Today's Earth date: June 21, 1992

We all saw the monster's shadow today. It swam by us, bumped us with its head, and then disappeared into the depths again. When I say bumped us, that's how he delivered it. Like it was a nudge. Barely a meaningful amount of content.

What it was for us was a violent sloshing wobble that threw three sailors overboard. They lived, by the way.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

"It's lucky we aren't traveling in this," Armond said as the fog enveloped the Zeroes. "Will be easy enough to wait it out."

Before the wave of white fully descended, Wayne stood just a few feet behind Fergus, looking over his shoulder as the landscape around them disappeared. When the fog fully set, the back of Fergus' head was only a faint shadow.

"There's someone out there," Margo said quietly.

Prism, her Phantasy Star II ability that let her detect hidden and invisible things, functioned in the fog it seemed. Second Sight from Tunnels and Trolls probably helped as well. When Wayne checked his HUD, he saw no indication of anything alive in the vicinity that wasn't his party. If Margo really saw a person, his radar should haved reflected that.

The strange pulses of color were likely the ghost lights the guidebooks mentioned, phantom orbs that appeared on rare occasions in the desert. They were odd, but they weren't physical threats of any kind.

"How sure are you?" Wayne asked.

"They're far off. It's shaped like a person and moving. That's the best I can tell you."

Fergus sighed. "How do the five of us navigate this together?"

"Single file," Armond answered immediately. "Put a hand on the shoulder of the person in front of you. Go where they go. Margo, you're in the lead."

As the party organized itself into a line, Wayne made a note of their camp's location on his HUD and asked Margo, "Can you still see the person?"

"Yes. I'm not great at guessing distance, but we've got a long walk ahead of us."

Hector took up position immediately behind Margo, ready to intervene if something attempted to harm the party's rogue. Wayne and Fergus came next in the line, and Armond brought up the rear. The cleric wasn't a tank, but he had enough frontline capabilities that he could protect Fergus in the event of an ambush.

Initially, the party resolved to move through the desert fog quietly, a reasonable best practice when monsters might be lurking about. That, however, did not last long. Desert terrain was full of tufts and bumps and rocks to trip over. When it wasn't, the sand dunes were deep and steep, ever shifting underfoot as the party attempted to traverse them. So everyone in the party, save for Margo, tripped and stumbled and bumped into one another. There was much hushed cursing, a few apologies, and several grumbles.

After several minutes of seeing nothing but white with the occasional shimmer of color, Margo whispered, "He's coming toward us."

Wayne still didn't see any indication of a creature, friend or foe, on his HUD.

"Hold your attacks," Wayne added.

A few moments later, a circular blur of shifting blues and greens steadily grew larger, the pinprick of an orb floating above the ground expanding by the second.

When the orb was the size of a human head, a breeze whipped through the party, swirling the fog to create an open pocket in the midst of the dense white.

The orb hovered for a moment, and then the light seemed to melt. As it dripped toward the ground, the light formed into the figure of an elf. He was shorter than the average human and his body was lean and slender. His face was young, like that of a teenager, but he wore fine platemail armor, and a thin crown rested on his head.

"A ghost?" Fergus asked in a hushed whisper.

To Wayne, the elven king looked like a force ghost from Star Wars–the original trilogy, when the effects were still a bit crude. He couldn't share that comparison with anyone in his party, however. None of them had seen the movies to appreciate the observation.

"Heroes…" the elf said, his voice proud but tired. "You are too late. My people are beyond saving, but there may yet be time to spare the world from suffering the same fate."

"What fate is-" Fergus began, but the elf king continued speaking as though he hadn't heard the old scholar.

"Our ambition and our hubris burned this once lush valley, scorching the ground and churning the soil. Winds of our own making buried our kingdom beneath sand, and with it, our people, our history, and our mistakes."

"That's interesting, but-"

"It's a recording," Wayne managed, still trying to pay attention to what the king said.

"For the sake of this world, find our lost civilization and close the gate that we so foolishly opened. My people deserve peace, and this world does not deserve to suffer for my mistakes. The land you see may no longer match our maps, but the stars are unchanged. Where the arrow strikes the stag, you will find our home directly beneath.

"Be brave, heroes. I am so very sorry for the challenges you must face."

The ghostly figure dissolved, and the dense fog slowly receded. Soon, the mountains in the distance were visible again, and so was a clear night sky.

"Sounded like a riddle," Armond observed.

Fergus nodded. "Yes, one based on astronomy."

"Well, we're going to skip all of that," Wayne said. "We already have the point of interest, so screw the puzzles. Let's get some sleep and head out in the morning."

Groping all the way to the point of interest wasn't particularly difficult. It was just long. Even with random encounters breaking up the monotony, the trek was dull and forgettable. As the mountains drew nearer, however, Wayne felt excitement building within him. He hadn't realized how much he enjoyed the rush of dungeon delving.

If the desert was as torturous for the party as it was meant to be, he might have felt differently, but the dwarves clearly did not anticipate a party powered by the strange abilities of Christmas List.

"No music for this trip?" Fergus asked as the party traversed the Bata Desert.

"I was worried it bothered you all," Wayne said.

While the rest of the party shook their heads that they were fine, Fergus said, "For all of the reading I've done about Earth, hearing it has made me feel the closest to the people there. You always talk about how many peoples and cultures there are, and the music makes that concrete."

"I didn't realize you enjoyed it that much."

"Let's not go as far as to use the word 'enjoy,'" the old scholar corrected. "Some of your music is awful, Wayne. I'm sorry, but it's true."

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Wayne laughed. "It's not my music. I don't get to pick what plays."

"You are the spokesperson for your people. Now please, spokesperson, play us a tune."

Random.

Song: Contigo Perú (feat. Oscar Avilés)

Artist: Arturo "Zambo" Caver

Album: Orgullosos De Ser Peruanos

Genre: Música Criolla

Beginning slow with the low twangy beat common to South American music, the song evolved into a deeply emotional ballad featuring a deep-voiced man. Wayne didn't speak Spanish, but he recognized the language nonetheless.

Maybe it was Fergus' comment, but Wayne felt the closeness Fergus described, like he was there in the audience or sitting in his apartment on Earth with headphones on and eyes closed. Not here in a strange fantasy world of monsters and glitch puddles and gropers.

Eventually, the party reached the point of interest, a nondescript section of sandy desert at the foot of the mountains. Elsewhere, dunes were punctuated by various rock formations, the beginnings of the mountain range separating the desert from the ocean, but here there was nothing but sand.

Wayne fiddled with his HUD map, zooming in and out to confirm they were in the right place.

"We should be right on top of it," Wayne said after a minute. "If you guys want to make camp, I can start digging."

Armond nodded. "Let's get to it, everyone. Keep your senses sharp. We could trigger an encounter at any time."

While the Zeroes went about unpacking, Wayne began using the Digmaster to remove one oversized cube of sand at a time, which would have been much easier if this world followed the rules of a survival crafting game. Instead of leaving perfectly cube-shaped holes with every activation of the ability, the desert sand immediately collapsed inward, partially refilling the void Wayne had just created.

For the first two hours, so much sand rushed to undo his work that he was uncertain of making any progress at all, especially with how frequently he needed to rest to allow his mana to recover.

The rest of the party, meanwhile, napped under the sun. Occasionally, Fergus would use Voice to ask, "How's it going over there, big guy?"

By hour four, Wayne's reply was always the same. "Please stop calling me big guy."

Despite those requests, Fergus' question went unchanged as well.

By hour seven, Wayne had dug a small canyon, having to expand the dig radius several times to account for the nature of loose sand working against him.

"Found something."

A parapet made from gleaming green stone rose out of the sand. Wayne hoped that it attached to a gatehouse or a front door. If this was the top of a watchtower, he had a great deal more sand to move before the lost kingdom was accessible.

While the party made their way to Wayne, he attempted to use the Digmaster on the deep green bricks beneath his feet. In many crafting games, breaking through a wall was the fastest way to overcome an obstacle, but Digmaster returned a failure notification on anything that wasn't dirt or sand. That was disappointing, but in clicking around in an attempt to harvest the parapet itself, he revealed a trapdoor.

A short while later, Margo confirmed it was neither locked nor trapped.

And thus began another dungeon crawl.

Wayne's fear was well-founded. He had indeed struck the top of a watchtower rather than any sort of official front door or entrance. Fortunately, the tower itself was not filled with sand. The orange grains leaked in through windows and open doorways, but the effect seemed more atmospheric than realistic. The weight of the sand overhead should have been more than enough to fill this space, but instead, it settled into neat piles below the windows and went no farther.

The tower itself had a few crates and barrels, but for the most part, its purpose seemed entirely defensive. Every floor was an additional vantage point for archers, but the rooms were small, and the stairway was narrow. No wizard labs or quaint hideaways. Just floor after floor of mostly empty rooms.

The floor-by-floor nature of how Wayne's HUD interpreted a dungeon map revealed glimpses of other rooms and structures in the distance, likely parts of other towers that occupied the same level, but they were far off. The only route available to the party was down.

Then at the landing for another nondescript level of the tower, the map blinked and filled the HUD with rooms and passages.

"There aren't any mobs on the radar," Wayne said. "Keep your guard up, though."

When they exited the tower and entered the castle proper, the green bricks were accompanied by statues and long hallways of engraved murals. Instead of depicting elves or humanoids of any kind, all of the art Wayne saw featured animals. There were statues of squirrels and stags, and one of the murals was nothing but a flock of birds. The intricate details of their feathers and beaks made the mural feel alive, as if the birds were actually in motion.

He expected them to come to life and attack like the murals in his first-ever dungeon crawl, but they didn't.

"I find that this feels like the Lighthouse," Fergus observed, and Wayne agreed. The art was exquisite and plentiful, yet the castle felt empty. This was more like a movie set than a place where anyone actually lived.

Eventually, the Zeroes found what they believed to be the true ground floor for the castle. What looked like the front gate had failed to hold back the sand. There was a winch for raising a drawbridge, or perhaps a portcullis, where the gate should be. The hall at their backs was vast, having the sort of grandeur a king would want guests to experience the moment they stepped into his domain.

"How do we want to do this?" Armond asked. "Full floor sweep, like usual?"

"Maybe on the way out," Wayne answered. "We know all of this was cut content, so it could be a lot of empty space like we've seen elsewhere. Let's get the main quest portion overwith, find the cube chamber, and then decide from there."

"Roger that."

The throne room was easy enough to find. Decorated with the same opulence as the other rooms, the throne sat at the end of a long chamber and atop a dais. Based on a few surviving fragments, this place once had grand stained glass windows all around, but the sand had burst through them long ago.

Wayne kept an eye on his HUD as the party advanced toward the throne. The only moving dots were theirs. The longer they went without an encounter, the harder he found it to stay vigilant. He mentally chastised himself multiple times for losing focus. This was a dungeon. He had to stay sharp.

He was in the midst of one such round of self-flagellation when Margo broke the silence.

"There's a door behind the throne."

The throne itself was crafted from the same green stone as the castle and sat flush against the back wall. The party stood back while Margo carefully searched the area for traps and secret buttons. After several minutes, she stepped back and scratched her head.

"I'm not sure how it opens."

While Armond and Hector discussed options for simply smashing through the secret passage, Wayne pondered the puzzle. Hidden areas in video game castles were a given. Sometimes they were nothing more than secret storage rooms containing a few beneficial, but optional, items. On other occasions, a secret door was a key plot point that the player had to find in order to progress.

Any time he saw a throne room, Wayne instantly thought of-

"Try pushing the throne sideways," he said.

The Zeroes, having traveled with Wayne for some time now, knew that Wayne had a mind for these things. Hector and Armond squatted low and braced their hands against the side of the throne. Pumping with their legs, they slowly slid the stone throne aside to reveal a passage.

Back on Earth, in his previous life, Wayne once attempted to master speedrunning The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the SNES. That game famously opened with a rainy rescue mission. Once the player freed Zelda from prison, the player escaped through a secret passage behind the throne. As a kid, Wayne had several friends who got stuck right there–five minutes into the game–because they couldn't figure out that they had to push the throne.

Speedrunning that game meant that Wayne played that opening sequence over and over and over. He couldn't estimate how many hundreds of times he had pushed that damn throne out of the way only to reset when he botched a skip a few minutes later in the Eastern Palace.

He gave up on speedrunning when he realized how much it hurt his hands, which felt like an old person thing to admit. One of the most consistent time saves, and also the most physically taxing, in A Link to the Past involved a technique called "pumping." There was air-pumping, wall-pumping, and stair-pumping, and all of them sought to exploit a quirk in how Link moved.

Speedrunners determined that Link's running animation alternated between one pixel and two pixels. When Link moved north or west, the first frame of the animation was always two pixels of movement while going south or east started on a frame of one pixel movement. With the right button mashing–hence the term pumping–speedrunners turned as many one-pixel movements into two-pixel movements as they could. Over the course of a full run, the time savings added up, and similar strats also made climbing stairs or moving through doorways faster than normal.

In his 30s with a lifetime of typing behind him, that much button mashing was hell on Wayne's hands, so he gave up on the hobby.

And he thought he'd never have to push a throne out of the way ever again, but obviously, he was wrong.

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