On the Lost Continent

by Andrew Novak

  Surrounded by similar snake-like plants, Jack was standing on something solid, probably on a piece of planking broken off by an emitter from the stern of the old ship.

  Silence was all around him — a droning, dense silence. There’s no such silence anywhere else in the world: not in real life, nor in Alterra. It just felt wrong. Surreal.

  He was so excited that he’d almost forgotten to breathe properly. Then he remembered Goodwin’s lessons. He seemed to be getting the hang of it. The trickle of white bubbles rose past him, gurgling and rustling, bringing sounds back into this world.

  The red-and-pink surface of the river was littered with pieces of wood, empty bottles and other flotsam. Each of those objects cast a long shadow below which closer to the bottom merged with the black background. It was a gloomy picture; strange, but also attractive; it wasn’t even found in Alterra.

  A bright spot slid past him in a muddy green. This was Goodwin, deftly moving his fins around him. Making sure that he caught his attention, the old man waved his hand. Time to swim. Jack kicked away, trying to imitate Goodwin. Soon he began to get the hang of it.

  Were the bubbles emitted by them visible on the surface? Would they attract the attention of the defenders? But it was too late to worry about it. He could only hope that the bubbles on the river were a common enough thing. He was so distracted, trying to understand this unusual mode of movement that he didn’t even pay attention to the incipient coldness, the sign of imminent danger.

  Jack slid behind Goodwin through the greenish depths of the East River. He glimpsed a movement to his right and turned around. A moving silhouette separated from the shadows under the wreckage of the Williamsburg bridge. It was large enough to attract attention. And it was clearly alive, changing direction several times.

  Jack caught up with Goodwin, patted his hand and pointed. The old man turned and nearly jumped, releasing a new batch of bubbles. He swung round and worked his fins even more vigorously.

  Jack tried to catch up but failed as the disease took the better of him. Naturally, this just had to happen at the most inopportune moment. His hands and feet filled with cold; he was so weak he was sweating like a pig. He kept lagging behind more and more while the creature that had emerged from under the bridge was approaching.

  He could already make out its long, flexible body and wide flat fins on its sides which moved like rippling sheets of cloth. Jack couldn’t see the head of the unseen creature, but it ended in a long body and tail. He didn’t like the tail. It resembled the Hydra’s which had guarded the temple on the island of the Lahittes.

  The underwater creature wasn’t in a hurry. It had the advantage of both speed and maneuverability, so it moved leisurely, all the while reducing the distance. Following it, two more smaller ones emerged from under the wreckage of the bridge. Those kept behind it at first, but they were approaching too, casting similar long shadows that went all the way down.

  Jack looked around. Goodwin was far away and the monster was approaching. It was clearly very large. It could probably completely envelop a person with its fins if it wanted to.

  Jack had nothing at hand, just the folding knife in his pocket. He worked hard with his fins, although he knew that it wouldn’t work. While moving, he pulled out the knife, opened it and got ready. The creature was hovering almost above him now.

  When the distance was reduced to a few feet, the creature’s long tail swished, aiming its tip at its new quarry. Jack managed to grab the tail about a couple feet from the tip — which did in fact end in a spike. He squeezed with all his strength and slashed out at it with his knife. The water slowed his movements so Jack had failed to chop off the tail in one move. The underwater monster jerked, dragging him along.

  Jack felt like a toy hanging from a string. He was swinging from side to side, enveloped in a sparkling blizzard of bubbles.

  He slashed out again and again with the knife, but the tail danced and arched in his hand so that less than half his strikes reached the target. The creature was flapping its wide fins while Jack hung below in the dark shadows.

  Finally, his next blow was successful. A fragment of rubbery black skin remained in his hand. A dark cloud burst out from the cut end, billowing with bubbles. The shadow overhead was gone. Instead of the broad silhouette above, there were two, smaller.

  Then a dazzlingly bright line moved overhead, slicing right through them, raising thousands of bubbles.

  The water around Jack vibrated. The whole space was shaking. He felt it now, but before, busy with the fight, he didn’t even sense it.

  The bright line which had sliced through the two underwater creatures passed only a few inches from Jack. Their dark fins, trickling with blood streams, gently dropped on top of him, still moving. Jack watched in fascination as they floated away.

  Someone grabbed him at the shirt from behind. Jack swung round and found himself face to face — or rather, mask to mask — with Goodwin. The old man pulled him, gesturing with his free hand, urging him to move on.

  Shaking off the obsession, Jack turned round and worked hard with his fins. When the divers were already about a hundred feet away, the bright line of the emitter returned, slicing again through the place of the fight. Looking back, Jack saw its threadlike beam enveloped in thousands of bubbles which penetrated the whole thickness of the East River. The two smaller creatures slowly descended into the darkness at the bottom, following the remains of the one already killed by the emitter’s beam.

  Everyone lives as they can. Bored defenders of the Barrier entertain themselves by shooting at the monsters that dwell in the East River. And these things do eat each other, if such a lucky event as a shot of the radiator is issued.

  The two divers hurried through the muddy green. Underneath them was a ghostly landscape of the seabed covered with snakelike seaweed. Jack could make out all sorts of shapes on the bottom: some still resembled cars and boats, one even turned out to be a small ship. As Jack swam around its broken mast, he noticed that the emitter’s beam, wrapped in streams of bubbles, was returning again.

  We must hurry to cross the East River, he told himself, because there must be a dead zone near the shore where the emitters’ beams can’t reach. He couldn’t hurry, though: his fight with the underwater creature had taken away his last strength. Goodwin had helped him a dozen feet, but he was also running out of steam. Which was logical: he was too frail to begin with and not used to these kinds of tasks.

  Jack overtook the old man but that’s where his achievements ended. He was close to the last of his strength. The beam slid unhurriedly through the thickness of the water, slowly catching up with them. Hell, it looked like the bubbles had indeed attracted the attention of a Barrier defender bored behind his turret.

  Finally, a dark mass loomed ahead. Jack could now see some flashing red lights. There were two of them just as Sartorius had said. One was to the right of the lock through which the pumps took water from the river, the other on the left.

  Goodwin slapped Jack on the arm and began to make some signs. At first Jack thought that the old man was trying to tell him that he could see flashing lights too, but then he realized that something was wrong. Goodwin pointed at the air-tanks on his back, then grabbed his own throat. He had little air!

  Never mind. Their goal was very close. Jack waved his hand towards the lights, then pointed at the approaching beam trying to say that they had to hurry before the deadly thread reached the lock.

  Goodwin nodded.

  They changed direction, heading for the closed part of the lock. The beam was approaching. Jack could now clearly see the trail of boiling bubbles in its wake as it sliced through the water.

  Goodwin began to lag behind. Jack looked him in the face: it was red, tense and all swollen under the mask. Jack grabbed him by the arm, clenched his teeth and forced himself to work his numb feet as fast as he could. Bad timing! Their race with the beam had just entered its final stage. They had to make it.

  Jack made it
. He literally yanked Goodwin out of the beam’s path, pushing him into the dark rectangular shadow of the lock. The iridescent beam sliced through the water a couple feet away from them. The red lights blinked one last time and went out.

  The divers pressed themselves against the flat wall of the lock. Jack pulled his mouthpiece out of his mouth and slipped it to his companion.

  Green flashing lights replaced the red. The flat wall shuddered into motion.

  A gap formed at its middle, the water rushing into it with incredible force. Jack grabbed Goodwin with both hands so that the current wouldn’t separate them or rip the mouthpiece out of his mouth. The lock’s gates began to part.

  Too slow! The current pushed the divers into the narrow opening, flattening them against its edges. Jack kept holding his breath. His vision blurred. How long could a man last without breathing?

  At the count of seven they were finally able to slide inside, leaving the flashing of green behind. In complete darkness Jack pulled the mouthpiece to himself. Goodwin reluctantly released it so that Jack could take a breath. The current inside the lock was still quite strong, but nothing like the previous pressure which seemed able to flatten you against the wall.

  Passing the mouthpiece to each other, they went with the flow. There was no direction here, the feeling of top and bottom was lost, but the current carried them forward — to the New Atrium. There was nowhere else to go here. Jack could hear a pump running, pumping water into the filtration system.

  A dull spot of light appeared ahead, growing. The current weakened. Jack recoiled as his head hit something. Then again. And again and again. It was a horizontal grid made of steel bars. Water splashed just above them.

  Hadn’t Sartorius said something about a hatch? An entryway for the lock maintenance workers. Jack had to find it.

  He grabbed at the next bar and looked in front of him. He thought he could make out something — a dark imperfection breaking the bars’ monotonous order.

  The hatch!

  The humming of the opening lock died away. The current weakened. Jack passed the mouthpiece over to Goodwin and let him breathe for a while. Then they continued swimming, feeling the slippery bars over his head searching for the dark spot he’d noticed.

  Finally, they found it.

  The hatch was rectangular, about a couple of square feet, and also barred. This was where the maintenance workers could dive in with all their underwater equipment. Problem was, these bars were much thicker.

  Jack took a couple of deep breaths, handed the mouthpiece over to Goodwin and grabbed at the bars, pushing and pulling. The grid seemed to have given just a bit but the hatch remained closed. Was it locked? The bubbles floating around him prevented him from seeing clearly through the mask.

  There was only one thing he could do: press harder. Jack kept tugging and pulling with his white-knuckled fingers, desperate for a breath of air. But there was water all around him, the muddy, unfiltered water of the East River.

  His chest constricted. His vision darkened. The lights high overhead began to dance in his eyes.

  Jack tensed, straining his shoulder muscles to their limit. One bar seemed to have given but the grill remained motionless.

  A dark shadow, clad in loose-fitting clothes, loomed over the hatch. It looked enormous — or was it his fading consciousness playing up?

  A weird voice cut through the underwater noises.

  “Come to me,” the voice called in an echoing, hissing singsong. “Come now!”

  Jack grunted. Bubbles burst from his mouth, concealing the dark figure bending over the hatch. In his dying mind, he suddenly knew. It was Necta the Dark, this was her voice!

  “Come on, Jack, I can help you. Come now, I’m waiting…”

  The hatch screeched open. Jack rushed to the surface and flew out of the water to the waist like a cork from a bottle. Raising fountains of spray, Goodwin flew out of the water next to him, still grabbing at his mouthpiece.

  Jack shook his wet hair out of his eyes and looked around for the goddess. But Necta was not there. She couldn’t be, could she? This was the real world, after all.

  Still, someone was standing over Jack. A man in a wide shiny cape had stepped back when Jack had shot to the surface. He shifted his feet, his boots squelching moistly on the wet bars.

  Then he bent down and took Jack’s hand, helping him out. The familiar round face of Sartorius looked down at him from under the hood. He looked exactly the same as he did in the virt, only without the stupid beard.

  “Welcome to New Atrium, Jack the Tramp,” he said.

  End of Book Two

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  by Vasily Mahanenko

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  Dear Readers,

  Our authors have co-written a LitRPG anthology which contains tons of spoilers about their books. To read the stories and find the planted clues, check out our

  LitRPG anthology You’re in Game! (LitRPG Stories from Bestselling Authors)

  You’re in Game! is a collection of seven LitRPG novellas and short stories from V. Mahanenko (two stories set in the worlds of The Way of the Shaman and Galactogon respectively), M. Atamanov (a story set in the world of Perimeter Defense), A. Osadchuk (Mirror World), A. Livadny (a novella set in the world of The Neuro and Phantom Server), Andrew Novak (a story set in the new world of AlterGame, to be released on May 09 2017), and a LitRPG novella Countdown by P. Kornev.

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  Game races:

  Scands (fair-haired, fair-skinned) – tall, strong, have bonuses to classes Warrior, Engineer. Race of warriors, under the patronage of Ged, the warrior god. Game registration for a Scand costs a hundred coins.

  Achaeans (hook-nosed, curly-haired, swarthy) are often frail, short. Bonus to Merchant, Psionic. Under the auspices of the wise Zaratos, the God of answers. Registration is seventy coins.

  Lahittes (fair-haired) – average build, strong. Bonuses to Adventurer, Warrior, Witch Doctor. They are under the protection of Astra, Ged’s wife. They have the ability to farm, work with pets. Registration is fifty coins.

  Taunites (narrow-eyed, yellow-complexioned) – short, flexible, agile. Have bonuses to classes Warrior, Thief, Psionic. Under the auspices of Faceless, God of Questions. Registration is fifty coins.

  Areuts (sea nomads, outcasts) – tall, flexible, agile. Bonus to Warrior, Adventurer. All abilities are reduced. In the past, they were dragon riders, allies of the Dragon God. Registration in the game is free.

  Gods:

  Chronos – the omnipotent lord of the gods and people, former ruler of the continent Gaerthon, the God of Order. Responsible for the passage of time. Disappeared from the world of Alterra after the war between dragons and demons. His disappearance is one of the two Great Mysteries of Alterra.

  Vecta / Necta – the wife of Chronos, responsible for the change of day and night. In the daytime, she is Vecta, the all-merciful mother of all that exists. Takes an evil appearance at night and, under the name of Necta, arranges all manner of dirty tricks. Patron of Dark Magic.

  Ged – the war god, the “wound dealer”.

  Astra – the compassionate wife of Ged, who heals the wounds inflicted by her husband. She is considered the discoverer of the first portal. The god of travelers.

  Faceless – God of Questions. In the monasteries of Faceless, monks practice martial arts and pilgrims present their offerings – questions collected throughout Alterra.

  Zaratos – the wise, but cunning god of answers. Known for the fact that his answers are alwa
ys true, but they contain some catch.

  After the disappearance of Chronos, the course of time was disrupted. Vecta, Ged, Astra, Zaratos and Faceless created two heavenly boats, the Sun and Shadris (the night star). They travel in the sky on these boats day and night, and no longer descend to the people on earth.

  Dragon God- the ruler of Chaos, ruler of the continent, Stoglav. Disappeared after defeating the Demon King, Azeroth. His disappearance is one of the two Great Mysteries of Alterra.

  King of Demons Azeroth –is not formally considered a god of Alterra, but is equal in power. He fought the Dragon God for control over Stoglav. Creator of the art of necromancy. The demons who served him are still revered by the savages of Stoglav (mobs), as tribal gods.

  The States of Stoglav:

  Havian – a Scand state. The capital is Svetlograd, the largest city on the continent.

  Maxitor – a Scand state, kingdom. The capital is Maxitown. Borders and feuds with Nightmare.

  Javatti, Sephiath, Bench – Lahitte state, khanate.

  The land of the Taunites – a multitude of small principalities that regularly quarrel amongst themselves.

  Mal-Zaire – a cluster of islands at the mouth of the eastern arm of the great Chand River, in Achaean possession.

  Nightmare – in possession of the guild of necromancers.

  About the Author: