32

A War Without End

“So, uh…” Rian opened his inventory, then saw Corvis floating nearby with an intrigued expression as if he knew what he was about to do. “I feel like I should let you know—” Selecting the Y-Locator, the radio transceiver-shaped item fell into Rian’s hand. “I have this on me.”

“Whoaaa,” Kat said, eyes wide. “What? Where did you get that?”

“I’ve had it on me this whole time.”

“Huh?! Dude, that thing got patched out almost right away, at the start of the game. Wait—how old’s your account?”

“I uh…I played for a little bit, about a year ago, when I got the item. Guess I must’ve evaded the patch-out or something by accident.” He hoped she’d accept that lie as an answer and not pry into why he’d taken a break for so long, but—

“Oh my god,” she said, apparently still losing her mind over this. “So that’s why you were asking about Yindra, back at the harbor?”

Hesitating, he nodded. This was easier than he’d thought. It wasn’t like he needed to tell her why he wanted to find Yindra when practically everyone familiar with the endgame was interested.

“Holy shit,” Kat said. She glanced over her shoulder. “Okay—put that away. Quick.”

He practically threw the item back into his inventory, then nervously glanced around at the players passing by at a distance, through Elmguard.

“Even if LastWhisper isn’t here,” she said, lowering her voice, “anyone sees that thing and we’ll have a huge problem on our hands. I can’t believe you fought Ogrot’s perma-Beginner with that item on you. That thing’s like a nuke waiting to go off and start a guild war, if not a server-wide killing spree.”

She blinked.

“You really trust me that much?” she said.

Smirking, he shrugged. “I mean, I have no reason not to.”

Kat’s trust in you has increased!

“Nice,” she said.

“I figured you’d probably end up with it anyway, the way things are going. So,” he whispered, “I’m assuming that once it activates, it’ll just point north, right? If that’s where Yindra is. Why would this thing be so valuable, then?”

Leaning in, Kat shook her head. “It’s not that simple. That device doesn’t do just that. There’s another use for it in these things called Temporal Rifts.”

Straightening up, Rian said, “Whoa—I ran into one of those last night. Right after you logged out.”

She looked taken aback. “You did a Rift by yourself?”

“No, no. I just found one. Needed a colored tesseract to get in, I think. The ruins looked pretty cool, though.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Gorgheit,” Kat said. “So the Rifts are these dungeons that become progressively harder. The layouts are mostly the same at the beginning, but certain things change each time.” She pointed at where his inventory window had been. “But that item—it can give you a specific path through the Rift.”

He swallowed. “So if we use the locator, it’ll let us find Yindra in there, instead?”

Slowly nodding, she said, “Probably just a memory of her, but yeah. And it’s gonna take a god piece to activate.” She brought her hand to her forehead. “Shit, a unique one. God, that’s expensive.”

“Isn’t that what I have?” Rian said, bringing up his inventory again. He pointed to the Ezre’s Thought hovering inside the grid.

“That’s a non-unique one. You’d need something like Ezre’s Eye or Goam’s Stomach to activate it. A whole entire organ, usually. Goam’s ‘big toe’ isn’t gonna cut it, unfortunately.” She pursed her lips in thought. “You know, I might be able to get one. It’s a long shot, but it might work.”

“Really? You know where to find these things?”

“Sort of,” Kat said. “It’s not simple, and it’s just another thing to add to my back-list of ‘things I need to do’ in this game, but…we’ll see. I don’t think we should do it before we’re capped, though. It’s likely gonna be even harder than standard endgame stuff. We’d probably have to get the whole guild in on it, which might make things complicated.”

“Don’t you have a capped wind mage? I think someone in the guild was talking about it. Couldn’t you just play through the Rift on that?” He almost wanted to add: And uh, maybe carry me through it while you’re at it?

“Well, yeah—that was my old main,” Kat said. “And even if I had the item to activate your locator, it’s gonna have to happen later. There’s too much stuff I gotta do, right now.”

“But isn’t this thing incredibly valuable, though? What if we get ganked?”

She crossed her arms. “Here’s the thing. It’s probably worth a million gold or so, but that’s only because of how rare it is—not for what it’s capable of. And it’s not exactly easy to hold on to, either, so getting value out of it’s not really the point. Like I said, it’s a contention item. So it’s really just for finding a memory of the Four, which at best could give you a ten-minute conversation on where to find rare items in the Overworld or other secrets.”

His heart sank. A chance to find Yindra, and she didn’t even seem excited about it. Maybe it’d been selfish of him to assume that she’d be down to drop everything and go hunting for a goddess with him.

It was probably because, as Corvis had told him, the version of Yindra they could find using the locator would probably be a memory of her, not the real deal like what was awaiting the winner of the Sacred Tournament. He wasn’t sure what the memory aspect of the encounter would entail, but even if it was just a “conversation opportunity” like Kat said, Rian would take whatever he could get. When he finally had the chance to question Yindra in any form, he was certain that things would start to make sense—with him, with Mom, with everything.

“So you don’t want to go after it, right now?” Rian said.

“Yeah.” Kat sighed. “I mean, I’m glad you trust me with it and all, but I’m too wrapped up at the moment, and I’m not sure I’d want to give that item away to anyone else. Especially if LastWhisper might end up getting it.”

Her eyes lit up, and she clapped her hands together. “Wait, I know!” she said. “We could give the Rift a spin like normal, for practice. That way we wouldn’t have to worry about your locator transferring if some randos decide to gank us here, and it’d be a nice change of pace doing some PVE instead!”

Rian almost stuttered. “You sure?” It would help to keep the item safe in his inventory, but he had no idea how difficult these Temporal Rift dungeons were. He’d entirely rely on Kat to carry him through, at least at first. He hated having to secretly judge the likelihood of dying in any new location or scenario, but he had to consider the odds at every step.

“The Rifts are one of the coolest things in this game, honestly,” Kat said. “I think they just added a new one last patch.” She brought up a window, scanned it for something. “Yep, the Altir one. Haven’t gotten the chance to try it, but I hear it’s pretty rad. That’s kinda far away though, and I haven’t done that one before, so we’re best off doing the one here in Elmguard. We’ll be able to power through it pretty quickly.”

She stood up, then nodded aside. “Let’s go!”

***

The ruins in the daylight were even prettier than at night. Gorgheit’s bronze walls shone like gold in the sun. Glass orbs atop the remains of marble fountains split the light into every color. From where Rian and Kat stood at the entrance to the city, he could see destroyed suits of armor like the Pyceian Runeknight he’d run into near Jensen’s farm.

“This place looks like the aftermath of a raid or something,” Rian said.

“Gorgheit was the capital of a kingdom called Pyce,” Kat said. “From before the Undoing.” The wind swept past them, ruffling the canopies of the trees behind them and the grasses at their feet. Kat burst into a laugh. “Dammit. Every time.”

Rian looked up, but he didn’t see what she’d laughed at. “Huh?”

“Every time you mention the Undoing,” Kat said, “there’s this overly dramatic breeze that happens. It’s so silly. Anyway—” She straightened out her sleeves as the wind gently blew past them. “Yep, there it is, again. I can’t not notice it, now.” Shaking her head, she glanced at him and then at the ruins. “Anyway.” She folded her hands together and stretched, cracking her knuckles.

“Ages ago,” she said, “there was this huge war between Pyce and another kingdom—Onsolia—on the opposite side of the continent. The war went on for an entire century without either side gaining the upper hand. So after years and years of fighting, the literal God of Miracia gets fed up and decides to intervene when it realizes the war isn’t going to resolve on its own.”

He remembered some of this from the opening cinematic: particularly the mentioning of a Hundred-Year War, but not much else. It sounded like he was finally getting a clearer picture of the game’s lore, at least.

“So our big friend Ulm, who’s basically God,” Kat continued, “splits itself into the Four—Goam, Ezre, Altir, and Yindra—so that it can walk among the mortals and communicate with them directly. Two of them went to Pyce, where Elmguard is today. And the other two went to Onsolia, which is what Aetheria used to be on the eastern side of the continent.”

“The Four went to both sides to get them to stop fighting each other?” Rian said, trying to keep all of it straight.

“Sort of. There’s plenty more to it, but you could probably tell how it all ended up working out.” She rolled her eyes toward the ruins of Gorgheit. “Spoilers: it didn’t. Pyce and Onsolia ended up killing the Four instead of listening to them, and that’s what caused the Undoing.”

Entry added to lore book: “The Hundred-Year War”

Progress to next lore achievement: 100%

You have gained +1 Spirit!

Your Max MP has increased! (385→390)

You have gained experience! (+86)

“You got the lore entry for that, right?” she said. When Rian nodded, she chuckled. “Good. That one’s a bit long, so I’m not always sure I end up covering it all.”

“Wait, so—once we go into this Rift dungeon, what happens?”

Kat smirked. “We’re going back to the Hundred-Year War. Before the Undoing.”

To a time when the Four were still alive, Rian realized. It all lined up. The way he’d been able to fight a memory of Goam, the apparent dislocation of Yindra in time, the Y-Locator’s ability to pinpoint her location in the past rather than the present. Whatever the hell was going on with this world, it felt as if these Temporal Rift dungeons were at the heart of it.

“Things get pretty interesting there,” Kat said. “It’s before everything became…game-like, in Miriad. You’ll see.” From her pocket she took out a colored tesseract—a red cube within a red cube, sparkling like a ruby in the sunlight. “The first stage is pretty easy, but I’ll let you know if anything might cause a problem. If either of us dies, though, that’s it—the dungeon’s over. It’s a once-a-day-only thing, too, so no pressure.”

When she started walking up to the altar, Rian spotted Corvis sitting atop it, cleaning his obsidian needle-staff. As Kat approached, Corvis stood up and floated away.

“Ah,” Corvis said, grinning again at Rian, “I guess it’s time to see some old friends.”