river. Your gut clenches with the thought that, if you lose sight of that small vessel, you may never see Jace again.
The river meets the ocean in a wide cove surrounded by cliffs. It’s not useful as a dock, so usually no ships use the cove. However, if you lose sight of the small rowboat, there’s a chance the slaver’s ship will leave the cove before you reach it since they’re traveling by water. Then you’ll have no chance of finding Jace.
You can’t chance that.
You take off down the riverbank but it’s not long before you run into vegetation creeping into the water. It blocks your way as surely as if the slavers had set up a gate.
Heading inland a bit, you try to work your way past the area only to find the trees grow thicker. By now the rowboat’s got to be well beyond your sight but you try to go back in order to check the river for it.
When you do finally make it, sure enough, the river’s empty of any boat. Tears prick at your eyes. Jace’s thrilled smile plays through your mind. Camping should’ve been a fun, safe activity for him but now he’ll never want to go to the woods again. That’s if you can find him and bring him back.
You have to find him. There’s just not another option in your head.
With renewed determination, you head back to the camp, realizing now that in your initial rush, you left your lantern and hatchet behind.
Items in hand, you make your way back to the impassable spot in the river and move inland again, swinging the hatchet through the brush to make a trail wide enough for you to pass through. Branches still scrape at your face, arms, and legs though, and it’s not long before small trails of blood trace your skin.
Dawn brightens the treetops by the time you’re able to follow the riverbank again. Sweat drips from your nose and off your hand as you swing the hatchet but thankfully there are a few small rivers meeting up with the main water that help cool you down when you have to cross them.
Exhaustion clouds your eyes as you scan the river for any signs of the rowboat. You’re close to the cove and can hear the ocean. Rushing ahead, you pan your gaze across the cove and your heart sinks.
No rowboat, no ship, no Jace.
Your knees hit the sand but then you hear a scuffing sound and what started out as a sob of disappointment turns into you ducking into the brush behind you. The sound comes again from inland, toward the cliffs along the cove where the trees grow thick.
Then you see it. Men on top of the cliffs. And there, in the middle of them stumbling along, you make out Jace’s blond head.
The only thing that makes sense would be if the men never had a ship but headed up one of the smaller rivers that you crossed on your way to the cove. Who knows all the details, the why or how or what are they doing, but you’ve got Jace in sight again.
Do you…
Aa. Climb the cliffs?
Or
Ab. Head back up the river to go around the cliffs?
Blessings,
Jennifer
