My only consolation was herbs, because the Endlar had herbs for days.
Red Rashovik. King’s Grass. Peppermint, Roseroot, Starberry, Irises, Foxglove, Nightshade and Green Moss. Everything I didn’t already know how to use, I frantically stuffed into my mouth, much to Suri’s confusion and Rin’s amusement. I was able to collect everything from common herbs, like Holy Basil, to exotic things I hadn’t seen before. Acid mushrooms, Hallucinogenic Mushrooms – those were fun for about twenty minutes – Mandrake, and all kinds of monster blood. God. So much monster blood.
Most the blood was from what was now my least favorite monster species. Stingcrabs were one of the most common mobs in this part of the Endlar, giving next to no EXP while costing us heavily in time and Antidotes. Then there were Gastina plants, which KO’d you and THEN flung spikes of death at your helpless body while other things came to eat your delicious sweetmeats. And pretty much everything here wanted those. The dinosaurs, the bugs, the plants...
“Bears. In a swamp.” Still covered in blood, I held my spear above the waterline as I waded through chest-deep steaming water. The sun was starting to set.
“Yup,” Karalti said.
“Swamp bears.”
“Yuuup.”
“Who the fuck puts crack-bears in a swamp?” I angrily pimp-slapped a leech that was oozing toward me through the water, backhanding it to land somewhere with a splash. “This is some Florida-level bullshit.”
“We’re lucky we haven’t run into a Rex.” Suri said. She and Cutthroat rode to our left. “Allosaurus are bad enough, but there’s nothing we have that could take a T-rex. We get them near oases in Dakhdir... they like to eat carrion. Unless you happen to be trucking a ballista, about the only thing anyone can do when they show up is run.”
“If they’re desert critters, they won’t be- FUCK!” Something wrapped around my leg, and I stabbed at it and jumped away on reflex. Nothing came of it, and I resumed wading. Tentacle or weed? Who knew?
“Yeah. This is more like Spinosaurus country, innit? Or what are those water-dinos. Name begins with ‘B’.”
“Baryonyx.” Rin clung to Hopper as the automaton paddled like a dog behind us.
“That’s the one. Barry-onyx.”
“No, it’s BAH-ri-OHn-ix.”
“That’s what I said, numbnuts. Ba-REE-oh-nix!”
It was getting colder and creepier as we padded through the thinning trees. They weren’t just thinning - they were dying. The water was drying up, leaving pools of cracked mud. There weren’t any animals or monsters around, and the earthy, organic smell of the swamp had almost vanished. When we were about three hundred feet from the marker, it abruptly disappeared on the mini-map, opening up into a field bounded by a large shaded circle.
“Looks like we have to search for clues.” I was uneasy as I vaulted down from Karalti’s back, and even more so when I landed on the earth and it crunched under my boots. The area smelled like an ice rink... like dirty ice and old rubber. “Something’s fucky.”
“Yeah.” Rin followed after me, sliding from Hopper’s back. “Everything’s dead. Maybe we could see something from the air?”
I looked up at Karalti. She nodded and paced ahead with her wings mantled until she reached a place where she could take off. Suri lit a torch while we waited. The circle of yellow light illuminated ghostly white trees, flying beetles, shallow dead water, and a gravel-strewn ridge up ahead.
“Weird.” I looked around uneasily. “It’s like the forest is dying.”
“Yeah.” Suri had her sword out, the point of the huge blade resting on the ground, the torch in her other hand. “Rin, you were saying there were devices that pulled mana from the land, right? Could be what we’re looking at.”
The Mercurion bobbed her head. “An Ix’tamo could do this. They eventually kill everything off, but they don’t usually do it this fast. Not unless there’s a lot of them.”
“Hector! I see dead people up on the ridge!” Karalti’s voice broke through just then.
“Hang on: Karalti found something.” I sniffed, but couldn’t smell anyone or anything decomposing. “Undead or dead-dead? And how many?”
“About twenty, and they’re dead-dead. They’re lying down in the middle of a pretty pattern.”
I wrinkled my nose. “… Pretty pattern?”
“What’d she find? Rotters?” Suri asked.
I shook my head. “She doesn’t think so. I’d be careful anyway.”
Slowly and carefully, we headed upward, climbing the narrow gravel path through groves of leafless, shriveled trees. The stench of death hung in the air.
“Wait.” Rin held up small silver hands. “I’m sorry… I can’t do this. I’ll watch the path with Lovelace and Hopper.”
“Sure thing. But corpse is kind of an acquired resistance. You get used to it, but you have to expose yourself to it.” I tied a cloth around my neck and pulled it up part way over my helmet.
She looked down. “I… guess you fought in the War? Like, the Total War. Second Total War.”
“79th Meatshield Division, at your service,” I replied. “I was conscripted in ‘63. Fought in the jungle and the desert for five years. This place brings back great memories, believe me.”
“That’s… mm.” Rin looked up toward the hill, then set her shoulders and began marching up toward the bodies.
“You can hang back, Rin.” I looked to Suri, who shrugged. “You don’t like… need to impress us.”
“No.” The Mercurion shook her head. “You’re right, and you’re my friend. If you have to do this and relive all those horrible things, I’ll go with you.”
“Alright.” Suri carried the torch ahead, drawing an axe with her other hand. She flipped it around. “But let me go first. You two stay behind me.”
I hesitated. “If you die-”
“If you die, Karalti’ll never forgive me. I’m trying to get on her good side right now.”
“Really?” Reluctantly, I fell in behind her and flanked out, peering out into the gloom. “Why? Think she’s cute now she can turn into a human girl?”
“Don’t be gross. She’s basically my adopted kid at this point, right?”
As her words sunk in, I grinned more widely than I had ever beamed in my life. “Yeah. Mine too.”
It was frigid now, our breath frosting in clouds of vapor, and the terrain was no longer entirely flat. I was okay, but Suri was shivering by the time we crested the ridge. Despite the cold, the smell hit us full force up there, along with the sound: carrion beetles. They rubbed their wings together in a raspy chorus as they crawled over a ring of corpses laid out in a circle on the ground. Karalti was right: these guys were very dead, each one laid out with his arms crossed over his chest. And the pattern was kind of pretty.
“Time to play ‘Jellyfish on the Beach’!” I twirled the Spear around like a baton. “Will they get up? Will they stay down? Either way, poke ‘em with a stick! It’s fun for the whole family!”
“Try that one on the left with the funny nose.” Suri held the torch up as I advanced.
Rin stood behind her turrets, her hands clamped over her nose. “I can’t believe I helped develop this game.”
Unsure of what to expect, I crept forward and stretched out with the Spear to tap the nearest corpse. Nothing happened. I came in closer, and jabbed the tip of the blade into an arm. The body lay there, unmoving.
“I think we’re clear.” I let out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding, then went in for a closer look. There were close to twenty bodies, all of them nude, all of them male. The Vlachian soldiers had Cossack hairstyles: shaven heads with a forelock or a side-part, beards and moustaches. Several tribal Yanik warriors had clay-covered dreadlocks like Zlaslo’s. Their clothing and armor had been removed and left in a moldering pile at the edge of the clearing.
“Rotters, for sure.” I crouched down. The man nearest me was a mess: blackened hands, old stab wounds, torn guts, faces stripped of flesh... and most not
ably, broken bones. Lots of them. He wasn’t the only one, either. Every man’s face had been pulverized: noses smashed, eyes ruptured, cheekbones caved back into their skulls. I turned to look at the center of the circle. There was a stack of stones there. On top of the small cairn was a crude wreath of grass and twigs, the only plant matter in the immediate area.
I frowned. “Baru are combat monks. Remember what Istvan said about Vash Dorha?”
“That he punched a wyvern to death.” Suri pulled up beside me, her boots crunching on the gravel. “You think he did this?”
“Yeah. Burna is the God of the Dead. I think this is Vash’s handiwork... he gave these men a respectful burial.”
Suri eyed the snaking ring of naked corpses, then the pile of clothes. “I admit I have some questions.”
“It’s a sky burial. He gave these men last rites.” The words tripped out of my mouth almost of their own accord. Somehow, I just knew. “There’s not enough soil in Tungaant to bury the dead, so they’re given rites and left out for the animals. Carrion insects are sacred to Burna. The monks have these dog-sized tamed flies-”
“Okay, thanks. That’ll do.” Suri coughed. “The smell’s bad enough. I don’t need the imagery.”
It was strange. As I knelt there, watching the beetles swarm the corpses, I didn’t feel the least bit of revulsion. Three months ago, I would have. It was the stuff of horror movies, right? But now... no. I knew why the Baru had done this. It was the cycling of the dead back into the living world. “Sure, sorry.”
“So Vash was alive for this fight, at least,” Suri remarked. “But why is it so bloody cold?”
I stood back up and rubbed my jaw, frowning. “The Ix’tamo, maybe? We need to find a trail. My hunch is to follow the cold. Maybe they found something here.”
“It’s warmer to the north and east,” Suri said. “South-west?”
“Let’s do it.”
With Karalti keeping watch overhead, Suri, Cutthroat, Rin and I advanced slowly and cautiously through the increasingly eerie forest. After leaving the sky burial site, there was no animal life to be seen or heard. Not even mosquitoes were stirring in this part of the swamp. There was no sloshing or gurgling of water, no wind... no anything, until we crunched our way across flattened, icy reeds and found ourselves at the shore of a frozen lake.
A serrated crescent of ice marked the edge of the lake, leading back into a cave so dark that even my eyesight couldn’t penetrate it. The moonlight gleamed through leafless trees onto solid ice. At least fifty bodies littered the frozen surface, lying where they had fallen. There was a small island at the center, where a spear-like device hummed, glowed and spat sparks out across the ground. The air hummed and crawled across my skin, and the smell of ozone was almost suffocating. There was a dead Allosaurus at the edge of the lake.
“That’s an Ix’tamo!” Excited, Rin pointed at the device on the island. “See! I told you that’s how the Demon was getting his mana!”
“Sure looks like it.” Suri rubbed at her face. “And it’s busted. My HUD says I’m at risk of mana poisoning.”
“Yeah.” I wasn’t, but I could sense something was wrong. “Suri, retreat to the edge of the radiation zone and let me, Rin and Karalti go out there. I’m not getting an alert yet.”
“My HP is dropping fast. Be careful.” Suri beat a hasty retreat on Cutthroat.
Karalti’s wingbeats grew louder as she circled down and landed firm, setting off a rolling boom. She folded her wings smartly against her flanks, flicking them as she took in the scene ahead. “Woah. What’s that thing?”
“Nothing good. How are you at walking on ice?”
Karalti chirped in her throat, cocking her head one way, then the other. “I dunno. I might be too heavy. I could polymorph, but...”
“No, no polymorphing. You haven’t gotten the hang of fighting in human form yet, but you’re a big badass like this. Let’s go have a look at our dead dinosaur friend over here.”
The three of us edged toward the fallen Allosaurus. It was a big specimen, and it showed signs of Stranging. Its skin was studded with crystalline eruptions, and it had an elongated, twisted look about it that was unsettling. Its dislocated lower jaw gaped to one side. One of its eyes had been pushed back into its skull, the flesh and bone folded around the point of impact.
“Did… Vash do this?” Holding her nose, Rin crouched down to look at the injury.
“Maybe.” Punching dinosaurs to death? I was starting to see why Istvan liked the guy. “Karalti, see how you go out on the lake.”
Karalti bobbed her head, padding forward to the waterline. She delicately placed a three-toed hind foot onto the surface and put her weight on it. The ice groaned, then squealed just before a there was a dull crack, and a long fissure appeared across the frozen surface.
“Nope.” Flattening her horns, Karalti carefully stepped away. Through the fissure, I could see that the water was frozen all the way to the bottom… but the ice was crumbly.
I sighed. “Guess it’s on me and Rin. Go protect Suri and Cutthroat, will you? I don’t want them being ambushed by whoever is coming back for this Ix’tamo.”
“Sure. Be careful.” Tail lashing, Karalti slunk back through the bone-white trees. When she accidentally bumped into one, it snapped like wet chipboard and toppled in a cloud of dust.
Rin pulled up alongside me on her automaton. “How are you at ice skating?”
“Imagine a cross between a pig and a cockroach. Then put it on ice.” I carefully picked my way out onto the lake. My armored foot immediately began to slide forward. But then I remembered – I had better gear for this. I went into my inventory and selected Boots of the Winding Path, the Tuun-made boots with the big-ass cleats on the soles. They appeared on my feet like magic.
“Yeh-hehhh, you icy bitch! Feel my traction!” I threw my hands in the air, and crunched my way forward like a large monster invading a Japanese city.
Shaking her head, Rin followed me out. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, yeah, I’m fine. Just mad with power.”
The diamond-shaped obelisk was driven into the bleached, lifeless earth like a knife blade. It was made of obsidian, metal and crystal, welded together in a seamless symmetrical design concealing a core of brightly glowing mana. The light pulsed erratically, because the crystal face of the machine had been smashed in by a single, powerful blow. Broken crystal ‘veins’ ran throughout the Ix’tamo, leaking through the shattered depression in the center. It cast a sick glow across the bodies laid out on the surface of the lake.
Like the others we’d found, the fallen men and women had clearly been zombies not very long ago. Like the other’s we’d found, they were heavily decomposed, with crude weapons in their hands, piecemeal armor and tattered clothing. There were so many and the fight had been so desperate that Vash hadn’t given rites to any of them. The number of corpses was relative to the proximity of the Ix’tamo - the closer we got, the more bodies there were.
“It’s like they were trying to defend this.” Curious, I made a fist and gently rested my knuckles over the depression in the crystal. It was almost an exact match. “Holy shit.”
“So… you think he might be alive after all?” Rin pushed her mask down and activated her spell glove.
“Everything that has gotten in his way so far has been punched to death or broken. And I’d assume that if we have a quest, then he’s more likely to be alive than not.” I watched my health bar cautiously, holding my breath against the gas pouring from the Ix’tamo. “I don’t know if there’s RNG involved.”
“A little, though I’m not supposed to tell players anything about it.” Rin poured over the broken device with gentle hands, utilizing some Craft skill I could only guess at. “But I guess we’re stuck on this server and everyone’s dead now… so, yes. It’s not a certain thing, because NPCs are largely autonomous. Every NPC Seed is crafted from digitized human datasets, so they’re basically like real people. Sometimes they do dumb stuff tha
t gets them killed. But the radiant AI will always try to guide them toward player objectives when possible.”
I went to ask her about the Seed thing, but accidentally drew in a deep breath. My eyes teared up and my throat went dry and rough, just as an alert appeared:
[Warning! You are being poisoned by Mana!]
“Crap. Mana.” I croaked.
“You should go find Suri. This will take me a while to fix, but I can make it work.” Rin was in her element now, furiously applying putty to the cracks on the obelisk.
“Don’t make it work,” I said. “We don’t want it working. Just turn it off.”
“You don’t understand. If I can make it functional, I’ve got some ideas for how we could repurpose it.” She shook her head, focused on what she was doing. “Leave me alone for a bit - I know what I’m doing.”
“Sure. I believe you.” I beat a hasty retreat to my own area of expertise: fucking around. “Okay… If I was a kung-fu master-slash-monk of the God of Death, where would I go?”
The cave loomed at the other end of the frozen lake.
Well, fuck.
I left Leaky Doomsday Device Island and trudged across the ice toward the cave, apprehension mounting with every step. A strange chemical smell wafted to my nose, like battery acid. The ice was cracked and hazed, ground to powder in places… and just inside, revealed by torchlight, was the body of a man dressed like a Tuun warrior in leather and fur. He’d fallen face down, sprawled across the ground. The boots he wore were a more modern version of the ones I currently had on, heavy leather with sharp metal cleats. His hands were sheathed in full-sleeve cold iron gauntlets, like the ones I’d given to Karalti. The rest of him was obscured by a thick, suffocating layer of slime.
“Uh oh.” I broke into a jog and knelt beside him, trying to roll the man over. When I touched the slime, I got a small static shock through my gloves. The stuff clung to my hand, stretching like taffy. Taffy with the tensile strength of steel cable. “Ugh. Nasty.”
With some effort, I managed to roll the body over and get a look at him. This man wasn’t Tuun, and he was bald. That immediately told me that this dead monk was not our man. Hair was a big deal in Tungaant, and the way it was braided and styled could tell you a lot about a person: their profession, their marital status, whether they’d ever killed another human being. The red cloth braided into my hair was there for a reason. I wasn’t entirely sure how Baru wore their hair, but I knew monks didn’t shave: except for the day they took their vows as acolytes. This guy was as bald as a billiard ball. He had to have taken his vows very recently.
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