The compass

When Neil saw the fog, he felt a shiver moving through his spine. Even though he had been surrounded by mist from the beginning of his journey, he now realized that the loneliness he had felt up to this point had only been a prelude. Here, he finally understood why so many people returned from their exploration and never lost a word about it. This had become the perfect breeding ground for stories about monsters waiting in the mists, about ghosts of deceased explorers, forever trapped in-between worlds. Standing here, Neil wasn't sure anymore, whether he wanted to find out what was true about them. He looked at his compass and considered turning around.

All explorers before him had been following, just as he was following now, a compass. But this was not a special compass.
It was found in the center of the Garden's Tower, which was itself the center of Neil's home city.
The tower was surrounded by a circular garden, was perfectly round and had four gates, one pointing in each cardinal direction.
Through them a visitor could enter the tower's ground floor, one giant large hall. The tower had no other rooms and no way to access its upper levels.
In the center of the hall stood the statue of an angle. Its wings were folded on its back and the right hand stretched out to present the compass in its palm.
Each evening the gates closed, and each morning they opened again. Nobody was ever seen around to operate them.

Someday, someone had had the idea to take the compass and to find out where it led.
This was when the explorations started. About a week later after the first explorer had left, the compass reappeared during the night.
The explorer was never seen again. This didn't stop others to try their luck. Over time, more people disappeared. Those who returned didn't speak about what they had seen. And yet, there was always somebody else to do it again.
When the compass had reappeared a few weeks ago, Neil decided he wanted to be the first to return home after his expedition to tell everybody what was beyond the mists. Now, in front of the wall of fog, on the fifth day away from home, he was almost changing his mind.

What had happened to the others? What if the compass stopped working as soon as he entered the fog? He would get lost and starve to death. Neil saw himself wandering around and tripping over rotten corpses of previous explorers. Maybe he would be eaten by a giant snake, which moved so silently he wouldn't be able to sense it until it was too late. Or perhaps he would stumble across a cannibalistic tribe living in the fog and waiting for risk-seeking people like him to feast on their raw flesh. Still, Neil didn't want to turn back.

Since he had decided to find out where the compass led, his life had had a purpose. Back in the city, you simply existed. You had nothing to do, all your desires were instantly gratified. And this terrified him. He didn't want to give in to the fear he felt now, and wake up one day to the fact that he was old and there was nothing in his life he could be proud of. Nothing he had fought for, nothing he believed in. An empty shell of a human being.
Since he had decided to follow the compass's track, he had seen this regret and suppressed fear everywhere around him.
And he was much more afraid of this than of anything that could await him in the fog. So he closed his eyes and took a step forward.

The first thing he noticed was that the fog was even more dense than he had anticipated. The landscape was the same grassy hills he had seen all the way he had went here on his journey, but compared to before, he only saw a tenth of it. The twittering of birds he had heard before was muffled. He looked at his compass and was glad to see that it still pointed in the same direction. After a while, the landscape started to change. And then, for the first time in his life, Neil saw a tree.

Of course, he knew what a tree was. He had seen depictions of them in murals on the older buildings in the city. His parents had told him stories about dense forests, mountains, and oceans further than the eye can reach. They had existed a long time ago. Now, there was only grass, a few hills and the all-engulfing mist.
Still, he recognized it immediately. The trunk had a diameter similar to the length of his forearm and the top of the tree crown was lost in the fog. Most of its leaves, which were about the size of his hands, had accumulated on the ground. While the leaves on the tree were in all shades from green to a bright yellow, the ones on the ground had taken a dark mandarin hue. He continued to walk. Soon, he found himself in a forest.
He saw different trees now, with various leaves in different colors. Some had needles in a bright, deep green.
He took in the new sights rapturously.
It took him a while to realize that the direction in which the compass pointed had changed.

Neil stopped, confused. Had he simply started to walk in another direction, not paying attention on the compass?
How long had he been in the forest? And how long would it take him until he found what he was looking for? But there was still light. And if it would get too dark, he could simply make camp here in the forest. He started to trace after the compass again.
After a while, he stumbled upon a path. It was about five meters wide, and was dug about an arm's length deep. The path itself was unpaved and consisted of soil. Neil jumped down the sharp incline and looked around. On the path the fog was much less dense. He was able to see a couple of hundreds meter far. Yet when looking at the forest, it was as dense as before.
The compass's needle pointed along the path, and he followed it. Gradually, the path deepened. The arm's length turned to a body's length, than to the size of a tree and soon, the incline was as high as a small apartment building. Suddenly, the path ended.

Neil was standing on the junction to a clearing. The clearing was circular and just like the path, surrounded by a steep, almost perpendicular incline of dirt.
He saw three more paths leading into the clearing, that were arranged so that it looked like the clearing had eight evenly distributed entries. Neil wasn't able to verify this as the the clearing was so large, that the other end was hidden in the fog.
This wasn't helped by the fact that in the center of the clearing stood a tree, larger than any he had seen in the forest.
It had such a large diameter that a small house would fit inside it.
Even though the fog was less dense then even on the path, Neil wasn't able to see the part where the trunk transitioned to the crown.
The needle of the compass was pointing straight at it.

When Neil came closer to the tree, he saw that it wasn't a single tree trunk.
Instead, he saw lots of trunks, branches and twigs intertwining to form the giant structure he saw in front of him.
And there, between two larger branches, he found an opening. A warm light shone from it. It was big enough so he could go through it, but too small to walk upright. So he unshouldered his backpack, leaned it on the tree and went inside.

The opening ended in a small cave. Its walls were from the same material, only with much more delicate branches.
At the center of the cave stood a statue, looking identical to the angle in the garden's tower. Its right arm was stretched out in front of it, the palm facing up.
Following a sudden instinct, Neil took the compass and placed it in the angle's hand. He noticed a change in the statue's face, as if it was smiling. He heard a sound, like two giant boulders smashing into each other and the statue was gone. Instead, there was now a stairway leading down into the ground.

Neil was petrified. What should he do next? He had no idea, how to find find the way out of the forest and back to the city without the compass.
On the positive side, he had found out, what had happened to all the people who had disappeared. Unfortunately, he had now disappeared as well. But there was only one way to go. Breathing in deeply, Neil took the first anxious step down the staircase.