The air was cool as Wilson slowly awoke, his body as weak as it always was when he was pulled through dimensions. As before, a whooshing sound indicated the arrival of his hated captor, Maxwell.
"What? You're still here?" asked the evil mastermind's voice, though he sounded hoarse and weary, as though aged. "Impressive. But you should probably stop while you're ahead."
Another sound, and Wilson didn't bother looking for his enemy as he finally mustered the strength to rise to his feet.
He was standing on a tiny patch of swampland, again with three burnt spiky trees around the spot of his arrival; some seawater appeared to be poking through tiny gaps in the ground, but since there was no point trying to reach it, Wilson didn't think about checking its properties. A new homing device was waiting for him, and he plucked it from its stand as he assessed the fertile grasslands beyond his little spot and the sun rising in the sky at what he thought looked like a normal pattern for the first day of spring back in his original cage.
Next, he looked down at himself. His beard was unchanged, and his tam o'shanter, mining helmet, and heat stone were safe in his pocket. The Eye Bone, though, was absent; all that was in his pockets aside from the first three items was a handful of black ash, not even usable for making salve.
It was consumed by flames when I teleported, Wilson thought, staring at the coarse dust he'd gathered onto his palm, his heart sinking. Otto von Chesterfield…Did I kill you, just by trying to bring you with me?
Anger lit a flame in his heart, and he tossed the Eye Bone ash aside and started walking, donning his tam o'shanter and gathering resources as always, moving in a straight line until he quickly found the shore and then following it. The patch of verdant land was respectably sized, but before even midday, he found himself suddenly in a swamp.
It was a normal swamp, with a normal amount of spider nests, spiky trees, and fishman huts. Ignoring it all, he followed the shoreline still, occasionally taking out his homing device, though it didn't give off much of a signal, and deviating only when, after dusk fell, he saw a group of fishmen kill a tentacle, from which he gathered the ideal weapon. Strangely, though he seemed to be mapping out the border of a small island, his device stayed all but quiet, and no bridges across the sea appeared to him.
It was almost nightfall by the time he got back to where he'd been, and he'd found nothing - the island consisted only of swamp and grassland, and when he put on his mining helmet and walked through the long middle of the oblong landmass, it only confirmed that none of the things were on this patch of land. Trying not to panic, he returned to the grassy area and started methodically gathering all the resources he could find - grass, twigs, flint, carrots, though he didn't bother chopping down trees just yet. Come morning, he was still trying only to stock up, but the light illuminated a soft, undulating shape embedded in the ground.
A wormhole. Only the one - he double-checked his mental map, and there was no indication of another anywhere on the island, though there was a fair bit of swampland he hadn't yet covered. Still, on a hunch, he approached the phenomenon he still hadn't decided whether to label a creature or an object, walking closer until it readily opened for him. Bracing himself, he jumped into the hole, and allowed the gooey, slimy tunnel to squeeze him through a long passage and spit him out somewhere else.
When he got up, slime sliding off his body so weirdly readily, he found he was somewhere new, the terrain rocky and covered in boulders, a tallbird pacing around not far away. Double-checking his mental map, he confirmed that he was not within the range of the island he'd just mapped out. I see, he thought. I'm to traverse between islands via wormholes. He hated the sensation of being swallowed and spat up by a two-mouthed worm, but if it was necessary, he would endure it, and his tam o'shanter would keep him from losing touch with reality, hopefully.
He started walking around the edge of this new island, and again, it took less than a day. The only change to the terrain he found was the patch of grass bearing the ring thing, which he took with relief. If all the islands are this big, and each one has a thing, I have no reason to stop for anything, he thought, and so made a beeline for the wormhole he'd spotted right next to the grass patch and jumped in.
This one brought him to an island covered in savannah terrain and populated by multiple herds of Beefalo. I haven't harvested a single one of these beasties since I found that portal, Wilson thought, but he was already committed to plowing through this challenge. The metal potato thing was on this island, but when he took a little more than a day to fully map out every inch of it, he couldn't find any wormholes besides the one he'd taken to get here. Trying not to panic, he returned to the rocky island and started mapping it out too, and to his relief, he found another wormhole and jumped into that one instead.
Dripping with goo that had barely had time to slough off before he got himself coated in more, Wilson stood up in a thick forest, then bent over and gagged, though nothing came up. He'd grabbed some carrots on the first island, so he wouldn't starve anytime soon, but the constant travel by wormhole was getting to him. Steeling himself, he started exploring this new island, and came upon a field of flowers that was thick with both beehives and the nests of inherently angry bees. When he chose to simply follow the edge of the forest, he soon found himself having tracked a line from shore to shore, and once he mapped out the forest itself as a whole, he'd found neither wormholes nor any useful things, only spider nests.
Oh dear. The hives had been so densely placed, there wasn't going to be any avoiding swarms of angry bees. If he'd bothered to make a beekeeping hat in one of the previous worlds, and gathered enough silk from the spiders in the swamp on the first island, there would have been almost nothing to worry about, but as it was, he decided his best option was to cut down trees for logs and weave the grass he'd gathered in passing on the Beefalo island into ropes to tie the wooden chunks together into a suit of armor. Good thing I didn't bother making a backpack.
Thus protected, he continued, trying not to run directly into the angry beehives but garnering hordes of angry bees just by walking through the flowers. Picking the flowers would have helped him recover from all the wormhole transportation, but he couldn't stop for that very often. Following the shore for a few minutes, he found himself in a new thick forest, and he retreated from the fields in relief.
Here in the new forest, he found the wooden thing, and its guardians, same as ever. It was, however, located right at the edge between this forest and the field of flowers, and some angry nests weren't too far away; deciding to play it risky, Wilson upset the nests, then ran into the middle of the patch of marble flooring with the red bees following him. Initially, the clockwork monsters were mad at him, but he ran back into the forest and away from their turf, and they soon lost interest, only to be attacked by the bees that had also lost interest in the human but still wanted something to sting. Wilson watched as a dozen bees actually managed to dispatch the Clockwork Knights and one of the Clockwork Bishops, though all the insects did ultimately perish; a couple even dropped handfuls of honey, and when Wilson returned and beat the remaining Clockwork Bishop to death with his tentacle spike, he was glad for the handfuls of sweetness to eat as he placed the ring and metal potato on the platform, to be added to later.
Nighttime really didn't matter here, not when he had his mining helmet, and he proceeded heedless of the time of day. There was nothing else in the forest, but when he returned to the field of flowers, for all the angry bees, he found himself another wormhole, and took it, ending up in a new swamp.
This island was all swamp, except for the bit of savannah terrain that held the crank thing. Not bothering with the resources he could gather here, Wilson searched for the next wormhole; when he found it, it led to a sixth island, which he assumed was the last, and this had some rocky terrain with bone mounds that housed hounds, as well as a forest of lumpy trees thick with spiders. Not caring about any of that, Wilson found the box thing with his homing device, returned to the wormhole, and went back to the swamp island, then the bee island.
His head was throbbing painfully, the color mostly leached from his vision, by the time he returned to the patch of land that would let him move on. He started picking flowers, barely avoiding the bees; he made several garlands, then dropped them around the beehives, just trying to feel a bit more civilized and a bit less lost. It was such a mundane thing, picking flowers, but that was precisely why it soothed his mind - only those with the luxury of time could afford to recognize the beauty of flowers and pick them, and it made the horrid situation of traveling the length of fleshy tunnels seem more distant. Once his headache had eased enough, he returned to the wooden thing, bearing only a few stings that he had no real means of healing.
Equal parts grouchy and proud of himself, Wilson finished assembling the teleportation device - he'd only been here five days, and already he was moving on, that warranted a certain amount of pride. Were the challenges getting easier, or was he simply getting better at recognizing his priorities and taking full advantage of minimal preparation? Either way, he was beginning to feel confident that he had more staying power in this game of wits than Maxwell. Home, he thought, and for the first time, it didn't feel like some abstract concept, but a genuine goal he was rocketing ever-closer to reaching. I will get through these false worlds and return home, I'll charge through them faster than Maxwell can make them and force him to release me.
When it came time to bring four items with him, though, he remembered that his fourth item of choice last time had been burned away. The tam o'shanter and mining helmet were still necessities, and he should still probably bring his heat stone, but beyond that, he only really had a log suit and a tentacle spike. After deliberating a moment, keeping in mind that he would be leaving behind everything else he had to hand, Wilson decided to build a fresh log suit from the trees around him and the rest of his grass - if he had to bring something combat-related with him to the next area, he wanted something that would keep him safe from harm.
With the new log suit resting with his other three chosen items, he pulled the lever, and was dragged away yet again, mechanical laughter ringing in his ears.