The Hero's Path

Chapter 3: An Old Witch

For a moment as Brittany started to awake she left her eyes closed feeling the warmth of the sun on her face. Then she could start to feel a slight pain in her back. Why was her bed so hard? Why did it feel like a rock was underneath her? And why did it feel like she was wearing different clothes? Then suddenly everything from yesterday came flooding back to her mind and in an instant she was sitting up her hands rubbing her eyes as she tried to adjust to the bright light around her.

"Where the hell am I?" Brittany said as she took in the first look at her surroundings. She was surrounded by forest on all sides and the ground was covered in soft pine needles except for the occasional small rock. Like the location her clothes were also different, they seemed to be made entirely from leather, but were still stylish. For a moment she whirled around, a slight panic building up in her chest.

"Oh wait, I totally forgot." Brittany said as she grabbed at the Codex attached to her left side. Unhooking the Codex, she opened to the first page and said "Map please!" even though she knew it wasn't voice activated.

The page for a moment appeared completely blank and then a drawing started to appear. It started as a small circle and continued to grow for about two inches in diameter before stopping. The image was of a forest from a bird's eye view. The trees in the picture where occasionally interrupted by what appeared to be boulders or small patches of dirt. In the center of the image was a white dot that glowed, the name Brittany Savage appeared above the dot when she pressed on it.

"Well this doesn't really help me at all." Brittany said, slightly annoyed. "How do I know which direction to go?"

Looking at the top left of the page brittany noticed a small drawing of a compass that hadn't been there a second ago. The four cardinal points were set in the normal way and also appearing was the normal ordinal points such as North-West. Brittany turned towards the right but the compass didn't shift, however the white dot that had represented her changed to a small arrow and it's position turned to the left.

"Well that's cool." Brittany said, "I guess all I can do is pick a direction and go that way. Since north seems to be forward lets go that way."

Her mind made up she took one last look at the Codex and then attached it back to her belt and set of at a brisk walk in the direction the book had shown as north.

It was about an hour later of walking that Brittany felt a slight vibration on her side. Looking down she realized that the Codex was vibrating. Remembering what Azazul had told her about the book alerting her by vibrating she picked up the Codex and opened it up to a random page. A second later the map appeared on the blank pages. This time however the image was much bigger than before. The image appeared as a very long oval shape that when in a somewhat straight line towards the top of the page or what could be considered the north direction of the map.

Using her finger to move the image downward Brittany was able to see the path that she had taken through the forest. There were small details besides trees, boulders and patches of clearing. She could see that she had almost passed by a small stream for part of her walk and that the map was now showing the small hills she had passed by as small patches of elevation. The real change was shown though when she moved to the top of the map where the dot that represented her shone. The map showed that in front of her only a few hundred feet away the forest ended and an enormous clearing started. In the midst of that clearing was what could be clearly seen as the drawing of a small cottage or house. Other than the building there was no other details.

"Civilisation at last!" Brittany said happily. "If there is a house there must be people and that means there must be a town or a city nearby somewhere."