The Fail-gate

Senkar had been in daily conversations in Tarragona and day trips away from it. He learned a lot about the former capital city, and came to enjoy it greatly. It was so… unusual. Picturesque. Colorful. The presence of many children was a sure sign of a stable, reliable environment. But perhaps the best thing about it was how many birds lived in the city, and how varied they were. They came in many sizes, many colours, and with many songs. Remarkably well-behaved too. He remembered hearing once that having a variety of birds in one’s living environment was a huge factor in a person’s happiness. Humans are just hardwired this way.

There were ample opportunities for appreciating all of that, given that he had been there for eight days already. He also learned about the customs, the geography, the Players’ strength here, their challenges, or achievements… which were not much. In fact, his colleagues in this city shared a certain sense of… complacency? Conformism? He realised this when one of the “heroes” who normally lived outside the capital came for a visit, or had respawned inside. The difference in mindset was small, but noticeable. The outsiders were more like Rockbasers in this regard.

He even finally learned the city’s name properly. In the beginning, it was frustrating how something so simple was so resistant to learning.

Was it Tarragana? Wrong.

Terragona? Wrong.

Torragona? Wrong.

Tarrogana? Wrong.

Tarragona? Correct.

It seems learning is all I ever do, he thought. First with the Portal Divers for a few weeks, and now this. I suppose I should take a break, make sure I spend some time enjoying this world before we go back. A little wouldn’t hurt, right?

He wanted to return to Rockbase, though. He often wondered how Hestia was doing. Not that she needed help with their hollow friends who took exile to this world particularly badly. Hestia is human too, and has human needs. She was doing it all alone before I came. Then I could not endure seeing them any longer, and seeing her worry about them. It was not that they were so… unsettling, but that there was no hope and no end to this fate on the horizon. That’s what gets me. Someone has to put an end to this, so I thought: why not me?

So I volunteered.

The whole point of this trip was to see if there are any clues to find. But for his contribution to count, he first had to make it home, and herein was the problem.

He had been staring at the inert Waygate for hours every day. Sometimes he would be sitting, sometimes standing, circling it around, poking it, cursing it. Still it stood there, unfazed, uncaring, indifferent to the frustrations of mouth breathers.

He had a lot of time to think about a lot of things. Like that dark pyramid. It spawned monsters. Can the Players perhaps disable it, block it, seal it? If we do that, no more new monsters. Unless there are more sources than this.

Do we even want that? Without monsters to fight, what do we do?

Another thing he often thought about was the size and shape of the world. It strongly seemed to be a globe - one look at the stars confirmed that. But was it really round, or was it a clever illusion? If we travelled in a straight line, would we circumvent it or would we hit an invisible wall like in a game? While the gryphons had limited range, there was no easy way to test that.

Also, why do we have to eat?

On that day, a cold and windy day that seemed to constantly be on the brink of rain, he suppressed his frustration and tried to figure out the problem by logic and reasoning.

The locals tried all kinds of obvious methods to use it, so there’s little point in repeating that. Whatever the answer is, it is either complex or requires a key they don't have. Or is there something simple they never tried?

This world follows some rules that the game did. That’s how we know what the Waygates are and what they should do. We know them from the game. “Should” is the important word here.

In NAVIS Online, the Waygates were always active - they just stood there, powered up, and waiting for travelers to use them. It checks out - this gate is doing that too. I can hear it humming with power if I listen closely. The circle of stone is not empty, there is definitely a plasma-like membrane inside it. It’s active.

In NAVIS Online, when you wanted to fast-travel between major cities, you interacted with the Waygate and chose the destination from the menu.

Speculation: this Waygate here is awaiting input. But there is no game interface anymore. I can’t click on it. I only have my hands and my mouth, and I tried them, including licking it. What kind of interaction is it waiting for?

—

Another five days went by, with him none the wiser.

His reports for the Administration, letters, and maps were composed and safely packaged. Safely, unless I’m caught in another natural disaster, he mused. His equipment was ready for departure at all times, stashed in his cell in the Old Monastery. He never asked for a different place to stay. He was rarely inside. Xem, Basil, and Akshal also presented him with new weapons, way above the level he had been at, but he used them with adequate proficiency.

He had learned that the gryphon-riding players have been patrolling the region regularly, picking off easy enemies or coordinating quick response whenever something meaner and nastier was spotted. They also kept observing the pyramids. Out of the three they knew of, only one was damaged, and the other two were heavily guarded by a seriously powerful guardian. They tried raiding it. Once.

The Boss and the local NPC officials stopped inviting him to interviews days before, seeing he had nothing else to add. And so, he wandered, he pondered, and he hung around the Waygate.

—

And then one day, he got it!

I’m a genius! he thought while sprinting to the Old Monastery building. He dashed through the main doorway, went up one floor, right into a corridor, and left into cell 28. It was closed but unlocked - nobody bothered with door locks when everyone was strong enough to kick any door open.

He seized his backpack and dumped all the contents on the cold floor. He seized the old scroll tube, checked that the inert Scroll of Town Portal was still inside, the once very precious and very rare item obtained from a dungeon by a party of Players. Only two were ever found, and one was used, which is how it was known what they are and what they do. Senkar then dashed all the way back to the Waygate plaza. He sped past people he had been seeing regularly, and who got used to his disappointed or frustrated face. Not this time!

The Waygate is expecting an address! Coordinates! That’s the input! It has to know where it should open a portal to, right?!

He stopped at the foot of the large construct, suddenly unsure what to do next. He had been so absorbed with his monumental achievement of connecting two dots that he forgot to think: what then?

Now was the then. He unrolled the parchment, its symbols still legible but faded, and held it in both hands. He could not read it, but he had imagined that the very fact he brought it would be somehow detected by the Waygate and something would happen. Because the Scroll must have some sort of coordinates or other link to my home, right? Otherwise it wouldn’t know where to take me.

Before the floodwater washed away the magic ink or whatever else it was, Senkar was able to read it, which was supposed to take him to Rockbase’s respawn obelisk. Its mystical power could adjust itself to the reader. But that power was gone.

He tried inserting the scroll into the plasma screen, but his hands went right through, like everything else. He scanned the surfaces, looking for some sort of socket, a slot. There was nothing.

I’m not a genius. He did not get it.

—

On some other day he noticed two things.

First, were tiny flakes of snow gently falling down from the sky. This one sign of changing seasons reminded him that it has been weeks since he landed in Tarragona. This really soured his mood, and he kept wondering if he had made a mistake. Had he chosen to walk all the way back home, attempting to cross the mountains, perhaps he would be home by now. If he chose to leave Tarragona, the riders could give him a little lift as well. But now he was stuck with the consequences of his decision, and the doubling-down on that decision.

Second, the gate was responding to something.

By complete chance, during one of the countless close examinations of the damned failgate, he might have uttered a few vulgar words at it. While he did, the tiny vibrations of the plasma screen… paused. He was not sure if it was only his imagination. He had to test it again.

‘Frakk you in the nutter,’ he said, and put his ear to one of the runes, looking parallelly to the surface.

It paused again for a second or two, and then resumed its normal vibration.

What does that mean?

He repeated the process a few times. The response was consistent. It happened every time.

It’s as if it was… holding its breath?

Letting me speak…

It’s listening!

It’s listening for input!

He stared at it, dumbfounded. His discovery was definitely important, but what was the practical application?

But I’ve been talking to it. A lot of people have. It never did anything.

Hmm… if the world is like a game, then maybe this is like a machine. A system. It needs input in the right format? The right command syntax? Was it something like the old wizard and the side entrance to a mine? “Speak, friend, and enter…?” but it was a different langua-

Yes! That’s it! The royal family! It’s the only other language around here!

I need a trip to the capital right now!

Where’s Basil or Akshal?!

—

The Royal Interpreter that was permitted to aid Senkar was a surprisingly young person, a teenager at best, but perhaps that should not have surprised him. The young have the best ability to learn languages, and if someone happened to this one, the loss would be less impactful for the court. He did not complain about being here. The gryphon ride with Akshal was something he would remember for the rest of his life with fondness.

He brought the only text in a foreign language he had, and the person who could read it. He also brought all of his luggage, showing his confidence that this time it was it. A few Players and passersby gathered, curious to see what the commotion was. Basil, Akshal, and Xem were there too.

‘Here,’ Senkar handed the Scroll of (formerly) Town Portal to the kid, whose name was Anti, short for Antikaelitattem. Senkar was not going to learn that. ‘Read this, loud and clear, please!’

Anti first scanned the text, furrowed his brows over a few spots that were hard to read, and began reading.

He got to the end. Nothing happened. Awkward silence befell the little crowd.

‘For frakk’s sake!’ Senkar yelled, pulling on his hair and the beard he developed over time. He noticed the kid looked afraid of his outburst. Senkar calmed down quickly. ‘Hey, don’t worry, I’m not blaming you or anything.’

‘Did I do something wrong, sir?’ Anti asked anyway. ‘This is tough to read, it is. Here and there, especially, because of this script that we don’t use anymore. Not since the last dynasty.’

That observation seemed important.

‘Can you read it differently?’ Senkar asked.

‘What do you mean, sir?’

‘With different intonation or rhythm, or… You see, back where I come from, there is a very old language. Nobody uses it anymore, except some scient- uh, scholars and, uh, monks. But the language is so old, the way people spoke it changed, but the writing stayed the same. Today nobody knows how some words were pronounced for sure, but there are two schools, the Classical and the… well you get it.’

‘Oh, you should have just told me to try the Middle-Eonian instead of High-Eonian.’

The kid started reading again, and the magic happened.

The skies darkened in response.