6500 Rubles
249 Olbia
Bluecrystal Mana x 5
Swamphag Queen Slime x 140
+3 Vlachian Saber
Yanik Marsh Scout Armor
Manual of Physical Health
+2 Mastercrafted Spellglove
Fine Leather Pouch
Staff of Ghost Touch
Black Opal x 4
Sapphire x 3
Light Steel Shield
Ring of Web
Ring of Force Shield
Vash’s Sanctified Iron Gauntlets
A grin split my face. “Look at all this! Holy shit, that’s a lot of gear.”
“Yeah. Let’s split that gold. Mind if I take the Ring of Force Shield and the manual?” Suri asked me. “They’d be real useful.”
“They’re all yours,.” I was about to impulsively add Vash’s gauntlets to my Inventory, then thought better of it. “You should go give these to him.”
“I’m gonna level first.” Suri accepted the heavy gloves, and they vanished as she folded them into her pocket of hyperspace.
I trooped back to Karalti and the now prostrate monk, and as I grew closer, she looped me into their telepathic conversation.
“… and the pita bread has to be hot! With extra garlic sauce, because I’m a big girl now and-” Karalti nibbled her talons, her crests flaring upright. “Oh! Hector! This guy says he knows how to spit-roast! We can have kebab every day!”
“From what I’ve heard out of him so far, that’s not the kind of spit-roast he’s talking about, Tidbit.” I swaggered across as Vash pushed himself up to stand.
Karalti winked at me, then craned her muzzle down toward the monk. “So yeah - and extra sauerkraut, okay? But only for veal. Lamb goes better with sweet pickles.”
“Of course, my lady. Your command is my greatest pleasure.” Vash swept into an exaggerated bow in front of her, then turned to scowl at me. “You! Get your filth away from this holy creature! Sss!”
“Sure, asshole, I’ll get right on that.” I clapped Karalti on the forearm, waiting as she leaned forward to rest on her winghands. Vash, visibly aghast, looked on as I put a boot up on her elbow and clambered up onto her back.
“Stop that! What are you doing!?” He caught his braids to either side of his shoulders and pulled on them.
“It’s okay!” Karalti chirped, cocking her head from side to side querulously. “Hector’s mine! He likes Burna, too! You don’t need to worry about him!”
“He… ‘likes’ Burna,” Vash repeated flatly. Then his face twisted in a snarl. “Is nothing sacred to you, dog? Not oaths, not dragons, not anything?”
“Some things. I was real busy worshipping your mom last night.” I sat down cross-legged on Karalti’s back and looked down at him. “Are you coming up, or what?”
Vash stared at us for a couple of seconds. For a moment, I thought he was about to fly up, kung-fu style, and punch my face through the back of my head. But instead, he slid his hand into one of the pouches on the heavy belt he wore and pulled out a bag. From that, he removed something that looked remarkably like a joint. He lit it with a match; a rich, skunky smell wafted to my nose.
“Mother jokes. Burna’s balls. I’m too tired for this shit,” he muttered. He took a deep hit and held it like a pro before blowing it out. He coughed, briefly, then closed his eyes. “Fine, Rotzlöffel. Have it your way, but before we leave this place, I must find my gauntlets. This stupid bitch of a worm sucked them off my arms like a two-ruble dockyard whore.”
It crossed my mind to tell him that Suri had them, but… nahh. “Sure, man. You do that while we level up.”
Vash grunted, and clomped over to the dead boss to start pawing through its innards.
“We need to pick up the Ix’tamo, too!” Rin exclaimed, bouncing over to Karalti as she stood. “Karalti, do you think you can carry it?”
“Yeah! I can carry a lot now!” The dragon squinted her eyes, like a smug cat.
I nodded. “Leveling first, though.”
“Okay! I need to level as well and make a couple of quick adjustments to Hopper and Lovelace, so, take your time!”
Rin ran off to continue repairing her turrets, while Suri joined Cutthroat. While they worked, I lay out on Karalti’s back and opened my HUD to level her up, and was shown a familiar chart:
“Let’s see here... we’re not choosing any skills from another path, are we?”
“Nope! The Path of Alacrity is fun.”
“My thoughts exactly. Okay… let’s see here. Level 10 gives us ‘Wings of Deception’.” I selected that, and then did my best to manually read the description:
Wings of Deception
Your dragon is the daughter of Matir, and her blood sings with the Words of Shadow, Illusion, and Life. She has flowered into adulthood and has gained the ability to create shadow copies of herself (1 copy per 50 Mana points, minimum 1 copy) that look, to all intents and purposes, like herself, her rider, and any gear she may be carrying.
When the copies are made, the dragon teleports one body-length in any direction and splits off into multiple images. Her mana and HP are evenly divided between herself and her dopplegangers. For example, if the dragon creates 3 copies (for a total of 4 individuals), each one will have 1/4 of her total HP and Mana pool.
Shadow Copies will naturally mimic their creator in movement, speech, and attack. Commanding the copies to take independent action takes great strength of will, but is possible with the right training. Maintaining the copies costs 1 Mana per second per copy.
The copies can take damage, cast spells, and strike with any attack the dragon knows - however, spells cast by copies use 50% more mana, and breath weapon damage dealt by copies is reduced by 75%. For example, a dragon with three copies who uses a breath weapon deals one instance of normal damage, and three instances of 25% damage. Physical attacks suffer no penalty until the copies expire.
If a copy is damaged over its maximum HP reserve, the dragon will not take damage. The copy will vanish and will not be able to be resummoned until the dragon has rested for 6 hours. If the original dragon is damaged beyond her reduced HP reserve, all copies will vanish and her HP will refill to its normal pool, minus the damage she sustained.
The dragon’s bonded rider is also copied, and can perform attacks - however, unless the rider also has an ability to create shadow clones, the attacks will be illusory and deal no damage. An invisible rider will remain concealed. If the rider if thrown off during flight, the shadow rider/s will also fall. The dragon cannot replicate non-bonded riders or passengers.
Copies look, feel and sound exactly like the dragon summoning them until dismissed. The clones created by Wings of Deception are tangible manifestations of mana and cannot be identified purely by physical appearance - magical means must be employed to discern copies from their original caster. The difficulty rating to pierce the illusion increases with your dragon’s level.
Oh. My god.
I rubbed my eyes, then had the system read it back to me again to make sure that my dyslexia wasn’t playing a cruel prank on me. And as she did, a grin split my face. “Karalti. I am about to smash this ‘accept’ button harder than I have ever smashed anything before.”
She craned her neck to look up and back at me. “Uhh... okay?”
“You’ll only be able to ninja-magic one of these copies, but even that is going to save us so much HP in the air. This Wings of Deception thing is a gamechanger. I’m almost worried it’s like... like a mistake.” When the option to accept came up, I screamed ‘YES!’ in my head at the HUD.
When it closed, Karalti closed her eyes and drew a deep, startled breath as the air around us darkened. Through the film of shadow rising around her, I saw the others turn to look. It intensified, deepening, and then the black vapor seemed to suck into Karalti’s body through the seams in her scales - and into me. We shivered at the same time, and then she opened her eyes.
“Ohhh.” Her violet and silver irises churned wi
th power, folding in toward her pupil like magma at the heart of a volcano. “Ohhhhhhhh! Yeah! This is neat!”
“Yeah.” My heart was beating fast at the possibilities. “Let me go see what combat abilities have opened up for me. Maybe there’s something complimentary to it.”
“Wait... so if I make a copy of me, and they do a quarter of my damage, then we do 125% total.” She paused for a moment.
“Yes. And this shit is going to scale up. You could end up doing 350% breath weapon damage or more by end game.” My mind was suddenly racing with ideas on how to use this ability to our advantage in fights with larger dragons. Would Baldr, Lucien, and Violetta’s dragons have comparable abilities?
I scrolled over to my sheet next to see what combat abilities I had to work with at Level 19. There were three new options:
Obsidian Scales (Dark Dragoon)
Your dragon’s damage reduction is increased by 5% per ability level when you are riding her.
Lance Assassin (Offense)
Every adrenaline point adds a 1% chance of instantly killing your enemies on a critical hit. The maximum target level increases with each level in this ability.
Aura of Terror (Defense)
You induce Terror in your opponents, demoralizing them and forcing weaker opponents to flee from your presence. This is a passive ability that is active in combat and can be activated manually at other times.
“Hmm.” I tapped my lip, mildly disappointed at the lack of shadow-copy abilities. Three abilities, all of them tempting in their own ways, plus several existing ones I wanted to level. I only had three Combat Ability Points.
Obsidian Scales was the one I felt I ought to take, because it would make Karalti less likely to be hurt in combat, but Aura of Terror was pretty fucking cool – and potentially very useful, if not in this particular war, then in future mass combat scenarios. Lance Assassin was promising, but only once I got an ability that increased my chance of landing critical hits. I checked out the full ability description and found that it was effective on enemies based on their EXP. Lance Assassin I would only instakill enemies with 50% of my experience or lower, but every point you dumped into that ability raised the ceiling by 15%. Lance Assassin X gave you a 10% chance to insta-kill enemies with 185% more EXP than yourself – good odds, especially in a fight with multiple opponents. If I could level it to ten between now and, say, Level 30, then I would take it in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t be able to level combat abilities to Level X until I was Level 45, though – so Lance Assassin was going to be great around end-game, but I was better off focusing on mastering my active combat abilities for now.
In the end, I decided to leave the new options alone and level my current abilities instead: Rain of Glass II, Master of Blades IV, Whirlwind Butcher IV. Whirlwind was my Adrenaline Point generator, and the MoB/Rain of Glass combo required a lot of AP. While I didn’t want my Tidbit getting damaged, her new Wings of Deception ability was going to go a long way toward improving her defense. As I was just about to close the sheet, my eyes snagged on the Gift of Matir abilities list. I hadn’t yet used the Shadow Lance ability, and it was still marked ‘new’. I’d forgotten about it: not good. That was something I definitely needed to work into my tactics.
“How’re you goin’ up there, soldier?” Suri called up.
“Good. Just finished.” I closed my HUD and rolled up into a crouch to see Vash glaring at me as he belted his gauntlets on. “Ready to go back to Korona and make an entrance?”
Suri put a boot on Cutthroat’s stirrup and pulled herself up into the saddle. “Ready to go back to Korona and bang Soma and Istvan’s heads together, more like it.”
Chapter 23
It took the better part of the night to reach Korona, and the sun was just coming up over the horizon when we sighted the Prezyemi Line from the air. This was made much easier by the fact that part of it was on fire.
“Oh jeez.” The sounds of artillery pounding the wall to the west of Korona made me wince. Magical barriers sprung to life over the archers and riflemen who fired down at the seething black mass surging toward them below. “Ohhh boy.”
“Do we go?” Karalti labored with the weight of the Ix’tamo and Vash on her back, while I hung onto her forearm like a pirate on the mast of his ship - or a stripper on a pole, depending on your angle. Her maximum carry weight in the air was now something like six hundred pounds, but anything over three hundred inflicted a movement penalty.
“Hell no. We need to drop off the dumb stupid rock and our passenger first.” I closed my eyes, then opened them wide to zoom in on the battle happening to our left. “Should probably hurry, though. This looks like the real deal.”
Bells were clanging all over Korona as warships and griffin knights surged westward. We circled, watching below as Suri and Rin crossed to the gate at the base of the wall. Only once they were inside did we circle the skydock and come in to land. Controllers on the ground galvanized into action when they saw us, waving flags and hustling people out of the way as we did a wing around, giving the people below a good view of what - and who - we were carrying. That maneuver was the end of my dragon’s endurance. Struggling for air, she evened out into a glide, straightened up as she came down, then flared her wings just before touching down to a stumbling trot.
“Oof.” She shuddered with effort, wings drooping, panting heavily as her stamina ring flashed. “That was close.”
“Yeah, but you made it because you’re a fucking boss.” I unlocked my white-knuckled hands from around her arm and jumped shakily to the ground, shaking out the adrenaline, and turned to see a mob of soldiers charging toward us. They clamored as Vash vaulted from Karalti’s back to the ground, cheering as the monk threw up his arms and ran toward them. But it only took the edge off the barely suppressed panic echoing around the fort - spearheaded by the fact that the General and Field Commander were nowhere to be seen.
“There is zero strategy here, Karalti. No strategy and no leadership. Istvan and Soma had better be at the front line.” Furious, I raided my pack for stamina potions, uncorked one, and held it up for Karalti to drink. She bought her head low and tipped it back, jaws open so that I could pour it down her gullet. By the time they were finished working, I heard the screams of ‘control your fucking bird!’ and saw the cloud of mayhem that usually preceded Cutthroat’s arrival, just before the hulking black hookwing drifted a corner around the gate to the docks and loped toward us.
“You! Take this!” Suri snapped at a passing dockhand as she jumped off Cutthroat. She pulled her reins around and handed them to the startled man, who eyed her, then the foaming, wild-eyed hookwing. “Get her somewhere dark! Like a stall, a stable. No sunlight, no light. She’ll die. Okay?”
“I... uh... the hookwings are all corralled outside-” he stuttered.
“Just find somewhere for her that’s dark!” Suri snarled. Cutthroat champed her jaws, head darting from side to side as she came up behind Suri’s shoulder to back her up.
“Yes ma’am! I mean, my lady!” The man awkwardly saluted, and tried to tug Cutthroat away from Suri. The big female did not want to leave, and as she realized what was happening, her crest feathers fell. She turned her head and squawked in disbelief as the man hauled ineffectually at her reins.
“Go on, you big fluffy cunt! I’ll come get you when you’re not a goddamned vampire!” Suri waved her off sternly.
The hookwing’s dead yellow eyes got big and sad. She dropped her muzzled head, and placidly slouched off with the nervous soldier, not even pausing to snarl at someone who bumped into her tail.
“She’s gotten smarter,” I remarked. “She can understand human speech now?”
“I dunno.” Suri scratched her head. “I dunno if she understands the words, or if she just reads my tone of voice. Seems like it though.”
“Sure does.” I nodded. “Hope you’re ready to bring her a big bouquet of severed arms when you get back. She’s going to be pissed when she realizes you’re killing things
without her.”
“Yeah.” Suri jerked her head at the Ix’tamo. “Need a hand gettin’ that bloody thing down?”
“Sure do.” I looked to Karalti. She flashed Suri a double-fanged sneer, but knelt down gratefully for us to get the heavy crystal weapon off her back. Rin joined us just as we got it to the ground, and ran across, flapping her hands, as we tried to figure out how to stand it up.
“No no no no no! Don’t mess with it!” She pushed me away from it, and waved Suri off as well. “Leave me here with this! We’ll get a cart. Soma and Istvan are with their men on the Western Wall. Go there and help - I’ll take care of the Ix’tamo and make sure it’s stabilized!”
“Roger that.” I cupped my hands to my mouth. “Vash! Hey! Asshole!”
“What do you want, you syphilitic dog?” He shouted back cheerfully.
“Want a ride to the fight?” I called. “Or you gonna stay here so these guys can suck your cock all day?”
He then clapped one man on the shoulder before turning and springing off the ground. He flashed into invisibility, then seemed to fall out of thin air into a crouch right in front of me, standing almost nose to nose. I took a step back as he spat to the side and looked past me to Karalti.
“Lady? Shall we go?” he said.
“With Hector,” she replied primly.
The monk sighed dramatically. “If we must.”
Before he could go around me, I blocked him and met his eyes. “Can we talk about this problem you have with me? Because this is a giant clusterfuck with no discernable strategy at play, and thanks to Istvan and Soma, people who don’t need to die today are going to die. This is difficult enough without you climbing my ass for trying to save my friends.”
Vash’s scarred mouth twisted down in about three different directions as he scowled. When he spoke, it was in Tuun. “Must I lay it out for you simply, like you are a child? Very well. You took a sacred oath in vain, and that is a very bad thing to do. Bad enough that untruth taints you like a disease.”
Archemi Online Chronicles Boxset Page 100