Archemi Online Chronicles Boxset

by James Osiris Baldwin

  The Spear of the Ender and the Maker

  Soul-bound Dark Elemental Weapon

  Slot: Two-handed

  Item Class: Relic

  Item Quality: Mastercrafted

  Damage: 277 - 352 Slashing or Piercing

  Durability: 97%

  Weight: 1lb

  Special: Soul-bound, +50 bonus Fire damage, +150 Dark damage (+300 damage to Undead), +500 HP, +10 Strength, +10 Will, +25% evasion, 1% chance to instantly kill an enemy.

  Special: Maker's Blessing - learn Crafting skills 5% faster. Nightfather's Blessing - 6% of inflicted weapon damage heals the wielder.

  "It is truly the Spear of legend," Ashur breathed. "Now, we end this. Unlock the Gate!"

  The gods here eat souls. That couldn't be true, could it? I looked up at the huge door, then took my place in front of the altar. Ashur was just behind me, watching intently as I raised the Spear, aligned it with the hole, and drove it down with all my strength.

  Chapter 53

  Before the blade touched the altar, I sprung straight up into the air. At the peak of the backflip, I hit Master of Blades V.

  A ring of ten shards of light-sucking energy flared out around me like arching wings, and in a split second, they spun and slammed down on Ashur and Violetta. There was no escape: each lance now did slightly over two thousand points of damage, two lances per target. Ashur was completely flat-footed, reeling as they took him through the chest and shoulders and blew two huge holes through his torso. Violetta barked a command word, getting a shield up just before the energy shards tore apart, regathered, and Rained down hard.

  [You deal 3092 damage to ??Zero]

  [You deal 6137 damage to Elder vampire Ashur! HP: 4863/11,000]

  I landed the Jump on Ashur’s back and drove the Spear through the back of his neck – another 2816 damage. Thanks to my old friend Type Effectiveness, he was already down to 2047 HP – less than my total pool, and I was 8 levels lower than him.

  “You! How…?” His next words choked off as he coughed a gout of black, clotted blood onto the floor.

  “Bla’pah’hai!” Violetta snarled the command words of a Water spell, flinging her glowing hands at me and Ashur both. I got out of the way as water condensed from the air and thrust forward like a giant sword. Ashur saw it coming. He teleported away, reappearing at the other end of the dais.

  With one eye on the vampire, I flung myself into a roll under her next spell and charged in with a roar. “Karalti! If you’re ready to rock and roll, now’s the time! Come in swinging!”

  Violetta slung another water blade at me. I Shadow Danced through it, soaking 500-ish damage as I burst out of the dash in a freezing cloud of darkness. I charged the Spear with Shadow Lance, and felt it reach for the Star. When it found it, the black fire rimming the blade burst into ropy coils of boiling shadow. Violetta’s eyes bled black as she threw up a desperate shield. The Spear struck it with a rolling shockwave, overloading the flickering wall of light and blowing it back into Violetta’s face. The discharge was so intense that it slashed her skin and sent her flying. I turned my focus back to Ashur then.

  “A Halfblood!?” He was clutching his wounds with his left hand, the other arm hanging uselessly by his sided. He couldn’t regenerate any of the HP he’d lost. “Me, sire a Halfblood! Has the power… urrghh… of Napath declined so much?”

  “Sorry, fang daddy. I’m a bad boy.” Violetta was trying to gain distance - I was struggling not to let her get it. She turned about twenty feet from me, close enough that I could Jump the distance and stay on her where she was weakest: up close and personal. Just before the Spear contacted her body, she rounded on me, teeth bared.

  "Chron lavan ki'mer!" She cried, slashing her hands down.

  [You resist Time Stop!]

  [You are slowed!]

  The world seemed to wind down to a crawl. I twisted to evade, but it was like trying to turn in knee-deep mud. Violetta's hands lifted, her mouth opening. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ashur down some sort of potion and snarl, hefting his sword in his off hand.

  “You are a stain on my bloodline! On my people!” He howled, his fangs lengthening, face twisting his face into a bestial, demonic mask of bone and iron. His muscles swelled. “Die!”

  The Slow debuff ended, and time snapped back to normal. I couldn’t evade in time. Ashur’s hooked sword split my armor like it wasn’t there, carving through the flesh beneath.

  [Your armor is Sundered! – 50% protection!]

  [You take 829 damage! You are Bleeding!]

  “Oof.” Something bright and hot flew toward me. I dodged on reflex, barely able to see for the pain. I scrambled around the pair of enemies on one hand and both feet, then flung a Shadow Garrote at Violetta to distract her. The loop of shadow didn't fly from my hand - it rose out of the sorceress's own shadow, dropping around her neck and drawing taut. Violetta's eyes bulged, and she forgot everything she was doing to claw desperately at her throat, drawing blood within seconds. She spun away with a small choking sob - right into the path of a gleaming black dragon who appeared out of thin air.

  Karalti drew a deep breath, jaws agape. "HRRRRROOOOOAARRR!"

  A liquid plume of blazing white fire swallowed the panicking sorceress in a sticky inferno. Her passengers jumped to the ground: a silver-skinned woman in a featureless steel mask, two spider-like automatons, and a slender, wavy-haired man who leaped down with a saber in one hand and a cocked pistol in the other.

  “You!” He levelled his sword at Ashur. The blade gleamed silver – true silver, by the way it made my skin crawl. “Stand and fight, demon!”

  Ashur snarled at him. He made an arcane gesture, glaring at me with burning gold eyes that hissed and spat like the core of a star. “Bastard half-blood! I will find you, thrall! I will debase you, kill your dragon bitch, kill your god! You have not seen the last of Ashur!”

  My ally charged him with a harsh battlecry. He fired the pistol – in an instant, Ashur’s body collapsed into sand that swirled away on an unseen wind before vanishing.

  The Mercurion and her Artifacts were butchering Violetta. She was on her back underneath them, shrieking with pain as she soaked bullets and tried to fend off the stabbing, stamping feet. "Aieee! No! Krath'uum!"

  Light pulled in around Violetta, then exploded in a shockwave that sent us all flying back - except Karalti. The dragon landed and charged in with her head lowered. Violetta whirled on her, preparing to cast another spell, but I was already flanking and ready to stab. The Spear took her through the kidney. Her words cut off as she seized in pain, and Karalti pulled her off the end of the weapon with her jaws. She shook her like a rat. Violetta gurgled - she was at barely a quarter HP, which vanished to a sliver when the dragon slammed her against the floor and then dropped her. I charged in as Violetta flung a hand up. Her eyes were wide and blue, dark with pain.

  "Mercy!" she gasped.

  “Not today, Satan.” Before she had any room to pull a fast one, I drove Shattering Darkness straight into her head. The Spear punched through Violetta's skull, freezing it solid. Her skull shattered into bloodless smoking chunks, and then her body collapsed to the ground. It shuddered, and then turned to dust - leaving a sack of goods behind.

  [The enemy commander has surrendered his forces and fled! You have defeated the invading Napathu army! You earned 2000 EXP!]

  [Quest Complete: Unto Death. You earned 3363 EXP!]

  [You are Level 22!]

  [Karalti is Level 13!]

  [Rin is Level 18!]

  [Suri reached Level 23!]

  Through the forest of notifications, I stared at the dragon in awe. Karalti was more beautiful than I could have imagined - tall and supple, her scales gleaming with veins of bright opalescent color. She was feminine and unearthly and… was this gorgeous, incredible creature really mine?

  "Hector! Are you okay!?" She ran to me with her head low, her wings flickering against her sides. Dropping the Spear, I held my arms out as Karalti thrust her
muzzle against my chest, colliding with me like a girl throwing herself in a hug. At the first touch of her burning hot scales, my temples heated with such sudden intensity that, for a second, I thought my skull was about to explode like Violetta’s had.

  "Gyaaaaaaah! GAH!” I barely felt my knees hit the ground as a massive, torrential flood of memories rushed in. Indonesia and San Fran and a house with a green door and faceless men sprawled over shattered trees and Suri falling and- “BITCH… ASS… MOTHBALLING… Gyah!”

  I clawed my face, my eyes, the floor, anything, trying to make it stop... and then it was over. It took me a second to realize where I was: lying on my side, Karalti mantled over me with piercing cries of confusion and distress.

  "Karalti! Hector! What happened?!" Rin ran up to us, pushing her mask back. Karalti snapped at her, once, then keened and pulled her head back. Gasping, I looked up to see her wide blue eyes round and worried. She felt my forehead.

  "Memory." I choked the word out through a dry, tight throat. "Download. Memory."

  Karalti drew her hands up against her chest and swung her head from side to side, moaning. “I hurt him somehow!”

  "Okay! It okay!" Words and word order were jumbled in my head, Tuun mixing with Korean and English and Vlachian. "Download... bad."

  The dragon ducked her head and nuzzled at me, then began to lick my exposed skin. I flinched at the first contact, but there was no more mental agony - just a wet dragon tongue that pulled my helmet off and mlem'd the entire length of my face.

  "Ugh... Jeez... okay..." I weakly fended off the tongue, and pulled her head down into another hug. Her smell was the most familiar thing in the world. "I'm okay."

  I sat upright. Rin and Istvan reached down. I caught their hands and let them help me up, still weak and dizzy from the info dump. As I got to my feet, I glanced over at the Dragon Gate and froze.

  Rin shook her fists, bouncing up and down with excitement. “We did it! We managed to hold the undead at the Pass! We weren't able to recruit all the Yanik, but we had enough warriors and soldiers to keep the zombies at bay. Lord Bolza was staked-"

  "Wait." I held up a hand to ward her back as I swayed from foot to foot. "Visitor.”

  "What?" Istvan turned his face in the direction I began walking. Then, to Rin, he whispered: "What is he talking about?"

  “Don’t worry, he’s not crazy. I see it too. Stay back while we go over, just in case.” Karalti rattled in her throat, inflating it and then huffing out a great gust of air as she padded along behind me.

  The Black God of the Nine was looking up at the huge shuddering door to his tomb, hands folded behind his back. Matir looked very similar to how he had the first time I'd met him, when I was glitched inside the belly of a slave ship. Tall, lean, dressed in shadowy traveler’s clothes. Trousers, boots, a hooded capelet... and when he glanced back at us, no discernible face. There was nothing but a sucking void of darkness with a single, dancing point of light at the center.

  "You came," he said. His tone was heavy with relief.

  "Yeah. Can’t say I’m not a man of my word." I cracked my neck and knuckles, drawing to a stop a healthy distance away. "You have a really strong heartbeat for a dead guy, you know that?"

  "The death of an immortal god is different to the death of a mortal human." Matir replied primly. "Our death is not of the physical self. It is the death of our agency - the removal of our power to directly act upon reality. A dead god is unreachable, inaccessible, and must act through their proxies. I was powerless to stop the plundering of my corpse. Before my ascent to the Dragon Gate, such a thing could not have happened. Now I am so weakened that the only place I can currently materialize is the antechamber to my prison.”

  Karalti snaked her muzzle forward, chirping curiously. Matir's avatar stepped forward, and raised a slender hand. His fingers twitched, as if he would touch her snout... but then he folded them into his palm and dropped it, turning away.

  “You need a more secure dungeon, my man.” I watched him with growing suspicion. “Pretty much anyone could bust in here.”

  “This isn’t the dungeon,” Matir replied. “This is just the entry to the dungeon. There is an entire complex behind each dragon gate, each different and devilishly challenging. You have to be at least Level 50 before you could cross that threshold and survive.”

  “Right.” I was actually reassured to know that. Even Lucien and Violetta weren’t that juiced up. “So… how’s it hanging in Dark Godsville?”

  “Poorly.”

  “Yeah. Same here.” I began to fidget with my broken armor. “So, going to tell us why we’re here? Because I just got strong-armed into being a vampire half-blood thanks to this quest, and I don't know how I feel about that.”

  “Is that why you smell so weird?” Karalti not-so-discreetly sniffed at my hair.

  Matir straightened, looking down at me. "You should know something about the world that the Architects created. The quest system here is dynamic. Adaptive. For normal, non-viral players, quests are generated for them, dovetailing with their needs, their desires and fantasies. Players are not controlled by their quests. Their quests are controlled by their hearts' desires. Do you understand?"

  "Just wait a second." I scowled. "You aren't supposed to know that stuff. You've never broken the fourth wall when you've spoken to me before."

  "You are correct." Matir replied. "I did not speak of it.”

  Something was plucking at my intuition. Something about the way the god's avatar stood and acted. "What's going on? What aren't you telling me? And why hasn't the Shrine quest ended? We're here, at the Thunderstones. We stopped Ashur from draining you. The Keystone's as safe as it'll ever be. Where's the wrap-up?"

  “There isn’t one.” Matir gave a very un-godly agitated sigh. "Hector, listen to me. Things have gotten out of hand here since Michael returned. Every time the Architects purged him from this world, he found some way to come back. He's malware: a virus that has embedded himself so deeply into the lore of this server that he could have come back any number of ways. He’s already warped it so intensely that we have things that were never intended to be seen in play. There were server limitations on torture, programs to detect sexual crimes beyond the scope of normal PvP... now most of that has been thrown down the drain."

  No way. My eyes widened as he continued to rant in a way that was utterly familiar to me. I took a step back from Matir, bumping into Karalti's wrist.

  A snippet of conversation from the past: "Matir is a feature of the game's mythos and storyline, but not an active character."

  And another: "What about my brother?"

  "We would like to offer our condolences. He did not successfully transfer."

  "He might have made it. You didn't know I was here. He could be alive, and we just don't know it."

  "We knew you had reached the character creation and neural duplication stage. There is no record of him ever getting that far. No psychological or neural profile was created for him..."

  My mouth worked silently for a moment. "... Steve?"

  Chapter 54

  Matir flinched slightly at the sound of my brother’s name. His long fingers curled up into loose fists.

  "Steve?" I took a numb step forward, then another.

  "Your brother... preferred his Korean name," Matir said haltingly. "He always wondered why it was that he had to use an Anglo-Saxon name to get a job, but had to learn to pronounce names like 'Kuzetznov' or 'Unbegaun' at work. Park Chi-Yul... it's not that difficult to say."

  First came anger. Then grief. Confusion. I fumbled back, searching for Karalti as I tried to figure out what the fuck was going on.

  "You always preferred your English name," Matir continued, turning to look back at the Dragon Gate again.

  "Yeah. Because I chose it for myself." My voice shook slightly as I got closer, studying him... searching for signs of my brother. "What the fuck is going on? This is impossible. Steve didn’t make it. His upload failed.”

 
“Did it?” Matir tilted his head to the side.

  “Ryuko said he didn’t even reach character creation.” Another step.

  Matir gestured elegantly to his chest. “My Herald... did it occur to you that your brother might have never intended to become a Starborn character?”

  My mouth opened, then shut. Then opened again. “You mean... you mean he survived? He’s here? He told you this stuff, about the game?”

  “Not exactly.” Matir’s face was unfathomable, yet somehow, he seemed... compassionate. “He didn’t need to ‘tell’ me.”

  I stared at Matir for several long seconds. “... then you are Steve? Right?”

  The Dark God turned away from me slightly, as if ashamed. “No. I am not Steven Park.”

  “I-I don’t get it.” I couldn’t stop the stammer, and flushed. “If he’s not a character, and he’s not you, and he’s not some kind of free-floating God...?”

  "Park Chi-Yul - Steve - is dead in the way that the gods of the Solonkratsu are dead," Matir replied gently. "He is... was... one of the Architects, is he not?"

  "Yeah." I halted, struggling against the heat in my eyes. "Yeah, he was."

  "I could not have awoken of my own accord. Only an Architect could have roused me from my restless sleep. When I first stirred, I felt only one powerful imperative: the need to raise an avatar and find a Starborn soul to serve as my Herald. It was sheer coincidence that I found you struggling against the Corruption eating you from the inside out... and when we made our bargain, I was given the option to select some character perimeters for you. I found I knew how to make you immune to Corruption, the secret property of Darkness... the point at which the Darkness element becomes the Void. For Darkness is the closest state of matter to the Void represented by the Drachan, even though it is in strong opposition to it."