Archemi Online Chronicles Boxset

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “By the way,” I asked. “What do you think of this whole thing with Ignas?” I asked. “You never really said.”

  “He’s alright. I like him more than Andrik,” she replied. “Bastard tried to cop a feel at the auction house.”

  “He what?”

  She made a scooping motion with her hand. “Whoopsie, right up under my ass. If he wasn’t the King, I’d have decked him.”

  If I hadn’t disliked Andrik before, I definitely did now. It was kind of weird to feel protective of an ex-pit-fighter Berserker with seventeen more Strength points and four levels on me, but I did. “If he tries it again, I guess I’m going to end up getting staked, but I promise you the Volod won’t have any teeth left.”

  She smirked, riding out into the town square. “Cute.”

  I scoffed. “Cute? In case you hadn’t noticed, Suri, I am an A-grade cut of man-beef, hewn from the plump loins of an enormous bull with really big... uh... horns.”

  Karalti chuffed, rustling her wings in agitation. “More like an A-grade load of bullshit.”

  Suri’s eyes danced. “Horns, huh? Plural?”

  “Yeah, and like, I totally don’t mean to boast but, in addition to having at least two dicks, I have a green belt in Taekwondo.” I put on my best dumb Chad voice for that one, and Suri laughed. But it was the last straw for Karalti.

  “Mine!” The dragon snorted a thin stream of fire from her nostrils as she broke into a run. “Mine, mine, MINE!”

  I nearly fell head over ass, because I’d been too busy acting like a peacock and wasn’t hanging onto the saddle. I caught it just in time, bouncing and flapping around until I caught both grips and got my knees down.

  “Karalti! Why!?” I called to her as she barreled into the Main Square. People jumped out of her way with yelps and screams. “We had such a great time last night - I thought we’d sorted this out!”

  “I’ll show you why! She can never do what I can do! Never!” Karalti roared, a sound that boomed out across the entire market, and beat her wings stiffly by her sides as she built up speed. She was headed straight toward the great big fountain in the center of the plaza.

  “Karalti! Stop! Bad dragon!” I got my feet into the stirrups just in time as she flung her wings open, sending people and crowds of pigeons running to either side, and kicked herself into the air.

  She had barely gotten her wings under her when the entire fucking fountain exploded.

  Chapter 38

  The blast swallowed us like an open mouth, turning the world to noise and fire. The explosion blew Karalti out of the air and flung her away like a ragdoll. I lost my grip on the saddle, vaguely aware of spinning, falling, and then impacting the unforgiving ground.

  When I regains consciousness, I couldn’t see. My eyes were gummy with blood and dirt, and my legs were numb. That wasn’t good. I swiped my wrist over my face, rubbing the dust away. When my vision cleared, I thought – for one terrified moment – that I’d somehow been ejected from Archemi and back into the real world, the Total War, and that I had woken up in the ruins of a building devastated by a nuclear explosion. But then I saw the broken body of a dragon sprawled in the wreckage of human bodies and market stands.

  “No! Karalti!” I tried to get up, and my arm and leg just kind of folded underneath me, bending in places they weren’t supposed to bend. It hurt, but the pain was distant, pushed away by raw panic as I dragged myself over to Karalti’s side. Notifications were streaming in about both of us.

  [Karalti is in a critical condition! You must restore HP equal to one quarter of her total HP! HP: 10/949]

  [You have sustained Internal Bleeding! 3 HP per second damage until healing is applied!]

  [You have a broken arm! You cannot use two-handed weapons or physical skills until healing is applied!]

  [You have a broken leg! 50% movement speed until healing is applied!]

  [Karalti’s wings are broken! Karalti is suffering internal bleeding!]

  [You are in a critical condition! You must restore-]

  “I fucking know already!” Frantic, I raided my Inventory for potions and dragged myself up to Karalti’s head. She was down to 7 HP by the time I reached her. The explosion had erupted almost directly underneath her, and her chest and abdomen were pierced by shards of wood and stone. She was unconscious, and trickle of blue blood ran from the corner of her mouth as I forced her jaws apart, uncorked a potion, and poured it down her throat. Then another, and another. She had 949 HP, which meant I had to restore at least 238 points to stop her from dying. I only had three Moss Tinctures and no Bonebreak Poultices – healing a total of 210 HP.

  As I drained the potions into her, a voice began speaking from all directions at once, like a loudspeaker.

  “Here me, citizens of Taltos!” Kanzo’s voice rang out sharply and clearly across the plaza. “I am the one you call the Slayer, a weapon in the hands of corrupt and unjust terrorists! Well - no longer! I will not be used by you sang’hi bastards anymore! Whoever among you took my daughter from me, know this! For every day onward that my people are held captive in the Tanners' District and my child is held captive by the so-called ‘King of Cats’, I will detonate a bomb - just like this one - in locations around Taltos!”

  Karalti moaned, drawing a ragged breath. I used my good arm to pull pieces of shrapnel out of her, and was confused when two pairs of arms reached past me to start helping: slim silver hands, and gauntleted ones.

  “Here. Drink.” Suri crouched beside me, holding a potion bottle to my lips. I shook my head.

  “G-give it to Karalti,” I said. “She’s dying–”

  “YOU’RE dying,” Suri snapped. “Drink the fucking potion.”

  While we argued, Kanzo’s voice continued to rant on over the sounds of fighting and screaming. “Heed my words, King of Vlachia, King of Cats, whoever you are - none of you shall know peace until my child is free! You will be tormented as I am tormented! You will suffer as my people are suffering! You think to oppress me?! I am Tlaxi’ca, and while I would choose peace, I was bred for war!”

  “I respawn. I d-don’t know if she d-does. Give to her. Please,” I rasped.

  “Christ.” Suri went to the dragon, who was starting to struggle and moan on the ground, and tipped the potion down her neck. Karalti swallowed weakly, then shuddered and opened one eye.

  “Some of the bodies are Stranging! Help!” I heard Rin shout.

  Kanzo’s message was on repeat, drowned out by my pulse. My vision blurred, darkening as the edge of my HUD throbbed red. Then Suri’s arm snaked around my back, and I breathed in her deep honey and sandalwood scent as she propped me up.

  “Here. Last one.” Suri touched my lips with another glass vial, and the herbal smell of a Moss Tincture wafted to my nose.

  I swallowed, and then shivered as my HP jumped and the ache of broken bones receded. I felt the disjointed edges of the breaks in my arms and legs realign and then seal. As Suri lay me down against Karalti’s flank, the world came back into focus – the sounds of battle, the moaning of mana-animated undead, shouting, and the sound of steel striking stone.

  I groaned. “The fuck is going on?”

  “Zombies. The Volod’s soldiers are coming to back us up. Sit tight.” Suri stood, pulling her greatsword from her back, and then ran off into the fray.

  Zombies? I wasn’t staying in place if there were zombies running around. Gritting my teeth, I reached out to my dragon as she stirred on the ground. “You alive, girl?”

  “Yeah. Kind of.” Karalti’s telepathic voice was strained. “I’m sorry. This is my fault.”

  “There’s only one person whose fault this is, and that’s Kanzo.” Anger gave me strength, and I rolled to hands and knees. “I don’t care if Andrik and Ignas hate my guts for the rest of eternity – I’m going to pull that self-absorbed motherfucker’s heart out through his asshole.”

  There was a girlish scream from behind us. Drawing a deep breath, I pushed myself up, searching for my spear. You c
ould drop weapons in Archemi, and I saw the Alpha Rod highlighted by my HUD about twenty feet away, close to where Rin and Suri fought a crowd of shambling undead – thirty or more of them. Cutthroat was hanging back because of the mana in the air, barking fearful cries of warning. The shuffling corpses – some still bleeding, some missing limbs - pulsed with magical light. Shards of mana crystal had erupted from their skin and hands, like claws made of glass and frozen blood.

  Karalti tottered up to her feet, panting. She and I were both in the deep red: 280/949 HP for her, 81/680 for me.

  “Use Bioscan on those zombies,” I panted, and broke off at a jog to retrieve my weapon.

  Karalti concentrated, and the seams of opalescent material between her scales went from multicolored to a brilliant blue. “250 HP… no MP. They’re weak against Fire and immune to Darkness.”

  “Got any fire in you?”

  “I think so.”

  I scooped my spear off the ground and spun it around before angling it down along my arm. The freshly healed bones ached, but they were functional. “Blast ‘em.”

  The dragon shook her head and roared in challenge as she broke into a limping run, her damaged wings held in against her sides. She thrust her jaws forward, and her throat swelled just before blinding white liquid fire burst from her mouth. Karalti’s Ghost Fire ability had a narrower stream than the typical yellow flamethrower-blast of other dragons I’d seen, but she could wield it like a whip, lashing the stream up, down, or to the sides.

  The gout of flame lanced past Rin and struck the zombie that had broken past the defensive wall of her turrets. It made a weird whistling sound as the flames caught it, and its skin caught like it had been dipped in gasoline. Rin stumbled back away from it – she clutched a crossbow in her hands, holding it up like a shield.

  [Karalti used a fire attack! It’s super effective!]

  [You deal 523 damage to Mana Zombie!]

  [Mana Zombies use Entrap! Suri is Entangled!]

  Suri had hacked her way through a hoard of zombies and was stuck inside of a twenty-strong mob. They had gathered around her in a knot of moaning, clawing bodies, forcing her to strike them away with her feet and the hilt of her sword. Her HP ring was draining, one Bleeding attack at a time.

  “Karalti! Protect Rin! I’m going to break open the pack for Suri!” I grit my teeth and charged.

  I burned ten precious hit points to Dash in, because it gave me the boost of speed I needed to chain Blood Sprint and Blood Storm – a sacrifice that paid off as I slammed into the mobs and blasted them back. Five targets on a good hit meant 50 HP in the tank. They were immune to Darkness, so I swung the polearm around, triggering Whirlwind Butcher during the Sprint cooldown. That maneuver threw enemies like skittles and blasted the mob to pieces, killing the zombies Suri had already injured.

  With room to move, Suri was once more in her element. With a roar, she slashed once, twice, and then channeled a burst of boiling red energy into a downward blow that cut a zombie in half and cracked the pavement under the blade of her sword. She pulled it free and whirled on me, teeth bared.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?! You have barely any HP and no fucking pots!” She snarled, belting another zombie that lurched toward her.

  “Same thing you were doing when you waded into a boss fight with one arm and no bra,” I snapped back. A trio of zombies ran at me, slashing with their crystalline claws. I dodged on reflex, Jumping back into the air, then reversing course to rain down Obscuring Veil on them. The Dark energy fell like freezing needles – they were immune to the Blindness debuff and the bonus damage, but they still took the normal damage from the physical strike as I came down.

  “Mass them up!” Suri called to me. “I can hit 8 at a time with Bull Rush!”

  “Why didn’t you use that before!?” I bounced back and dodged the clumsy zombie swipes. Suri tanked the blows, but they had a hard time hitting me. Compared to them and Suri, I was prancing around like Tinkerbell.

  “I did! They have a special entrapment ability when there’s more than six!”

  I led the zombies into a waltz, dashing to the side – ten more HP gone – then Sprinting into them again as soon as the timer vanished. I only hit three with the combo, restoring a tiny sliver of HP, but had to Dash again to avoid getting stuck in the crowd. Once they were rounded up and shambling in a group, Suri dropped the sword, pulled her axes, and ran at them from behind. Crimson light coiled and snapped into an energy shield that she used like a battering ram to plow through the rank. This ability had Knockdown, and it floored eight zombies to the pavement and split the mob. Whirlwind Butcher took out my side; her ax tornado took out the others.

  [You have defeated 28 Mana Zombies!]

  [You gain 337 EXP!]

  Soldiers were pouring out of the streets that fed into the main plaza, with several hookwings. Backup – thank fuck. I sagged down to one knee, exhausted. Suri ran back toward Rin, and I turned to see Karalti spending the last of her fire on the few remaining zombies attacking her and Rin. Mutated victims of the bombing were scattered around them in a ring, their chests and heads plugged with arrows. And Rin was backing away, terrified.

  “Run!” She screamed, just before she broke into a sprint away from the center of the plaza.

  “What?” Confused, I looked back at the approaching soldiers and waved, then forward again, freezing as five guards broke rank and bodily tackled Rin to the ground. “Hey! Wait–”

  Suri and Karalti were as startled as I was as at least fifty guards swarmed us. I was knocked down from behind, struggling as soldiers piled onto me. My head was forced down; my spear was torn from my hands, and they were pushed back behind me. “Wait! We’re working for the Volod!”

  “We know who you are,” one of the guards retorted.

  “You want a piece of me, you cunts!? Here it is!” Suri roared.

  [Suri uses Primal Rage! Suri loses control!]

  “Hector!” Karalti cried. The hookwings were encircling her, and she was out of Ghost Fire and low on HP.

  “Get out of here! Karalti! Get away!” I shouted, struggling against the crush overhead. It was getting hard to breathe, and I writhed and bucked to no avail as a pair of manacles were clamped around my wrists.

  Flexing her injured wings in a panic, Karalti tried to take to the air, but was taken down by nets and bolos flung out by the cavalry. The weights dragged her back down, honking with pain and terror. Someone ran up with chains that crawled with magical sigils and snapped them around her ankles. She blasted someone with the last of her Ghost Fire.

  “Karalti!” I screamed in real fear now, thrashing on the ground.

  Suri was next: she fought like a demon, felling soldiers left and right, but there were just too many of them. I lost sight of her as the platoon crowded forward.

  “You’re under arrest for aiding and abetting a terrorist and conspiring against the Crown of Vlachia!” A woman’s hard voice pierced the fugue of cursing and screaming. “Stop resisting, or you will be made to comply.”

  “Fuck you! You want it? You fucking take it!” I bellowed back. “Suri! Rin! Karal-”

  The boot to the back of my head drove my nose into the pavement, and I didn’t even get to say her name one last time.

  Chapter 39

  Thunk. Thud. Thunk. Thud.

  The world rumbled and swayed and grunted as I faded into consciousness. My head was pounding, my pulse hammering in my temples and fingers. My throat was dry and tight.

  “Uhhgggh... fuck.” I shifted around on what felt like blankets, itchy and coarse against my bare skin. I tried to push myself up on my hands, but as I did, the damp wooden floor beneath me lurched. I dropped back down with a groan.

  Thunk. Thud. Thunk.

  The rumbling I heard was the sound of wagon wheels bucking over rough stone. We were moving steeply uphill. I cracked my eyes open and stared up at the iron-reinforced ceiling. I was naked, alone, and being taken somewhere in a prison wagon - great. There w
as nothing good about this. I needed to move. I needed to find Karalti.

  I gritted my teeth, and rolled onto the side that hurt less. “Karalti? Where are you, Tidbit?”

  [You are Incarcerated by the City Guard! Private messages are currently disabled!]

  Trying to speak to her caused an odd sensation: a sense that my words hit an invisible barrier between her and I, as if I - or Karalti - was trapped inside a glass bubble.

  “Ugh.” I spat, trying to clear my mouth of the dirt and grit I’d picked up from rolling around on the ground. “This fucking game.”

  Slowly, I sat up and took stock of my predicament. The compartment I was in was maybe half again as long as I was tall, and it reeked of old sweat, piss, and terror. There was a rusty grate in the floor in the far left corner, and a small barred window about five feet off the ground on the wall to my right. I had 20 HP left - no more broken bones, thankfully - but I was laboring under no fewer than 6 debuffs: Hunger, Thirst, Chained, Incarcerated, Exhausted, and the fucking Pee Meter. I was also half-naked. They’d left my pants on and stripped everything else. Armor, weapons, items, all gone. And so were Karalti, Suri, and Rin.

  I got to my feet with some effort, weighed down by heavy chains. Keeping balance with the wall, I shuffled over and tested the crusty grate, looking for a weakness. The bars were unfortunately sturdy. Resigned, I whipped out Hector Jnr and got busy fixing Archemi’s most awkward debuff, and was about halfway done when someone knocked on the wall where I was resting my other hand.

  You know what happens when someone lets go of a firehose while the water’s on full blast? Yeah. “Fucking shit-tits!”

  “You’re a real poet, aren’t ya?” Suri’s voice croaked from the other side of the wall. “You should’ve become a bard.”

  “Jesus Christ! I just pissed all over my... my everything.” Scowling, I shook my hand.

  “Stop telling me about your golden showers and go look out the window, eagle eyes. Tell me if I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing up on the wall of Vulkan Keep.”