Part 37: No Solid Ground

Chapter 31: No Solid Ground

I never believed that we would come this far.

When I joined Rolf, I was expecting to find the source of the Biomonster plague or die trying. Either outcome would have been acceptable to me. Mother Brain never encouraged her children to speculate about the afterlife, but in my heart I know that one day I'll see my wife and daughter again.

But so much has happened that I couldn't possibly have imagined back then. Rolf's mission attracted all sorts of misfits seeking to help the people of Mota, to make a name for themselves, or sometimes just to get closer to Rolf. He wouldn't turn anyone away, whether they were a doctor or scientist with no combat experience, a bloodthirsty hired killer, or a common thief. It disturbed me that he was willing to so casually risk the lives of others; this journey we were all on had started as his mission, and by rights he should have been the one bearing the consequences when it went wrong.

If any of our allies were looking for fame and fortune, they must have had a rude awakening when we all became wanted criminals. Now there's no turning back for any of us. There's evil at work in Algo, an evil of great power and obscure origin, an evil that destroyed Palm and corrupted Mother Brain. I don't believe that we have the power to stop it, and I don't want to live alone, on the run from the law, in a world that's slowly falling apart. If this is to be my life, then I have no fear of death.

But as long as innocents like Kain and Amy are caught up in Rolf's search for answers, I won't throw my life away. I'll do everything I can to protect them, until we find out what the hell is going on. And if it's my fate to make my last stand against an overwhelming force of evil, then so be it.



Rolf believed that the last artifacts of Nei were in a part of Dezo we hadn't yet explored. We'd found exits from Skure to the north, south and east: that left only the west.



And so we went west, deeper into the abandoned mine that had poisoned Dezo, in hopes of finding the legendary weapons that would supposedly save Algo. Rolf acted as if we were heroes, as if by finding these weapons and fighting some demonic power we could set right everything that was wrong with the world. I knew better. A weapon can destroy lives even when it's being used to save them.



At least his sense of direction still worked. We emerged into the open air of Dezo from a heavily forested hillside to the west of Skure.



To the south, trees at the edge of the abyss, warped and stunted by the poison still billowing forth from Skure, clung desperately to life. At the centre of a clearing in the forest stood a tower. No trees grew near it, and no birds flew above it.



Grotesque bronze figures, covered in a green patina, adorned the inside of the tower. The remains of mosaics covered the floor, too worn by age to discern clear patterns or images. Some of the artworks showed signs of deliberate defacement by vandals, or maybe by monsters.

But we hadn't come here to look at art; if there were weapons in this tower, we needed to find them.



A long spiral passage sloped gently upwards around the outer edge of the tower. Rolf's scanner picked up several chests on small platforms the inner part of the tower, but there was no apparent way to reach it from here.



The tower was infested with evil spirits and fire-breathing dragons. Dragons, of all things! Who in this day and age would believe that dragons existed? If the remnants of the Palman government ever captured any of us again, we'd only have to recount our experiences on Dezo and we'd be declared insane.



We reached the top floor, but found only a walkway extending out over a pit in the tower's centre and ending abruptly halfway across. There were platforms below us, but in the ever-present fog their outlines were impossible to make out. All we could do was make a leap of faith.



Our first jump was a success, landing us safely on the floor below. Amy was the last to make the jump, following long after the rest of us. I wished that Rolf hadn't brought her along; the poor girl was a talented doctor, but hopeless with heights. A woman like her shouldn't have to brave the many dangers of Dezo for Rolf's sake. He could look after himself.



The second jump was misaimed by the slimmest of margins, leading to a bone-jarring fall to the bottom of the tower. As Rolf helped Amy to her feet, she leant against him for a little longer than was necessary to steady herself.

"Be strong," he told her. "Not much longer now. The last artifacts of Nei are somewhere in this building; I can feel it."

Amy stared up into his eyes, smiling dreamily like a lovesick teenager. Rolf couldn't possibly be oblivious to his effect on her; had he gotten over Shir already, or did he think that taking advantage of Amy's feelings was an appropriate form of leadership?



We returned to the top of the tower and descended through the central section again, successfully making each jump this time. Inside a battered copper chest was an arm guard crafted of a light, hard blue-green metal, probably a Laconian alloy enhanced through lost metallurgical techniques. Rolf offered it to Amy, but it was too long to comfortably fit her arm.



A second spiral passage ran alongside the first, and the two twisted their way up the tower in a double helix pattern. We followed the second passage all the way to the top of the tower, where it branched out into a pair of walkways extending into the central area.



We took the western branch first, and landed safely on a broad platform with two small, rotting wooden boxes on it.



Inside one box was a long white glove just like the one Shir had worn. Rolf stared at it wistfully.

"What's the matter, Rolf?" I asked, hoping to finally get his personal issues out in the open. "Does that glove remind you of Shir?"

Rolf quickly put the glove away. "That's none of your concern," he snapped.

"It's my concern when it affects your judgement and puts your friends' lives at risk. We're working far behind enemy lines here; a lapse of concentration could be fatal."



As if to prove my point, our conversation was interrupted by Rolf's startled grunt of pain as one of the bizarre caped humanoids inhabiting Dezo shot a ball of fire at his chest. Despite its emaciated body, it was incredibly resilient, taking several shots and sword blows to bring down. Whatever those things were, they were neither Palman nor Dezorian: they didn't belong in Algo.



We returned for a third time to the top of the tower and followed the northern branch of the passage, which led us down to a platform with a single wide, flat silver box on it. Rolf carefully pried it open and found a shield inside, made of the same blue-green alloy as the arm guard.



"Gimme a lookit that," Kain said.

Rolf handed Kain the shield and he held it for a while, examining its finish and testing its weight in his hand.

"Now that is one mighty fine shield," he finally concluded. "I reckon I'll be holdin' on to this for a while, if'n ya don't mind."

Rolf nodded amicably. "I don't mind who uses it, as long as one of us is keeping an eye on it. What matters now is that we have all the artifacts of Nei. We're as ready as we'll ever be to face the evil that's been destroying Algo."




With our business in the tower finished, Rolf teleported us back to Aukba, and from there we took the teleport station to Skure's spaceport. Rolf had left the Neislasher with Anna, and he needed to return home to pick it up so that he could show the full collection of artifacts to Lutz. I didn't share Rolf's blind faith in Lutz, but right now he seemed to have more answers than we did.



'As ready as we'll ever be', Rolf had said... but did we really stand a chance, when we didn't even know what were fighting against? My Neishot was a weapon of terrifying destructive power, but it was only a gun. So far, the most serious problems we'd faced hadn't been the kind that could be solved by shooting at them. When Rolf killed Neifirst, he became a wanted criminal and nearly flooded Mota; when he fought the Palman army, he was captured and imprisoned on a satellite; when he tried to escape, Palm was destroyed.

His intentions had always been good, of course -- he had no way of predicting what would happen as a result of his actions -- but that was exactly the point. We didn't really understand the consequences of what we were doing. Who was to say that things would turn out any better this time?



I had no way of knowing the future. All I could do was fight for the lives of my allies and hope for the best. But when our enemies were everywhere and nowhere, it was hard to find the strength to keep fighting.

We stayed at home for a full day, longer than Rolf had spent there since the destruction of Palm. I did my best to relax, to avoid Anna, and most of all to avoid thinking about what lay ahead of us. Our former ally Shir may have been flighty and capricious, but in her own way she'd given Rolf a kind of stability. Her absence was only making him more reckless, at a time when strong leadership was what we needed most.