by G. Akella
It took me about an hour to walk around the pyramid’s perimeter, but there were no entrances that I could see. Nor did I find any other stairs to the top. So I approached the set I had seen earlier and looked upward. Nothing... If only there was at least some hint for me. What if there wasn't even anything up there? I recalled videos of all those daredevils climbing skyscrapers and cranes and dangling from their pinkie fingers or jumping back and forth between six-inch-wide metal beams at two thousand feet up. I wasn’t one of them. Both there and here, I hated heights. And these stairs didn’t even have a handrail. Still, I had to make a choice. I summoned my courage, smoking two pipes in a row with a wistful look at the undead shuffling around the pyramid, and began my ascent.
The width of the stairs was about fifty yards. The steps were steep, but never worn. I doubted many people ever decided to climb them - perhaps I was even the first. One slip and I’d be riding down these steps on my ass! Trying not to look down but only around me, I worked on estimating the size of the city beneath. As I rose higher into the sky, I concluded that Vineta was at least as big as San Francisco. A kind of irrational fear pounded in my head more and more as I ascended. The height had nothing to do with it, though - or at least not much. It was something else. The monstrous thing sitting there in the fog, at the top. My fear grew with each step. But as breathing became hard, rage rushed in and cleared my mind, and the rest of the climb was not difficult.
The fog covering the top of the pyramid had a strange look to it. When I was only a few steps away from it, I drew my sword, took up my shield with my left hand and hid behind it, and stepped into the gray mist.
Hart! Visibility dropped to zero. I began to doubt this stuff was fog. Wet cement, maybe. I pressed on for five minutes or so, when suddenly the steps ended and I stepped onto a flat surface, nearly falling at the surprising change.
ERROR 757@4#!278%$
An unknown force suddenly dragged me forward, and the fog disappeared. I looked around and cursed violently. It was the only thing I could do given the horrific scene that opened before me.
The pentagonal platform, surrounded by a rippling wall, was literally painted with blood, adorned with patches of hair, bone and bleeding stumps. A glass ball rested on a silver stand about fifty meters ahead, at the point of the pentagon opposite me, and in front of the ball and a little to the right lay the giant carcass of a monster, in a pool of blood. It had a huge gray body covered with terrible ulcers, dozens of severed tentacles, a triangular face with two cone-shaped growths and twisted horns, three-foot yellowed fangs, and a long snaking tail. This fight had ended no more than five minutes ago - and I hadn’t heard a thing! Apparently this damned fog completely dampened all sound. I had no desire to figure out what happened here... Hart. I forgot to bind in Ellorian. Idiot!
There were four victors, though they had been noticeably battered by the fight. The spider had lost a leg and had its right claw crushed. Teiran’s skull was cracked open. Nerghal had lost three tentacles of his six, and Rgharg’s lupine body lay in a pool of his own blood with his tongue sticking out and a terrible wound gaping at his side. Each of these companions of Vill had a third of their HP left at most, though that would still be more than enough for me... Four raid bosses!!! What the hell, System? You finally crashing? How did all of them end up here, anyway? They had already died before!
Silence still hung over the whole platform, disturbed only by Rgharg’s ragged breath. The four monsters looked at me silently, as if they were seeing me for the first time. I grinned, tightened my grip on Ruination, and stepped forward. I wasn’t about to run away - not that I even could. If it's a fight you want, a fight you will have. Even if I meet my end here.
Just then Shiekata came out to meet me, and her dry, raspy voice rattled around in my head.
Calm yourself, demon. It was Arkam. The spider nodded back over her shoulder, winced, and began to speak normally. "We were just clearing the way for you, Dark One. Your friend Hel used the power she gathered to break the seals of his tomb. The mindless god became incarnate in Vineta, as did we all, and the guardians of the Azure Valley took advantage of this and placed him here, in your path. But I assure you, they will regret what they did to our master..."
I was only beginning to grasp the meaning of her words when I realized that the bars above the companions’ heads were not bright red, but pale pink. Unfriendly! Vill’s companions weren’t going to attack me. Instead, they were... they were... what the hell was going on?! Clumps of uncombed, knotted spider hair - hanging in filthy icicles where water and blood had brought them together - four white growths on her forehead, an oversized lower jaw, saggy, flabby breasts. Shiekata was a horror to behold. It took all of my strength to lift my jaw up from the stone floor, yet still I could not speak. I probably looked quite amusing.
"Sometimes, demon," Shiekata continued, "even your worst enemy can become an ally. Believe us when we say this does not make us happy, but we have no choice: only you can kill the Beast that consumed Vill."
I finally exhaled and got a grip on myself. "How did you even get here?"
"Vineta is the city of the dead gods. The forbidden graveyard of Arkon. Only those who have ‘ceased to be’ and those who ‘do not exist,’ such as yourself, can come to this place." Shiekata stopped and ran her eyes along the gray walls. "The magic of the guardians has warped Arkam, the Scales of the Celestial Dragon tipped, and Providence pulled us from our graves."
"But why do you care?" I nodded at the dead god and returned my eyes to Shiekata’s. "How will the death of the Beast help you? Or are you just avenging Vill?"
Shiekata shook her head slowly, holding my gaze. "You will kill him and free the essence of our master, and then we will have a chance. You, however, have no chance. I see it... I know it... The Black Demon of the Prophecy shall pass from this world, no matter the outcome. And I cannot say that it will sadden me..."
"Even if the Beast dies?"
Shiekata nodded. "Yes. You will depart this world, no matter what. But if you are victorious, you will never be forgotten." She slowly raised a claw, pointing at the sphere on the pedestal. "Break the seal and you may continue your journey. Farewell, demon, and may Sata be with you."
"See ya later, alligators." I looked around at Vill’s companions, then shrugged, even as internally my emotions raged against one another, and set off towards the sphere.
Upon reaching it, I discovered it was not lying atop the pedestal but floating six inches above it. Not that I cared. I swung my sword at it sharply, shattering it into a thousand splinters as the platform disappeared in a bright flash.
My consciousness returned, slowly. The first few breaths tasted salty. I pushed off the boards I was lying on and sat up. I was at sea? Well, this was certainly new - I'd never been on a ship before. Though it didn't look much like a proper ship, more like a shipwreck. In fact, I doubted I would find anyone alive. The vessel was about forty yards long and twenty wide. At one point it had possessed two masts, but they had snapped off, leaving their threatening stumps jutting from the deck. Every surface I could see was littered with scraps of rotted canvas, fragments of rope and wood, and the bones of some unlucky souls. Of course there were bones - the scene wouldn’t look authentic without them.
The poop deck was where I had awoken. That was the name for it, right? It made sense that that would be at the ship’s rear. Or did it? Stern, aft, portside, starboard, avast - my knowledge of sailing terms was about as good as an Aborigine’s knowledge of the Large Hadron Collider. If the movies I had seen were accurate, the brave captain should be standing around here, turning the ship’s helm and giving commands to the crew, who in turn should be climbing the ropes and furling or unfurling the sails. But there was no ship’s helm, only a small piece of where it had once been. Steering this ship was not an option, in other words.
I stood and sheathed my sword, rubbed off the damp moss which had relocated from the deck to my gear, and walked over to the railing. I wasn't
going to lean on it - the boards had cracked and rotted through, and I’d rather not learn to swim in a full suit of armor today. Judging by the sun’s position, the time was approaching evening. There were no clocks and no maps, and my portals were limited to the visible parts of the ships. My mount icon was grayed out. But I still had my inventory. I could in theory summon one of the ten griffins I still had, but what use would it be? If only those griffins could fly...
The sea stretched out in all directions, to the horizon. I saw no tropical islands with coconut trees nor any black sails with skulls and crossbones. There were plenty of skulls and crossbones on the ship, anyway. So I wasn’t in any immediate danger, it would seem, but where was I sailing to? The nose of the ship pointed south, but that didn’t mean the ship was actually moving in that direction. Sailors would probably be infuriated by the terms in my head. You don’t move in a direction, you sail towards a heading. Or some nonsense like that. But what I was doing could hardly be called "sailing." Aggressive floating, at best - that was all the vessel was capable of. Still, what did it matter? No matter where I ended up, the story would end up the same way. I sighed and smiled. Bitterly. Shiekata’s parting words still roiled around in my head. Was my death really foreordained? Would the Black Demon of the Prophecy leave this world no matter what happened? If not, why would the spider lie?
I pulled my pipe out of my bag, lit it, and stood for about five minutes watching the horizon.
To hell with this! What was there even to mull over? Rage overwhelmed me for a moment. So I was going to my death? I didn’t give a damn! The last six months had been the best in my entire life! I was a man, a warrior, a friend to many and loved by many, both friends and the most beautiful of women. If I had been given a choice between living a century as an unmatched concept artist and living the past half year again, I would have chosen the latter in a heartbeat. I would go kill the Beast and die a glorious death. That was how all good fairy tales ended. And so what if the black demon would then leave this world? I thought back to Merdoc saying that someday I would cease being the Dreamer... Wait a minute! So the Prophecy would come to an end? And I would cease to be the demon of the Prophecy? Did that mean... that I would be just an ordinary Prince of Craedia?! Why not? I tossed the thought back and forth in my head, then smiled and took in two lungs full of fresh seakissed air. My story wasn’t over yet! I had no plans to depart into the Eternal Flame! No intentions to go gentle into that dark light!
But what do I do now? I glanced around the ship and walked up to the remnants of the helm, leaning against what was left of its column. What had I gotten myself into this time?
I took stock of the situation. Cheney’s crew had shoved a crazed Arkam onto that pyramid, and Providence had revived the companions of the Twice-Damned God and revealed to them what exactly had happened to their master - and what each of them faced. They had taken radical action, and quickly. But some things still didn’t make sense. For some reason, I had thought that the Primordial Paths, though somehow connected to the outside world, had not been so pervasively connected. They were a partial reflection of the world, but they contained many things that could not, in theory, exist in the normal world. Why? Well, the governing AI couldn’t see them thanks to the blood of a certain dragon I knew. I wondered again what that "blood" really was. Alas, my understanding of programming was even worse than my understanding of ships.
I settled my gaze on a rusting, curved saber lying nearby. Vill’s companions were in Vineta now, and they hoped to travel to the normal world someday, with my help. Could any creature on the Primordial Paths get to the world of RP-17 as long as they were somehow linked to it? If so, then... That meant the Azure Valley was located on the Primordial Paths! And perhaps the Source of Power in the Kraet Peaks that the titans were seeking was its reflection! Programmers could curse at my terminology more violently than the sailors had, but I didn’t care. My party and I had fought off the undead attack on Dorca while being in Karn and on the Primordial Paths simultaneously. And that wasn’t all! The gods called the Nameless "Lord of the Primordial Paths." Was this some powerful governing AI that could create locations while being under the full control of the Board of Directors? Changing the settings of RP-17 required at least seventy-five percent of shareholders to vote for the change, but this was the builder of a parallel world! Want him to build an Azure Valley for you? No problem! It was he who had made the Ancients Paths, right? It all made sense!
And since it was connected with the world above, during the Patch this AI had become self-aware - and had possibly partly escaped the control of Cheney and co.
I contemplated my pipe as the finger of the sea breeze carelessly twirled its rising smoke. My mouth curled into a smile. To a person who knew how game development worked, my reasoning probably would sound ridiculous. But I was doing the best I could to be logical about it. So what might I be missing... Well, why had the dragon been kept not in the valley but in some random cave? What if he really was the one keeping those shitbags in the valley? Was that possible? Why not? Then the Nameless remained alive as long as he kept the valley hidden from RP-17. As soon as Cheney - or whatever he had become - consumed Vill and became the New God, he would be able to escape on his own. The White Dragon would be slain, and everyone in the valley would die along with him. Cheney despised witnesses, as I had learned first-hand. Their blood would cover his trail, and then the Beast would step into Karn and give them his beastly middle finger.
If I was right about all of this, or at least most of it, my course of action remained the same: find the White Dragon, enter the Azure Valley with his help, and nip this wicked plan in the bud.
I knocked my pipe against the boards of the ship, stamped out the scattered sparks, and stretched my sore shoulders. Time to get better acquainted with this ghost ship.
I carefully descended the creaking steps to the main part of the deck and traversed it to the bow, absentmindedly looking at all the rubbish under my feet as I tried to ascertain why I was here. Was something going to happen on this very ship? Or was I supposed to use it to sail somewhere, and that something would happen there? I abandoned all thoughts of being clever as I reached the front of the ship. There, among other things, I found a perfectly preserved oaken box containing a compass entirely without rust, a small spyglass on a stand, and a sextant or something of the sort.
I might have never sailed before, but I wasn’t stupid enough not to know what these were for. Except they should have been near the helm, not here. The box’s little legs had been broken off, so in this condition it could have been swept overboard in a storm or onto the bow. I quickly dismissed the possibility that sailors in this area of the world outfitted their ships with helms somewhere other than at their bows.
Throwing the various instruments in my bag - lest they be swept overboard after all - I reached out towards a skull lying near the box. He had thirty seven copper and a piece of silk fabric. Over the course of his whole life, he had barely reached level 200. So what could I conclude? Nothing at all! Except that if the whole crew of this Flying Dutchman were to suddenly come back to life, I’d have no problem dealing with them.
Back in thought, I looked at the faraway horizon with a pensive smile. If only Max and I could have gotten our hands on a ship like this when we were ten, or twelve - that would have been the coolest thing ever to happen to a pair of boys. But my childhood was over, and now I cared little for ships and skulls. I wanted to go back home, to my wife and my friends.
There was not a single skeleton on the upper deck. That made sense, as they tended to crumble and slip through the ship’s railing, as long as they didn’t rise to become undead. Only in movies did crew skeletons sit on the deck, still tied to the masts, holding treasure maps or little purses of gold in their hands. On this whole deck, thirty seven copper was all the treasure I’d see.
I checked all fourteen skulls below decks, finding five silver coins and some copper, three pieces of silk, an empty wine bottle and
a dirty black bandanna. Had this been a pirate ship? Possibly. But as far as I knew, sailors in the Middle Ages had all worn clothes like this, be they pirates or no. Not that I cared whether they were pirates or merchants or millers. I didn’t untie the bandanna, of course, leaving it and the empty bottle with its owner. Then I cast a lantern and headed towards the dark opening taking me to the front portion of the ship’s belly.
The stairs had rotted away so I simply Stepped into the space. The cryptic smells of death, mold, and rotten algae pummeled me, and I winced. There was nothing of note in here. Wrecked furniture and a piece of canvas. Seeing the light of the sky filtering through the door, I drew my sword, just in case, and pressed on.
Searching the whole ship took me five hours and revealed nothing of interest. There was a rare level 190 sabre, seven two-pound silver bars and two gold, but those were as good as garbage to me. Probably just right for five level 150 adventurers, but that wasn’t me. This was probably just an ordinary ship in the System’s possession that it had decided to toss me on after altering its route to the one that suited its purposes. A glorified water taxi whose crew had perished of some illness or some curse. The bones of the skeletons were intact, and there was a substantial supply of food and water and even a couple of barrels of disgusting wine in the hold. More gold and silver was locked in the ship’s vault... My suspicion was that I would have guests come nightfall. Either the crew would rise again or the captain would emerge to reveal to me the mystery of their deaths. Some such standard storyline.