Today's Earth date: November 23, 1991

Horcus is finally cured. He ended up with three more fetch quests in order to get all of the ingredients, but the curse is gone. He can use spells again.

We're camped at the Water Temple now. We leave for Iomallach in the morning.

We have a new party rule: Horcus isn't allowed to talk to NPCs.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

"A deal is a deal," Lord Blackwell said. "Here's your writ of credit to cover my debt as well as my dear cousin's. And this letter shall inform my staff in Iomallach of our arrangement."

The nobleman handed two envelopes to Fergus.

"I should add my personal thanks for locating the ruins," Blackwell said. "Negotiating with druids is sure to be a fantastic adventure, and to have the Blackwell name tied to such a historic discovery… Rebecca the Empty was never kidnapped? Marvelous story. Absolutely marvelous."

Fergus offered a bow with a flourish.

"You have me considering my own trip to the Cuts. It's been some time since I saw my family there, and with three sites for the Zeroes to explore? How many magnificent mysteries will the Blackwell family unravel this time?"

Wayne had to cover his mouth to disguise his reaction. Fergus was far more adept at playing along.

"Well, my Lord, one confirmed site, and two potential sites," the old scholar said. "We will do our best to deliver, but I also do not wish to deceive you. We aren't likely to uncover every site on the list."

"Nonsense. Your group has only just begun."

One of Blackwell's attendants leaned down to whisper into his Lord's ear.

"I have another appointment," the Lord said. "I look forward to our next correspondence."

Wayne and Fergus stood as Blackwell departed. As the Lord approached the front door of the guest house, it opened. From the other room, Wayne heard Blackwell say, "Ah, greetings Master Dunton. What a coincidence."

"I hope all is well, Lord Blackwell."

"Better than well, my boy. Give your father my regards."

One of Amethyst's servants entered the room and introduced the new guest. "I present Master Dunton." The servant offered a bow and departed.

Wayne expected the familiar face of Governor Dunton to enter the living room, but the man who appeared was younger, smaller, and ghostly pale. The Governor's son looked much better than he had when the Zeroes rescued him from the den mother, however. Connecting them as the same person took a moment.

When the Governor was in a room, his authority had a presence all its own. The pressure ticked upward as if his status had physical mass. His son, meanwhile, had the meek posture of someone who preferred the background, and he had kind eyes.

"Master Wayne and Master Fergus," the son said, "I am honored to meet you again. These circumstances are much more pleasant."

"It's wonderful to see you well, my Lord," Fergus said.

"Please, I am your lesser. I'd like to speak plainly with the two of you, if that's okay. The formality… It isn't my preferred modality."

Wayne and Fergus were okay with that.

"Good," the son said. "First, my father misled you, I'm afraid. He delayed you on my account because he knew how much I wanted to thank you in person."

"No worries," Wayne said.

Fergus agreed. "We're happy we stayed. Worked out for all of us, it seems."

The son smiled. "I can't ever repay you, but I'd like to try. For Fergus the Wizard, I offer this gift."

A servant appeared from behind the son and presented Fergus with a bottle. Wayne recognized the script on the label as elvish. The old scholar was mesmerized.

"This is too generous," Fergus said, passing it gently to Wayne. At this point, Fergus assumed Wayne would always want to use Resource Values on anything interesting.

Frost Forest Merlot (Third Age), Average value of 972 gold coins.

Wow. This topped Elder Red Robe tea.

"I owe you my life," the son said. "A bottle of wine feels like a paltry thanks in comparison, but I'm happy that you like the gift."

The servant reappeared with a framed magazine page.

"I'm told you collect writings from Earth. A family friend has had this piece for some time, and I think it belongs in the hands of Wayne the Hero."

The page handed to Wayne was not from the 1990 Electronic's Boutique Christmas Catalog. He was sure, however, that the ad had to be mid to late 90s because it felt so 90s.

The ad read:

PLAYING THE KABOOM BOX AT EXTREME SOUND LEVELS WILL DEFINITELY MESS WITH THE RIGHT PEOPLE

52 Watts

Dual Subs

Strap it On

Remote

The featured product in the ad was a portable JVC stereo with an over-shoulder strap. The whole unit was shaped like a long round pipe with the diameter of a dinner plate. The dual subwoofers were bolted to either end with molded plastic meant to emphasize how rebellious and bad ass carrying the Kaboom Box would make you. The finishing touches for that promise were a blonde white kid with Shawn Hunter hair wearing a wallet chain and carrying a star-spangled skateboard.

"This is… Wow," Wayne said, fighting to swim through the nostalgia, even if it was cheesy. "This is an incredible gift. Thank you. May I ask about its origins?"

"Unfortunately, I anticipated that interest, and I'm sorry to say that the provenance of this item is unknown. This was an inherited collection with no receipts or records included."

"That's alright," Wayne assured him. "It's an amazing find, regardless."

"I'm glad it pleases you. As I said, I am forever in your debt. If there's anything I can ever do for Wayne the Hero or his party of Zeroes, please, come to me."

Wayne and Fergus thanked him again for the gifts and walked him to the door. When the Governor's son had gone, Fergus loosened his restraint.

"It's taking all of my strength to not drink this right now," Fergus said, admiring the bottle again. "This is a once in a lifetime wine. I want to experience it, but uncorking it feels like a crime against history."

When Wayne didn't respond, the old scholar looked to his friend.

"Are you okay?" Fergus asked.

"Yeah, I think so. I mean, this is just surprising. I've not seen any Earth artifacts newer than the Pages of Power, but this is definitely later than 1990 in Earth years."

"You're certain?"

"Positive."

Fergus wrinkled his brow. "Vanilli did say items crossed worlds at all times, not just with the Chosen Heroes."

"That's true, but he found all of his items in the Water Temple."

"Ah, I see," Fergus said, nodding. "Either someone else was able to enter and leave a Temple off cycle, or this item came through a leak outside of a Temple."

"Exactly. And you know the next question, right?"

Fergus smiled. "Will Christmas List work on this item as well?"

"I need another level to try."

"Then let's complete our joint errands so you can grind. I can take care of most of our tasks on my own."

Wayne watched as Grinroot's staff wheeled tall burlap bags of soil into Cold Storage. Goods Storage would have been more appropriate, but their traveling library, wine collection, and growing assortment of souvenirs and treasures were too plentiful to move.

"We're shipping dirt?" Wayne asked.

"Shh," Fergus said, "calling this 'dirt' is an insult. This is topsoil nurtured and developed over decades by the legendary Lady Grinroot. Herbalists the world over pay a premium for a single pot, as it can only be found right here in Cuan."

"I'm dubious. Does a rainforest region really have problems finding good topsoil?"

"We will turn a significant profit, I assure you."

Topsoil wouldn't rot like raw fish at least. With their accommodations in Iomallach accounted for, one of their largest expenses by far, they could afford an economic misstep or two. That said, Wayne wasn't brave enough to ask how costly this misstep would be, nor did he inquire about Grinroot's influence on the decision. Fergus assured him business and pleasure had not mixed and that the price they got was more than fair.

All Wayne could do was trust his friend and hope Sammy didn't quit if he had to dig all of that dirt out of Storage when it didn't sell.

As the last bag went in, leaving plenty of space in the front for Fergus' supply of fresh seafood, the old scholar said, "I'll be tidying up a few remaining affairs, one of which is mailing our correspondence as well as your gift to the lovely Sheeri. I can take it from here."

"Are you sure?"

"Certain. We can reconvene this evening."

Wayne thanked Fergus and went looking for monsters. He was so excited to test Christmas List on the stereo ad that walking to one of the Cuan gates was unacceptably slow. He Blitzed over the rooftops, landed outside the east gate, and summoned Outlawson. They sped off to the forest where Wayne previously encountered ratmen and the weeping man-eater.

When Probe didn't pick up any enemies at the edge of the forest, Wayne repeated his aerial travel, this time over treetops. The Altimeter helped him time his Brake on the descent, and he mostly missed the tree branches as he fell to the ground. He walked aimlessly west while he waited for Probe to reset again.

He repeated this process three times before he picked up a cluster of red on his HUD.

He saw nine scattered dots as well as a dense cluster, like seven or eight enemies were on top of each other in a tight space. Wayne bounced in place to briefly warm up. With the basilisk fight and all of the random encounters before and after, he hoped he didn't need an incredible amount of experience points to progress to level 12.

Wayne crept toward the enemies, hearing familiar deep grunts and nonsense babbling. Previously, he fought goblins and ratmen in this forest, but those voices sounded like ettins. A few dozen yards closer, he was certain. This was an ettin camp. According to Fergus and their contacts in Cuan, ettins shouldn't be here. They weren't known to be in the Breakers, and they certainly weren't supposed to be this close to the port city.

The giant brutes seemed to be in the midst of constructing permanent residences. They had crudely crafted axes with stone heads, and they were building the walls for a longhouse–scaled up to ettin proportions. He counted six, two of which appeared to be female, but their appearance wasn't all that different from the males. They had the same ratty clumps of hair and twisted faces as the men, but these two had breasts.

Three wolves shared the camp with the two-headed monsters. Two were asleep off to the side, away from the work, and a third followed one of the male ettins around as he wrestled timber into place. The ettin yelled at the wolf with both mouths and kicked it in the ribs when it got in his way.

These wolves weren't as large as the druid mounts, but they looked larger than the average wolf. Wayne didn't know if they were just bigger physically or if this was a different species, like wargs or dire wolves.

As for the dense cluster of dots, he saw a pit prison where those enemies should be. These monsters were hostages, future meals for the ettins most likely.

Wayne heard snarls. One of the lounging wolves had its hackles up and ears back, looking in Wayne's direction. He saw flames begin to sprout down the wolf's spine.

Wayne activated Wufbam, a spell he learned from Spellcasting 101, but he wasn't sure if fire wolves would count as "small dogs."

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

They did. The growling exploded into a red mist, making a noise like a wet fart, the kind that would have you excusing yourself to check your pants in an office bathroom stall.

The camp didn't descend into chaos, but all of the monsters still alive were alarmed and confused. The wolf nearest to the explosion, sniffed at the red puddle. One of the lady ettins stomped over to investigate for herself, her heads grunting back and forth to one another.

Wufbam. Wufbam.

With the other two wolves eliminated, the ettins seemed certain they were under attack. The ones without axes reached for the nearest logs to wield as clubs. They scanned the treeline, their twelve collective heads searching every inch for enemies.

Skycat swooped in and circled three ettins standing near to one another. The jet surrounded the three with flaming shrubbery and banked off to repeat the attack with the remaining ettins, fencing each of them in with their very own wall of fire.

The ettins roared and recoiled as red flames licked at their skin. Wayne Blitzed through the three single ettins first, zipping through the fire to sever legs before tapping Easy Out to appear next to them for a coup de grace. With his new Mark of Fire skill from Ultima III, Wayne was impervious to fire, an effect that extended to his worn equipment as well.

When he first tested this strat, he was worried using Mark of Fire would inevitably burn away his clothes, leaving him naked and covered in soot at the end of every fight. That was, thankfully, not the case.

As the second ettin fell, Wayne felt a success notification. At the same time, he spotted one of the ettins in the trapped trio run through the fire, slapping its body all over to put out the flames consuming its furs.

Skycat blew away both of its heads before the ettin could douse all of the fire. The corpse collapsed to the ground and continued to burn. The fighter jet circled back to add another layer of flaming shrubbery around the two ettins still grouped together.

Between the fire, fear, and confusion, the remaining ettins were unable to mount a meaningful defense against the impossibly fast human, a human who could move through flames unharmed. Wayne used his Fire Extinguisher spell to smother the leftover bushes before the fire spread beyond the camp.

He strolled to the edge of the pit to see what monsters were left.

Some ten feet below, nearly a dozen ratmen looked up at Wayne. That surprised him at first because he had seen firsthand how adept at digging the monsters were. The ettins were aware of that too, however. The rats in the pit had their mouths bound shut, and their vicious front teeth removed. Many of them were too weak to fix Wayne with the hateful rage he had come to expect from the monsters, but a few gave it their best effort.

Wayne did his best to give them a quick end with Missile. He felt two more success notifications as he did. Smiling, he summoned Outlawson for company and sat in the grass, his back leaning against his mount.

He pulled his new magazine page from its frame and frowned at the back being some sort of professional basketball coverage. Most of that side was coated in the same thick black ink that marred so many of the other pages he found, making it unreadable save for a few vague outlines of basketball hoops and players.

Wayne circled the Kaboom stereo. His system indicated this was another [1/1] unlock, and it took Wayne a few minutes to figure out what he actually unlocked. Buried in the BGM Switch of Pat Riley Basketball, he found a new option:

Random – Press the RANDOM button. "RANDOM" appears in display window. After all tracks are played back once in random order, playback stops and random play is released.

He clicked it.

Small white text appeared at the bottom of his HUD and faded away:

Song: Tarana

Artist: Pandit Ravi Shankar

Album: Inside The Kremlin

Genre: Tarana

The song began with a stringed instrument rapidly plucking chords. It had the qualities of a guitar but with a bouncy brass undertone backing every note. When the vocals came in, the accent made Wayne think Indian, but he had never heard of the genre Tarana before, so that was a wild guess on his part.

The music played out loud as if invisible speakers followed Wayne at a comfortable acoustic distance.

He hit Random again.

Song: Looking for Love

Artist: Kofi

Album: Reggae Hits, Vol. 6

Genre: Lovers Rock

A woman's soft voice came over reggae's classic one drop beat. Damn, he had forgotten about reggae entirely. Reggae wasn't an important part of his life on Earth, but the fragility of the memory made him sad. How much of his Earth life had he lost without realizing? How many experiences were as faded as one of his sunbleached catalog pages?

He left Kofi playing. The Random button from his Kaboom unlock seemed truly random, but he needed to use it more to understand how it worked. With a light soundtrack bopping along, he looked at his stats and other updates.

Hero: Wayne the Guy

Level: 13

HP: 215

STR: 31

AGI: 23

VIT: 16

LCK: 26

He learned a spell from Phantasy Star II:

Sak – Very special magic with which you offer your own life to save a comrade's.

"Oh, Jesus," he said out loud to himself. "I hope I never have to use that."

He got a utility skill from Centurion:

Voice – The range of the general's control over his cohorts.

After thinking about how that might work for a moment, Wayne started to experiment.

"Hello?"

"What the fuck? Wayne? Is that you?" Fergus said. "Where are you?"

Wayne heard Fergus' inside of his mind, like a form of telepathy.

"Sorry," Wayne said. "Was just testing a new skill."

"Gods, Wayne. Everyone at the fish market thinks I'm some crazy old man rambling to myself."

"Didn't mean to bother. I'll stop now."

Whether Fergus never replied or Wayne's conscious thought to "end" the Voice skill cut off the communication channel, he wasn't sure. He felt a little bad for spooking Fergus, but he was more upset he wasn't there to see the old scholar's reaction in person.

From Railroad Tycoon, he unlocked an option that appeared under his Display settings:

History – A graphic recreation of the growth of your railroad and your competitors on a year by year basis.

With this new map toggle, Wayne could retrace his movements down to the minute. He didn't have access to everywhere he had been so far, but now that this was storing data in his system, he'd always be able to find his way back to somewhere.

Wayne was all smiles reading his unlock from ESWAT:

Fire – Spin rapidly, firing a powerful flame from your arm cannon.

He put a large berth between him and Outlawson and activated Fire. Balls of flame began orbiting his belt. If he thought about charging the skill, those flames grew to baseball size and twirled around him at a little slower than one full revolution per second. When he walked the balls into a tree, they splintered the trunk as if they were Missile spells.

Finally, a proximity ability he could use in emergencies that wasn't a one-off like Fire a Broadside.

Lastly, he circled the submarine simulator game Wolfpack, giving him a new utility skill:

Periscope – These controls raise or lower the submarine periscope.

His attempt to activate it there in the forest earned him a curt failure notification.

Wayne opened documents and updated his progress records. Even he was surprised at how much ground he covered in the last few levels:

Crystalis - (6/6)

Ultima III: Exodus - (6/6)

Pirates! - (6/6)

Railroad Tycoon - (3/6)

Lightspeed - (5/6)

Spellcasting 101 - (4/6)

Cyberball - (3/6)

After Burner II - (3/6)

Super Monaco GP - (3/6)

ESWAT - (4/6)

Phantasy Star II - (4/6)

Pat Riley Basketball - (1/6)

It Came from the Desert (2/6)

Tunnels & Trolls (2/6)

Chessmaster 2100 (1/6)

Centurion (2/6)

Wolfpack (1/6)

Professional Write (1/1)

Quicken (1/1)

Four Score (1/1)

Pictionary (1/1)

Kaboom JVC Stereo (1/1)

And Wayne put those abilities into one of six categories:

Onetime Bonuses

Power Ring from

Crystalis

Warrior Ring from

Crystalis

Medicine from

Pirates!

Ice Combat Suit from

ESWAT

Ezra's Mana Well Necklace (Wearable Item)

Ice Combat Suit from

ESWAT

Accelerator from

Lightspeed

Wing Type 1, Heaviest from

Super Monaco GP

Linkage from

Lightspeed

Super from

Eswat

Wheelchairs from

It Came from the Desert

Charisma from

Centurion

Deo's Pendant from

Crystalis

Life Up from

ESWAT

Laconia Cape from

Phantasy Star II

Spells

Repel from

Ultima II: Exodus

Missile from

Ultima III: Exodus

Light from

Ultima III: Exodus

Rise from

Ultima III: Exodus

Nee from

Spellcasting 101

Urg from

Spellcasting 101

Open from

Ultima III: Exodus

Defense from

Phantasy Star II

Fanbi from

Phantasy Star II

Hrglut from

Spellcasting 101

Dum Dum from

Tunnels & Trolls

Wufbam from

Spellcasting 101

Fire Extinguisher from

It Came from the Desert

Sak from

Phantasy Star II

Active Skills

Sword of Water from

Crystalis

Fire a Broadside from

Pirates!

Blitz from

Cyberball

Skycat F-14XX from

After Burner II

Brake from

Super Monaco GP

Easy Out from

Cyberball

Linebacker from

Cyberball

Castling from

Chessmaster 2100

Fire from

ESWAT

Passive Skills

Fencing from

Pirates!

Personal Foul from

Pat Riley Basketball

Morale from

Pirates!

Auto-Target from

Afterburner II

Mark of Fire from

Ultima III

Gunnery from

Pirates!

Super Soft Tires from

Super Monaco GP

Ferryboats from

Railroad Tycoon

Flame Bracelet from

Crystalis

Charisma from

Centurion

Utility Skills

Probe from

Lightspeed

Goods Storage from

Railroad Tycoon

Resource Values from

Lightspeed

Cold Goods Storage from

Railroad Tycoon

Insect Flute from

Crystalis

Investment Account from

Quicken

Voice from

Centurion

Periscope from

Wolfpack

Display

Regional Display from

Railroad Tycoon

Crosshairs from

Lightspeed

Navigation from

Pirates!

Documents from Professional Write & Professional File

Party from

Four Score

Altimeter from

LHX Chopper

Let's Draw a Picture from

Pictionary

BGM Music from

Pat Riley Basketball

Random from

Kaboom JVC Stereo

History from

Railroad Tycoon

He closed the Documents window and patted the side of Outlawson's body-head.

"Starting to look like a Hero after all."

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