Chương 65: 64-The Forgotten City

Bob waited at the Northern Gate for the rest of the Losers to appear. Elariana, Pob, and Dawn had volunteered to go with them on their adventure, but Exchange had been adamant—if anyone but the Losers attempted it, their quest would fail. No one had liked it, but they had all gone along with it. Bob realized that without their previous experience with Governance, Exchange would have had a much tougher task convincing them. It was twenty past nine; Jenna and Billy were running late.

He had spent the past thirty minutes watching whole squads of crafters going back and forth between the city and the forest. When they returned to the city, they were loaded with materials: hides, bones, salted meats… Many also carried bags filled with ornate ivory figurines. It was not hard to imagine what they had been doing. Billy was remarkably civic-minded for someone so young and had gotten into the habit of ending any corpse-camping session with a loot charge.

He reasoned that it was more appropriate to leave behind materials anyone could use rather than the disemboweled corpse of a monster. Finally, they appeared, clad in their Elven gear and closely followed by a group of merchants pestering them with questions.

"Are you going to do this again soon?" said a plump young man who looked to be some kind of tanner.

"If we do, you can bet your ass that this time we are charging you for it," Jenna answered acidly.

"How did you find out, anyway? We had scarcely started, and there you were, trying to get your pound of flesh."

"That fellow alchemist from the Secret Mountain sold us the location of your operation," the tanner answered. Bob had to smile at that. Of course, it had been Bilto. He briefly wondered how much he had made off Billy and Jenna's efforts. He waved hello to them as they approached.

"First of all, we did have a decent night's sleep. We decided to wake up early so Billy could get some Achievement Points back. He was running on fumes after the fight with the Answer," said Jenna.

"No judgment here—I spent the whole time doing Alchemy," said Bob.

"Of course you did," Jenna answered, smiling.

"I didn't have enough materials or time to do much. This is for you, Jenna: a stick of shadow incense so that you have access to dimensional magic if we get separated, and a single Mind pill. It only works for a minute, but you will probably reach +6 in a tertiary stat with it. We all know what you can do with it."

"Well, Bob, that Exchange guy is probably hitting +7 tertiary ranks all the time. I am no longer so impressive. I will have to do, though."

"Billy, I made you some experience tonic. We do not know whether the realities we are going through have active systems," he said as he handed Billy a bottle.

"You crafted nothing for yourself, did you?" asked Jenna.

"I already have the Gambling Die," Bob answered.

"Yes, the die. The bloody die. The next items we loot are going to you two, no matter what you say," answered Jenna. She knew it had been the right call, as she was the one who needed new approaches to her magic, but even so, it did not feel right.

"How did the corpse-camping go?" Bob asked.

"Quite well, as a matter of fact," answered Jenna.

"Billy has around 2, 000 AP now. No Essence, though, as we were not clearing dungeons." Billy looked the same as always, but there was a feeling of competence and danger around him that could only be granted by a high Spirit.

"Thousand-Faced Assassin?" Bob asked.

"Very good, Bob. This time, we decided to devote some AP to evolving the Avatar. He is level 50, so his powers and stats are a bit more potent. He is the best scouting shape Billy has, and I think we are going to need him."

"Makes you wonder why we don't do this more often."

"Because it is throwing AP away, Bob. Once he discorporates, the Whisper template goes back to its original form."

"But this time, we need a competent scout, and Billy has plenty of practice with the form, so we decided to go with it."

"Sounds good to me. I have already stocked my Inventory with everything we needed. I also got something else for Billy," Bob said as he gave Billy a small glass ball, the size of an olive.

"What is this?" Billy asked him.

"It is a dimensional beacon, one of the ones Jenna imprinted with a pulse signal. I used it in a Pantean Tastecraft recipe, which required knowledge of Waycraft. Swallow it, and it will remain in your stomach forever. That way Jenna can locate you if we get separated."

"It will not work, Bob. I will leave it behind when I discorporate."

"I already told you: it has a Waycraft component. It will follow you even into the Blue Room and back."

"Thank you, Bob," Jenna said, genuinely delighted.

"That was an awesome idea. But you should do the same for yourself." Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"I did—I implanted another Beacon under the skin of my forearm, and healed the wound closed. We are not going to be able to use the Blood Link when we leave our own time, but at least you will be able to locate us both."

"Okay, we'd better get started then," Jenna said as she took the instructions out of the box. She took a small pearl and a slip of paper. She gave the box to Bob so he could add it to his Inventory.

"The pearl is imprinted with a dimensional location. By joining our powers, Bob and I can gate us there. Our destination is a system-locked reality known as Opla. It contains a time dungeon known as the Ever-Branching Maze. The slip explains how to navigate it. It will take us 600 years into Opla's past. We must then cross a city under siege by two hostile factions. There is a Church in the center of the city. It contains a catacomb we must reach to begin the second part of our journey."

"Okay, burning city, two armies, find a Church in the middle of the chaos and port out," said Billy.

"Sounds fun."

"Three armies, Billy. When we enter the past with the artifact, we will be emitting a Dissonance so powerful that it will draw a horde of Time hunters on our track. I am sure the Keeper, or whoever controls the Maze, will promise fifty free trips to whoever takes the Icosahedron back into the present. He will probably add free drinks, too."

"And we are going to have to do this three more times," Bob said glumly.

"That's it, Bob. The only respite we are going to get is when we are inside the Time dungeons themselves." As they talked, they put some distance between themselves and Babylon. The merchants, accepting that there were no more goodies to be handed out, had finally returned to town.

"This should be far enough, I guess." She took the pearl and gazed into its depths while she laid her left hand on Bob's shoulders. Bob activated Celestial Gate: A rift opened in mid-air, showing a landscape of horror. The land was scorched, with huge craters. The air smelled of ash and burnt wood. There was nothing alive: no vegetation, no animals. Only the broken ruins of a city in the distance. At first, Bob thought it was night.

Then he realized that the air was so thick with smog that it kept the light of two suns from coming through. One of these suns was reddish and the size of ours. The other had a bluish tinge and was as large as our moon. Bob had to use his Tastecraft to make sure the air was not poisonous. Then he entered the rift. Jenna and Billy followed.

"I think that whatever poisons were released here have long since been neutralized."

"Figures," Jenna added.

"I don't think that one-horned jerk would have sent us here only to die of radiation poisoning."

"What are we looking at here, Bob?"

"This looks like a nuclear winter. I think we are looking at the results of whatever war took place here six centuries ago—the period we're heading into, by the way," Bob answered.

"Jesus, are we traveling into that?" Billy asked.

"None of us like it, honey," Jenna answered.

"It is the only way."

"But won't the time dungeon have been destroyed too?" asked Billy.

"Only its upper floor, Billy. Time dungeons exist at all points in time at once. The only way to destroy one is to kill its core and bosses. They are like weeds—leave the root, and they will regrow. The entry must be somewhere around." Jenna sat on the floor, meditating and expanding her spirit. Two minutes later, she stood up again.

"I think I have found the entry. It is two miles east of here." The trek through the gloomy terrain kept them all in low spirits.

"I think this world is mostly devoid of life. All the vegetation has disappeared, and the fauna with it," Bob said. The sound of their boots on the frozen mud was the only noise that broke the eerie silence. Jenna felt a brief moment of panic when she could not at first find the entry to the dungeon. Finally, her eyes picked it out.

"There it is," she said, pointing at a small cave in the side of a cliff.

"Wasn't it supposed to be a maze?" asked Billy.

"This is only the entry; the inside can look like anything. First, let's do this," Jenna said as she used her superhuman strength to bury one of her dimensional beacons deep in the ground.

"That way we can return to this world whenever we want."

"To be honest, I don't think it has much to offer," answered Billy.

"It does have something to offer, Billy: a time dungeon. We can use it to reach the past and future of this world. I am also as fed up with time travel as you possibly are, but I will not throw away a potentially useful tool." Entering the cave was like crossing into another world. Literally. They were no longer in a post-apocalyptic waste, but inside a hedge maze under a cool summer sky. They had just stepped through a tear in midair. The ravaged world they had come from was clearly visible on the other side.

They were in the middle of a circular clearing from which multiple paths led into the dungeon. They were all marked with strange symbols.

"The slip contains a sequence of symbols; I think we can safely assume it follows the same method as the Black Tower."

"And we can assume that is the Maze's equivalent of the Keeper," said Bob, pointing at a huge black metal statue in the center of the clearing. It depicted a hooded figure holding an hourglass.

"Yes, there must be a way to communicate with it, ask it for directions, obtain instructions from it, and so on," mused Jenna as she studied the statue.

"Fortunately, we do not have to waste time doing that," she added as she headed for the passage marked with the first symbol on her slip. Twelve minutes and sixteen symbols later, they reached a different rift. This one opened onto a sunny landscape, under weather much like that inside the dungeon.

"Okay, first, some ground rules. We must assume the assassins the Maze is going to send against us will be mainly interested in taking the Icosahedron from us to return it to the present. The Icosahedron never goes into Bob's Inventory. Ever. We may have to pass it back and forth between us to shake off pursuers."

"We were going at full speed, and it took us twelve minutes to navigate the Maze. That is the only head start we are going to get. We fly towards the city as fast as we can, with Bob in manta form. We continue on the ground if air travel is not feasible. We look for the Church, and enter its basement. There is an infinity symbol inscribed on the ground. From there, we can jump to the next phase of our journey."

"Everyone ready?" Bob and Billy nodded tersely. Bob's form shimmered for a second as he assumed his gliding form.

"Go!" Jenna shouted as Bob flew through the rift, his friends riding on top of him. Cold air hit their faces as they entered the rift. This world was no longer dead. They were in the middle of a lush forest teeming with wildlife. Jenna gasped as the air hit them.

"God, the Dissonance—it's so strong! It is as if the whole universe is howling at us!" The city they had seen in ruins now stood before them, in the process of being reduced to rubble. Two armies were fighting around it. The defenders were bulky humanoids armed with hammers and axes.

"I recognize those. They are Dwarves. My postman turned into one of them." The attackers looked oddly familiar. They rode winged beasts and attacked with bows and spears.

"Oh, my God," said Jenna, finally recognizing them.

"They are Elves."