Kingdom Come

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “Karalti? Are you okay?” I took a step toward her, but she brushed me off when I reached to embrace her. Her hand was gentle, but she could have belted me across the face with all her strength, and it wouldn’t have been as painful and confusing.

  “Uhh…” I hung back, unsure of what to do. “Did I do something wrong?”

  Karalti’s face darted up. She stared at me for a long few moments, her lovely face as still as carved marble. After a heavy pause, her throat worked just before she looked away.

  “No. Like I said. I need to think,” she replied. “I need privacy. I’m going to… go somewhere for a while. By myself.”

  “Was it Suri?” Every nerve in my body was screaming for me to resolve this, comfort her, chase her as she tried to pull away. She had never pulled away from me before. Just then, I realized something – I couldn’t sense how she was feeling. Not in the way I was used to, when her emotions beat against my mind like radiant heat.

  “Yes. And I will deal with it as I please.” Karalti glared up at me with eyes like chips of violet obsidian. In human form, the supernatural gravity of Karalti’s charisma, her presence, was not lessened. At a glance, maybe – but my lizard brain still knew that I was staring down the barrel at a predator who could burst out of her human suit and turn into a monster the size of a train carriage. “I’ll see you later. Okay?”

  “Okay?” I echoed the question, too stunned to say anything more convincing. Every other time that she had lost her shit over Suri, it had been a flamboyant temper-tantrum of some kind or another. She had never withdrawn before. “Are you… are you angry at me, or…?”

  “No. I’ll… I’ll be back later.” Karalti drew a deep breath just before she marched off down the corridor. As she left, I felt a piece of myself leave with her. She had never once insisted on privacy before. Not from me.

  I was still brooding by the time I marched into the Fort Hospital and asked after Lazar. The Chief Medic was in the hospital's pharmacy, brewing and blending with what few herbs and regents he had left. I coughed to get his attention, and when he turned, his eyes widened.

  "Your Grace! You’re back! Forgive me... one moment." Agitated, he pulled off his gloves and mask and bustled over. Before I had a chance to react, he seized my hands in his and kissed me on both cheeks like a Russian grandma. I fought the urge to lean away.

  "Lord Dragozin, I cannot thank you enough!" His eyes brimmed with emotion as he dropped my hands and clapped me on the arms instead. "You and your comrades bought Vash Dorha back to us, you saved untold lives at the Wall... the stories of you and your dragon's battle with the undead has been flying around the hospital since the injured were carried in. A reanimated Brontosaurus, the noblest of the sauropods and the symbol of the House of Bolza... can you imagine the effect that a successful attack would have had on the soldiers?"

  "I..." I hadn't thought of it that way, but now he mentioned it, that was true. The Demon wouldn't have just broken through the Line - he'd have mindfucked the entire garrison. "No worries.”

  “Gods, I didn’t even offer you something to drink.” The doctor began to look around frantically. "We have nothing to offer you, unless you need potions. Not even wine. My apologies, I will call-"

  "Chill, man - it's fine." I held up my hands in surrender. "I have your herbs, and something even better.”

  Lazar stopped flitting around and turned to me. "Better than medicines, or better than wine?"

  "Both. I'll send you a transfer request. Hang on..."

  I opened a transfer, and when he accepted, loaded the herbs for the sidequest from my Inventory to his, along with my share of the gold coins we’d liberated from the Swamp Hag Broodmother. “There: six hundred and twenty-five smackeroos. Should be pure enough for you to make Colloidal Gold.”

  "By the Nine. This is... this is..." Lazar swallowed. "This is a gift of unparalleled generosity. I am touched, truly, and thank you a thousand times, my lord. I am forever at your service.”

  [Congratulations! You have gained 340 EXP!]

  [You have gained 34 Skill EXP (Herbalism)]

  [You have gained 75 renown!]

  [Your fame is growing! New Quests are available!]

  [You have unlocked a new Hero: Lazar Skaliz (Rank B+ Alchemist - Myszno Defense Force)]

  [Congratulations: You have unlocked your first recruitable hero! Would you like to learn how to manage heroes?]

  Not right now, I thought back. To Lazar, I said: "There is something you could do, if you have time. I used my last Aqua Regia a couple of days ago. If you know how to make Hydrochloric Acid and Nitric Acid, can you teach me?"

  "But of course!" Lazar drew himself up tall and pushed his glasses back from where they’d slipped. "Come with me - I have all the ingredients we require. In fact, Nitric Acid starts with these mushrooms and a solution of brine water..."

  ***

  For at least an hour, Lazar taught me some elements of chemistry in a way no other teacher had ever successfully managed to: because he knew what it was like to not be able to read.

  "I struggled terribly with books and reading." He watched on as I attached a generator flask to a collection bulb and a flask of iced water. "The Skaliz name is well-respected, but by the time I was born, my House was too poor to afford me a tutor. I learned all the basics of healing from my father the way he had learned it, through memorizing by speech... and so I learned to read and write at the University. Can you imagine: a boy who can barely spell his own name, learning to read anatomical textbooks and herbals!"

  “I know exactly how that feels." I added water to the flask, then a mixed flask of sodium bisulphate - created by mixing powdered salt into [Oil of Vitriol] - and more plain salt. "Now I turn the heat on, right?"

  "Correct." He nodded.

  I did so, then took a step back to watch as the assorted powders melted into the water. The solution dissolved quickly, turning yellow. Gas flowed through the tubes, white and wispy, passed through the collector and funneled into the beaker of bubbling water. "So that's turning into acid now?"

  "Yes. Wait for it." Lazar stood by my shoulder, a small smile playing over his lips.

  After a few more seconds of bubbling and popping, the entire contents of the beaker were suddenly and dramatically sucked up out of its tubes and into the collector with an audible shhhloop.

  "Shit!" I jumped back like a cat. The doctor laughed uproariously.

  [You have learned a new recipe: Hydrochloric Acid!]

  "Fun, isn't it?" He beamed.

  "Hell yeah. Not as fun as flying, but this is pretty great." I picked up the collector full of acid, and let my HUD focus on it. Sure enough, I got one of Archemi's somewhat surreal item identifiers: "Hydrochloric Acid: It's all fun and games until someone forgets the baking soda and perforates their colon!”

  "You can also extract Hydrochloric Acid from the stomachs of Stingcrabs with a collector," Lazar said. "Not as fun as this, but given that you are an adventurer, you may find it easier to obtain the acid this way. You simply need a Collector and a vacuum flask."

  "Sure, I have one of those. Though I need to start thinking about getting better lab glass as I get more into these Medical crafting trees." I took some empty bottles from my inventory and poured the acid inside. Carefully. One brewing made three bottles, which seemed like a good amount for the effort. "Can this be made to different concentrations?"

  "Certainly. You need a Distiller." Lazar pointed at a tall copper tank in the corner of the room. "You can put three Hydrochloric Acid through a distiller to get one Concentrated Hydrochloric Acid. Of course, the more you distill something, the more dangerous it is to work with. If you ever decide to do pursue the path of mastery in Alchemy, you will need to know how to handle the chemicals safely."

  "Right." 'Hector Dragozin: Master Alchemist and Cool Dragon Stunt Dude’ sounded like a pretty good resume to me. "My safety record is admittedly pretty terrible overall, but I'll work on it."

  "I sincerely hope so. Hmm.
Let me see..." Lazar went to a drawer and unlocked it. Inside was a stack of leather-bound books, heavily tagged with ribbons. He pulled out two and set them down. "These might be useful: my old school manuals on creating potion bases and methods of refining."

  "Are they skill manuals?" I asked hopefully.

  "As in, enchanted with a Seal of Learning? No. Plain old books." He flipped to the first page of the fatter book. It was a table, showing alchemical symbols alongside neatly printed explanations of what they meant. "This will teach you all of the basic ingredients that go into every potion known to man or dragon. Alcohol, all of the acids and bases, suspensions and oils. You will learn a great deal of Alchemy from this tome, and unlock the Apprentice levels if you can absorb the learning. The other is an Herbal, which details all of the commonly used herbs and the conditions they treat. You are already an Apprentice level Herbalist, but to access Journeyman, you will need to find a Master or attend a college. Either way, to become a Journeyman, they will expect you to be able to recite the information in this book from rote memory."

  It was about two inches thick. My eyes widened with slow-dawning horror.

  "Medicine is an art worth your time and study," Lazar assured me. "And you certainly have the mind for it. They are yours, my friend - I do not need them at my current level of ability. I have no doubt you will excel."

  I picked up the Alchemy textbook. The pages had stains on them here and there, and when I tried to focus on the words, they squirmed and wrestled on the page. There was a table with 26 different alchemical symbols in the front. "Thanks, man. I'll try. I don't think I'll be able to make it, though."

  "It takes time." The man pushed his spectacles up along his thin nose. "Time and dedication, as with all good things in life."

  I let out a tense breath and closed the book. "Yeah... for sure. Don't suppose you know anything about healing magic, do you?"

  "Healing magic?" The Medic gave me a curious look. “I do. I know that mana cannot directly be used to heal. It only harms unless it is heavily adulterated."

  "But mana is used for healing. Alchemical potions can regrow limbs and shit, so there has to be healing magic in there somewhere."

  Lazar thought for a moment. "Not exactly. Mana contains all of the elements in an unexpressed state: the state of Aether. By combining it with other ingredients, one or more elements is coaxed forth from the mana, transmuting it into a different substance - just as the sodium bisulphate and salt transmute into hydrochloric acid."

  I nodded. "The reason I’m asking is because we fought a monster that used healing magic."

  The doctor's eyes widened until they were almost the size of saucers. "Well, Your Grace, some monsters have a regenerative process that strongly resembles magic..."

  “No. This was definitely healing magic.” Careful not to knock over anything that might explode, I leaned back against a bare stretch of counter. "The Swamp Hag Broodmother used a restoration spell to heal itself while we were fighting it."

  "If that is true... well, a dragon and Starborn have reappeared after thousands of years, so why not the Lost Art?" The doctor shook his head. "At the University, we learned that Elemental Darkness and Light are the elements which are most aligned to the practice of medicine. My professor used to say: diseases are cured by the light of the sun, injuries by the solace of the moon."

  "So healing magic that’s usable by humans IS possible?" I pressed. “In theory?”

  Reluctantly, Lazar nodded. "In theory. But if there are Words of Power that humans are capable of speaking that bend mana into healing magic, any record of them disappeared at the end of the Era of Queens.”

  "Era of Queens?"

  "The last great dynasty of the Dragons, when the East of what is now Vlachia was supposedly ruled by Lahati the Wise," Lazar replied. "Do you not know of the dragons’ history?"

  My cheeks turned hot. "Never had a chance to study it."

  "I see. Well, we can rectify that." He beckoned. "Come with me."

  Curious, I followed the man through the ground-floor ward and through a locked door into a suite of spartan, but tidy rooms. The main room was a hall with a table, a hearth with stew and bread keeping warm on a shelf nearby, and a number of clean pallets. The day-shift medics were asleep there, some of them still in their bloody work clothes. There was a storeroom and other smaller, private quarters. Lazar led me to one, where he unlocked a second door and showed me inside his private quarters, where a bed, no finer than the ones his staff slept on, and some chests and other plain and functional furniture seemed all the more spartan in the steady white glow of the one luxury he did have, a mage light. It illuminated the top of his desk, making it the focus of the whole place.

  "I managed to save a few books when we fled Karhad. I had an emergency trunk of manuscripts I’d copied over the years, just in case anything ever happened." He squatted down in front of a chest, opening it to reveal neatly-packed books of nearly every dimension and quality. Some were hardly bigger than a matchbook, while others were the size of my grandfather's art folios. He shifted tomes aside until he came up with an unremarkable-looking brown volume with weathered yellow pages. "Here.‘The History of the Dragons in Vlachia’. It’s almost all myths and stories, folk tales from the Churvi and the nomads of the steppe, but you should be able to recognize fact from fiction. Take this as well - it is a history of Myszno. It naturally focuses on the Vlachian conquest, but there is some elemental information about the land and its history that I think you will find interesting."

  Blinking, I accepted the books. They were heavy enough that I could probably knock someone out if I smacked them across the face. "I don't know if I'll have time to read it while the war’s still going on, but thanks."

  "Try." The medic smiled, then patted me on the shoulder. "If we can retake Karhad, there’s more where this came from. We can only hope they didn't burn the library at Egbolt or the University."

  "Good libraries?" I asked.

  Lazar looked down. "The University holds a unique and truly ancient collection of texts, including a set of plates that are assumed to have been scribed during the Drachan War. That is the war that ended the reign of the Dragons in Archemi: one of the few remaining texts of the Solonkratsu’s great civilization."

  My intuition pinged at me. "When were those plates discovered?"

  "Oh, long ago. I wasn't even born when they were donated."

  "By who?"

  "Why, the Tuun who live near the village of Myszno." He cocked his head, a small smile playing over his lips. "They recovered them while mining in the southern mountains."

  Chapter 27

  I didn’t feel like heading back to my quarters to mope around until Karalti decided to come back and talk to me. Instead, I restlessly headed north and crossed the river, hoping to catch up with Rin.

  There was a great cluster of unit production structures on the islands behind the Fort. The rapids powered turbines and mills attached to the manufacturing complex, which was shielded by sloped roofs that partly camouflaged it from the air. Rin was in the Airship Hangar, pouring over the Ix’tamo with a group of men, women and Mercurions. They took samples and measurements, monitored attached magical devices, and sketched blueprints. Rin was in the blueprint creation group, gesturing animatedly as she conversed in a sharp, clacking tongue with three other Mercurion Artificers. The warehouse bustled around them, with workers tuning, repairing and building airship components. I edged around the Ix’tamo until I was across from Rin and waved. Her head darted up.

  "Oh! Hector! Hi! Just a second!" She pointed something out on the blueprint, patted one of her teammates on the back, then scurried over to me. "Hey! What's up?"

  "Thought I'd come and see if there was anything I can help you with," I replied. "I did everything I could at the hospital. Netted a good amount of Renown."

  "You aren't going back to hang with Karalti and Suri?" She asked.

  I shrugged. "Karalti probably doesn't want to see me right now. I
f I'm lucky, she's having a girl talk with Suri."

  "Oh no! Did something happen?" Rin's big blue eyes widened with concern.

  I glanced at the people milling around and hunched my shoulders. "Don't really want to talk about it here. Besides... I didn't come to lean on you. I figured we could talk to the Chief about the Supply Train quest, and maybe do some other sidequests tonight."

  "Oh, come on. You've been there for me through all sorts of things. Kanzo, the boss fights, all of that. Besides, I don't really think that way." She puffed a lock of translucent hair from her face. "Come on. Let's go outside."

  Resigned, I followed Rin out of a side door. She led me up a flight of stairs to a balcony overlooking the river and sat down, hanging her legs between the rails. I hopped up to perch on the narrow edge, squatting down on my heels. The sky was low, clouds obscuring the light of the moon, and it smelled gritty and damp. Like the city just after a rain.

  "So, what happened?" she asked.

  "Draconic growing pains," I grunted. "I think."

  "You had an argument?"

  "No. Not exactly." I sighed. "She got really cold after the meeting with Dumb and Dumber, brushed me off and left. Said she needed to think.”

  “Why? Did something happen?”

  “I kissed Suri goodbye.” I shrugged. “She said she wasn’t mad, but she sure seemed like it.”

  Rin made a face. “You think she likes you? You know, as in…?”

  “I know she does. She’s had a crush on me since she hit Level 5 or so. We have a frigging telepathic bond, so it’s not news to me or anything. But it’s not… I don’t want what she wants. I love that dragon more than anything or anyone I’ve ever met. She’s like my twin, like the other half of me. But I’m her adoptive parent and as far as I’m concerned, she’s family. I can’t give her what she wants.”

  “You’re not related, though,” Rin said. “I mean… relationships evolve?”

  I scowled and shook my head. “No. Parents don’t fuck their kids. No exceptions.”