Journals of a Captain

Auditory Atmosphere Supplement Activated. Now Playing: Kevin MacLeod – Darkest Child

“Now, what would you say if I told you that I didn’t just meet him, I witnessed his last moments?” The two of them had moved into the captain’s quarters of the ship where Mariana was now rummaging through a bookshelf to find something.

“Okay, wait a second there… According to the story, he died on a ship near the North Pole, trying to find the ‘monster’… Are you telling me…?” John could hardly believe what he heard there. Mariana was the captain that found Victor Frankenstein near the North Pole while he was pursuing his ‘creation’, the well-known Frankenstein’s monster, a reanimated human ‘too ugly’ for even its creator to love.

“Yep, exactly that. Been a while since I read the story myself, but we found him out in the waters, frozen, wounded and almost starving, following the monster to make it pay for its ‘crimes’. Something had attacked him on his way and seemingly almost killed him, we never found out what. He told me and my crew his story over the next few days until we separated again, since he was so hellbent on ‘fixing his mistakes’. Contrary to the published account, we never actually saw the creature or him dying, he just disappeared into the mist. Miss Shelly always did have a habit of dramatizing things. I assume he died out there, either in battle against his creature, or, more likely, to the cold. Never got any proof for that though… Aha!” She pulled out a rugged, old leather-bound notebook that was closed by a piece of bone and a thick string.

“…Is that your diary?” joked John, earning himself a punch in the stomach.

“Idiot. No, it’s my logbook. You know, like captains usually have?” she rolled her eyes, but there was a grin on her face telling him that she wasn’t actually annoyed. “Anyway, have a look at this entry.” She flipped open the notebook at a specific page and handed it to John who eagerly began to read. Although the book was obviously written in German, somehow John could understand it.

Automatic Translation activated

’Huh, neat.’ Looks like he would need to read some non-English literature then.

The book was old and the pages were yellowed, likely due to the age of the document. As John let the page glide through his hand, they felt rough and slightly brittle. He really had to be careful with them.

Captain’s Log, 25th of March, 1729

We’ve sailed through this gods-forsaken sea for weeks now and there is nothing but white snow, blue seas, and an abundance of hostile Abyssal creatures trying to eat our ship. We had to fight off some kind of kraken just last night when the guard shifts switched, the damn thing must’ve followed us out of the strait and stayed on our trail for a while now, since it knew when to strike. It took out three of my men before we could kill it, including our physician, Hector. We couldn’t recover the bodies, not with how cold the water is. Gods rest their souls.

At least we are not the only people insane enough to sail through these waters. We found a shipwrecked man lying on an ice floe this morning, heavily bleeding and riddled with frostbite. We took him aboard, and tried to figure out what he was doing out here alone while he warmed up. Currently, he’s in no state to talk though, so we will have to wait until he’s patched up to get any answers. Hopefully, we can do something about the bleeding without magic.

I don’t need another **** on my ship today.

John looked up from the notes, “Okay, so that person is obviously Victor, but I have a question: You said that you were attacked by an Abyssal creature there. How is that possible? Shouldn’t they be confined to Barriers?”

Mariana shook her head at that, “Not necessarily. They probably spawned in some kind of Barrier deep beneath the surface and managed to escape into our world. Abyssal creatures normally survive on the residual magic inside the Barriers, but I’ve said before that things inside Barriers get weird when nothing dies. That’s because the creatures will just keep amassing more and more magic until either they are powerful enough to break through both the limits of their intelligence and the walls of the Barrier or the Barrier becomes too weak and collapses. Fortunately, the latter is the usual case. When a Barrier breaks down, it will take anything inside with it into oblivion, nothing escapes that.”

“Since most of the seas, and especially the depths of the seas, are barely explored by people, Natural Barriers are pretty common there. The closer to human civilization you get, the less Natural Barriers you will find, due to the lack of magic and the increased likelihood that they’ll be destroyed by local cleaners, like the Order. But in the deep parts of nature where man has very little influence, all sorts of strange creatures roam. Like Bigfoots, or the fabled monster of Loch Ness. Nessie’s very real, by the way. But that’s not what we’re here for, keep reading!”

Still trying to get his head around the idea that something like Bigfoot could possibly be real, John read the next entry in the logbook.

Captain’s Log, 26th of March

That damned beast wasn’t alone! Tonight, another kraken tried to attack us, but we were ready for a fight. It still tore apart Heinrich, poor soul. The loss of our last competent healer weighs heavily and with each passing day I’m less and less sure that this supposed treasure is actually worth it.

Assuming we can even survive long enough to find it…

Our new friend woke up today and made quite a fuss. Almost tried to take the head off of his caretaker, Flinnigan. He quickly calmed down though, once he realized that we were helping him. Didn’t get an apology out of the bastard.

We’ve learned that his name is Victor von Frankenstein, and surprisingly he’s actually Swiss. He’s a scientist, one of them mundane bookworms, and he’s apparently specialized in biology. He had a fascination with ****, or rather, how to avoid it. Did some experiments with corpses that I should throw him overboard for even confessing to… but who am I to judge? Apparently, one of his attempts at ‘scientific’ reanimation, necromancy if we’re being honest, succeeded, but not in the way he’d hoped. He created something, calls it a ‘monster’. It killed his family and fled towards the North Pole afterwards. He keeps insisting that he’s got to put an end to the creature himself seeing as it’s ‘his mistake’. The crew voted that we keep him on board for the time being, seemingly enthralled by his story and wanting to hear more. To me, he seems… strange.

I’m keeping an eye on him.

“So, the monster was real?” John asked as he was done with the entry.

Mariana just shrugged her shoulders, “Dunno, never saw it, never saw any proof of it. If we go by his words, then yes. But I like to see things like that with my own eyes, y’know?”

John nodded at that, he could understand that sentiment. In a world where potentially anything is possible, why trust only the word of someone when you can’t even see it for yourself. If someone had told him about the Nexus without being able to see it for himself, he would never believe something like it existed.

Speaking of the Nexus…

“By the way, you want to see the Nexus I told you about?”

“I thought you would never ask; of course I want to see your little kingdom! If you can open a way to it from here. I don’t really want to leave this Barrier.” He could understand why she didn’t want to, the store was probably going to be brimming with people soon, and even with the Reentering, it would get weird.

Pushing his keycard into a gap between two floorboards, the usual black gate opened up on the ground.

Gesturing towards the hole, John said, “After you.”

The captain patted his cheek with a coy smile, “Ever the gentleman. Keep that up and I might actually drop my knickers for you.”

That thought short-circuited something in John’s head and made him freeze as a laughing Mariana jumped into the hole. Following her, he found her sitting on the ground rubbing her butt. She hadn’t expected the gravity shift, apparently. “Should I have mentioned that it’s actually a door on this side?” the Gamer asked with a grin.

Looking at John with a pout, Mariana said, “That would’ve been nice! Anyway, fancy way to travel here. Does the door stay open?”

Nodding, he replied, “It’ll stay open until I don’t want it to. But I only get the card back when I close the door.”

As the two walked out of the terminal room, they were greeted by Thorn and Gary on the stairs. Mariana immediately squealed as soon as she saw the two, enveloping them both in a swift hug. “Oh my god, you’re adorable! John, why did you wait so long to meet up with me, I would’ve loved to meet these cuties earlier.” She was completely enthralled by his two pets/companions. John could only chuckle at the affectionate reaction.

The two pets didn’t seem to mind the attention as Thorn happily lolled his tongue with an excited look on his face while Gary was purring… He still had to figure out what Aranea had actually planned to do with the little guy.

The two humans walked up the stairs into the mansion. John purposefully evaded Andrea’s door so he wouldn’t have to deal with her right now. Seeing as how Mary was completely occupied with the dragon-wolf and the spider, he focused on the journal once again. He hadn’t noticed it in the captain’s quarters, but now that the air was mostly neutral in odors, he could smell the salty, old scent of the pages, likely drenched in salt water and some other liquids. The smell made him feel as if he was on a ship (or a ship shaped Barrier at least) again.

Captain’s Log, 29th of March

It’s been four days now, since we brought Victor aboard our ship, and something has changed in the sea. I do not know if it is because of him or because we’re getting closer to our goal. We are getting attacked during the day now, multiple times by ice hounds and other ice-dwellers, and just this morning we woke up to a frozen sea. We’re fully enclosed and unable to move. The crew is getting restless, morale is dropping. I think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew and my men are suffering for it. So many lives lost for nothing…

I will put it to vote tonight for the crew if we keep going or not.

Victor, meanwhile, has been… there. I’m not saying that I expected a half-starved shipwrecked to help much around the ship, but I expected him not to get in the way of things, at least. He’s been complaining around the clock about every miniscule detail, as if he is entitled to everything. He should be happy that we didn’t leave him stranded! The crew don’t seem to mind, they’re all enthralled with his story. He is dangerously charismatic.

Seeing his reaction to the vote tonight will be interesting...

John felt some kind of lump in his chest as he read that entry. His history classes had taught him well enough what ‘dangerously charismatic guys’ can do if given the opportunity. Thankfully, he knew how this story ended.

Captain’s Log, 30th of March

The vote was unpleasantly close, but we are going to turn around. Victor wasn’t happy about it, he threw a tantrum, seemingly expecting our help in finding his monster and putting it to an end. For whatever reason, some of the crew even wanted to help him with that, I had to remind them of their family waiting at home to keep them from leaving with him. At least I won’t need to worry about it anymore. Victor was missing this morning, he must’ve set off on his own in the night, taking some supplies with him and one of our sleds. Thankfully it was a sled without dogs, otherwise those poor animals would’ve probably died out there with him. I won’t be shedding any tears for him, not for a man who has pursued his personal redemption with this much vigor. I’ve been around long enough to know that people like him will only drive themself and anyone who gets too close into an early grave.

Thankfully, I can learn from this mistake and plan to take my crew back into safer waters. Goodbye, Victor. I hope you find your monster.

John was so engrossed in that last entry that he didn’t notice that Mariana was standing behind him by now, resting her head on his shoulder. “So, what do you think? I know it’s not much, but it’s at least something. At the time I didn’t think too much of the guy, you meet all sorts of weird people in or ‘near’ the Abyss.”

He thought for a moment about his answer and what he had just read, “It’s really weird to see how similar and yet different it is to some iterations of the story… Did you tell the story to Mary Shelley?”

“No, but one of my crewmen did, namely Robert Walton. You might recognize the name, obviously he made himself the captain in the written story, but the man was actually just the chef. The author made some changes of her own to make the story more dramatic, like the **** of Victor and the details regarding the appearance of the creature. That’s something you get used to in the Abyss, everything is only half the truth.”

He had to turn around at that, “Okay, that’s something I wanted to ask earlier but now it fits just as well. Are you telling me that most of the stuff that we hear stories of are actually real? Like, you said that Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster are real, and so is Frankenstein obviously... Does that also mean fiction is real?”

“About that. That actually fits perfectly with the stuff that I actually wanted to show you."