On the Lost Continent

by Andrew Novak

  He stood in silence for a few seconds more, then shrugged, put the black sword away, stepped over the beast’s carcass and strode to the destroyed temple.

  * * *

  It looked like the game scripts didn’t allow for the full destruction of the temple. Neighboring buildings had turned into shapeless piles of hewn stones, but the temple still stood. The columns of the portico were pockmarked, some were lying on their side, and the roof was damaged, but the walls had survived.

  Jack walked into the dark portal. The massive doorway framed with a carved arch sat at the end of a stairwell.

  When Jack had taken a few steps along the stairs, the image of the ruined city blinked. There was a soft click, and visibility returned, but a dark translucent figure appeared in front of the entrance.

  The specter reminded him of Dark Necta as she had appeared once to Jack on the forest road. That is, the figure was translucent. Through it he could see the outline of the entrance, the carved arch, the columns and the chipped walls. But this ghost looked like a man. A big man, wearing a crested helmet and plate armor, with a heavy shield on his left arm and a sword in a massive scabbard.

  “Halt, stranger! the hollow voice said. “Do not disturb the shadows of the past! I am Ged the Victorious, Master of the Battle and Lord of Arms. By my authority, I forbid you to enter the shelter of this temple, dedicated to me by the mortals.”

  “Great,” Jack growled, continuing to climb to the entrance. “There are a bunch of you Gods, and you all want something different. You tell us not to go in, and Necta demands it. So, do grant the lady this one wish.”

  “I ruled over this land,” the translucent shadow of the warrior god bent down to him, “and my word still remains law. Do not disturb the spirits with your presence. Let the past rest in peace.”

  Jack strode unhesitantly right through the ghost and entered the darkness under the vaulted arch. A faint light trickled through the holes in the walls. He could see an altar in the distance. A statue towered above it, quite similar to the chatty ghost at the entrance. It also portrayed a bearded man with a weapon.

  Outside behind his back, the shadow of Ged repeated its monologue again and again.

  “Halt, stranger! Do not disturb the shadows of the past! I am Ged the Victorious, Master of the Battle and Lord of Arms.”

  “You’re lying,” Jack muttered, making his way through the wreckage to the altar. “Necta warned me you’re not who you say you are. A fraudster, that’s what you are, and not a true God. All of you younger Gods are actually something else.”

  Finally, the altar. Next to it lay a pile of bones topped with a human skull. When Jack took another step, the bones began to move with a dry, unpleasant rattle. A heartbeat later a whole skeleton stood before Jack, holding a staff in one bony hand and a dagger in the other. The staff, by the way, looked more like a spear. Its finely-sharpened lower end was pointed at Jack’s chest.

  Risen Priest of Ged

  Expertise: 30

  Disease: 40

  The skeleton made a movement with its left hand, and the dagger soared through the air. It circled around Jack, changing angles in flight and threatening him first with the tip, then with the blade. Jack dodged, but the dagger soared to the dark vault of the temple, attacking him from above so fast that he was barely able to knock it aside with the tip of the sword.

  Spinning, the dagger flew to one side, clinked against the wall and dropped. There it twitched among the stones in the darkness until it wriggled its way back into the light.

  Glancing at the dagger writhing on the floor, Jack lunged at the skeleton, reasoning that the former couldn’t be too dangerous on its own. As he advanced toward the skeleton, he felt the prick of the flying dagger.

  You receive damage!

  You lose 4 hit points!

  Jack was already at the altar.

  “Why, you… take that!”

  The skeleton attempted to parry the blow with the staff but the Shadow of the King cut clean through both the weapon and the undead priest. Just in case, Jack stepped onto the crumbling skeleton to keep it from rising again.

  Then he turned swiftly around, searching for the flying knife. It came flying out of the darkness, performing some complex aerobatics in front of the player, then flipped itself over hilt first.

  Jack carefully caught the weapon. The dagger didn’t make any more attempts to come to life again and lay quietly in his hand as was proper for a well-behaved bladed weapon.

  New weapon added.

  Flying Dagger of the Priest

  Cold, one-handed, enchanted.

  Class: Rare

  Damage: 7-11

  Damage type: Cleaving, slicing

  Durability: 18/22

  Available from level 30.

  When Jack closed his fingers around the hilt, a kind of crosshair appeared in front of him, with a new menu in the corner of his field of vision. It was a tiny schematic image of a winged dagger with a virtual joystick next to it. Direction… height… There was also a circular green arrow.

  Jack played with it for a bit, launching the weapon and pointing it in different directions, then released his grip on it. Using the crosshair, he struck the statue of Ged a couple of times. He really should test it on something softer than a stone monument.

  Having finished the test, Jack clicked the icon again.

  The deactivated dagger hung for a second in mid-air, then clattered to the ground. One more tap on the green arrow made it come back and hover in front of its owner.

  “Okay, the winner’s reward,” Jack said, putting the loot away into an inventory slot. “I’ll take a closer look at it later, but it’s already clear that it’s not a bad little weapon. But right now, I have a fire to light. Don’t need a dagger for that.”

  But what did he need?

  The altar at the foot of Ged’s statue was shaped as a rectangular stone pedestal with a depression in the upper edge. The sacred flame was supposed to burn in this depression.

  Jack clicked the flint over the hollow. Nothing happened. He looked in his inventory to see if there was something in there suitable for the situation.

  And there it was. The thought that the Hound might react to something from the Theokrist’s set had already occurred to Jack, and the Beads seemed to be the most fitting. Maybe they were the key to the altar.

  It was still unclear how a Rosary might help with a fire, but why not give it a try? There was no need to search for real-life logic here in the game. It had its own rules.

  Jack took Theokrist’s Rosary and bent over the altar. Now what? He began to slowly run his fingers over the black, white and colored beads on the string…

  At first he didn’t even realize what had just happened. His hands twitched. Something about the artifact had changed.

  Fire rose in the altar. Mechanically Jack withdrew his fingers from the flames. Only then did he notice that the Beads had changed. Something happened to them because now they looked a little different. Well, yes, of course! There were fewer beads. There were only seven left now. One ball had become fire: more specifically, the red one.

  Red… Ged’s color. The color of fire, war, and spilled blood.

  Ah, and something else seemed to have changed, yeah? The voice of Ged’s ghost was gone.

  While Jack had been fighting with the undead and rummaging around in his inventory, the shade had continued with its monologue, “Halt, stranger! Do not disturb the shadows of the past! I am Ged the Victorious, Master of the Battle and Lord of Arms…” But after the fire on the altar had been kindled, the ghost had quieted; probably disappeared altogether. Well, and why bother rattling on if it didn’t work?

  Jack stared into the fire, meditating, making use of this accomplishment. Well, actually, he’d defeated the boss, completed the local quest, but where was his reward, or at least, some proof that he’d done it correctly?

  In the flames, a face appeared, formed by the red and orange tongues of fire. The shape flickered an
d blurred, but the bearded man was plainly visible.

  “Greetings, stranger,” the man in the fire spoke. His voice crackled like the sparks floating over the flames. With every word, the man’s mouth released puffs of sparks. “I am Theokrist, the explorer and adventurer. In the search for an answer to my questions, I left all that had remained of our miserable land abandoned by the gods. I learned of the greatest mysteries and witnessed unfathomable events. My dream was to call upon the Gods to return to Gaerthon. The Great Mysteries of Alterra called me to the road. I was able to accomplish much. Upon completing my journey, I discovered what happened to Chronos, the god of light, and found him… Or was it no longer him? He was so terribly changed by his enemies’ machinations.”

  Jack pricked up his ears. A Great Mystery of Alterra! The one Sartorius dreamed of discovering.

  “If you can muster the courage, follow in my footsteps and find the place where Cronos is imprisoned. But be prepared! The sight you might find there will horrify you. My heart nearly broke when I saw it… I had no weapons capable of freeing the Father of All Gods. Even my Bone Sword was powerless against such evil sorceries. It was only half the weapon required. The white half. In search of the black half of the sword, I went on a new journey.

  I wasn’t able to release the God of Light but I did receive a sign. It led me to the Conlock Caves where I found the Rosary which had been stolen from Chronos. This is a famous relic from the days of Alterra’s creation when Chronos created the pantheon of Gods, established order and defined the flow of time. The Beads served him in this work. They will, I believe, help to restore him. I believe this because the Beads are a model of the universe as created by Chronos.

  Creating Order in the midst of Chaos, the great Chronos separated Questions from Answers, Cruelty from Mercy and Darkness from Light. He strung them all on the thread of Time and created the Rosary in a similar Order. Cruelty and Courage was embodied in Ged. His color is red. Pity and Compassion became Astra, who personifies the elemental forces. Her color is green, the color of leaves and grass. Questions became Faceless, the color blue. It is the color of the sky, to which the questioner directs their curiosity. And Answers were given to the wise Zaratos, His is the color of dying leaves, the color of the desert, of dead earth. Yellow. Answers create balance, for questions die in them.

  The four younger Gods completed Alterra. Together with Light and Darkness, they slide one after the other along the thread of time. The Beads told me where to look for the restoration of Order.

  Perhaps, if you revive the fires in the temples of Alterra’s Gods, they will help you find the missing piece? Try it. Because if you are listening to me speaking from the flame, it means you have already found the first temple. My Compass will help you find the road to the rest. Look for it in the area around Astra’s temple, which is not far from here. Astra, as is befitting for a faithful wife, is always near Ged.

  Use the Rosary, for the prototype Order of Chronos is lain in them. Good luck, wanderer! May the Gods be with you!”

  Theokrist’s face melted away. Now the altar pulsated with a normal flame like the ones in the temples of Stoglav — inextinguishable and constant.

  So Ged’s temple had been restored. Regarding the weapons, Jack had an idea. It looked like the black half of the sword was already in his possession. If he completed the quest correctly, step by step, then Necta’s temple would probably be the last on Theokrist’s Path, and the Night Mother would award him the whole weapon. Same with the Compass. Jack had already found it, even though Theokrist advised him to find it. It just so happened that the War Hound had prevented him from kindling the fire on Lahitte island immediately after completing the first part of the quest. Otherwise he would have gotten the Compass then, had he performed all the steps in order.

  The one thing he knew for sure was that at the end of this quest chain, the answer to one of the Great Mysteries of Alterra awaited him. The very thing that seemed to intrigue Sartorius.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jack’s Plan B

  “JACK, IT’S ALREADY getting light,” Goodwin’s muffled voice broke in, a spectral sound from another world.

  “Another fifteen minutes, and I’ll be back,” answered Jack.

  He left the temple. It was still nighttime in Alterra because it was earlier there than in reality. The ghost of Ged, as expected, was gone. And in the place where Jack had killed the Hound, something flashed brightly in the rocks. Had that thing still not settled down? Extremely rude on its part, causing trouble even with a severed head.

  Carefully approaching the site of the encounter, Jack discovered that the War Hound had vanished, leaving a drop behind. Something… something fiery. It pulsated with a crimson glow, and was about the size of two fists.

  The Fiery Heart of the War Hound

  Unique

  Properties: unknown

  “Another riddle for Egghead,” Jack muttered, putting the loot in his backpack. “I wasn’t sure if I should let him know that I survived. Without him, I wouldn’t have ever been able to take care of that Hound. Let him dig around in the archives. I still have a lot to do.”

  That done, Jack didn’t hang around. He returned to the Dead Wind and gave the ship the order to make sail for Stoglav. This time it was better not to use the Dark Path because the ship would to be very useful when the time came to visit Sartorius. Who was now becoming a necromancer — and Jack didn’t want to be caught walking around in Nightmare. Too dangerous, there may be delays, and his time was decreasing relentlessly.

  Before he finally logged off, Jack sent a private message in the Shell,

  Sartorius, I found the quest leading to the Great Mysteries of Alterra, and I thought you should know about it first. And naturally, you have the full right to participate in this endeavor. If you want to, of course. I’ll be on a ship off the coast of Nightmare. On the same one the necromancer Bacchus, Azeroth’s servant, wrote about. Get a boat of some kind and sail over to me. We’ll meet on the open sea.

  That’s it, plain and simple. If you want to. If you want to fulfill this long-cherished dream you’ve held all your life. Fancy doing that?

  Removing the helm, he blinked a little so that his eyes got used to the ghostly gray light of real twilight. His stuff had certainly not dried out, so he had to wear wet clothes. Jack woke Goodwin, who’d somehow managed to fall asleep, and followed him along the shore. The old man chose a route through the ruins in order to keep out of the Barrier spotlight .

  “Apparently, it’s not your first time here,” Jack said.

  “It’s better here. Omegas don’t poke around,” the old man replied. Then, for some reason, he blurted out, “It used to be called White Avenue.”

  “Hm,” Jack had never been concerned with what it was called before the Gendemic. Those times were gone and wouldn’t return.

  Goodwin turned to the East River. They passed piles of bricks and concrete debris which once had been parts of something too but were now just a shelter from the searchlights.

  At last they were at the water’s edge amidst a heap of huge concrete structures, fallen cranes, destroyed machinery… in some places a roadbed and rails could still be seen from under the rubble. Jack saw quite a lot in his wanderings but he hadn’t seen this.

  Goodwin nodded. “Brooklyn shipyards.”

  Jack believed that since he was a Walker, there wasn’t much that could surprise him. However, the old man managed to do so.

  And what’s this? Jack had never come across a real ship in the Wastes before. The vessel was large and not even damaged that badly by blasts from the emitters. It stood at the dock. Its deck could be accessed by passing through the rusty gate of a felled construction crane.

  Its hull was rust eaten; the paint on it was peeling. Its stern, facing New Atrium, had become a mess of bulging metal, the steel in some places deformed as if had boiled, then cooled that way. But it still looked awesome.

  “I have my own schooner in Alterra,” Jack said. �
�Well, she’s a bit prettier. Although this old tub is pretty cool, too.”

  “I chose this place because there is high-voltage cable here,” said the old man. “It delivers electricity to the ghetto from New Atrium along the bottom of the East River, and there’s enough junk on the ship that I managed to make a decent transformer, so that I can get basic electricity. And once the cable was laid here, the defenders stopped firing over the ship. They don’t want to damage the line. Well, overall, the ship is very comfortable. You’ll find all that you need to live independently.”

  “And do you store rats here for food?” Jack asked, eyeing the vessel.

  “I always keep some stores in my hideouts. For a short haul, it’ll be enough.”

  “Short haul, you say? All things considered, I might not be here for the long one,” Jack sighed. “Right now I need sleep, and in the evening I will try to find another way across the Barrier. I’ll also find out what they’re saying in New Atrium about Ruger’s death.”

  He still needed to figure out how to get to Brandt Ironfist… but Jack didn’t say it aloud, so as not to worry Goodwin. The man was probably glad now that Ironfist would stop hunting him. So let’s not worry about it. Let him think that the quest had been closed and that they ran no risk of walking into the boss.

  * * *

  Waking up in the hold of the old ship took Jack a few minutes to remember where he was. He felt dizzy and nauseous. Just lousy. Gradually, the memories lined up in his head in the correct order. Yes, he needed to hurry. There was a great deal to be done and not enough time to do it.

  Goodwin was nowhere to be found and Jack went looking for him — first around the deck and finally, on the foredeck. A panorama of the ghetto stretched before him — the ruins, rows of trailers, and the web of cables overhead. Behind it stood the Barrier — and above it, the glowing windows of the tall residential towers in New Atrium.