The cavern ahead of us narrowed into a dragon’s nightmare: A tunnel, barely wide enough to permit a dragon to open her wings. It was lined with countless rings of massive spines, huge angled columns of lethally sharp crystal that pointed away from us into the darkness. It reminded me of a fish trap. Fish could go in, but they couldn’t get out.
“Don’t worry,” Karalti said, firmly. “Like you just said: we’re the best dragonrider team in Archemi. This tunnel’s made for dragons bigger than me. We can do this.”
“We’re going to have to time your wingbeats just right,” I said. “Push back and build up some speed. We don’t know what the rest of the obstacle course looks like.”
“Right.” She lowered her chest, lifted her tail, and used her hands to back up without turning around.
“Can you get a visual on the tunnel through the Bond?” I asked.
“Yeah. As long as your eyes are open.” She stood up straight and weaved her head like a falcon, tuning her internal gyroscope. “Hold on... and stare straight forward.”
Karalti spread her wings and beat them stiffly, loosening her shoulders. I felt her second heart engage and fall into sync with the other. Dragons had two hearts: one that pumped blood like a normal heart, and a larger one that drove the mana-infused lymphatic fluid that magically lightened her body and pressurized her limbs. It was my cue to kneel down and brace.
The dragon roared a challenge as she broke into a lumbering charge. She built speed, almost a run, and launched herself from the very edge of the ravine. I ducked as the spines grew uncomfortably close. There was barely fifteen feet of clearance on all sides, a gap which narrowed sharply up ahead.
“Burst flight!” I thought.
Karalti read my mind, or maybe I read hers. She brought her wings in toward her flanks, teetering as the tunnel narrowed into a one-way squeeze chute just barely big enough to permit a dragon’s body to pass. She shot forward like a missile. Just past the choke was a space for her to gain a single wingbeat, and then she had to do it again.
“There’s no room to gain lift!” She struggled to keep a smooth trajectory as entropy set in. The hair on my arms stood on end as my stomach rose, and I had to cling with all four limbs as her body curved into a high-speed dive, right towards the spikes. “
“Just hold on and don’t stall out! There’s a wing space just past this choke!” I stared ahead at the cored out sections of rock to either side.
The connection between Karalti’s mind and mine intensified, as powerful as I’d ever felt. Karalti’s concentration was absolute as she shot into the open space, blindly snapped her wings out, and drove herself forward and up. There was only room for two wingbeats before she had to swallow-dive again.
“There’s another space ahead!” Adrenaline pounded through my bloodstream. My mouth was dry, hands sweaty, eyes tearing up as I forced them to stay open. “One, two, now!”
Gasping for breath, Karalti beat her wings in the small gap, barely keeping herself out of terminal velocity... and then the roof opened up, and the tunnel curved sharply to the right. The dragon threw her wings open and used her tail to swing into a fast, soaring arc around the corner. Gravity bore down on my back, crushing the air from my lungs before she swung back, and we burst out of the gauntlet into a massive lava chamber.
“We did it!” She cried. Even her telepathic voice was breathless. “But there’s nowhere to land!”
There sure wasn’t. Titanic streams of magma seethed below us, belching from the walls into a great river of molten rock. Six monolithic statues loomed from the walls to either side of the rumbling lava. Dragons, each one standing with their hands cupped around a different item. At the other end of the canyon was the entry to a cave, sealed by a great metal portal.
[Warning: Temperature is dangerously high!]
[You are overheating!]
My dragonrider mutations gave me resilience to extremes of temperature: up to fifty degrees Celsius, which was about a hundred-and twenty-degrees Fahrenheit. My Heads-Up Display showed the temperature in this cavern: a lovely 93 degrees c, enough to cook a normal human alive. Even as that wonderful thought passed through my mind, a Hyperthermia ring jumped up in my display: blank, at first, but slowly filling with red.
“We’ve got about five minutes to figure this out before this place roasts me,” I said, as sweat poured down my face. “No pressure or anything.”
“Mmm. Roast Hector. Don’t suppose we’ve got any ketchup?”
The bumpy thermals twirling up from the lava were a pleasure cruise compared to the spiny tunnel, the heat lifting Karalti’s wings with hardly any effort on her part. As she glided past the door, I twisted to keep it in my line of sight. There were six carved runes engraved on the surface, with hollow channels waiting to receive mana.
“Can you read those symbols?” I asked her. “They might be Solonkratsu.”
Karalti winged over and flew back, pulling into a slow glide as we passed by again. “Yeah, kind of! They’re words of power. But they all say the same thing.”
“Which is?”
“‘Breath’. It’s different Words for the same little-w word. Breath.”
“Hold steady.” I craned my head and zoomed my vision in on one of the flanking statues. The stone dragon had his wings folded and his head bowed. He presented an ornate goblet in his clawed hands—a goblet with a metal wick. “It’s a statue puzzle. We have to light these statues with your breath weapon.”
“All six statues? That’ll use up half my charges!”
“I know, but the alternative is a lava bath.” My hyperthermia ring was already a quarter of the way full, and I was starting to shiver from the heat. “I don’t know if we have to do them in some kind of order. Let’s try one and see if it stays lit.”
Karalti flicked a wingtip and coasted toward the statue with the goblet. Her chest swelled against the saddle, and she let out a thin, controlled plume of brilliant white flames. The sticky Ghost Fire lashed over the goblet and the statue’s chest, kindling the wick to life. The statue’s blank crystal eyes lit up—and so did one of the runes on the door.
“I don’t think it matters,” I said, hooking my feet under the saddle straps. “Let’s do a circuit, and make it fast.”
“Gotcha!” The dragon swooped forward, trusting me to hold on as she slingshot along the line of statues. She blasted them, lighting wicks on a lantern, a crystal, and a knife. She swung back around at the end of the canyon, torching the last pair of statues—and the door slid out of its frame and began to slowly roll sidewards into the wall.
“That... was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Which immediately makes me kind of suspicious.” I was trembling now, panting from the heat that crawled between my skin and the surface of my armor. I leaned with Karalti as she banked and winged over, soaring toward the opening door. It was lit from behind, revealing a glittering white tunnel. “What the fuck is that?”
“I dunno, but I sure hope I can land on it. You’re boiling and I’m exhausted.” Even though we’d only flown a short distance, Karalti’s stamina had dropped sharply between her hunger and the stressful, intricate maneuvers she’d had to perform to get us this far.
I zoomed in on the rapidly approaching tunnel—and winced. “No. Stay in the air. That’s web. And I’m pretty sure that whatever spun it is big enough to eat a dragon.”
Chapter 5
As we got closer, I revised my opinion. The tunnel wasn’t lined with web. It was way, way grosser than that.
“Right, so... at first, I thought maybe this was made by giant spiders. But now I am like, ninety-nine percent sure this is fungus.” The steam that billowed out past the door carried a damp, earthy scent, like mushrooms mixed with burned plastic. “Whatever the fuck it is, don’t touch it.”
Karalti rumbled, soaring into the humid tunnel. As the tip of her tail passed the threshold, the door thumped behind us. I glanced over my shoulder to see it rolling back into place. Sticky white strands lashed
out over the warm metal, almost as if the tunnel itself was sealing the exit behind us.
[Warning: Mana levels are dangerously high. You are at risk of mana poisoning!]
“Well... it’s magical.” My skin crawled as I looked around. The fibrous strands looked like living cotton candy, a hollow cocoon that undulated as we flew past. They yearned towards Karalti like hairs reacting to static electricity, reaching for her wingtips. “And it really wants to eat us. Can you Bioscan it?”
“Yeah. Hang on.” I felt her gather her mana, then cast it out into the tunnel like an unseen burst of sonar.
[New herb discovered: Dragonrot]
Dragonrot (Parasitic Fungus)
While technically not a monstrous entity, Dragonrot is one of the few lifeforms capable of striking fear into the hearts of Archemi’s apex predators, the Solonkratsu.
Dragonrot is a Stranged, semi-sentient fungus that thrives in moist underground environments populated by magical creatures, mana-poisoned waterways, and freshwater cavern systems. The fungus targets arcane megafauna like dragons, swamp hags and Stranged leviathans. After infecting a creature’s bloodstream via wound entry, the fungus uses the mana in the host’s body to replicate.
Dragonrot is almost never found in active Solonkratsu settlements. Dragons experience an instinctive revulsion toward the fungus and scorch the walls of their cavernous dens to kill spores. The presence of this fungus is strongly associated with damp underground locations containing dead dragons and-or decayed mana.
This fungus is intrinsically harmless to humans and non-magical creatures and cannot infect them, but the spoiled mana it thrives on can cause mana poisoning and rapid death. Dragons infected by Dragonrot via blood contact will incubate the fungus for 3-4 days before showing symptoms.
“Jeez.” Even after listening to the part where it said that the fungus couldn’t infect humans, I had the urge to scrub at my face and wash my hands. “You know, sometimes, I run across shit in Archemi that makes me wonder what the hell Ryuko was thinking. We’ve had three major pandemics this century, and that’s not even counting HEX. My grandma refused to leave the house without a facemask in her purse. Why the hell did the Devs put something like this in a videogame? Games are supposed to be fun, not traumatizing.”
“I dunno,” Karalti replied, swooping to avoid a waving curtain of fungal strands. “Maybe the Architects didn’t plan for it? I mean, they’re just people, right? Maybe they didn’t make it, and it just... happened?”
“I don’t know if that’s how videogames work, Tidbit.” The walls of the tunnel up ahead narrowed and became bumpier, and I frowned as my eyes snagged on an oddly familiar shape. As we got closer, I saw a long skeletal neck, gaping jaws, and short, stubby horns poking out through the layers of silk: a dragon’s skull and vertebrae, half meshed into the wall. Karalti shuddered beneath me—then yelped aloud. It was all the warning I got. She tipped sharply to the right, almost throwing me off the saddle.
“Oof!” I coughed, slamming down against her back. I clung to Karalti like a baby bat as she desperately winged forward and to the left. “What the-!?”
“Hold on!” The dragon’s voice was as close to a terrified shout as I’d ever heard it.
Oh boy, was I gonna. Then something moved in the corner of my eye. I whipped my head around just as a long, fleshy stem burst out of the wall like a hook shot, exploding toward my dragon’s wings. The stem pulsed with blue light, swiping at Karalti’s thin wing membranes before sagging back against the wall. Then there was another one, and another... and it was all I could do to hold on as my dragon dodged, pulling her wings in to drop, roll, then surge forward as the trap came to life around us. One of the hooks skidded over her wing membrane, catching on the edge. Another shot at me, threatening to catch in my armor and pull me off her back. I kicked at the tough, spongy stems with a boot, breaking them off and sending the clawed ends tumbling away.
“Did it get me? I don’t want to get sick!” Karalti dived as the roof bulged in above us, then exploded in a cloud of spores. Without thinking, I held my breath and screwed my eyes closed, flattening down against her back.
“You’re fine! But whatever you do, don’t stop!” I frantically looked over to her wing, making certain she hadn’t taken any cuts from the hooks. “I’ve played The Last of Us! I know how this goes!”
Karalti belched an oily stream of flames as another cloud of spores ejected from the wall in front of us. They ignited in a puff of sparks, but there was another, and another. More darts shot out at us, skimming over and hooking on the scales of the dragon’s neck. She jerked as they hauled back with surprising strength, pulling out from the walls with long, trailing white roots that crawled with blue embers. I clambered over the bucking saddle, ripping the claws out and throwing them overboard.
The exit was in sight: a dark cave entrance feeding into what looked like a larger cavern. Dim blue light spilled out from it—light that got dimmer as the fungus threw sticky strands across the opening, sealing it off. Karalti had blasted four spore clouds—she had two breath weapon charges left, one of which she spent to incinerate the rapidly forming web that was trying to close off our escape. The fungus shriveled back from the heat, and we blew past as more darts sprang out and fell away, unable to catch on Karalti’s body from behind.
The cavern we flew into was lit by immense columns of bright blue crystal that hummed like exposed wires. They jutted from the ceiling and walls, practically forcing Karalti to go to ground. She landed heavily, wings sagging.
“Wow...” she panted. “That’s... that’s a lot of mana.”
“Holy fucksticks. This has got to be worth a fortune,” I whispered. The radiation from the crystals beat down on my armor like small suns, but the crystals weren’t damaged or liquified, so there was no Mana Poisoning alert. “How many tons of bluecrystal mana do you think this is?”
“I dunno.” Karalti looked back at me, her horns lifting into an upright fan of alarm. “You’re not thinking about taking any, are you?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely,” I said. “There’s enough mana here to power Withering Rose.”
“This the tomb of my ancestress!” My dragon flattened her crests against her skull, hissing in her throat. “I’m not graverobbing my grandma, you ass.”
I winced. “Ah... yeah. Sorry. Didn’t think.”
Karalti neatly flipped her wings so they rested properly against her flanks, and gave an irritable grunt. “Ugh. I dunno about you, but I’m just about done with this place. How much further do we have to go?”
“No idea.” I focused my eyes on the other end of the chamber. Under the jutting forest of crystals was a dragon-sized crawlspace. It looked like someone had busted through the wall. Rubble and broken crystals lay scattered around it, sunken into the dirt and covered in dust. Gouge marks left by claws were visible on the walls. The room beyond glowed brightly. “Given that Myszno was one great big dragon city, we might have to fly all the way to the Endlar at this rate.”
“Ugh. Don’t say that. I remember Istvan saying there were ruins under the swamp.” Karalti flipped her wings along her sides and pushed herself to her feet. Her stamina was looking better—but her hunger meter was sitting at 10%, and her stomach rumbled audibly. “I don’t like the smell coming from that next room. It smells... dead. And mushroomy.”
Between Karalti’s description, the traceries of fungal strands reaching around the edges of the opening, and the bright glow lighting up the next room like a neon sign saying ‘go here!’, my Gamer’s Intuition began to poke at me.
“Let’s buff up,” I said, quietly. “I’ll give you what food I have in my pack. It’s not much, but it’ll get you through whatever we probably have to kill in there. While you eat, let’s talk strategy. You’ve only got one burst of Ghost Fire left: assuming there’s a boss that is designed to challenge dragons and other flying creatures, how are we going to fight it?”
Karalti rubbed her face with her front claws, hissing low in h
er throat. “Uhh... I-”
“If you say ‘I dunno’, I’m gonna kick your ass,” I said. “That’s baby talk.”
She huffed in a way that told me she’d been about to say that exact thing.
“I can use Wings of Deception to make a double of myself,” she said, after a few minutes. “My copies deal the same physical damage as me. I can hit something with thirty-five percent more breath weapon damage that way... and then fight them physically.”
“Right. What about magic?” I scrounged around in my pack, evicting all the food I’d saved. Macarons, sandwiches, burek, random vegetables. I pulled out an entire cabbage I hadn’t remembered picking up and grimaced. I must have picked it up out of a pot somewhere. Mmm-mmm, delicious dungeon cabbage.
“Haste makes me faster,” Karalti said. “Dirge can curse enemies and make them blind and unable to speak, so if they’re a magic user, that helps.”
“Right.”
“Uhh... Dark Focus gives me triple power on my next magical attack. The only offensive spell I have is Shadow Wave. Maybe Circle of Protection?”
I brought the spell descriptions up in my HUD with a thought:
Shadow Wave
Rippling shadows disorient enemies and inflict moderate damage. Causes one or more of: Confusion, Blindness, Deafness, Rage, Nausea to living enemies.
Circle of Protection II
Create a 20ft radius of protection against undead for 5 minutes, warding them back from contact with the dragon’s body while dealing 1 Dark elemental damage per second (15 MP, 10-second cooldown).
“Pretty sure it will work with Shadow Wave. I’m not sure what ‘moderate damage’ means, but triple that will probably end up being ‘serious damage’,” I said. “I guess that was one of those beta testing descriptions that wasn’t fully updated before we... I... joined the game.”
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