“I... thank you.” I sat down on Karalti’s neck, stroking it as she burrowed under Lahati’s wing. The Hall of Heroes that she was talking about had hundreds of biers like the ones outside. The coins alone were probably worth hundreds of thousands of gold Olbia... and the artifacts, magical knowledge, weapons, and armor were potentially priceless. “Thank you so much, for all of this.”
“I did not sacrifice everything only to see the Deceivers sweep Archemi and destroy the world my lover died to preserve,” Lahati said fiercely. “To see my great-granddaughter, Usta, enslaved to the human warmonger who serves them. I sense in you both an incredible spirit, a powerful will to fight. It is my honor to give these gifts to you. I believe in your vision, Herald. I believe your Triad will drive the Drachan back to the Void that spawned them. As long as you can hold onto your sanity, I believe you will triumph.”
The sharp scent of mana cut the air: mana laced with a dense, rose-like perfume. I felt Karalti swallow, her long neck rippling under my hands. Then she stood up, panting, her muzzle coated in a glaze of dark blue dragon’s blood. Her scales heated, lifting under my hands, and the veins of shimmering color between them intensified.
[Karalti the Black Opal Queen has gained a new Path: Path of Royalty.]
[New information has been added to your mount’s character data.]
[Quest Completed: The Path of Royalty.]
[You gain 1576 EXP! Karalti gains 4 Bonus Lexica!]
[Karalti is Level 16!]
The heat and opalescent light spread over Karalti’s body, briefly filling the cavern with light. When it passed, she was a couple of feet longer, about two-thirds the size of Lahati. The muscles of her back were thicker, her tail longer, the fins along the flattened edges of it longer and more aerodynamic. The saddle, thanks to the virtual reality wizardry that made equippable clothes and armor fit any player who wore them, resized to fit. Karalti stretched her wings and craned her neck, looking back at her body in wonder.
“You are a glorious woman, Karalti,” Lahati sighed. “The Nine have mercy on any male who seeks to catch you in the sky. I fear the lair-coddled dragons of Ilia may not be up to the task.”
“Then they’ll have to train until they’re good enough, won’t they?” Karalti snorted and tossed her head, but the thought of her being pursued by other dragons made her—and me—vaguely uncomfortable. As she’d matured, the subject of her taking a mate or three had become an unspoken tension between us. Karalti had gone into heat once already, while in human form, and it had ended... awkwardly. The next time she was compelled to mate, it was possible that there would be other dragons around. Male dragons. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
“Can you give us any advice about the Dragon Gates?” I asked. “You helped create them. What should we know about them?”
“By opening the Gates, you awaken the god entombed within,” Lahati replied. Her voice was becoming wispier, more distant. “Each opened Gate will destabilize the Caul, but as the sleeping god gathers their strength, they will help control the collapse. The magical architecture was designed to withstand the collapse of up to three of the Dragon Gates, other than Veles’.”
“What’s special about his Gate?”
“He was the first to be entombed, and he must be the last to awaken. The Lord of Time’s power is the keystone of the Caul, and if his Gate were to open first, the result would be catastrophic. It is why we sacrificed Hava Sahasi to raise The Gate of Endless Longing above the dome of the sky, beyond the reach of man or dragon.”
“What if...” Karalti trailed off, anxiously tossing her head. “What if one of the gods died? As in... really died?”
“My soul shudders to think,” Lahati said. “But only the most powerful of the Architects could be capable of such a thing. I do not know the means... a god’s death is not the same as a mortal’s. Darkness would not cease to exist if Matir were to truly perish. The Darkness would generate a new godling, who would rise as they assumed their mantle. Perhaps a mortal would ascend, or perhaps they would form from the night sky. It is unknown.”
“But once the first Dragon Gate has been opened, the Drachan can get out, right?” I said. “So we have to time it right.”
“The Drachan will stir to wakefulness, but they will not be freed. But they are weakened from eons of forced confinement, and the magic of the Caul of Souls is powerful,” Lahati said. “I cannot predict what will occur. I can tell you that it is not only the Drachan themselves who are sealed in Rhorhon. They were bound with their alien servants. The legions of the Void: demons, humans, and the Rostori.”
I drew a deep, steadying breath. “Alright. Thanks for that... and thank you for everything you’ve done for us, Your Majesty. I can say with absolute, one-hundred percent certainty that you are the coolest dead lady I know.”
“Hector!” Karalti hissed, flattening all seven horns against her skull.
Soft, ghostly laughter echoed around us. “If only the ancient Paragons had been able to preserve such a sense of humor. Siva Nandini, Altair of the Broken Chains, Pathfinder, Grigori Skyrr, Catherine of Annecy... all so serious, they were. Treasure this one, my daughter. He is perhaps the second man in history who has made me laugh.”
“Wait!” Karalti took an urgent step forward as the cavern exhaled and the softly glowing lights flickered. “Lahati, grandmother... there’s so much I don’t know! About my mother, about our people-”
“You will, child.” A wraithlike form began to rise from the silent corpse of the ancient queen, the shadow of a great dragon. Lahati’s head was almost as long as Karalti’s entire torso, dwarfing her as smoke coiled around her long, narrow wings, her graceful neck and elegant, wedge-shaped head. “Trust in the song written into your flesh and blood. Listen to it, grow in wisdom... and you will discover all you must know. You are the Black Opal Queen. Stand tall, knowing that a thousand mothers watch you from the place of stillness beyond the living world. We will always be there for you, and if it is your fate to pass over, we will receive you with open arms and warm wings.”
Karalti let out a mournful cry as Lahati’s wraith blew apart and faded. The hairs on my arms rose as her presence left the room, leaving it echoing and empty. The crystal floor hummed, turning a milky gray as the body in front of us began to dissolve. As we watched, her body disintegrated into the substance, which hardened once more and set like glass. All the jewelry Lahati had been wearing lay on the surface, glittering on the dragon-shaped shadow her body had left behind.
As Karalti’s tail and wings drooped, I sat down at the very front of the saddle and wrapped my arms and legs around the base of her neck, hugging her tight. She shivered and jerked, at first... but as the minutes passed, her muscles relaxed.
“What an incredible will,” Karalti whispered. “To have waited here for so long, and yet kept so much of herself.”
Karalti’s voice startled me a little. She sounded so... mature.
A HUD alert shook me out of my reverie. I called it over, and as Navigail read out the notifications, my eyebrows climbed up toward my hairline.
[You have made progress on a Main Quest: Darkness Shines on Light Places (1/4) complete!]
[You have a new Quest: Darkness Shines on Light Places (2/4).]
[You gain 1000 EXP!]
[You are Level 26!]
“Yeah. And wow.” I pulled my helmet off and rubbed my head. “When did I even get this quest? It must have been back at the Eyrie.”
“Huh?” Karalti shook herself out of her reverie. “Which quest?”
“Darkness Shines on Light Places. I’ll have the HUD read it out to us,” I said. “It’s an important one.”
Quest Update: Darkness Shines on Light Places (2/4)
During your time at the Eyrie, the bastion of the dragon knights of St. Grigori, you discovered a dark secret at the heart of the Order. The dragons and knights are bound by some kind of magical enslavement, a geas stretching back hundreds, or maybe even thousands of years. It
binds the dragons and their bonded riders to the will of the current Knight-Commander.
The Solonkratsu, Archemi’s native dragons, are a hive species. It is this hive-forming impulse that the Geas on the Order perverts. Instead of allowing the dragons to form families, communities, and centers of art and culture, the magic compels them to be docile mounts in service to human agendas, with no room for argument or independence.
Your Queen dragon, Karalti, has gained access to the Path of Royalty—but to free the dragons of Ilia, Karalti’s status as a queen is not enough. You must get to the root of the problem, the Geas itself. The answers lay in the fallen Aesari city of Cham Garai. Now that you possess Lahati’s blessing and the Pearl of Glorious Dawn, the way will be open to you—but are you strong enough to face what lies within?
This is a special quest (Mark of Matir).
This is a sequential quest (2 of 4)
Difficulty: Level 40-45
Rewards: 6500 EXP, Fame/Infamy, Unknown unique rewards.
[Do you wish to continue this quest?]
I squeezed Karalti with my legs, and nodded. “Yes.”
[Quest accepted!]
The quest marker turned green, and then joined the queue of active quests waiting in the holographic window. I closed it down, and sighed.
“Yeesh. Level 40 is a lot closer than it was back then, but it’s still pretty far away.” I said. “We’ll need a shit ton of EXP to take on the Eyrie.”
“How much?”
I brought up the Archemipedia. The reference wiki was a brain-to- virtual interface database, like the rest of the menu software. All I had to do was think ‘Dark Dragoon Experience Table’, and I was able to see how much EXP I needed to get from Level 26 to Level 40. I could do the same for Karalti. She needed a lot more EXP than I did to reach the same level, meaning she was typically ten levels behind me. “Yeesh. We’ll have to nearly double what we have now. I need a bit over thirty-eight thousand to hit Level 40. You need about thirty-nine thousand points to reach Level 20.”
“We can do it,” Karalti said firmly. “We have lots of quests, and there’s heaps of monsters in the Endlar. All we have to do is fight and train together, like we always have.”
“You bet your fine ass we will.” I clapped her neck and stood on the saddle. “Let’s work out a training regime at home: I’ll delegate everything I can, and we can skill up.”
“Yeah!” Karalti tossed her head up and down, huffing a cloud of steam toward the ceiling. “We should pick up the treasure here and go. Suri, Vash, Istvan... they’re all worried about us.”
“Don’t rush yourself if you like... need to stay here a while longer.” I said. “We’ve been gone from Karhad for nearly four days. Another half an hour to say goodbye to Lahati isn’t gonna make a difference.”
“It’s fine. I feel okay.” Karalti rumbled, squatting down to paw at the scattered jewelry on the surface of the crystal lake. “Can you help me pick this up? Between your inventory and mine, we should be able to take a lot of what we found here home. Istvan’ll be happy to see gold in the treasury.”
“He sure will.” I rolled my shoulders and slid down her flank to dismount. “I can’t believe she bequeathed everything to us. There’s got to be a million olbia’s worth of treasure in the Vault of Heroes. There’s probably fifty grand’s worth just in here. Not to mention the mana.”
“I can,” Karalti said. “Believe it, that is. Lahati told us why. I’m her hope for the future. We both are... because if the Drachan get out of their prison and win, none of this gold will mean anything. There won’t be a world to spend it in.”
Chapter 9
Thanks to the fact that Karalti could now carry about a thousand pounds of stuff, we could pack in a LOT of treasure. I cleaned all the junk I didn’t need out of my Inventory, and we crammed in everything we could loot. And then, with the protective spells over Lahati’s Tomb deactivated, we teleported home.
We appeared in the air right over my castle—a statement which still felt weird to think, even though Kalla Sahasi had been ours for almost a month. The castle loomed over Myszno’s administrative capital, Karhad, perched at the edge of a tall mesa overlooking the narrow river valley. The city looked better than it had three weeks ago. There were fewer tents, less rubble, and more scaffolding. As for the castle... Ehhhh. Not so much.
In its hey-day, Kalla Sahasi had been a masterwork of soaring black towers, intricate gothic buttressing, and tall golden roofs surrounding a trio of towers around a triangular courtyard, the Inner Ward. Right now, Kalla Sahasi was barely livable, let alone defendable. The roof and upper floors of the tower closest to the road had been crushed by the Demon’s siege engines. Unfortunately, that tower contained the library, guest suites, the War Room, and our nice meeting rooms, all which had put a bit of a crimp on inviting the nobility of Myszno to come and visit.
The Administration Tower wasn’t the only casualty from the invasion of Myszno. All the outbuildings on that northern side—the bakery, two granaries, servant housing, and one of the barracks—were unusable, heavily damaged in the vicious assault the Demon’s army had leveled on the castle. Our curtain wall was more curtain than wall. We’d even had to burn most of the remaining furniture, because Ashur and his undead minions had left mysterious brown stains on the upholstery.
Sadly, no repairs had been made on the castle since we’d left it for Dakhdir a couple weeks ago... because Ashur had also looted the treasury and shipped most of the Voivode’s gold stock back to his home country of Napath. So, for now, we made do. The castle garrison had patched together the shattered ramparts with scaffolding. Said garrison was crammed into the one remaining barracks and used the guest rooms in the residential tower for overflow. My Warden, the castle’s chief of security, had bunked in the ruins of the gatehouse. We ran meetings out of the private dining room next to the great hall, the main building at the heart of the inner ward. Access to the residential tower was via an arrangement of narrow plank walkways and ladders. On the upside, we got to train our Dex stat every time we needed to go to bed or use the bathroom.
But one thing about Kalla Sahasi had changed. A huge encampment had sprung up across the northern mesa, down the road, and onto the alpine meadows beneath the shadow of the castle. Rows and rows of pup tents and canvas marquees, hundreds of cooking fires, hookwings, wagons, and latrines sprawled in all directions, bustling with soldiers. Two large and three small airships were moored at the skydock that jutted over the southern cliff face. My army had arrived from the north and south.
“What the... ohhh fuck. I didn’t expect them to set camp right outside the castle.” I held onto the saddle grips as Karalti swooped into a fast glide, kiting around the skydock to line up with the southern face of the Inner Ward. “Jeez. At least we can pay The Orphans now. They saved us a whole lot of trouble in Vyeshniki.”
“Did they get the bandits?” Karalti asked.
“They sure did. Kicked their asses up and down the row.”
The blare of a war horn followed us as Karalti passed over the airships, rocking them in their bays. Down below, the doors of the Great Hall flew open, letting out a stream of people. Suri was in the lead, her expression as shocked as it was hopeful. Vash Dorha and Istvan Arshak were right behind her, shading their eyes against the midday glare. There were others trailing them: the tall, mustachioed Captain Vilmos and the curvaceous silver figure of Rin, who squealed and hugged the startled Warden around the waist before he could react.
Karalti let out a musical, bugling cry as she slung her long hind legs forward, then backwinged before touching down on the pavement. Suri stormed forward as I slid down to the ground, her golden eyes flashing. For a moment, I thought she was about to slap me. Instead, she caught me in a tight embrace, pressed her lips to my forehead, then kissed me fiercely on the mouth.
“Ummf!” I groaned as my spine cracked under the pressure of her arms. Suri was about five inches taller than me and had about 50 more points of Strength.
“Hi babe,” I croaked.
“Don’t you fuckin’ ‘babe’ me, you... you...!” She leaned back, gripping me by the shoulders. “Where the fuckin’ hell were you two!? We were worried sick!”
“Uhh... long story. I don’t remember all of it. I’m pretty sure Baldr kicked my ass, and we woke in a dungeon we had to clear before we could teleport home.” I pulled out a couple of handfuls of jewels from my Inventory: strings of gold coins, pearls, and jewels. “But hey, look! Shinies!”
Suri’s expression darkened, but she didn’t deck me out. Instead, she wrapped her arms around me again, burying her face in the crook of my neck and shoulder. I put the treasure away and hugged her back, kissing her hair.
“I’m sorry.” I said quietly. “I knew you’d be freaked, but we couldn’t do anything to get in touch. All we could do was get back as fast as we could.”
“I thought you were gone.” Her fingers clutched the back of my armor. “I really did.”
“We’re fine!” Karalti lowered her head to nudge at Suri’s arm. “He died a couple of times, but I took good care of him.”
“I bet. You always do.” Suri wasn’t crying, but her voice choked as reached out to lay her hand on the dragon’s nose, still resting her forehead against my shoulder.
“We were just discussing the logistics of how to take the Volod’s ships to Dakhdir to search for you both,” Istvan added, stepping forward as Suri finally let go. I shook his hand, then Captain Vilmos’ as he followed up behind. Vash put his hands together, palm to palm, and gave me and Karalti both an ironic little bow.
“Well, just as well you didn’t. We were nowhere near-OOF.” I staggered back as Rin ran up and threw herself into my arms. The little Mercurion was a lot heavier than she looked.
Spear of Destiny Page 7