Archemi Online Chronicles Boxset

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “Hey man - I’ve come to see if I can do anything for you.” I edged in closer. “My name’s Hector.”

  “Uhhhhn.” Zlaslo’s eyes briefly fixed on mine, but there was no other acknowledgement. He was too sick.

  Just as I resolved to start examining him, my HUD jumped to life. A soft blue glow began to highlight areas of interest on his body. His forehead, neck, abdomen, elbow, a big red rash on his forearm... and his crotch. Lovely. Still, that was new.

  “Uhh... okay.” I started by taking his temperature with my hand - 107, yikes. Then, on instinct, I felt the glands in his neck. They were swollen up like golf balls, and he flinched when I touched him. My Field Medicine-informed instincts told me that meant he was fighting an infection.

  I took his pulse next. His heartbeat was irregular and quick. Frowning, I muttered an apology and put my ear to his chest, closed my eyes, and listened. His breathing was clear... but his heart sounded like it was flailing around, sloshing and thudding out of rhythm.

  “Ohhhh... get off...” Zlaslo flailed around weakly. “Gods, it hurts.”

  “What hurts?” I sat up quickly as he writhed.

  “Everything,” he moaned. His voice was slurred. “Head. Belly. Skin. Bones. Cock. Everything.”

  I gently pressed around on his stomach. The upper stomach seemed okay, but as soon as I pushed below the navel, he yelped.

  “Heart stuff is Sanguine, gut stuff is Phlegmatic...” I muttered what Masha had taught me in the past few weeks, looking him over. He had more than one rash. The patches were red and angry, which made them Choleric - dry and hot. His joints were hot and swollen, too, like someone with arthritis. Anything to do with bones and joints was a Melancholic thing. Just about the only thing he wasn’t doing was coughing. “Damn, man... no wonder the healers are having trouble with you. You’re like a big old grab-bag of bad humors.”

  After a couple of minutes, I came up with a game plan. I went back out and grabbed Lobelia, Blazing Star, Lotus and Water Iris for the potions I intended to make later, then took out a Goldenseal Tincture. I pushed back the heavy clay-covered locks, propped Zlaslo’s head and poured the potion in his mouth. He spluttered a little, but a meter appeared, and his terrible fever began to subside. After a few seconds, the man shuddered and looked up at me.

  “Who the hell are you?” He whispered, in thickly accented Vlachian.

  “Hector. I’m trying to figure out how to cure you of whatever you’ve got,” I replied. “I don’t think this potion is going to fix you, but it will take away some of the fever. I need to know what you were doing before you got sick.”

  Zlaslo’s mouth twitched. He wasn’t a very attractive man: narrow head, pinched features, shifty eyes. He was lean and fit, but scrawny compared to the other Yanik men I’d passed. “I was working.”

  “Be specific, or you’re probably gonna die.”

  He shivered. “I was not doing anything out of the ordinary, my friend. I returned from my last mission two weeks ago. I went to celebrate; I went to bed. Then I trained soldiers… went out in the swamp to teach the Vlachii how to swim and hide in the marshes...”

  Parasites, maybe? We were always having to deal with those in the jungle. I thought about it for a couple of seconds. Glanced at his bedpan. Squinted at it.

  “Wait,” I said. “You’re pissing green stuff?”

  “Urrgh.” He covered his eyes.

  “How long for?” I demanded.

  “Why? One week, maybe week and a half,” He admitted. “Not long.”

  I sighed and crossed my arms. “You went into a place named Slutlava to pick up chicks?”

  “Uhh... yes. To play around, yes.” He tried to nod, but his neck spasmed and he let out a small sob of pain.

  “And you’ve been pissing this green shit since then? Any blood?”

  “... Some.”

  I crouched back on my heels and thought about it. I glanced down, where the blue aura was highlighting a… distinctly shaped region under the blanket covering his lap. It seemed Slutlava’s name wasn’t as random as I’d originally thought.

  “Based on what I learned about STIs at boot camp and my extremely limited sexual experience, I am ninety-nine percent sure you have the worst case of gonorrhea known to mankind. Why didn’t you come to see Lazar when it started, man?”

  “Had it before,” he mumbled. “No problems then. It went away.”

  “Wait.” I held up my hands. “Dude, no. Gonorrhea doesn’t just go away. You’ve had it for months, which means you just gave this shit to every innocent Slutlavan you fucked, you asshole.”

  “… Even the man?" He asked after a short pause.

  I face-palmed. "Yes. Even the man."

  This was the first time I’d had to deal with someone who had an advanced disease without Masha’s help, but I had to trust in those points I’d invested in my skills. Gonorrhea was unfortunate, but it wasn’t a rare or specialized condition, like the Grave Rot illness the medic had told me about. If I was being offered this quest, it was probably within my means.

  I thought back to what Masha had said about the guy with the infected hand. Lance the wound, then apply the poultice, then the potions. No water until the end, because it would cause sepsis. I was willing to bet that the standard sequence for this kind of deep-seated infection was hot, moist, dry, cold. Treat the skin rash and fever, then his heart, then his joints, then the root of the infection, so to speak. But the healers here hadn’t been able to cure him... so it was possible that there were more steps in the pattern.

  “Sex is pretty hot and pretty moist,” I muttered to myself. “It probably goes Choleric-Sanguine-Melancholic-Phlegmatic-Sanguine.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Doctor stuff.” I surveyed the colored zones of light on his body. As soon as I started thinking about how to treat the rash, a list of ingredients appeared:

  Holy Basil

  Starberry

  Baking Soda

  Cotton or Linen Cloth

  I recognized those: they were components of a Holy Basil Compress, used for treating skin infections. This must be one of the perks of Journeyman-level Herbalism. “Ooh, that’s nifty.”

  Zlaslo looked up at me in desperation. “What are you muttering about? Can you help me or not?”

  I fixed him with my best serious doctor face. “Probably. But I might have to cut your dick off.”

  He made a strangled high-pitched sound and flinched away from me on the bed.

  “Not really; just joking. Though I bet there’s some Lava Sluts who’d thank me if I did.” I pulled my Herbalism kit and began to brew and mash, breaking off to go and raid the ingredients out in the hallway when I needed them. At the end of fifteen minutes, I had an array of treatments lined up like shots: A Holy Basil Compress for the rash, another Goldenseal Tincture for the fever, a Hawthorn Potion for the heart issue, a Comfrey Decoction for his bones, and then finally a Concentrated Green Moss Tincture. “Okay: you’re going to drink all of these. The Comfrey Decoction absolutely contains materials designated as cancerous by the state of California, but it should fix your joint pain.”

  “What?” He blinked up at me, doubly confused.

  I slapped the Holy Basil Compress on his rash. “Drink the fucking potion.”

  A new timer popped up on my HUD, counting down from 60 seconds. Another new thing. The area where the poultice was applied began to glow red - red for Choleric, I was willing to bet. I waited breathlessly to see what happened. When the timer hit 00:00, the man’s chest flared with a golden aura. Gold for Sanguine. Fumbling a little, I fed him the Hawthorn Potion. Another timer appeared, this time counting down from 01:30. I watched it, frowning, and was startled when another red glow appeared at 30 seconds in: this time, around his head.

  “Urrrgh.” Zlaslo sunk back into the pillow, flushed in the face. “What did you just give me?”

  “Hang on.” I felt his forehead: he was burning up again, temperature rising fast. The red aura pulsed. Racin
g against the clock, I mashed together the ingredients for a Goldenseal Tincture and brewed it like a bartender pouring a drink. I finished ten seconds before the timer was up and put it to his lips. “Drink.”

  Zlaslo glared at me suspiciously as he quaffed the potion. The red glow disappeared just before the golden one did, and then his entire body shone with black light. For a moment, I was freaked out - until I remembered the sequence. Black for Melancholy. I got the Comfrey Decoction and poured that down Zlaslo’s neck. At the first taste of the bitter, ashy brew, he coughed and tried to spit it out.

  “No. Drink it like a man.” I pushed up under his chin and held his mouth closed, like when you give a dog a pill. He glared at me, ashy liquid bubbling at the corners of his mouth. “You fucked your way into this mess, and now you’re going to swallow your way out of it.”

  Another timer appeared: a five-minute timer. When it ran down, his abdomen and groin began to glow blue. I fed him the Green Moss Tincture, then waited anxiously as a 10-minute timer appeared. But he was looking better, if not weak and exhausted.

  “I’m going to give this regime to the healers here. I think you’re going to need multiple treatments,” I said. “Probably every day for a week or so. But your fever’s breaking, so that’s a plus.”

  “Yes. It does not hurt as bad.” His voice was weak and rusty, and he grimaced as he shifted on the bed. “I thank you. You are one of Vash’s students?”

  “No. He’s... out on a mission,” I said. “In fact, I’m getting ready to join him out in the Endlar. I was told you know the swamp better than anyone here. Are you strong enough to answer some questions?”

  The man gave a small nod. “What do you want to know?”

  I thought for a minute or two. “Let’s start with the monsters. What enemies can we expect out there?”

  “Your worst enemy is disease. Don’t eat anything raw, and don’t drink from still water. Stingcrabs are your next biggest threat,” his voice cracked as he spoke, so I got him some water and used a pipette to drop it in his mouth. “All over the place. Be careful of those: they don’t do much damage, but they can paralyze even the strongest man with their venom. They wait until other beasts come, and then eat whatever is left. There are many kinds of larger animals… giant crocodiles, titanoboas, giant dragonflies, wolves. Allosaurus are common in the heart of the swamp. They always hunt in packs, three to six individuals. In the south of the Endlar, you will find Tyrannosaurus, who can be solitary or in pairs.”

  “Okay. What about Stranged creatures?”

  Zlaslo took a second to lick his dry lips. “Many. The Stranged creatures of the Endlar loathe fire, so keeping a burning brand with you is a good idea. The most common are the Bogmaq - the drowned dead, who lurk at the edge of bayous. They do not have the weakness to water, like the Demon’s zombies… he has been summoning them to his aid, enslaving them into his army, and now they lurk ready to pull in scouts and soldiers. But the worst thing you may see there is the Aljulaki Samak.”

  “The who-what now?”

  The man’s brow furrowed. “The Vlachii call them Swamp Hags. Do you know of the giant sandworms that can be found in the desert?”

  Visions of giant worms with mouths like black holes lined with teeth plunging in and out of sand dunes came to mind. “I think so, yeah.”

  “They are the sandworms of the bayou. I have seen one eat a hookwing and his rider the way you would eat a chicken wing,” he said urgently. “You must beware their traps. They produce much slime and fill entire ponds with it. They lair at the center of slime, and if something walks in there, they do not walk out.”

  The last timer ran down to zero, and the blue aura around Zlaslo’s abdomen faded. He shuddered - this time with relief.

  [You have unlocked new knowledge: Endlar Swamp (D-grade)]

  [You have gained 5 Skill EXP!]

  I grunted, satisfied. “Aljulaki Samak, right. I’ll bear that in mind. How do you feel?”

  “Better, but my huadiv still hurts.” He motioned down at his lap. “Do you know what is wrong with it?”

  “Well, I’m not a... uhh... whatever a penis doctor is called, so your huadiv is just going to have to sit tight until a specialist comes around.” I slapped my hands down on my thighs and leaned in a little. “Now, I’ve got some questions about terrain...”

  Chapter 18

  The next morning.

  The night was spent reading and brewing: healing potions, antidotes, disease-fighting tinctures. After hours of effort, I also decompiled one of the recipes in the book Lazar had given me: [Roseroot Potions], which replenished 50 points of stamina and increased stamina regen by 40% for 30 seconds. The Hospital sold Roseroot, so I bought their stock up and brewed ten.

  We left at dawn, winched down to the battlefield by the elevators, and trudged off through the mud and the billowing clouds of water vapor spawned by the waterfalls. The Endlar Swamp was humid. Very humid. A croaking, humming, brackish, dreary million-acre morass that stood between us and a sizable number of zombies. A faint methane perfume hung over the still brown waters. Foxfire bloomed among the whispering reeds. Weeping willows hung down over the river, motionless in the unnaturally warm air. By ten A.M, it was also hot.

  “I’m seriously jealous of you, Rin,” I muttered, ducking as Karalti crawled under one of many slime-draped trees. We were about twenty miles into the marsh and headed due south, following a glowing quest icon on a largely-undefined map. Sweat crawled down the back of my neck.

  “Me? What did I do?” Rin squeaked. She was riding Hopper, who hummed along in the water beneath her. Rin had stayed up all night to modify her turrets, turning them into what amounted to small hovercraft. Hopper and Lovelace had sacrificed some defense for these features, but they could now float, climb, swim, and wade. In this environment, that was more important than armor plating.

  “Nothing. But I resent your lack of bodily fluids,” I replied.

  She had her mask pushed up onto her head, and blushed bright blue. “Wh…what?”

  “Sweat, kid.” Suri’s beautiful hair had frizzed up and turned dark, clinging to her face and neck. He’s talking about sweat.”

  “Oh! Me too! I’m glad I don’t have to worry about it anymore!” Rin paused for a moment, then winced. “I mean… sorry that you don’t feel well?”

  “I’m fine. Just gross.” I snorted. “Don’t sweat it.”

  Suri groaned. “New party rule. Puns are banned.”

  “What? That wasn't a pun. That was far beneath something so sublime as a pun. That was merely word play.”

  Karalti was unaffected by the heat and water, large enough to wade through the marsh without needing to swim. Cutthroat seemed to actively enjoy it. I’d been worried about her praying mantis-like claw arms – they didn’t look made for swimming – but she simply folded them against her chest and paddled with her back legs, weaving smoothly through the water with Suri on her back.

  “Look!” Rin hissed. “Do you see that? Is it a zombie?”

  The Mercurion shrunk back on Hopper, pointing at a slumped corpse with one trembling finger. I peered at it. The corpse had no legs. Or arms.

  “That guy is too dead to get up again.” I replied. “Don’t worry about the bodies. Keep an eye out for clues to Vash’s path through the swamp. If anything twitches, we let our mounts take them.”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry about zombies. Worry about scavengers,” Suri grunted. “Allosaurs are big, bad bastards. And they eat carrion.”

  “Hopefully they don’t eat Baru,” I replied. “Because I don’t want to have to lug a barrel-load of Allosaurus shit back to Istvan.”

  “You can just bring back the gauntlets, numb-nuts.”

  “And if you want to dig those out of the dino shit, you go right ahead.” I made a face. “Smell anything, Karalti?”

  The dragon wove her head, breathing in deeply. “I smell... crocodiles. Aaaand... dead people. And monsters. Lots of monsters. Up ahead.”

  No sooner
had she spoken than the stale wind moved a little, and the smell of decomposition hit me like a punch to the nose. Eyes watering against the urge to cough, I nodded, and checked the direction of the wind against our quest marker. “Yup. The dead people smell is coming from the south-west... same direction as our quest.”

  “What if the army is out there?” Rin pinched her nose.

  “We kill ‘em.” Suri loaded her crossbow and cocked it. “Nothing like water-logged corpses to start the day off right.”

  I grinned and banged the top of my helmet with a fist. “Breakfast of champions.”

  Karalti made a happy trilling sound in her throat. “Smells like lunch to me!”

  We were out of the No Man’s Land and well into the swamp now. The area we had started in was thick with cattails, a forest of them reaching seven feet or more. But as we swam south, the water got shallower and the stench of decay grew thicker. Then the Mark of Matir turned cold on my skin, just before I heard a soft moan drift through the still air.

  “Shh. Stop.” I held a hand up. “Listen.”

  The others froze, and the sound of multiple feet shuffling in the mud drifted to our ears. There was another soft moan. It sounded… wet.

  “Undead,” I hissed. “Ready?”

  “Yeah.” Suri used a handful of muddy water to push her hair back and out of her face, slicking it against her skull. “Rin. You know how to fight zombies?”

  Rin was very tense on the back of her turret, holding onto it with a vice grip. “Shoot them in the head?”

  “Bingo.” Suri brandished her crossbow suggestively.

  We nosed out of the cattails into an open muddy pool churning with activity. There were twenty of them: male, female, even children. They varied from the relatively fresh to the extremely decayed; from skeletal, leather-skinned walkers to shuffling, bloated white bags of flesh that barely resembled people. But before they noticed us, we saw that they were united in a singular purpose.