Welcome to this first person walkthrough of Quern.
Part 1 is a detailed walkthrough of the overground areas (read this first).
Part 2 (this part) is a detailed walkthrough of the underground areas.

Link to part 1:
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2824582615

The journey was short, finishing at the base of the tower. I stepped out into a tunnel and upon clearing the doorway there was a metal clanking sound behind me that made me spin around in alarm. It was a door that had closed noisily behind me, shutting me away from the tower. It seemed that I had no choice but to move away from the tower and explore the tunnel before me.

As I moved away from the tower I saw a burst of blue light before me and Gamana wafted into view. I wondered briefly if she had always been a lightweight blue ball of bright energy but she began talking, projecting her voice into my mind and stealing away any chance for me to think to myself.

“When we discovered these tunnels,” she said, “we hoped to find some rest from the endless noon. We realised we needed a quiet place, hidden from the scorching sunlight, away from the rumbling ocean. A different place where we could at last find the long awaited change of atmosphere. Where we find balance, not just among ourselves, but harmony within our own bodies and souls.”

This was the first hint that I’d had from Gamana that she wasn’t a loner. She spoke of ‘we’ and spoke as if she was one of a race of human beings that had been fed up of the constant world above, of a world where nothing aged or cycled through night and day, of endless days without seasons or differing weather patterns. I had to admit, I could see where she was coming from.

“These chambers,” she continued, “were our refuges when we couldn’t bear the weight of our existence. After staying for hundreds of years in the light, darkness preserved our sanity.”

It didn’t sound to me that Gamana and her people were indigenous to this world. It sounded as if they’d arrived here through a waygate, much like Maythorn, much like me. Why else would she speak this way? In which case, I decided, she had no more right to this place than Maythorn did.

She continued to speak. “I tried to keep this place secret from him. But I had to make a choice. When I saw him losing his mind he reminded me of us. I felt pity for him. I decided to lead him down here to grant him some relief. What a mistake it was.”

The ball then floated away, disappearing along the tunnel before me. I set off at a brisk walk, attempting to follow her, but she quickly disappeared out of sight. The tunnel headed downwards, lit by orange torches and I quickly came to a wooden door set into the left wall. The door wouldn’t open and beside it there was a keyhole protected by a metal cage. The cage was secured with a cross headed bolt.

Just beyond the door there was a dark chasm but beside it there was a torch holder, easily recognisable because it was of the same design as those on the surface. I slotted my white torch in and a panel below the torch began to fizzle in an odd way. The panel had four studs and it looked socket-like in appearance. It was odd because the fizzle was like an electric fizzle yet the power being supplied was pure white light, not electricity.

A tunnel headed away from the door and the chasm and I moved along it. Were these tunnels natural or had they been dug out? Until now I had been assuming that Maythorn had dug everything but it was now evident that Gamina and her people had been here first which left me wondering whether Maythorn had needed to dig anything. Even the space behind me where the tower rested had surely been here in Gamina’s day because she had said that her people had discovered the tunnels. Maythorn had already mentioned an ancient race, the Dulmarians, who had been here a long, long time ago. Perhaps they had dug the tunnels. It was quite a mystery.

The tunnel passed beneath a wooden walkway before turning through 180 degrees in order to reach a raised wooden platform on which were various tables and pieces of machinery. This platform was certainly of Maythorn’s doing, all of the bits and pieces laying about were the usual leftovers of the professor’s work. I was immediately drawn to a letter that was laying on one of the tables and which was written in Maythorn’s usual scribble.

Most of these tunnels were carved out by the Dulmarians once. After covering the island with my experiments, I was fascinated by the gigantic space this place offered. I am convinced that she has appeared to you by now. I know her quite well. She will probably try to persuade you to turn against me, if she hasn’t yet. She reflects her own past failures onto me. She fears that I will become the monster she once was. Be conscious when she is around, her innocent purity is just a well-rehearsed disguise.

Well, I thought, that answers one question. These tunnels are definitely Dulmarian.

Mounted beside the letter there was a cylinder with a large keyhole at the front. The cylinder was powered by one of Maythorn’s batteries and a stand with four squares was on the other side, being fed in turn by the cylinder.

Behind me, on the other side of the platform was another table on which there was a larger panel, a numerical display having four columns containing the numbers one to six in each column. There were lots of wheels and cogs scattered around and a rounded metal container caught my attention. It opened easily and inside I found a large key with four oddly shaped symbolic shapes attached. I picked the key up and studied it. The shapes were almost like letters or numbers but there was no word that could be created by them. They almost looked detachable.

There were some wooden shelves at the back of the table and a note had been pinned to the wood.

Yellow. One of the key parts is among the components of the solution.
White. One of the key parts is in its appropriate place.

Directly below the numerical display there was a mechanical jig, a former whose shape reminded me of the key I had just picked up. I laid the key on the jig and it snapped easily into place. It was intriguing and I had no idea what it was for until I pressed the numbers on the display. I found that I could enter a four digit number, using the four columns reading from left to right, and the machine behind the display would then attach shapes to the key to represent the number I had selected. I was basically programming the key with a four digit code.

Eventually I took the key, turned around to the other table, and inserted the key into the keyhole. I suspected that, if this was a lock, nothing would happen until I had programmed the right code onto the key but I was wrong. What happened was far more complex.

After experimentation I worked out that the code on the key always had an effect on the four squares. Some squares would rotate slowly whilst displaying a yellow colour and other squares would display a white colour whilst spinning faster. The rule being followed was what had been written on the note pinned to the shelf. A white square indicated that one of the four digits on the key was spot on, but it didn’t tell me which one it was. A yellow square told me that a digit on the key was currently in the wrong place.

I remembered a game that I played when I was young. It was called Mastermind and it involved deducing a four digit code based upon similar clues. This was Maythorn’s version of that game and it was a gratuitously complicated, complex and over engineered machine. I could only imagine that he had had years and years of idle time to kill. Why design and build such a machine that told me nothing about his actual objectives in my education but instead slowed me down, flustered me and generally reinforced my hatred of him?

Eventually I calmed down and began working on the puzzle. I had to find the correct code for the key and I had to use this Mastermind machine to work out what the code was. I soon discovered that I only had six attempts before the machine reset with a new code. This added to the surrealism of the key because surely once I succeeded in programming the correct code onto the key then I had to take it to a lock somewhere and open something. The implication was that if the key suddenly required a different code (because I failed to solve it in six goes) then the actual lock, wherever it was, had to accept the new code as well.

I sighed. Maythorn’s mind was unfathomable.

Move on, I thought bleakly, just move on, go with flow and get to the end. I wasn’t tiring in this world but I was getting ready for a long hot bath, preferably in my own bathroom back home.

The logic of the puzzle went like this in my mind. There were six possible digits, no repeated digits were allowed and the final code was a four digit code. So two of the six digits would not be in the solution and the other four digits had to be. Picking a random code must therefore result in at least two yellow/white squares. My approach therefore had two steps, first to get four yellow/white squares by changing no more than two digits at a time and second to then rearrange the four digits to get all of the spinning squares white.

And to do it in six or less tries, I muttered.

I eventually solved it but it took a few resets and a certain amount of luck. The randomness of the puzzle prevented me from formulating a definitive solution but despite the complexity I achieved the solution fairly quickly. Upon successfully getting four spinning squares I heard movement and saw two panels slide open close by.

The first panel, to the left of the table, had opened to reveal a plug shaped object with a cross on the end. I was pretty sure that it would fit the cross headed bolt by the wooden door I had passed earlier. Despite the cluttered shelves there was nothing else to plunder from behind the panel but on the wall at the back there was a picture of four symbolic shapes, shapes I was sure I could replicate on the key programming machine. I placed the key back into the jig and quickly managed to replicate the pattern, a task that was straightforward because each digit was represented by a fixed symbolic shape, easily identifiable on the picture. The code turned out to be 6213 and I was sure that the key, programmed with this code, would fit a lock somewhere.

The second panel was up a small set of steps. At the top there was a cage that had just been revealed by the opening of the panel. The door to the cage was locked with a circular key having serrated edges.

I returned to the wooden door beside the chasm. When I tried to fit the plug to the cross headed bolt I found that it fitted easily and it became a simple matter of turning the bolt until it dropped out. To my delight I then found that the key, programmed with the new number, operated the lock. The wooden door then opened and beyond the door was a stone corridor where the stone had been cut squarely and cleanly.

At the end of the corridor a machine hummed away, surrounded by a cloud of billowing steam. Some indicators shone with a white light, telling me that it was receiving power, whether it was electrical or optical I wouldn’t like to say. On the right side of the machine I could see a vertical pipe with five rotatable segments. Above the top segment was a white light and as I rotated the segments I saw that I could steer the light lower and lower from segment to segment. The target for the light was on the fourth segment and I managed to steer the light successfully by first getting it to the final fifth segment and then steering it back upwards.

The final solution was as follows:
First segment, steer the light down.
Second segment, steer the light right then down.
Third segment, steer the light down.
Fourth segment, steer the light down ensuring that the target is two spaces to the left of the light.
Fifth segment, steer the light left, then left again then up.

Upon completing the light path a tray popped open at the base of the machine. On the tray I found a circular piece of metal that looked like part of a disk. Interestingly on the front of the machine there was a diagram showing a full disk made up from three parts and one of the parts was here in my hand. I had to assume that there were two more parts somewhere and that I needed them in order to create a full disk.

Next to the door leading out there was a wooden cupboard inside which I found a plug with serrated edges on one side and a cross head on the other.

There was also a table here and on it there were two diagrams. One of the diagrams depicted the machine behind me whilst the other diagram was surely a picture of a pillbox, the same kind of pillbox that existed on the surface beside the light tube array puzzles. There were three such pillboxes on the surface and I had managed to light them all up by solving the light tube puzzles.

I nodded in understanding as I linked the two diagrams together. The pillboxes fed white light downwards to these machines of which there had to be three. And I needed to acquire three partial disks to make a full disk.

One down, two to go, I thought. Again.

I headed back to the cage that had been recently revealed by the opening of the panel. It was locked by a circular key with a serrated edge and I was sure that I now had the very plug that would fit it. The plug engaged snugly and now it looked just like another cross headed bolt. My other plug, the first one I had found, then fitted over the cross and again it was a simple matter to unscrew the bolt and open the cage. Inside the cage there was a rectangular block that looked strangely familiar. It had four studs on it and I wondered whether it would fit in the panel beside the chasm because it also had four similar studs.

Then I realised where I had seen the block before. It was the block from the sliding block puzzle that I had solved in order to open the door to the crystal laboratory. It was on a rope harness that was suspended out of sight above my head but I had no doubt where it went. Directly above my head was the crystal laboratory, or to be more exact the entrance where the sliding block puzzle was. This was where the block had dropped to once I’d solved the puzzle and allowed the weight of the block to open the lab door.

I took the block from the harness but I was apprehensive what would happen. If the harness, no longer being weighed down, were to shoot back upwards then that would close the lab entrance, perhaps for good. I had no idea whether I was going to get back to the surface or not - the gate that had slammed shut when I’d come out of the lift had had a distressing ring of finality to it. Nonetheless I was loathe to take the risk but then I was sure that I was supposed to take the block. Maythorn never messed up like that and there had to be a reason for unlocking this cage.

When I lifted the block away from the harness, the harness didn’t move. With a sigh of relief and with a self inflicted slap on the wrist I set off for the chasm.

I was right. The block fitted snugly into the panel and the white torch fitted nicely back in the torch holder. After placing both of them there was sudden movement within the darkness of the chasm and a segmented bridge rose from the depths with each segment joining up to provide what looked like safe passage across the inky black gap.

I crossed the bridge, at first wary of its fragility but after a few faltering steps I gained more confidence. Despite there being gaps between the bridge segments the construct seemed solid and safe. At the end of the bridge the tunnel came to an end against what looked like a lift. The lift was suspended from a cable that disappeared upwards into the dark but I wasn’t fooled. This lift was going to go down.

I stepped in and pressed the only button. Sure enough, the lift dropped downwards and after only a few seconds of smooth motion it entered an enormous cavern that stretched into the distance in all directions. When the lift came to a halt I stepped out and stood there, staring at my surroundings in awe and wonder. High above me the roof of the cavern was rough and solid but no longer oppressive due to the distance. The walls were far away and rough hewn columns of massive stone stretched upwards towards the distant roof, seemingly to hold up the immense weight of the roof. I was high up on a stone bridge and below me the cavern floor was too far away to make out clearly. I looked over the edge but the vertiginous view I got made me back away. On all sides tall, narrow waterfalls tumbled downwards filling the air with a cool, damp spray that refreshed my senses. Bright white lights flooded the cavern with clean light.

In the centre of the cavern was a circular platform whose height matched the height of the bridge where I was standing. From my position it seemed that there were two other bridges that connected the platform to the cavern walls, the three bridges being at 120° to one another. Access to the other two bridges was blocked by sliding doorways.

I walked slowly towards the platform and saw that in the centre there was a circular table with a circular platter built in. On the platter i could see the three partial disk patterns, expertly etched onto the platter surface. Surely, I thought, here was the place where I was going to construct the complete disc. I pulled the piece that I already had out of my pocket and carefully laid it on the platter. There was a sliding sound and the door that had been blocking the left hand bridge slid open.

Despite its size there was nothing else to do in the enormous cavern other than marvel at the views in all directions. So I eventually crossed over the newly opened bridge which, like the cavern, seemed to be a work of nature rather than being man made. A metal grid had been set into the floor of the bridge however and the subsequent tunnel I entered seemed to be once again artificial, presumably cut out by the Dulmarians many years ago. The tunnel was lit by orange crystals and these were set in torch holders in the same way I’d seen many times before so I assumed this was an addition that could be credited to my friend, Professor Maythorn.

The tunnel wound its way to a new room and once again I stood and gazed around this new place, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. After a while I began to understand what was connected to what. There were three exits, not counting the entrance I had come in by, and they were set into the circular wall at different heights around the room. There were also three ladder sections, or to be more precise there was one ladder split into three sections. Each section started at a different height and finished at a different height. The ladders were mounted on horizontal rails and I was sure that the sections could be moved sideways along their rails.

To reach the lowest of the three exits I could see that I would have to slide the lowest ladder section to below the exit. To reach the middle exit I would have to slide two sections below that exit so that they met up to make a taller ladder. And to reach the top exit I would have to slide all three ladder sections together to make a very tall ladder that would reach that exit.

It sounded easy enough but then I looked at the mechanism that slid the ladders and my heart sank. Maythorn was at it again, producing complexity for complexities sake. It was another puzzle that I had to solve but one that, yet again, taught me nothing about Quern but lots about frustration.

After fiddling about with the mechanism I deduced the following. Each ladder section had it own pulley system for dragging the ladders sideways and it was all done with weights. The heavier the weight, the further the ladder would travel along its rail. The procedure was to place a weight, or weights, on a supporting tray for whichever ladder needed to be moved. Pulling a lever then released the weights and the ladder section would be pulled sideways a certain distance, determined by the weight value. To change the weights there was another, thinner, lever which when pulled would retrieve the weights and in so doing return the ladder sections to their starting positions.

The logical approach was to try and access the exits in ascending order starting with the lowest exit and the lowest ladder section. I had two weights available and I placed both of the weights on the tray that controlled the lower ladder. When I pulled the lever the ladder section slid across and came to rest directly below the lowest exit. So far so good, I thought.

I climbed the ladder to discover that the exit was nothing more than a small alcove cut into the rock. In the alcove there was a weight, being somewhere in weight between the two I already had.

Now for the middle exit, I thought. Or perhaps, I pondered, it might just be another alcove.

The solution here was to place the smallest weight on the lower tray and the new middle weight on the middle tray. This positioned the low and middle ladder sections correctly but the top ladder section was in the way so I also had to place the large weight on the upper tray in order to move the top ladder out of the way. With this configuration I could then climb the ladder to reach the second exit. And yes, it was another alcove and in it was another weight.

Now I had enough weights to reach the top exit. I placed the new weight on the upper tray, the two original weights on the middle tray and the middle weight on the bottom tray. The ladders positioned themselves nicely in line beneath the top exit and I clambered upwards to find a new tunnel heading off into the distance.

As before the tunnel was lit by orange crystals and stone steps headed upwards towards a closed door. Beside the door was a white button which I pressed. The door slid open and I passed through to find myself in a small circular room fitted with various brass objects. The door closed abruptly behind me and for a brief second I thought I was unable to retreat but the white button beside the door responded to my touch and opened the door.

In the centre of the room was a pedestal with a hexagonal base and I recognised it as a holder for either my red torch or my green transporter. The two customary lenses that focussed the corresponding beam pointed towards a hole in the wall. On the side of the pedestal was engraved an A.

On the wall was what appeared to be a map showing pathways between A, which I assumed was here, to B and C, which I assumed were two places that were elsewhere.

A straight corridor led to another door which I duly opened. There was a heavy grille barring further passage through the door but I could peer through the grille to see what lay beyond. What I could see was a second circular room much like the one behind me. In the centre of the second room was a pedestal engraved with a B whilst above it was a glass device hanging from the ceiling marked C. On the pedestal was a green crystal.

I thought furiously. I could surely transport from A to B if I could somehow connect a green beam from the pedestal at A to the pedestal at B. And, I thought, the map on the wall seems to suggest that there were passages between the two.

I returned to A and attached my green crystal to the pedestal. Sure enough a green beam was now being focussed through the hole in the wall but when I looked into the second room there was nothing coming through. I returned to the map and studied it. There were four nodes between A and B and I had to assume that this map was a diagram of pipes that the green light was being focussed along.

In the corridor between the rooms were four rotatable wheels with white arrows fixed to them. I realised that the wheels controlled the nodes and that I had to rotate the wheels to steer the light towards B by matching the white arrows to the map layout. It sounded easy but after I’d turned the wheels to match the map I still wasn’t seeing a green beam arrive at B. The solution came to me after comparing more closely the map with reality. On the map the journey was from left to right, with A being on the left of the map and B being on the right of the map. In reality as I stood staring at the wheels, the A pedestal was on my right and the B pedestal was on my left. So in order to follow the map I needed to mentally flip the map and reflect the flip by reversing the horizontal direction of the arrows on the wheels.

The route on the map from A to B was shown as follows:
At node 1 (on the left) light had to enter from the left and exit upwards, at node 2 light would then enter from the left and exit to the right, at node 3 light would enter from the left and exit downwards and at node 4 (on the right) light would enter from below and exit to the right. Any other route on the map couldn’t be achieved using the arrows on the wheels.

The arrows on the wheels therefore had to be set as follows:
At node 1 (on the right) light had to enter from the right and exit upwards, at node 2 light would then enter from the right and exit to the left, at node 3 light would enter from the right and exit downwards and at node 4 (on the left) light would enter from below and exit to the left.

In notation form to create the path from A to B, reading left to right, would be

A to B left to right: d to l, r to d, r to l, r to u.

When I set the four wheels to agree with this notation I saw a green beam of light appear, shining on the green crystal at B. I had made the connection! I returned to A, activated the transporter and moved to the second room containing nodes B and C.

This second room was very similar to the first room. There was even a similar looking map on the wall but this time it showed new pathways from C to D and C to E. I sighed, realizing that there had to be a third room containing these new nodes, D and E. I examined C which was like a goldfish bowl hanging from the ceiling and concluded that it was a reflective node, reflecting light coming from the hole connected to A into a new hole that presumably had to be connected to D and E.

There was a door in the room but it wouldn’t open. And through the grille behind me I could see back to the first room and A. For a while I was stumped, not knowing what to do, but then I spotted a pull cord tucked up against the hanging column that was C. I should have noticed it earlier because it was shining with a white light. I mentally shrugged, grasped the cord and gave it a pull.

I was astonished to witness the startling transformation that took place in the room. The way the mechanical room had transformed was pretty spectacular but what happened here was something else. The entire ceiling opened up like a blossoming flower to reveal that the room was totally underwater. After a few short seconds the ceiling had retracted out of sight leaving a glass ceiling that gave a splendid upward view of blue, clear and clean water. Bubbles danced upwards towards the surface whilst fronds of wavy vegetation played endlessly in the water’s current. Dappled water patterns filled the room, lit by the natural light that shone down from above. It was frightening and sensational at the same time.

How Maythorn had engineered this underwater haven was beyond me. No amount of time, regardless of whether time stood still or not, could bring about the enormous engineering effort required to create such a space using just one pair of hands. I wondered how much of this space was Dulmarian.

It was a true miracle of design and it was a hearty nod towards Maythorn’s ingenuity and genius. I still hated the guy though.

The door that had been locked now stood open and I wandered down it. Circular windows looked out over the watery exterior and I could see more buildings in the distance with glass windows of their own. It was a different world out there, a world of water, far removed from the island above.

Just like before there were four wheels with arrows set in the wall and I had no doubt that these would allow me to set the route of the light beam departing from C. Beyond the corridor was the third room, doubtless the home for D and E and I entered, still entranced by the external environment visible through more glass.

At D was another reflective goldfish bowl and I was intrigued to realise that any light beam was going to be directed horizontally from D straight out of the nearby window. I peered through the glass and saw another window in a distant building. I fancied that I could see a green crystal through the far window.

So there we have it, I thought. That has to be my transporter target. So I needed to set up a link from A to C between rooms 1 and 2 and then set up a link from C to D between room 2 and room 3. Then I would be able to move from A all the way to that distant building.

It sounded easy. But then these things often do

The plan was to set up C to D first then transport back to A to set up A to C. As I looked around I noticed that the hole that would provide light to D was covered over by a heavy shield dangling from a thick rope.

I shook my head in bewilderment. Maythorn had the most annoying habit of making difficult things even more difficult and to what end? That guy had a lot to answer for and I dreamed, not for the first time, of what I would do to him once I found him. He had it coming to him, in spades.

I studied the shield and rope and found them firmly fixed in place. There was no way I could untie the rope and I had no sawing tools to cut through it. It was intriguing however to note that the rope passed in front of another hole labelled E. What was Maythorn expecting me to do here? After some thought I came up with an idea. I could inject a beam from A through to E by manipulating the wheels. Then instead of using my green crystal I could use my red crystal. I already knew of the powerful heat properties of the red crystal; I had already used it very successfully to light two fires. The question was could I use it to light a rope? To burn through a rope so that it no longer held up a shield? There was only one way to find out.

I needed to set up a link from A to E. To do that I needed to set up C to E first and then go and set up A to C afterwards. After consulting the map I worked out that I had to do the following:

C to E left to right: lu to dr, dl to dr, dl to ur, u to r.

Interestingly the second set of wheels had two possible arrow layouts, swappable by pulling a small lever beside each wheel. Nonetheless it was a straightforward matter to set them up.

I then moved back to A and set up A to C as follows:

A to C left to right: u to r, l to u, ul to dr, d to r

Finally I swapped the green crystal with the red crystal. After a few seconds I heard a distant clang! which had to be the shield falling to the floor. I had done it!

Now for the final step, I thought. I first needed to return to B so I set the wheels back to the A to B configuration, namely:

A to B left to right: d to l, r to d, r to l, r to u.

I then swapped the red crystal for the green crystal and moved to B. Then I set the wheels into the C to D configuration, not forgetting to change the arrow layouts where required. The configuration was as follows:

C to D left to right: l to u, l to r, u to r, l to r

After moving back to A I then reset the wheels into the A to C configuration as follows:

A to C left to right: u to r, l to u, ul to dr, d to r

At last I was ready to go. With crossed fingers I touched the hand print and moved.

I found myself standing in an alcove of a new room, close to a green crystal and next to a large circular window through which I had miraculously arrived. The green transporter beam could clearly be seen arriving through the water from a distant window, the window of the third room where I had been only moments before. I was gladdened to see a hand print beside the green crystal, a way back if needed.

The room was circular and a suspended floor gave a watery view of the ocean floor beneath my feet. A few moments ago, in the corridors with the wheels, the presence of the ocean had not been overpowering compared to the hard local presence of the walls of rock, but now, here in this room somewhere below the sea, the very weight and proximity of the water outside the room was almost intimidating. Here there were no reassuring rocks to provide solidity and protection. Here, there was just a thin wall and lots of even thinner glass. The ceiling was glass and there were many windows encircling the room that made everything here look more fragile. The puzzle solving was already challenging to me but now I also found myself closer to questioning my own mortality.

I decided to push on. The quicker I solved the secrets of this room then the quicker I could get back to solidity.

I’m a terra firma man, I thought. The more firmer, the less terror…

I began to explore the room, walking clockwise around the edge starting from the alcove where I had arrived. There was a thick pipe entering the room from outside; the pipe looked industrial in both thickness and width. After entering through the wall it passed through an inlet junction that then fed the supply to the contraption in the centre of the room. I wondered what the pipe contained. Looking at the pipe coming in from the outside I saw that it disappeared into the distance before heading upwards to the surface at what seemed to be a jaunty 45° angle. I did notice that there were what looked like three leaks spewing vertically upwards from the pipe. The leaks looked like bubbling jets of white light.

Further along there was a table and on it there was a letter.

Wasting time. This phrase has no rhyme or reason. After the centuries I’ve spent working. I needed a calm and quiet place. I originally built this facility to explore the depths of the ocean, and to research but eventually I spent more time resting here. This was the only place where I could hide from her. She judges me for demolishing long forgotten buildings on an abandoned island while she is directly responsible for much greater destruction. And after she told me about their failure she dared asking me to destroy Quern. Her agony is not my concern, and especially not yours. This power is not hers to give or take.

Maythorn was his usual scathing self, full of self righteousness and dismissive of everything else. I understood his need for a place of sanctuary but I had to smile when I read his admission that it took centuries to admit he needed one. Somehow that fitted into his narrative of self belief. I had to wonder what terrible destruction Gamana had allegedly wrought. I hoped I would have the opportunity to find out.

The rest of the table was covered with Maythorn’s usual junk. To the right of the table I saw a key hanging on the wall so I lifted it off the hook and pocketed it. I hadn’t realised that the key was weighing down a release mechanism and when I lifted the key away the mechanism engaged and behind me a chamber opened up to reveal a space that had been hidden. I ignored it for the moment and continued my clockwise tour of the room.

There was a big window here looking out into the expanse of the ocean. There was a chair looking outwards and a table with a cup and saucer on it. I could imagine Maythorn sitting here, staring out into the watery depths, thinking up his next fiendish puzzle. I had never seen him, I didn’t know what he looked like, I had no idea what his shoe size was or what colour his skin was. He was a formless person, a faceless entity, a featureless creature. Yet I could imagine him sat here, sipping his tea, staring out into the oceanic depths and mulling over his work and his unfathomable desire to create puzzles.

I moved on to find myself back at the alcove. I had noticed two other things attached to the walls as I’d made my circular pass and these were two large plaques on which were etched a grid of squares. The rows and columns were labelled 1 to 9 and A to I but the actual squares were all blank. One of the plaques was labelled in the corner with a I and the other was labelled II. I had no doubt in my mind that the plaques were part of a puzzle but I had no idea at the moment what they were for.

I next turned my attention to the contraption in the centre of the room. I smiled for I recognised the machine; it was a machine that would reward me with a partial disk, what would be my second in a set of three. The column on the right hand side was different to the first machine, here I had to dial a five digit number unlike the first machine where I had to guide light. The machine however looked dead and I had no doubt that it ran off white light delivered via a surface pillbox. So where was the white light? Looking up I saw the industrial pipe that was attached to the top. It would seem that there was no supply being delivered and I could only think of two reasons. The first reason would be that light was no longer being supplied from the surface from one of the pillboxes beside one of the light tube puzzles. The second reason, and one more likely, was because the light was being wasted through leaks. I looked again at the light jets as they bubbled merrily upwards from the top of the industrial pipe. If that leak, if that is what it was, was diverting the light away and stopping it from reaching the machine here in front of me then I had a big problem. If the leak was Maythorn’s design then I simply had a puzzle to solve but if it was a real leak then I was in big trouble.

Fingers crossed, I muttered. This was the first time I actually wanted one of Maythorn’s puzzles.

The only remaining thing to explore was the new chamber that had opened up when I had taken the key. It was next to the pipe inlet but I had ignored it earlier due to its featurelessness. Now I could see that it was a chamber, much like a bathysphere, but also looking like the entrance to a lift. Inside the chamber there was a suit, held open in readiness to accept a human shape. Accompanying the suit there was a diving helmet and heavy looking boots.

Following the trail that was Maythorn’s puzzles never failed to surprise me and each surprise was somehow more surprising than what had come before. I stared at the suit, realising that this was going to be a trip to the outside, after all a diving suit complete with helmet could only mean one thing.

Putting this on and leaving the relative safety of the room was another step closer to mortal danger. I was going to put my life in Maythorn’s hands. Would the suit leak? Would it provide oxygen? Would I get the bends? A host of questions raced through my mind, all different excuses to justify backing off. But backing off was not an option. I only had one direction to go and that was forwards. And the direction forward was where Maythorn deigned to lead me. I was a small rat in Maythorn’s huge maze and he had me running.

I entered the chamber, carefully pushed my feet into the boots and pressed the white button that I could see right in front of me. My heart raced as the suit closed around me and somehow sealed itself. The helmet then came down over my head and clamped itself to the suit. Then the chamber dropped down towards the ocean bed whilst water rushed in to climb higher and higher until it slurped over my head. When the chamber came to a halt I was totally submerged, breathing oxygen from a hidden tank and feeling light headed. The door opened and I walked out into the water’s depths.

The visibility through the helmet was not perfect and my breathing sounded stentorious in my ears but I found that I was surprisingly mobile. The suit was heavy, heavy enough to stop me from swimming upwards and at first my thoughts were focused on my oxygen supply. How long did I have? What was I supposed to do and did I need to do it quickly before dying of asphyxiation?

I looked around. The water was beautiful, seemingly peaceful and timeless but I was uncomfortable and felt vulnerable. The ocean was sterile; there were no fish anywhere to be seen, no molluscs or shells, no signs of any life except for plants. It was beautiful yet dead. I knew there was fishy life here somewhere, after all I had caught an electric fish not too long ago.

I looked up at the industrial pipe and had a clear view of the three leaks bubbling out of the top. How the hell was I supposed to fix them if I couldn’t swim upwards?

I began to explore and soon became familiar with the relatively small space I was in. It was an enclosed space, surrounded by rocky cliffs and unclimbable hills. My exploration, as usual, took me clockwise around this space and in my circular walk I discovered three levers and four small plaques. The levers, of course, were just asking to be pulled and I pulled them upwards as soon as I found them. They were all stiff, somewhat encrusted by their long exposure to the water, but after coaxing them into their upward position I noticed that the leaks were being stopped. Once all three levers had been operated the three jets of white bubbles were no longer present.

The small plaques were all affixed to the rock walls and were engraved with a short sequence of letters and numbers which I committed to memory. In the order I found them the sequences were
2 IIC8,
3 IIF1
1 IH3
4 ID9

There was nothing else to find so I thankfully headed back to the airlock chamber and pressed the white button. The chamber lifted itself back up into the room, the water level quickly dropped and my helmet lifted away making my ears pop. The suit then split open and I gratefully stepped into the room, pleased beyond measure that I was back on dry land, even if it was inside a submerged room beneath the ocean on a strange world where time was standing still. There were times when it didn’t help to be overly fussy.

The first thing I noticed was that three lights were now lit up on the inlet junction. I was sure that these three lights weren’t lit earlier and I was heartened to see this. I took it as a sign that light was now being delivered through the pipe.

To confirm this I crossed over to the disk machine and saw that white light was now present at the top of the column where the number dials were. So all I needed to do now was enter a five digit code but the problem was I had no idea what it was.

The code had to be contained somehow in the number and letter sequences I had seen on the four small plaques. They appeared to be numbered from 1 to 4 and I stared at them, looking for inspiration. All I could glean was the presence of an I or an II and this seemed to match with the I and II numbers on the two large wall mounted plaques here in this room.

Perhaps, I thought, I was seeing a grid reference. For example, the first sequence from the first small plaque was 2 IIC8, was this a reference to plaque II, grid reference c8? I inspected the plaque but the square at c8 was as blank as all the others. I was missing something here but I couldn’t see what.

I explored the room again, looking for a clue that I had missed. On the table next to the letter I saw some wooden stamps and a sponge that reminded me of the way documents used to be franked or imprinted with a postmark. Press the stamp into the sponge then stamp the stamp onto paper. The sponge would normally be soaked with ink but here the sponge was white with a bluish tint.

I groaned when I recognised what I was seeing. Looking at the stamps I saw that they were all stamps of single numbers. I pulled out my blue torch and sure enough, the sponge and the numbers on the stamps fluoresced brightly. I headed over to the nearest large plaque and the grid fluoresced revealing a single number in every square of the grid. It was Maythorn’s invisible ink again and I was kicking myself for not realising it earlier.

Now I had the means to translate the sequences into a number and also by using the first number in the sequence I could determine the position of the number in the code for the partial disk machine.

After using my blue torch to retrieve the four numbers I placed them in the correct order and ended up with 0835. I then went over to the machine in the centre of the room and dialled 0835 into the column. The fifth number hadn’t been revealed to me, probably because I hadn’t spotted a fifth plaque, but it only had ten possible positions so it was an easy matter to work through the numbers until I got the final number and the full code. The full code was 08353.

Upon entering the full code the tray in the machine popped open and I helped myself to my second partial disk! It had been a long route to get to this second partial disk; the ladder and weights, the corridors with the wheels and arrows, the diving suit and underwater walk and this room where I now stood. I know Maythorn had unlimited time to create this stuff but it would seem that he had unlimited patience as well, willing to wait as good as forever to get to wherever he was planning to go.

After a final glance around the room I activated the transporter and moved back to the first room. I snatched up my green crystal, vowing never again to walk underwater in a claustrophobic diving suit then passed back through the ladder room eventually returning to the enormous cavern where I gratefully breathed deep the cool, damp air created by the thundering waterfalls. The air here was richly oxygenated and was the perfect panacea to counteract my growing sense of confinement. I needed to see the sky and the sun and to feel the wind through my hair.

Eventually I approached the central pedestal and carefully fitted the partial disk into place on the platter. I was expecting the barrier preventing access to the third bridge to slide open and I wasn’t disappointed. I closed my eyes to compose myself; this non-stop puzzle solving was wearisome to my psyche despite me not feeling tired or hungry. My soul was being slowly devoured and I was beginning to understand Maythorn’s need to rest in that chair with the oceanic view.

I approached the bridge, the bridge that I hoped would lead me somehow to the third partial disk. What I saw was completely unexpected - a large section of the bridge had collapsed and tumbled away into the lower depths of the cavern. I knew instinctively that this was not Maythorn’s doing, this was a natural disaster that Maythorn had no control over or even any knowledge of. This collapse must have happened after Maythorn had departed.

The thought sent a shiver of ice running along my spine. I had always been aware of the eventuality that the intricacies of Maythorn’s puzzles might not survive between the time when he had set them up and the time of my arrival, that something might have somehow happened to render a puzzle unsolvable. It was a waking nightmare come true. It was the very concept that I might not be able to progress any further along the professors mad journey. It was the concept that I might be stuck. Stuck here forever.

If I couldn’t cross over this bridge then it could be game over. Okay, I might have countless years to find another way to cross but this wasn’t exactly something I had on my bucket list. I wanted to go home sooner, not later. Especially when ‘later’ stretched into the future forever.

I approached the gap and I could see that it was far too wide to jump and far too wide to bridge. I shook my head in despair. What was I going to do?

As if in answer a bright light caught my attention and I turned to see Gamana approaching. As usual she was a ball of blue energy that hovered and then darted about, seemingly unable to keep still.

“I wouldn't try jumping if I were you.”

Her sudden appearance was unexpected but after a few brief seconds I felt some gratitude towards her. And although her statement about jumping was rather obvious I was quite pleased that she showed some support for my plight.

She continued to talk, butting into my thoughts. “He couldn't control everything after all. I remember when this bridge collapsed not long before you came. It's a relief to see how time and nature together could outplay even him. How an unforeseen accident can ruin a life's work.”

She was now hovering on the far side of the bridge, almost teasing me by being where I couldn’t reach. The way she spoke however gave a different story. She spoke of Maythorn and her relief in seeing that he wasn’t infallible.

“I can't deny that his failure brings me joy,” she confirmed, almost as if she could sense my thoughts, and then continued, “unfortunately I still need you to stay on his path.”

She had spoken to me before about this. About continuing to follow the puzzle trail that Maythorn had laid for me and then somehow thwarting him at the end. If she was assuming that I would help her in this way then she was wrong. What I was doing was simple. I was following Maythorn’s trail simply because I had no alternative course of action. And if there was a possibility to thwart him then it meant there would also be an opportunity to thwart her. My main issue was that I still knew nothing, nothing at all. And not knowing meant not being able to choose sides. If it came down to choosing sides then I needed more information.

Mind you, I still hated Maythorn for doing this to me. Which left the question, should I also hate this peripatetic ball that called herself Gamana for not helping me?

“I think I might be able to guide you through, but first I need to show you something. Now, follow me.”

Was this woman reading my mind? I watched Gamana as she darted out into the empty space beyond the broken bridge and hovered in the distance as if she was waiting. Waiting for me.

“You will not fall!”

I walked to the edge of the stone walkway and dared to look down. It was a long way to the bottom but I fancied that I could see a coalescence of blue, twinkling energy at my feet. The blue energy seemed to extend outwards towards where Gamana waited.

“Don’t look down!”

Too late, I thought. Was I supposed to trust this person and take a step of faith into empty air? I could see through the energy and still see the vertiginous drop below. I gulped and brought my eyes back up. I fixed my gaze on her blue light and before I could convince myself otherwise I stepped off the stone and walked towards her.

“Just follow me! Trust me!”

I’m trying, I thought. I’m trying very hard. The truth of the matter was that I desperately wanted to believe in her. Unlike Maythorn, this crazy ball of light offered me hope. A hope that I could get off this crazy big dipper ride and go home. I was desperate for a way out, and that needed someone to help me. Gamana was all I had.

I walked slowly forward and I didn’t tumble to my doom. Now that I was looking up I found that I could no longer look down, instead I locked my gaze on Gamana and slowly shuffled towards her.

“No need to hurry! You must trust me!”

I was aware of one of the waterfalls getting quite close to me. It tumbled water through a hole from somewhere above and just dropped water in a gushing stream straight down without wetting any other rocks. It soaked me though.

And now ahead of me I could see an exit in the rock face. A broken wooden rope bridge dangled forlornly below the ledge at the exit and Gamana was backing up and into the exit, matching my speed as I crossed over the empty void towards her. Where the hell was she taking me?

I reached the ledge and breathed a sigh of relief as my feet touched solid rock. It was evident that Gamana had control of some kind of magic, an ability to coalesce energy into something solid. If only she would help me more often, I thought.

The exit led into a narrow tunnel that disappeared into gloomy darkness.

“This path,” said Gamana, “leads to our sanctuary. He removed the crystals to darken these tunnels.”

I could see empty sconces on the walls of the tunnel, disappearing into the darkening shadows.

“Let's have some light!” She moved towards the nearest sconce and it burst into a bluey green light, a wavering ball of bluey green energy, that lit up the way,. It looked cold but it was bright and it banished the shadows. Gamana darted forward into the tunnel and as she passed more empty sconces they too burst into light. I followed.

It was a strange feeling. For the first time I was doing something that Maythorn hadn’t planned, I was walking somewhere unexpected, almost in defiance of Maythorn and his little game plan. It felt quite liberating.

“I suppose he wanted to hide this place from you.”

I tried to make sense of what I was hearing. Maythorn had been here before and it sounded like he’d then left with no intention of returning. He’d taken the torches and presumably he’d destroyed the rope bridge. Gamana had said that she’d brought him here, back in the day when they were friends. What had happened to sour their relationship?

“It’s not far from here!”

She led me up stone steps and along the tunnel until it widened into a room containing various structures. To the left was a gate that looked somewhat like the gates on the surface. Other structures to the right looked cruder and I wondered whether these were things built by Gamana and her people. I tried the gate but it wouldn’t open.

I had no time to explore this area any further because Gamana was moving ahead, giving me no chance to travel at my own pace.

“I brought him here once too,” she called. “Surprisingly this is one of the only places he didn’t ruin since then but I doubt he kept it intact simply out of respect.”

I hurried after her and came into a larger chamber, once again containing primitive structures. “This is the place we once called the great hall of the Amma'jat. The shrine of the Seekers.”

She became still and I decided that this was her final destination, the place she wanted me to see. I looked around but there was nothing of unusual import to catch my attention. Perhaps I had been in too many weird and wonderful rooms recently. Perhaps I was now hardened to seeing out of this world sights and sounds.

“You must look around and find some blue crystal powder to cast into the fire!”

My first instinct was to ask her why but her solemnity held back my tongue. Time enough to find out, I thought, once I’ve found some.

I walked further into the chamber and crossed over a stone bridge to an elaborate wooden structure of thick branches lashed together with rope. Again it seemed too primitive to be associated with Maythorn. At the base of the structure there was a stone brazier and wooden steps led upwards towards the top.

“Have you found any blue crystal powder yet?”

I frowned at her sudden insistence and deducted one point from her solemnity rating. Only moments ago she had told me we were in no hurry and now I got the bad feeling that I was being monitored for efficiency.

I climbed up the steps to find a platform on my left. Woven baskets here were filled with grey powder and there was an old ornate metal key here that I picked up and pocketed. A horizontal beam of wood was lashed to a vertical pole and there was a wooden walkway that continued on towards the other end of the beam. At the far end the beam looked remarkably like a massive spoon.

There was no blue powder here so I retraced my steps and slowly crossed back over the stone bridge.

“We must have blue crystal powder!”

I frowned again. If she was going to keep reminding me then I was going to get cross. At least Maythorn didn’t pester me with his tasks.

I looked over the edge of the bridge to see what I was crossing over and the whole ground beneath the bridge appeared to be smoking hot, like a bed of cooling lava. The vapour rising from the ground was green and I could feel the heat rising up to my face. It certainly didn’t look like a good place to stand on. If this was a shrine then I wasn’t overly impressed.

I looked around for Gamana but she had disappeared. It would seem that her desire to nag had passed and she was happy to leave me powder hunting on my own. It suddenly felt like another puzzle, another crazy task much like Maythorn would devise. The similarity left me bemused and a little worried.

I headed back out of the shrine room and immediately saw some blue crystals jammed into a stone bucket. The bucket was standing on a table along with plenty of junk - pottery shards, vases, powder… it all looked depressingly familiar.

I took the bucket. Perhaps if I could grind the crystals into a powder then that would suffice. I suddenly had the feeling that I was being watched. Maythorn had complained about this and now I felt the same way. I was sure that Gamana was watching me from some hidden vantage point, maybe assessing me, maybe judging me. The pleasant sense of liberation that I had felt earlier was evaporating very quickly.

I continued retracing my steps, heading back towards the gate that I had passed in my hurried arrival. The structures here were crude, being wooden and held together with rope. Despite their outward appearance however they looked functional, serving a purpose that at the moment remained a mystery.

I reached the gate and confirmed that it was locked. The gate was an incongruous entity amongst the wooden structures, standing out as different with its metal bars and its heavy lock and hinges. I took out the ornate key that I had just found in the shrine and was pleased to see that it fitted the lock. When I twisted the key and pushed the gate open I was surprised when the entire gate fell forward onto the floor, clanging to the ground with a reverberating crash.

This gate had to be a Maythorn gate. Had he built and locked this gate to prevent anyone from passing through to reach whatever lay beyond? I stepped gingerly over the supine gate and ascended the wooden slope that lay beyond. The pathway curved around, passing over the top of the walkway to reach the top of the wooden structure that was close by. Here, at the peak of the structure I found two levers.

It was very odd. Here was a functioning structure that appeared to be controlled from this high vantage point by two levers but the end result, whatever it was, was clearly down below at ground level, accessible to all, whilst the locked gate meant that operating the structure was only possible to someone with the key.

I played with the levers and worked out what the structure did. There was a huge pillar of stone that one lever raised and that the other lever dropped. The pillar, when dropped, would crush whatever was positioned below it. It was a giant version of a mortar and pestle. I clambered back down, ascended some wooden steps beside the pillar and saw that there was a stone tray below the pillar where things could be placed. Things that doubtless needed crushing. The whole contraption was powered by pulleys and weights and I was struggling to understand why it was here, close to the entrance of the shrine. I was aware that this crusher would be ideal for crushing the blue crystals that I had and it soon crossed my mind that perhaps its sole purpose was actually to create blue crystal powder.

So, I thought, was blue crystal powder a necessary requirement in order to use the shrine? Would people, back in Gamana’s time, collect powder on their way to the shrine and if so, what purpose would it have served? Gamana had said that the powder was for casting into the fire and I suddenly began to suspect that they were burning the crystal powder in order to pray. It was a shrine after all. And burning the powder would create fumes. And fumes would be breathed in.

Dammit, I thought. Gamana wants me to gather powder in order to get me high! Maybe to hallucinate! Is this what she needs to do to win me over? Is this what it takes?

I stood silent and still for a while mulling these new thoughts. She was aloof and her character was cold but I had built up the impression that she was genuine in her desire to thwart Maythorn and it was for reasons she truly believed in. What if she wanted me not to hallucinate but instead to see a vision? She had said she wanted to guide me but to do that she needed to convince me and she knew it.

It was a matter of trust. Could I trust her? Did I have a choice to decide, trapped as I was in this sanctuary of hers? It was sad but I had to admit that I was as much her puppet right now as I was Maythorns. I had drank concoctions of powder and flowers for Maythorn and suffered hallucinations so now should I breathe in her concoction and suffer the same?

I placed the blue crystals on the stone tray and then passed back through the broken gate to reach the levers at the top. Had Maythorn once blocked access to the levers to stop Gamana and her people from getting high? Did he know something that I hadn’t yet discovered?

I paused again by the levers. This is a one way trip, I thought. With a sigh I pulled the lever that dropped the pillar and watched it thud down onto the crystals below. Back at ground level there was a lower tray with a spout and I placed the empty bucket on it. The weight of the bucket activated a hidden mechanism that I hadn’t noticed earlier whereby the pillar rotated to grind the crushed crystals into a fine powder before pushing the final result into the bucket.

When I picked the bucket up Gamana spoke. “Good. Now use the crane up there to throw the powder into the fire!” Her voice as always came from nowhere but just manifested itself in my mind. It was like wearing invisible headphones. I looked about but I was alone, proof, as if I needed it, that she was observing me from a distance.

“Use the crane!”

She was back alright. The prospect of being pestered drove me forward as I made my way back to the shrine. I wasn’t looking forward to what was to come but my mind was now made up. I was prepared to go high.

The crane she referred to had to be the beam with the spoon-like appendage. I was unsure what would happen but I dutifully made my way back to the shrine and climbed up the steps. After I’d tipped the powder into the spoon I backed off and Gamana promptly appeared, almost pushing me aside in her haste. She pushed the spoon and it began to propel itself around the shrine, following a circular path over the steaming rocks below and literally sprinkling the powder over the rocks as it went. The chamber was immediately filled with an unusual aroma as the powder sizzled under the intense heat. The room wobbled and darkened…

Gamana’s voice filled my mind whilst visions filled my sight.

“Now it is time I told you the story of my people. It is time you learned the truth about this world. The Dulmar were a great, noble and prosperous civilization. They were people of peace, a thriving society of wisdom and art.

“Then everything changed. At the dawn of the third age we were attacked by the Shadows. Over the years, our colonies had fallen one by one. The Shadows had slaughtered our settlers without mercy. They filled our hearts with terrible fear.

“In the great halls of Un'natko, the capital city of our world, the Circle of Elders chose three of our best people. Rhoren, the most skilled warrior, Tiador, the brightest of all scholars and a devoted shaman, me. We were called the Amma'jat, the Seekers. Our goal was to find a legendary place of great power, Quer'nelok.

“We embarked on a journey to face the unknown and to find what was hidden. This quest forged a strong friendship between the three of us. Over the years we visited countless worlds. We became exhausted and shattered under the weight of the responsibility. We learned that the Shadows had reached the outer walls of Un'natko. We almost lost faith but we couldn't stop.

“As we kept searching, we found a world that astonished all of us. This very world. Here we found what we needed the most: time. Time to find a way, a way to save our people. Our worries trapped us here, knowing that our home was only safe if we stayed on this island.

“The search was over. We knew that finding this island in our time of need was not an accident. It gave us hope, and we started to believe that this world was Quer'nelok. Over centuries we perfected our expertise. We, the Amma'jat, became idols of strength, intellect and discipline.

“But it was not enough. The infinite time we had been given made us obsessed with the overcoming urge to save our people. As we kept training and learning, pursuing power slowly became our only passion. We had risen above the boundaries of the body and mind. Eventually, we almost forgot the very principle of our mission.

“And then I had a vision of our people. I saw their suffering. At that moment I understood that we had become the very power we were sent to search for. It was time for us to head home. I knew we were prepared. We were ready to face them, but the Shadows were no longer my worst fear. I was afraid of what we had become. I was afraid of facing reality.

“We appeared at the edge of doom. Most of our great city was burning in flames. Un'natko, our home, was about to fall. And then we vanquished our enemies. There was no fight. They couldn't fight back. We cleansed our city of the Shadows. A war that had lasted years, ended in seconds.

“We were the saviors. We were celebrated like gods and that's exactly how we felt. But we knew that the people we saved were not really our people any more. We no longer belonged here. We felt we were... more.

“After witnessing our power, people lost their faith in the Council. We, the Amma'jat, had taken their place. But having fulfilled our destiny, the strong bond between the three of us started to fade. A new era had begun, the era of division and conflict.

“As our disagreements became stronger, we turned against each other. This caused the people take sides. A war had erupted from within, a war that we were too proud to stop. Chaos rumbled across the streets of Un'natko. We watched our once thriving society fall apart. Our home was destroyed, all because of us, because of what we had become.

“I couldn't live with myself, I couldn’t bear the great emptiness I felt any more. I left what remained of my world for one final journey. Following the path we once walked upon I found Quer'nelok once again. But I did not come back for its power, i came back to face the curse that made me forget who I was.

“I spent centuries meditating on my past mistakes, trying to find a way to make up for what I’d done . By accepting the loss of all attachments that kept me in the physical world, I managed to ascend to a new form of existence. In this way I will never lose myself again, and I can guard this place for eternity.”

It was a long story and during its telling I was filled with images of her people and her friends. The walls of the chamber became her backdrop and her stage was filled with images of her story. As she spoke I remained detached from reality and almost became part of the story, such was its power and closeness.

At the end of the telling the darkness receded and my awareness of reality returned. Before I could gather my thoughts, Gamana appeared and hovered before me.

“He didn't want you to know about our heritage. He didn't want you to see how the power of the island can ruin an entire civilisation. He too wants to ignore it, but you must know the truth! He cannot accept the destructive power of this knowledge he worships above all else. No civilisation could contain this kind of power, especially not a single person.”

She darted away in a blaze of bluey green light.

“It is time for you to return to his path,” she called. “I'll meet you back at the entrance.”

Alone again, I slowly made my way down the steps and out of the shrine. I wasn’t feeling at all groggy or tired after the experience of breathing in the smoke from the powder and there didn’t seem to be any aftereffects. My mind revolved around what Gamana had done in dedicating her life to staying here in order to protect both this place and others. When I had first encountered her she had come over as a self centred entity filled with hubris and perhaps jealousy. Now, I saw her as a selfless woman who had ascended into a new form of life, a life filled with loneliness yet brimming with unfettered altruism.

My mind was torn between her need to protect and Maythorn’s desire to learn and I still didn’t know which one was the most honorable.

At the entrance I balked as I looked over the ledge but Gamana was there waiting for me and I saw the coalescence of energy at my feet providing me with the magical pathway back over the yawning chasm.

“Now,” she said, “you must continue following his guidance. I will help you get back on his path. He was the first person who found this island after we left and you must be the last one to ever be here.”

The journey over the gap was just as difficult as before but this time I walked with more purpose to my step and with slightly more confidence. The route took me right through the waterfall and I emerged from the cascading water soaking wet with the feeling that I’d passed through a baptism of fire, despite dripping with cold water. My new knowledge of Gamana’s past was filling my thoughts, changing the way I thought of my predicament and of my allegiance.

I was steered, not back to where I’d started from, but instead towards the far side of the broken bridge. Gamana had got me across the gap and now I was in a position to continue along Maythorn’s path, a path of twisted logic of solving puzzles in order to learn things he knew but what he refused to simply divulge.

“You have to go alone now,” she said. “But soon we will meet again.” The ball of energy that was Gamana skittered away and once again I was left alone.

Behind me was the broken bridge, beyond which I could see the enormous cavern and the central pedestal. I needed to find the third partial disk and fit it into that pedestal in order to complete the set. Quite what would happen then was unknown to me and it was something I didn’t have the time to think about right now. What I did start thinking about was how I was going to get back across the broken bridge once I’d claimed the third partial disk?

One thing at a time, I thought. At the back of my mind I imagined Gamana rescuing me again. After all this effort on her part, she surely wouldn’t leave me stranded on this side of the bridge.

I headed into the tunnel, pleased in a strange way to see orange crystal lights again. The tunnel was short and at the end of the tunnel there was a contraption angled at 45° emitting a green beam of light. At the base of the device there was a transporter crystal and the green beam was being emitted up a slanting tunnel to an unseen place in the distance. I tried to transport by touching the handprint but nothing happened.

There was a lever to pull that looked like a snooker queue. When I pulled it there was a rattling sound in the slanting tunnel and an empty hexagonal tray, hanging from a cable just like a cable car, came swiftly down the tunnel to come to a rest at the bottom. Aha, I knew what to do with hexagonal trays and I wasted no time fitting my green crystal onto it. A second lever, which required pumping three times, then sent the tray shooting back up the tunnel.

The green beam brightened which told me that the transporter was now connected to my green crystal and I continued to waste no time by pressing my hand quickly against the handprint. I was getting used to the feeling of being transported by now and so when I moved it came as no shock.

I found myself at the top of the slanting tunnel, this time looking downwards to where the green beam originated. I retrieved my crystal, keen as ever to keep it on my person, before looking around. There was little to see here, just the transporter device beside me and a barred door beside which was a white button. The door duly slid downwards into the floor after I pressed the button and I stepped through into a spacious cavern lit by powerful white lights. In front of me I could see a large circular object encased in a cage whilst pathways went off to the left and right. I headed left and came to a table. On the table there was a letter.

These are the lower levels of The Mechanics. It was here, I learned that all the attributes of the different minerals could be harnessed by dividing the energy beam of the white crystal. The shortage of crystalline materials no longer hindered my work. With this knowledge, I was even able to isolate green crystal beams. The exact same energy ray that the ancient gateways use. This could suggest that there is a connection between this world and the origin of the ancient gateways. Focussing on my work helped me deal with the unbearable loneliness that started to consume my mind.

Next to the letter there was a demonstration that had been setup showing a white light beam passing through a prism and splitting into a spectrum of colours. I guess the point that Maythorn was making was that the super bright high energy white light was a mixture all of the other colours including their properties. And the colours, including their properties, could be separated back out. Maythorn was indeed another Isaac Newton in the making.

The letter concluded with an admission of growing loneliness. After countless centuries of being alone I didn’t consider that to be much of a revelation.

Except, I thought, long term loneliness leads to madness and the growing complexity and meaningless of his puzzles made me wonder if his madness was indeed burgeoning.

Just beyond the table there was an open door leading up some steps. At the top there was a closed door and through the bars of the door I could see a kind of balcony overlooking the cavern. I went back down the steps and I could see the balcony from below but there was no other way of reaching it.

I walked over to the circular cage. The cage surrounded a metallic circular room with two separate gantries on the outside of the cage. Each gantry had steps leading up to what looked like an entrance position but there were no entrances to be found. I peeked through the cage and looked through what seemed to be circular windows into the inner metal room.

I was very surprised when i realised that I was looking into the mechanical room, the one with a central wall bisecting the room into two semicircular areas. This room had moved downwards from the surface and had been replaced with a second room after I’d solved the concentric rings puzzle and that meant I had to be directly underneath the mechanical room and the cannon. I backed away and looked upwards to see a tall circular shaft with daylight at the very top. I fancied that the metalwork that I could see at the top was the floor of the room with the spiral staircase.

I was no longer surprised with Maythorn’s ability to create this kind of complexity, in fact I had stopped wondering how he had accomplished this level of engineering mastery with nothing more than an anvil and hammer. He was lonely and he was mad but he was also an unmitigated genius.

On the other side of the cage there was a door set into the wall that looked like the way into a bank vault. It had a rotating combination lock that I knew I couldn’t crack.

The remaining area in the cavern was to the right of the entrance and here I found two complicated looking control panels. The leftmost panel had a seven digit display showing the numbers -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2 and 2. There was also a slider with four positions, a START button and a RESET button. The RESET button was in the centre of four concentric rings, two of which were lit up and two of which were dark.

I immediately recognised the rings for I had seen them before. The machine at the top of the ladder that controlled the rotation of the inner walls of the mechanical room had used the same schematic. It would seem that here was another control panel that would also allow me to rotate the walls. I was immediately tempted to have a go because, knowing Maythorn, there had to be something in the mechanical room that I would need.

If I could rotate the rings so as to line up the gaps then I figured that I would be able to get in via the two gantries, one gantry for each door. But the control panel gave nothing away - it was a classic Maythorn puzzle.

It took a lot of experimentation and fiddling but eventually I worked out how to operate the panel. The slider had four positions and each position selected two of the four rings by lighting them up. In addition, for each slider position it was possible to transfer a digit into the lower area by directly pressing the digit.

The digits represented 90° turns of the rings. A +1 was a clockwise turn of 90°, a +2 was a clockwise turn of 180°, a -1 was an anti-clockwise turn of 90° a -2 was an anti-clockwise turn of 180° and a -3 was an anti-clockwise turn of 270°.

The numbers were additive over different rings so for example if a ring was influenced by a -3 and a +2 then the result would be an anti-clockwise turn of 90°, the same as a -1.

Each ring was influenced by two of the four digits in accordance with the information gleaned from the lit rings. If the four digits, from left to right, were a, b, c and d then the influencers were

The first (inner) ring was influenced by digits a and c.
The second ring was influenced by digits a and b.
The third ring was influenced by digits c and d.
The fourth (outer) ring was influenced by digits b and d.

Using this information I could now position the rings. There was only one attempt possible at a time and that was performed by selecting four digits using the slider and then pressing START. After an attempt the only thing to do was press RESET which would return the rings to their default position.

On the outer edge of the ring display were the Roman numerals for 1 and 2, these represented where I needed to align the gaps. It was an unusual puzzle, not just in its difficulty but also in the fact that every time I tried a new ring configuration then the actual linings of the mechanical room would also spin around. I became concerned that the continuous start and reset cycles would wear out the room itself but, as in all of the puzzles, I had no choice but to persevere until I had a solution.

To gain access to the room through door 1 I worked out that I had to select digits 2, 0, 2, -1. I then ascended the closest gantry and entered the room. Everything looked untouched since my previous visit and it was strange to once again look at the semicircular table and the puzzle that I had already solved. Beneath the table the cogs still revolved and the ticking of hidden machinery still pervaded the room.

Was there anything to do here? There had to be something, I thought. Maythorn wouldn’t have created this devious puzzle unless there was a reason to enter. Through the central window I could see the second room and it also looked untouched.

On the table there was an object that I didn’t understand. It had been there all of the time, right since my first visit, and I hadn’t understood it then. It was like a container and it had an oddly shaped feature that could be a lock. The keyhole, if that is what it was, was L shaped.

Then I remembered the key that I had picked up in Maythorn’s underwater sanctuary. It had been hanging on the wall and when I’d picked it up the airlock containing the suit had opened up. I quickly examined the key and there it was, an L shaped ending! I fitted it into the keyhole and the container opened to reveal a button. Naturally I pressed the button, looked around and movement in the other room caught my eye. Something next door had opened up!

Now all I had to do was access the other room and see what had changed. I returned to the panel and spent more time working out the code to position the rings for the other gantry. Eventually I came up with the required digits which were 1, -1, -3, 2. However when I ascended the far gantry I found that the entrance, though open, was boarded up. Maythorn, it would seem, had no intention of making this easy. The boards were metallic and solidly placed and I realised that I would have to find another way to get into the second room.

I was fully aware that I hadn’t studied the rightmost half of the control panel area yet. There was another collection of levers and buttons there and I was now hoping that they would somehow provide the means to get into the second room. There was also the balcony area which was accessible through the locked gate at the top of the stairs by the table. I looked up at the balcony and saw cables strung across from where the gate was to a post attached to the top of the cage. On the top of the post I could see what looked like a lever.

I returned to the panel area and took a good look at the rightmost panel. There were two wide levers and between the two levers were positions marked A, B and C. Both levers were set to C. To the left of the levers there was a white button. There was also a small central display panel and this had a three position slot also marked A, B and C. There were white and orange lights present on both panels.

Like before it took a little experimentation to work out what was going on and, like before, nothing was intuitive. Maythorn, if nothing else, was predictable in his ability to make simple things complicated.

This is what I worked out. The central slotted display was simply a map of what I could see in front of me. The lower position, marked B, was the ground floor right in front of me. The topmost position, marked A, was what was on the surface high above. And the middle position, which was offset to one side and marked C, was the balcony. This map showed me where things were. The orange light showed me where the mechanical room was and the white light showed me where the room with the spiral staircase was. This display panel was actually superfluous as it was evident where they were by just looking but it did identify the three positions by letter.

The rightmost panel allowed me to move the rooms around. I’d already seen this in action whilst on the surface and I had marvelled at the engineering feat involved. Now, from this lower vantage point, I could see how it was done.

The left lever selected what to move. A selected the spiral staircase room and B selected the mechanical room. The right lever selected the destination position as identified by the central display and the white button initiated the move. For the move to happen it was obvious that the destination position had to be empty.

After ensuring that the mechanical room’s rings were set to provide access to the second room I moved the room to the balcony by setting the left lever to B, the right lever to C and then pressing the white button. Then I brought the spiral staircase room down to the ground level by setting the left lever to C, the right lever to B and pressing the white button.

My first objective was to reach that lever at the top of the cage and it seemed to me that the spiral staircase would give me the required height. So having brought the room down to the bottom I found that I could now climb the staircase to get to the top of the cage. It was the cables leading to the upper gate that held my interest because it suggested to me that the lever might operate the gate’s lock.

From the top of the spiral staircase I found that I had access to the lever and when I operated the lever I saw the upper gate open.

Beside the lever I found a new type of disk. It looked like a dial with eight sections around the edge, each section having a different symbol on it. I had no idea what it was for but I slipped it into my pocket. Looking upwards I could see the cannon suspended from the ceiling of the upper building and it made me yearn momentarily for the open air but then the sudden thought of the cannon dropping made me hurry back down the staircase.

I headed past the table with the prism demonstration and went directly to the stairs leading to the upper gate. It was a good feeling to find that the gate was indeed open and that I could step through and onto the balcony. The big question now was whether or not I could enter the second room. To my delight I climbed some steps leading around the metal shell of the building and found the entrance open. I entered and saw in front of me another dial, looking exactly the same as the first one I had found. It had been exposed when I had pushed the button in the first room.

To my further delight, when I left the room I saw the third partial disk machine against the wall just beside the doorway. It was very similar to the previous two having a puzzle mechanism on the right hand side and the usual closed tray on the left. The mechanism was slightly different but I could readily see that it used the eight section dials that I had just acquired. Both of the dials slotted easily into place leaving a gap for a third one.

All I had to do now was locate a third dial but I was unsure what to do to find it so I decided to go and examine the vault door again, this being the only outstanding thing I could think of. As I approached the upper gate I spotted a button mounted on a small pedestal just to the left of the gate and I pressed it with no hesitation. There was a whirring sound just to the side of me and a mechanical arm moved outwards from the wall towards a window in the building. In the arm’s pincer-like grip was the third dial!

I hurried back to the room but to my dismay I realised that the window in question was in the unreachable first room. I couldn’t reach the dial from the outside either because it was too high to reach.

The solution came easily. I returned to the control panel and moved the room away from the balcony up towards the surface where it was nicely out of the way. The lever positions to do this was B on the left and A on the right. I then moved the spiral staircase room into the balcony area. To achieve this I moved the left lever to C and the right lever also to C. Now it was a simple matter to enter the room and retrieve the dial which was easily reachable.

I returned to the partial disk machine and inserted the final dial. It dropped easily into place and then everything burst into life with flashing lights and lit dials. There were five dials in all, two having being there from the start and then there were the three that I’d just fitted. Together they made a revolving drum that looked exactly like a slot machine straight out of Vegas. The symbols I could see on the dial edges were random and to the right of the drum was a lever just screaming to be pulled. It was a slot machine!

The incongruity was almost laughable. After all of the puzzles I had endured to get to this point in Maythorn’s mad journey, to now have to play a slot machine seemed absurd. Slot machines, by their nature, were ultra intuitive devices. Pull a lever then see if you’ve won. Repeat ad nauseum. I felt a pang of disappointment with the professor, the self made doyen of obscure puzzles.

I pulled the lever and watched the wheels spin. It was actually very realistic, even more so when I didn’t hit the jackpot. It took two more pulls before I got five of a kind and I was rewarded, not with a mountain of coins, but with a Vegas like message that announced in a true gaudy way

Time to crack the safe!
46, 11, 37, 77

That just had to be a reference to the vault door at the back of the cavern. I hurried over and dialled in the code, one number at a time. Once I’d done that I stepped back and watched as the vault door rotated, slid backwards and then lifted upwards. Beyond the door I looked about, momentarily bewildered by the familiarity, but then I recognised where I was. I was by the exit from the tower, the very tower that had brought me underground.

For a few seconds I thought that the trail was going to take me back up into the open air where I could breathe in the freshness and feel a waft of clean air through my hair. Then I saw that the tower door was still closed and my only option was to retrace my underground steps back towards the enormous cavern and the pedestal with two partial disks already fitted.

At least, I thought, I don’t have to cross back over the broken bridge. Was it serendipity or was it planned? It was an unusual coincidence but one I welcomed.

I made my way to the central pedestal by crossing the chasm and then calling the lift that took me down to the enormous cavern, the pedestal in the middle and the circular platter that was waiting for the third partial disk. Fitting this final piece would complete the disk and I couldn’t help but wonder what majestic thing would happen. Maythorn’s contraptions were getting wilder and bigger and I wasn’t expecting to be disappointed.

The disk piece fitted snugly onto the platter and I backed away when floor panels began to swing upwards to reveal a hole. Something close by started moving and I looked wildly about, trying to make sense of what was unfolding. The motion resolved into a downward movement but with a sideways component that induced a brief feeling of dizziness. Everything was dropping and picking up speed and I lost my bearings as I realised I was somehow turning whilst heading downwards. I was moving along a spiral path and I then saw that the floor was sliding down a central column, following a helical rail that acted as a guiding track. I had thought that I was already very deep in the bowels of this odd world but now I was heading even lower.

The ground eventually came to a halt and there in front of me, built into the central column, was a door. I looked about. High above I could see the bridges and the white lights, completely out of reach. My feeling of isolation from the outside world grew as I contemplated the vast weight and pressure of rock above my head. How in the name of all that is holy had Maythorn engineered this immense helical lift mechanism?

I peered through the door to discover more stairs spiralling downwards, following a vertical shaft that cut even lower through the rock. I slowly moved down the stairs, trying to imagine Maythorn creating this mad world. What drove this man to spend so long doing this? Was it really a philanthropic sense of duty to his fellow humans, or was he just completely bonkers?

At the bottom of the stairs I could see gantries going off in three directions, beneath which was a huge reservoir of dark, cold looking water. The air here was warmer but less fresh and the only sound was the distant rush of water as the waterfalls hit the surface of the reservoir.

To the left, a short gantry led to an area where there were five dials set on the wall. Each dial had a different emblem and also had a moveable pointer that could be set between 1 and 8. The emblems were small and circular and had a differing number of dots numbering from one to five dots.

Straight ahead from the stairs were two gantries, running side by side. One gantry was blocked by five closed gates, all in a row, whilst the other gantry ran in parallel to it providing a good view of the closed gates. I could see that beyond the five gates there was a solid looking door and it was was clear to me that I needed to open the five gates in order to reach the door.

Beside each gate there was a white crystal and each crystal was slightly different in shape and form. In addition there was a sliding dolly cart that could be pushed along a rail and positioned beside any of the five crystals. I gave the cart an experimental push and discovered that when I moved the cart up to a crystal then I could hear a sound, presumably being emitted by the crystal and picked up and amplified by equipment on the dolly cart.

Each crystal was emitting a different sound. I listened closely to each one and confirmed that the sound pattern was short, just a second or so, and was being continually repeated, over and over again.

It was something I was sure I needed to remember but for now I moved away to check the final gantry, the one running to the right from the base of the stairs. This gantry was quite long and at the very end there was a blackboard covered with geometric patterns. The patterns were numbered 1 to 8. Half way along the gantry there was an orange screen displaying a picture of a crystal and five buttons marked with the same symbols that I had seen on the five dials. When I pressed a button I saw a different crystal on the screen, being one of the five crystal shapes I could see by the gates.

After further studying I saw what I had to do. The screen and the blackboard were just informational, providing cross references to the link between the crystals and the dials. The bank of dials was just an overly complex way of entering a five digit code and the crystals was an equally complex way of garnering information about the gate positions. It was classic Maythorn and one I was becoming wearily accustomed to.

The first piece of cross referencing involved numbering the gates. Each sound bite was unique to each gate and on the blackboard were drawn sound envelopes, little graphs of sound amplitudes over time. It was therefore possible to match the sound bite against the envelope and thus assign a number to each gate. The gate numbers turned out to be, numbering from left to right as seen by the dolly cart, 7 1 4 8 2.

The second piece of cross referencing involved identifying the crystals. Each crystal was easily recognised on the orange screen and could therefore be assigned a symbol. The number of dots on each symbol turned out to be, numbering from left to right as seen by the dolly cart, 3 5 1 4 2.

The final step was to enter a five digit code by turning the pointers on the dials. The code, reading from left to right, was 4 2 7 8 1, this being the gate numbers reshuffled into ascending crystal number order.

Next to the first gate there was a button. I’d tried pressing it earlier but nothing had happened; this time however the gates opened one at a time to reveal the final door set solidly into the cavern wall.

The amount of engineering effort that Maythorn had put into this gate opening puzzle was nothing short of stupendous. The orange screen for example was a major step beyond his already formidable mechanical skill involving as it did a form of screen capable of showing images. And then next door to the screen he had used a very low tech blackboard.

I shook my head, unable and now unwilling to understand his level of competence in these things. Instead I walked along the now open gantry towards the solid door that was cut into the vertical rock face. It was a heavy door with one of those wheels that hinted at watertight air locks. I tried the wheel and discovered that it turned easily.

Beyond the door was a corridor whose walls were lined with moving cogs and pipes. It was very warm, filled with steam and also filled with the sound of groaning mechanical movement. A couple of the pipes were broken and white light was spilling out, sparking with unbridled energy. At the end of the corridor was another heavy metal door, again sealed tightly closed with a wheel mechanism and sporting a yellow warning triangle depicting a skull and crossbones.

Was this a dangerous area I was in? Why were pipes broken and letting out light? And why was there a deathly looking warning sticker on the door in front of me? I had no choice but to open the door because it was the only way to go. There was a second door close by but it was locked tight whereas when I tried to turn the wheel it rotated easily and smoothly.

The door swung open and beyond I saw a room that looked very opulent. At first I thought it was my imagination but when I stepped in I had to admit that not only did the room look opulent but it actually was opulent.

The floor was carpeted in rich fabric and the walls were covered in shelves and books, all tidily arranged. There were two circular annexes with walls tastefully covered with fleur-de-lis wallpaper and there were desks and tables arranged around the room for private study and contemplation. The main colour was red and even the books that lined the shelves were red and blue as if they were making a profound design statement rather than provide a written reference for the inquisitive bookworm.

This lavishly equipped library just had to be Maythorn’s headquarters. There was a lot to look at but stupidly I found myself wondering how he’d managed to keep the luxurious carpet so immaculately clean. And what was that skull and crossbones all about? I then noticed that the door had closed quietly behind me and a cursory examination told me it wouldn’t open. So here I was, finally in the heart of Maythorn’s domain. Was this, at last, the end of the trail?

In one of the annexes there was a table. A proper table. Not a roughly hewn wooden table lashed together with rope or a crudely shaped table chipped out of unyielding stone, but a professionally carved table with ornate leg supports, curved around the bend in the floor and embellished with an M monogram. On the table there was a letter.

The point came where I slipped. The idea of eternal solitude tortured me beyond imagination. It even overcame my sense of duty, it made me homesick. I felt like I was suffocating. I knew that I would have to find a way to escape, but before that I needed to do something. I wanted to reveal Quern to all worlds, to share this incredible power. At the beginning of your journey I asked you to cooperate with me. This is the point where I require your assistance. Help me to give the worthy a chance and the opportunity to make a difference.

It was definitely a case of Gamana vs Maythorn. Maythorn wanted me, somehow, to expose this world, replete with its powers, to the Worldchain, allegedly for the good of the Worldchain. Gamana wanted the opposite, telling me that the knowledge was too dangerous, that it would allegedly end up destroying the Worldchain.

Was I supposed to make a decision based upon what I now knew? Both arguments were, as far as I could tell, based upon their opinions. Their beliefs were subjective, not objective. Their pleas were from the heart and not from the head.

Gamana stated that the knowledge and the immortality was too much to handle and that the power and eternal burden would be too much to control. It seemed to me that Gamana’s problem had been not about the power per se but more about the fact that she and her two companions couldn’t agree.

Maythorn claimed that the knowledge and power would benefit humankind but to me historical evidence proved otherwise. Power breeds dominance. Domination breeds war and death. Humankind was indeed a miracle of God and nature but death arising from power struggles was a construct of man alone.

It was a sad thing that Maythorn and Gamana hadn’t settled their differences when they were both here. They’d certainly had plenty of time to resolve their issues. Bloody centuries. This failure alone highlighted the true weakness of humans.

I sighed and looked again at the table. Here was where Maythorn had written his letters and a partially written letter was still open.

Although I was not able to fix the ancient gateway, I managed to b-

I wondered what had interrupted him, here in this bookish haven. The only ancient gateway I knew of was back on the surface where I’d started on this mad journey. Had he been trying to fix it? What had he managed to do before being rudely interrupted?

The rest of the annex was empty. There were powerful white lights behind the window and they could be turned off with a handily placed switch but once turned off the windows proved to be false, looking out on nothing but rock.

There was a second annex, also circular, with a large white screen against the wall and a projector aimed conveniently at the screen. There was a torch holder built into the projector and when I inserted the white torch the screen lit up but sadly it was blank. On the projector were three slide holders that could be rotated into place but the glass slides that were fitted were all blank.

On impulse I fitted the blue torch. I’d been caught out twice now by forgetting to try the blue light that revealed hidden ink and I didn’t want to be caught out again. To my surprise a message appeared on the white screen. Maythorn had done it again with his invisible ink but this time I had nipped the problem in the bud and discovered it very quickly!
The message read

6-3-2 multorum

There was an arrow linking the number 2 to the first letter u.

I rotated the slide holder to reveal a second message.

6-3-2
Fortunae meae,
multorum faber.

There was an arrow linking the number 3 to the word multorum.

I rotated the slide holder once more to reveal a table.

1 12 3 3
2 5 3 6
3 10 2 2
4 20 3 6
5 7 3 2
6 15 5 3
7 13 1 9
8 19 2 2

The first two messages revealed the meaning of the arrows. The u was the second letter in the word multorum hence the link from 2 to u and the word multorum was the third word in the sentence hence the link from 3 to multorum.

I eventually realised that the number 6 referred to the sixth letter that I had read, penned by my ever absent friend William Maythorn. I had collected the letters as I found them and during my journey I had glossed over the fact that some of his letters had a Latin phrase at the bottom. The phrases were by and large meaningless and I had ignored them but I discovered that the phrase fortunae meae, multorum faber was written at the foot of the sixth letter.

So the key 6-3-2 identified the letter u in Maythorn’s letter number 6.

The table in the third slide almost certainly identified eight letters, using the same three digit code. After looking each letter up I ended up with:

1 12 3 3 S
2 5 3 6 A
3 10 2 2 E
4 20 3 6 C
5 7 3 2 U
6 15 5 3 L
7 13 1 9 U
8 19 2 2 M

The word saeculum was a Latin word referring to a period of time, typically a person’s lifetime. This word, doubtless pulled out of the Latin dictionary by Maythorn, was quite apt seeing as a person’s lifetime in this peculiar world was actually forever.

Beside the projector there was another table. This one was an ornate metal table with a glass top on which was placed a perfectly ironed white tablecloth. On the tablecloth there was an odd looking typewriter, one with a mechanical keyboard but with a strange looking paper carriage. When I operated the keys the typewriter printed strange geometric symbols, a different symbol for each letter. The carriage return key was yellow, the keyboard layout was European and the limit of characters per line was only four but otherwise it was just another typewriter. I made a note of all twenty six symbols, taking care to especially memorise the symbols making up the letters in the word saeculum.

There were a few interesting books laying about. Next to the typewriter was a book entitled The Musings of an Evolved Simian by someone called Jose Cardoso. There were a few others too but the concept of there being any book at all here was interesting. I had been under the impression that Maythorn had arrived here with no possessions, a bit like myself. Yet the presence of the book, written by someone else, implied that he had brought it here from elsewhere. And if he’d done that then it begged the question, what else had he brought with him? Were the things in this library brought in? Or were they perhaps leftover possessions of Gamana’s people, or even the Dulmarians? Or had the professor built them himself?

Between two bookshelves there was a mechanism built into what looked like a door. The door was covered in red quilted material and the mechanism was a diamond shaped keypad consisting of eight buttons that were marked with partial lines from the geometric symbol font I had just memorised. After some study I worked out that a letter could be selected by pushing just two keys. When the partial lines for the two keys were overlaid then the composite symbol would be that letter.

I figured that I needed to key in the symbols for saeculum. Numbering the keys from 1 to 8 (starting at the top and going clockwise) I keyed the symbols in as follows:

For S, I pressed keys 1 and 4 and then the white diamond.
For A, I pressed keys 1 and 8 and then the white diamond.
For E, I pressed keys 5 and 6 and then the white diamond.
For C, I pressed keys 2 and 4 and then the white diamond.
For U, I pressed keys 1 and 5 and then the white diamond.
For L, I pressed keys 1 and 3 and then the white diamond.
For U, I pressed keys 1 and 5 and then the white diamond.
For M, I pressed keys 6 and 7 and then the white diamond.

As I did this a diamond shaped area beside the white diamond displayed the composite symbol and after completing each symbol a light on a panel that was higher up on the wall, above the door, lit up. Each correct entry added another lit light to the eight lights. Upon entering the final symbol and lighting the eighth light the door slid downwards to reveal a chamber beyond the threshold.

Waiting for me on the other side of the door was Gamana.

“So he led you into his library. I have to admit, it's really beautiful.” She wafted into the room and began roaming around, like a dog sniffing for a hidden bone. “Sadly, it's just as fake as he is. Maythorn… the archaeologist, the friend, the enemy, the saviour, the wicked.”

She made her way back towards the new exit, trailing blue light as she moved.

“It's all the same to me. It's all just the facade of a broken man whose hunger for proving himself could never be satisfied. I can only hope that by now you can see this too.”

I could sense her considering the situation, sizing me up and weighing up possibilities.

“Yes,” she averred, “I think you're ready.”

Gamana then disappeared through the door, leaving me alone. Why wouldn’t this woman, this entity, talk to me and let me ask her questions? I had so many of them.

I followed her through the door. It was a shame to leave the library behind for it had a compelling aura of calm and tranquility. This new chamber, by contrast, was quite messy, filled with nothing but broken junk. In the far corner I found some wooden book spines that matched the books in the library and that really disappointed me. I hadn’t actually opened any of the library books but now it appeared that Gamana was right; the books on the shelves were false and the library was indeed a fake.

There were two large round doors in the chamber. One was locked shut whilst the other was gaping open. Both doors were made from rusty metal which was a little unsettling. If the doors were rusting then it implied that entropy was at work here and the doors were slowly aging.

I passed through the open door to find myself in a large, rocky amphitheatre. A high gantry was suspended across the width of the amphitheatre, the left hand side appearing to connect to the locked door in the previous chamber while the right hand side led towards a closed door high up in the wall.

Below the gantry there was a large circular frame which appeared to be constructed from metal girders shaped into the pattern of the three partial disks. My instinct told me that this was it, the culmination of my journey. That circle was going to be the final focus of my entire experience on this world. There was a bridge that crossed over dark water that would grant access to the frame but a long section of the bridge was pulled back making it uncrossable.

To my right there was a raised platform and I warily walked up the slope leading towards it. I could immediately see that Maythorn had once been here, the residual mess was characteristically his. There was a long bench and a lone seat; again they were covered in a layer of rust. The lights close by were still lit including two desk lights that were sat on the bench top. I couldn’t begin to imagine how long this place had been here; the rust spoke to me of many years and yet the lights were still on. It seemed bizarre but it vindicated Maythorn’s belief that crystal energy was eternal.

On the bench I saw various pieces of paperwork that provided solutions to some of the puzzles I’d endured whilst to the left of the bench there was a pinboard on which were pinned the schematics for energy distribution around the island. From the batteries to the light tube puzzles, through the pillboxes down to the partial disk machines and finally culminating in the circular frame on the other side of the bridge. Like an eye, it seemed to be watching me. Unblinking, unwavering in intensity, almost malefic.

The schematic made it clear to me that the frame was the final receiver of the white power. It was also clear to me, just by looking, that it was currently dormant. Even as I thought this through I noticed a switch between the pinboard and the bench. It was unclear what it did but I knew I had to operate it.

I pulled the lever down. Unexpectedly a small loudspeaker next to the lever crackled into life and what I assumed was Maythorn’s voice gushed out of it.

“Although I wasn't able to fix the ancient gateway, I managed to build a less sophisticated one. I was not able to specify the target world of this new one-way portal but I am sure that it is capable of providing a safe journey. This is where I left this world... and I want you to follow me.”

As he spoke the frame burst into life, filling with the familiar green light that I associated with transporters. The light was stronger and more powerful than any I’d seen before and I gasped as tendrils of green energy flickered around the frame before settling into a steady green glow. This was a gateway! Inside me I had already known it but I hadn’t dared to hope. Here, with luck, was my way out of this crazy world.

What had he just said? His first sentence matched what he’d written in the library but there he’d been interrupted. He’d said that this wasn’t a real ancient gateway but one he’d cobbled together. And he’d admitted that he didn’t know where it went.

The thought of walking into it suddenly lost its appeal. Only once before I’d thought I might die and that was whilst underwater. Was I now going to be forced to risk my life again?

Maythorn’s voice continued to crackle out of the speaker. “But before I grant you the opportunity to do so you must do something that even I was not able to accomplish. I need you to open Quern. For everyone.”

So here was his great plan. He wanted me do do something, goodness knows what, and then hightail it through his homemade transporter to goodness knows where. My immediate thought was why didn’t he just find a way to do it himself but my attention was caught by a box flipping open to reveal two key hooks. The left hook was empty but a small key hung from the right hand hook. I took it and read the label fastened to the key ring. It read ‘The other key’.

I wondered what Gamana would have to say about Maythorn’s cunning plan and on cue the blue ball of energy that was Gamana appeared on the upper gantry. Her voice filled my mind.

“This world is out of time, out of balance. Even its very existence is a great risk. It’s power is... unnatural, unbearable.

“If you help him more will come to use this power selfishly, each of them will grow and destroy. He will unchain this destructive curse and let it rumble through worlds without any boundaries. This force uncontained will be the end of countless civilizations just as it was the end of mine. You must destroy the gateway and seal Quer'nelok forever. No one else should ever find this place again. You must do this for all mankind.”

It was the flip side of the coin. Gamana wanted me to destroy the gateway and thus keep it isolated forever from the Worldchain. For a short while I was confused but then I realised that the gateway she was referring to was not this one, not Maythorn’s homemade transporter that went somewhere unknown, but the ancient gateway on the surface.

I stood silent and still as I considered this. Was she telling me that the upper gateway still worked, that it could still be a target gateway and potentially receive someone else? Could another person, another ‘Maythorn’, arrive here at any time and do this all over again? The professor, in his misguided wisdom, had messed up the transmitting side of things; the upper gateway couldn’t transmit to somewhere else, but could it still receive?

Neither side had a convincing case. Perhaps, I thought, I should use Maythorn’s transporter without saving or destroying anything. Just get away from here and be done with it. I looked at the small key then made my way down the slope towards the transporter. By the bridge there was a lock which doubtless would extend the bridge across to the transporter frame, granting me access to just hightail it out of here. The prospect was tantalising, so tantalising that I pushed the key into the lock and tried to turn it.

The key wouldn’t turn and I nodded in acknowledgement at Maythorn’s planning skill. He wasn’t going to let me go that easily, he had planned this too thoroughly. I looked around, wondering where else the key would fit and remembered the other circular door that led to the upper gantry. The key had to be for there.

I returned to the previous chamber and tried the key in the locked door. It turned easily and I stepped through to find myself on the upper gantry with the sickly glow of the transporter on my left. The gantry led me across the amphitheatre to a closed door which readily opened at my touch. Through the door there was a room.

Directly in front of me was what looked like a brass periscope and I couldn’t resist having a peek through the eye piece. Through the periscope I saw the original ancient gateway, the place where I’d started on this madcap adventure. To the left of the periscope a monorail track headed off through a hole in the wall and above the periscope there was what looked like a huge magnifying glass.

Unusually, scattered on the floor of this room, were many loose punchcards. I frowned in concentration as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. Punchcards were used by computers of old, stiff cards with strategically placed holes that were scanned by the processing unit of the computer and turned into instructions or read as data.

The only other item of interest was a small bay area with a white button positioned beside it on the wall. I pushed the button.

Maythorn’s voice crackled once again from a nearby speaker. This time the speaker was right next to the button.

“I prepared everything to be able to connect the ancient gateway of Quern to the Worldchain. I designed all the machinery and I programmed the whole procedure. The only thing I needed was... calculations. Complex calculations I was not able to do myself.”

The wall of the room slowly cracked open to admit a bright white light and as the crack enlarged I saw what could only be a vast computer bank. The area of the computer was immense, stretching into the distance and upward as far as I could see. The lights emanating from the massive machine were white crystal lights, thousands of them, stretching like regimented soldiers away into the distance, across, up and down.

“I invented this machine to think,” said the professor, “think, when the capabilities of the mind are no longer enough.”

It was extraordinary, a mind boggling achievement of the highest order. It must have taken Maythorn decades, if not centuries, to build this monster of a calculator. But why?

“The only task ahead of me was to wait. And that was exactly what I was incapable of doing. I knew that the calculations could take centuries to finish. I was tired. I couldn't resist the calling of the portal I’d built. I wanted to live again. I left my life's work behind…”

My mind reeled with the vastness of what I was hearing. This machine had been sat here calculating for centuries? Perhaps still calculating. And Maythorn had moved on and passed through his homemade transporter centuries ago, leaving this machine to finish the calculation on its own.

Maythorn had spoken earlier about his loneliness and about abandoning his goal here in order to end the loneliness. And he had spoken about performing one last thing.

The wall opened up further fully revealing the computer beyond. There was now a doorway that I could pass through and beyond the doorway was a narrow foot walkway that ended at a centrally placed machine positioned between the banks of lights.

Maythorn’s voice had ceased and silence reigned once again. The voice was obviously prerecorded, triggered by my presence and I struggled to visualise the breadth of Maythorn’s vision in creating this massive computer. This was so much more than a few cog wheels and bits of metal. How many centuries had he really been here in order to build to this level of sophistication?

My curiosity compelled me to step onto the narrow walkway and carefully step forward towards the central machine. This either had to be the central processing unit itself or the place where the human interaction took place. Whichever it was, as I approached the machine I saw a screen on which were two words. Just two words that told me everything I needed to know.

CALCULATION
COMPLETED

There was a lever to the left of the screen. I pulled it and a thick wad of punchcards appeared in a slot to the right. I quickly grabbed the wad and returned to the room, thankful to get off the narrow walkway. I figured that this wad had to be the results of the calculations, in punchcard form. Many, many years of calculating and this wad in my hand was the result.

As soon as I got back into the room a small cart appeared, running along the monorail. It paused at the end of the track, right beside the periscope, and at the same time the big magnifying glass above the periscope dropped down to provide a large view of what could be seen through the eyepiece - the ancient gateway.

The speaker crackled into life again. “I couldn't fulfill my destiny. I need you to finish what I have started. I need you to become what I could not become. The one who leads all of the worlds to a new era! The era of enlightenment.”

On the cart I could see four compartments. The leftmost compartment was open and I could see that it was punchcard shaped. It was a punchcard reader waiting for me to provide the wad of punchcards, the data needed to repair the gateway and open it up to the rest of the Worldchain.

I placed the punchcards into the reader, still wary of the ramifications of what I was doing or why I was doing it. I felt that I was nothing but a puppet, that I was being used. It was rather unsettling.

Nothing happened. The cart just sat there doing nothing and the gateway could still be seen in the glass, looking as forlorn as ever.

Then I noticed that there was a torch holder lower down on the cart and I realised that the cart was waiting to be powered up. In my possession I still had the white torch along with my green crystal and my red crystal. I slid the torch into the holder.

“The time has come.” It was as if Maythorn was here, watching me over my shoulder. “The repair cart will need a mineral sample to be able to reconstruct the missing elements of the ancient gateway.”

I almost looked behind me, just to check that the professor was not there, watching my every move. The message was prerecorded but Maythorn had an uncanny ability to predict my every move to the point where he could talk me through my actions.

“You must insert the green crystal.”

So, I thought. The required mineral sample just happened to be the green crystal. On the right of the cart was a hexagonal base, similar to ones I’d seen a few times before. My hand instinctively closed around my green crystal, ready to put it in place.

“This is our time.” Gamana’s voice cut through my thoughts, making me freeze. “If you insert the red crystal the ancient gateway should overload and break down. This is the only way to contain this power. This is the only way to restore balance!” Gamana was here, hovering beside me, her voice insistent and persuasive.

I let go off the green crystal. Here was the moment of truth, the pivotal point in time where I could make my own mind up. Green or red?

“Add the green crystal sample!”

“Insert the red crystal!”

“Connect the gateway to the chain!”

“Destroy it!”

They were like children, bickering and arguing. Their insistent requests continued whilst I stood there, frozen in indecision.

Maythorn was a madman with a God complex who seriously thought he had found a panacea for mankind. He was also a charlatan; something I’d realised after seeing those fake book spines.

Gamana was a loner with a guilt complex who seriously thought that because she had failed to control her power then everyone else would fail as well. She was prepared to deny her knowledge to everyone else in the universe because of her inability to believe in herself.

“Do it!”

“Do it!”

I made a decision.

I placed my chosen crystal onto the hexagonal plate. A metal panel covering the second compartment slid open to reveal a switch labelled SAMPLE MINERALS. When I pulled the switch down a small arm unfolded towards the crystal and took a sample before a metal panel covering the third compartment slid open to reveal a switch labelled INPUT CALCULATIONS. I pulled the switch down and a metal panel covering the fourth compartment slid open to reveal a switch labelled SEND REPAIR CART.

I pulled the final switch down and the cart shuddered before disappearing out of sight along the monorail. It was done. Whether my decision was right or wrong I didn’t know. Frankly, I was past caring.

A box on the wall had flipped open and inside it there was a small key. It was labelled ‘Gateway Bridge’.

I grabbed the key and headed back along the upper gantry, walking slowly towards the bridge leading to the transporter. The key was the same type as the previous one and when I pushed it into the keyhole a section of bridge floor swung upwards, granting me access to the yawning green mouth of Maythorn’s homemade transporter.

I wasn’t tired, this world would never give me that basic human emotion. But I was weary, very weary.

I stepped into the green light.

I had some interesting words to exchange with professor William Maythorn…