Chapter 535: The Price of Escape

In the end, the path had been chosen; the observatory it was... and yet, there was nothing there. He wasn’t surprised by it; the only thing he had to say was that he was a bit upset that he had to go through so many books.

He didn’t like reading all that much anymore, not close to how much he liked it as a child, but there was also the fact that as a child he read stories, and now he was reading some reports about the sky, a fake sky that meant nothing to him.

The only interesting thing he had noticed along the way was that... there weren’t that many people inside the Wonderland anymore. More Readers have died, of course, but that wasn’t the main point; it seemed as if more and more people from the Wonderland were transported to the real world.

...

It made him wonder what was going on in the real world; he hoped everything was going fine. But since the monster attacks had also dimmed a lot... it made him think that they had also been transported, which was in no way good news.

Was the Withered good? Were they safe? ’As much as I want to say that they are... there really isn’t anyone to protect them; Maeve isn’t powerful enough to fight those kinds of monsters.’

They needed to find a way out, so they could help the others back home.

But how...

They have been trying for so long, and they will continue to try, but how much time did they have left?

Aether walked down the stairs of the observatory, as the other people waited for everyone to come back so they could leave. Gripping his chin, he thought about this whole exploration. He wasn’t going to say it hadn’t done anything.

It was in no way his intention, since he did feel that what Keres was doing was the right thing, but they didn’t have the time for his plan if they went to everything that might have a slight chance of being their way out. They were going to eventually find it, but only after a long time; however, they didn’t have that much time left.

So was it really the right thing to do?

Aether sighed as he reached the others, moving towards Sofia.

"Do we just continue? I heard that we already have our next route planned." Aether asked, still in thought.

The girl nodded, a happy smile on her face. "Yeah, it’s better not to waste any time, and since we knew that this was probably going to be a fail, we planned in advance, really the only reason we chose this path is because we knew it was close to the next, and we could cover two in one day, without it, I don’t think we would have ever come here."

As she finished talking, Keres made a speech, explaining to everyone what happened before telling them about their next path. After finishing, he started walking, as the others followed him.

Yet... Aether was starting to doubt this whole exploration, and quite a lot.

...

...

Reaching the next destination towards the night, Aether was surprised to see that it was a giant cave. From what Sofia told him, there had been stories about this cave told by the people of the Wonderland, and its nature was to let Readers out; that was why they were here.

He didn’t hold much hope for it; he found the reason quite stupid. And in the end, he was right; there was nothing in the cave, yet another failure for them. That marked four ever since he first joined. And the fact was that failures weren’t happening because of him... he wasn’t cursed or anything... but rather had been happening since the first.

He also felt like things weren’t going to change anywhere in the near future.

...

It felt like they were wasting their time slightly.

’Is there another way? Another way to speed things up?’ Aether bit his fingernail, watching as the group prepared camp for the night in the cave, since not only was it a safe place, but also because a lot of people were tired.

He could go and talk with Keres about this, but he was sure the Harbinger had considered this and still chose to go on this path, so he felt as if there was no reason for him to do so... but he could ask his sister.

Walking up to Sofia, who was preparing to go to sleep herself, Aether asked a bit hesitantly, trying not words seem like something else.

"I wanted to ask... do you think that by doing this we will find the way out?"

His sister tilted her head, slightly confused. "I mean, sure, and if we don’t, we’ll try to create one."

...

"But why not try to make one now? Why waste time?"

...

Sofia scratched her cheek, not sure how to answer that question. "Well... It’s quite simple: everything has a price, so we’re sure creating a way out will also hold a high price, and plus, we have no idea how to do that so far; we will have to figure it out before we can make an exit ourselves."

Aether smiled, nodding at Sofia’s answer as he turned around, and his smile fell as the small flame from earlier started burning once more inside him, just that this time, it was a lot hotter than before. ’Then why not try to figure out how, instead of this? And plus, what price could there be? What price can be too much? If we stay in this place, people outside will continue to die, and who knows, maybe we will also. No price is too much.’

Passing by Keres’s tent, he saw him drawing another route on the map, to another one of these locations... things were only going to repeat themselves, forever, until it was too late.

...

Was staying with the group really the right idea?