Kingdom Come

by James Osiris Baldwin

  All of my Californian instincts kicked into gear as soon as the first tremor caused the ground to roll beneath me. Cursing, I scrambled up as small rocks rained down from the cave roof. The quazi was going ballistic outside, screeching as he struggled to take off into the air.

  "Balls!" I half-crawled, half-ran to the door, dodging a chunk of basalt the size of a brick that nearly brained me on the way out. Temaz swung from his reins like a kite on a string, flapping up huge clouds of dust in his panic.

  "No you don't, you goddamn turkey!" I jumped forward to catch the reins before he tore the hitching post free. It took a few goes, but once he heard my command, he hovered down low enough that I could grasp him by the second pair of reins - the ones connected to piercings through the skin in the corners of his mouth, behind his beak - and gently pull on them to guide him to the ground. He quaked underneath my legs as I pulled myself onto his back, and I didn't have to urge him to take to the air - away from the bridge, which was raining car-sized blocks of stone onto the causeway.

  When the carnage was over and boulders were no longer tumbling from the cliff sides, we flew north, straight into the mist. It was like a blanket pulled over the world; it muffled sound and clung to my armor like soft, grasping fingers. Breathing became more difficult as the minutes passed, and the quazi's stamina dropped more quickly.

  It was dark by the time we closed in on the Narrows. The night hung around us, damp and heavy. It was almost silent, except for the gurgle of water below. The straight tunnel-like passage gave way to a tight twisting labyrinth of hair-pin turns and hidden corners, and the ground here was fucked up beyond belief. Jagged shards of stone lanced up toward the sky, pitfalls dropped down into the earth. Parts of the cliffs had fallen inward. The stream that flowed below us had diverted into these sinkholes, bubbling as it drained. There might have been a road down there before, but there sure as hell wasn't now.

  And there, about six hundred yards away, was the hulk of one of the airships.

  "Damn, son." I tilted my bodyweight and gave the quazi the signal to land. The panting bird soared down, heading for a ledge created by the ship as it had fallen and sheared off an area of rock. The ground around it was a treacherous honeycomb of caved in tunnels and channels. "Okay, birbface. Stay here."

  Temaz chattered his beak, darting his head and flaring his eyes. He rustled nervously after I dismounted, pawing at the ground with his wing claws.

  "Staaay." I gave him a pet on the neck, then went to look for a way down.

  The hulk had landed belly-first and broken up over the remains of the road and the river. The back of it had disintegrated, scattering parts and pieces everywhere. The front half had mostly survived. It had driven a huge amount of earth up under its keel as it had slid across the shattered road and into the river.

  With the Spear in hand, I edged closer and held my breath, listening for the telltale sounds of scavengers. But there were no bodies and no monsters, and no smell of ozone. That was odd: it had been carrying a shipment of mana.

  "Huh." I jumped up onto a tall piece of wreckage, then leaped across the rapids to land on the hulk resting in the water. The rail, turned on its side, clanged under my boots. The rushing water had stripped the airship down to a metal and wood skeleton. Balancing carefully, I explored the twisted desk and then dropped down inside to search the hull. Mana had to be stored carefully, in pressurized metal or crystal tanks bound with copper wire. There was nothing like that in the ship, and no corpses or perishables. The food was missing; gold wasn't. I found all kinds of valuables in trunks and caskets. Coins, nice clothes, books, and jewelry. The galley and supplies of food and water looked like some giant had reached in and cracked it open like a walnut to get at the meat inside.

  When I left the galley, I went out onto the debris in the river and began to search for the mana-fueled engines that had powered the ship. Eventually, I found one: a great big disc-shaped thing made out of crystal and precious metals. It had been cleanly punched through the middle, as if something had driven a giant spike through it. The crystal around it was hazed, but not shattered. There was not a single drop of mana remaining inside.

  "Looks like it was extracted. Do pirates have the tools for this? But pirates wouldn’t leave the treasure behind." Frowning, I crouched down on the edge of it to examine the edge of the hole and see if I could figure out what they might have used to cause it. Just as I was reaching my hand out, a rumbling boom rolled through the valley, bucking the wreckage up under my feet and sending rocks skittering down from the cliffs.

  I yelped, arms windmilling, and managed to stop from being thrown headfirst into the water before another boom shook the causeway. "What in the shuddering fuck...?"

  The quazi called out, his voice distant and echoing, but I couldn't see him. The mist was getting thicker, and when the next boom tore the air, it felt closer but sounded further away. The wreckage I was standing on groaned under my feet.

  They were footfalls. The steps of something colossal.

  Cursing, I leapt up and landed lightly on the main hulk, then sprung up again as the next quake sent the bowsprit and upper railing tumbling into the water with the screech of metal on metal. Fear lanced through me as I ran back along the shuddering deck, which loosened under my feet with every earth-shaking step. I jumped off the end, hit the ground rolling and scrambled away just as the road split and crumbled.

  "Shit fucking goat... cocks!" Teeth gritted, I blurred into vapor to avoid plunging into a fresh sinkhole. My feet slipped on the liquifying gravel, then gained traction on solid rock.

  Boom. Crunch. Boom. The moonlight vanished, and a shadow fell from the north end of the canyon, distorted and stretched by fog. An armored foot the size of Karalti appeared from around the corner, smashing the causeway like a sledgehammer smashing into a pane of glass.

  "Lord have mercy." The breath caught in my chest, even as I scrambled back and bolted for cover.

  The thing that loomed forward into the chasm walked like a zombie. Not the fast, scampering kind that the Demon fielded - the relentless, limping kind. There was something bestial in the length of its arms and the way it hunched its shoulders forward. The resemblance to anything organic ended there. It was a machine - an armored colossus of charred, blackened steel that was crumbling with rust. The face was an eyeless, skull-like mask, topped with a back-sweeping crown of jagged obsidian. A gleaming inky corona suffused with a brilliant white glow hung just behind, framing the titan's head like the blazing halo of a Russian saint. It steadied itself against the wall of the canyon with one hand. In the other, it carried a massive black spear with a curved, glaive-like blade. The weapon looked entirely familiar. I glanced down at the Spear of Nine Spheres. Almost a perfect match.

  As the titan shambled out into view, it revealed its other weapon: a curled scorpion's tail that flexed in the air just above its head. Each segment of the tail floated apart from the others, linked by arcs of flickering white mana. I had never seen that color of mana before... but I had seen a machine as big as this one. In a brief, surreal vision I'd had a couple of weeks ago, when the Ruby of Boundless Strength had merged with the Spear of Nine Spheres, I'd witnessed a titanic mecha-like thing striding through a desert, part of an ancient funeral procession attended by thousands of mourning dragons.

  I was looking at a part of Archemi's ancient history.

  The thing that had brought down those ships was a motherfucking Warsinger.

  Chapter 35

  The [Prototype Revenant] lurched into full view, plunging the gorge into darkness. This Warsinger didn't have the angelic elegance of the great construct the Ruby of Boundless Strength had shown me. It was held together by rust and sheer awesome willpower, shuddering on every step. Parts of it were stripped out and crumbling with corrosion. Its great breastplate rattled, hanging loose on one side. There were multiple dents in its death's head face. Something about the way it was moving suggested to me that there was no human mind behind the wheel. A d
rone - or a golem.

  It wasn't all good, though. The choking mist swirled around it like a trailing cloak, bleeding off into the air. Other than the massive weight churning up the earth, it was strangely silent for a machine in its condition. No creaking, no squealing, no grinding parts. The grip on the spear was firm and steady, and that tail looked like it was capable of dealing some serious damage. I shrank back into the shadows as it halted, head half-turned. Its posture as wary and still as a stalking hunter.

  A great hum began to build in its body, rattling its armor. My eardrums buzzed like a sub-woofers as the air as the mist around the [Prototype Revenant] seemed to catch on the wind. The air was suddenly almost too thick to breathe. I was just about to try and change cover when the Warsinger emitted a piercing, impossibly deep sound that filled the canyon like a spectral dirge. Gravity seemed to increase ten-fold, crushing my body flat to the ground and forcing the air from my chest. A wave of involuntary fear left me gasping on hands and knees. Above me, Temaz let out a piercing cry and launched himself from his perch, fleeing in terror.

  The Warsinger tensed.

  "Dammit, bird!" I hissed.

  Temaz blundered into the mist and slowed in the air, screeching as the fog wrapped his wings and trapped him like a fly in amber. The Warsinger swiveled toward the unfortunate quazi, and slowly lifted its free arm. The limb jerked and shuddered with the effort of raising it, the fingers twitching... then striking out like a snake. Its fingertips were extendible, shooting out like a chameleon's tongue to delicately pluck the quazi from the air. The bird kicked and squirmed, but Temaz was the size of a gummi bear in the Warsinger's hand. With slow-dawning horror, I watched as the machine opened its skull-like mouth, revealing a nest of interlocking grinders.

  “Oh jeez.” I clamped my hands over my ears.

  The Warsinger pressed the struggling bird into its maw and woodchippered it. The quazi's screams were mercifully brief, cutting just before a cloud of reddish dust blew out of a vent on the Warsinger's head. The brilliant white mana in its tail and corona flared, becoming a steady glow for a couple of seconds before fading. They resumed flickering and spitting, and the Warsinger turned and began to stumble off the way it came.

  Sangheti’tak. Slowly, I dropped my hands and just knelt there, struggling to breathe. I had played a lot of games in my life and fought some bosses that did pretty nasty shit. But this thing... this thing was fucked up.

  "What the hell am I supposed to do against THIS?" I hissed at myself. I checked my quest log to see if there were any pointers I'd missed or clues I could collect. There was nothing except the reality of fighting a two-hundred feet of carnivorous war machine by myself.

  I pushed myself up to a crouch and thought back to Indonesia. The Pacific Alliance deployed a lot of Powered Armor Infantry, which we’d shortened to ‘PAIN’ for a reason. Heavy powered armor could take a couple of RPGs to the face and be just fine, but all machines have two major weaknesses: heat management and fuel systems. Machines with pilots had a rather obvious third weakness: they relied on the command of the squishy blood bag inside. We had a tactic that we called the Crab Pot, where we’d shoot quicklime into the air intakes and then either trip the mech or hit them with water cannons, boiling the pilot inside.

  This Warsinger probably didn't have a pilot who could be crabbed. It was possible, but I wasn't willing to bet on it - not when the penalty for losing was a one-way journey into the magical land of hard vore. It DID have a fueling system, which unfortunately seemed to be at the top of the body and mimicked at least part of a human digestive tract. Given that I was pretty sure white mana was toxic enough to kill me and the cliffs barely reached its shoulders, that was not nearly as likely a target as the heat management systems. I hadn't seen any vents on it, other than holes made by rust, but magic or no magic, moving that much mass generated heat. Lots and lots of heat. That heat had go somewhere, managed by vents, heatsinks, tubing and insulation. If the machine was like a human body in other ways, the majority of the heat was going to be generated and vented in the joints and in the middle of the torso.

  My gaming experience came to bear, too. I knew that titan bosses tended to be multi-stage. You didn't usually just ball up on some enormous thing and wail on it with your tiny weapons until it exploded in a cloud of glitter, unless you were playing an MMO. Archemi wasn't an MMO. It wasn't single-player, but it wasn't an MMO.

  With one eye on the gorge, I opened up my menu to see what I could equip or ready for this fight. I already had my best gear equipped: the full Raven Suit, plus the Belt of Tiger's Spirit, which fortified me against fear. I switched the Raven boots out for my good old Tuun boots, the Boots of the Winding Path. They gave me +10 movement-related checks on unstable surfaces, and +5% stamina. I needed both of those things very badly.

  I checked items next. I had picked up a couple of [Crude Grenades], some pitch, and a better dagger from the armory before I left, but there wasn't a lot of good-quality weaponry at the Prezyemi Line - pretty typical for basecamps in RPGs. The grenades were definitely going to be useful. I hooked them onto my belt for easy access.

  My stock of potions was up to date: ten [Concentrated Green Moss Tinctures], an array of antidotes to cure most basic status effects, some [Roseroot Decoctions] for stamina, another [Bonebreak Potion] in case I needed it. I had a lot of ingredients, too. I was mostly interested in the list of chemicals instead of the herbs:

  Hydrochloric Acid x 10

  Nitric Acid x 10

  Bluecrystal Mana x 1

  Swamphag Queen Slime x 140

  Stingcrab Blood x 31

  Gastina Sap x 22

  Stranged Bear Bile x 10

  Sodium Bisulphate x 3

  Oil of Vitriol

  Pine Tree Resin

  Cinnabar x 5

  "Hmm." The acids were probably about all I had to throw at it. Playing with Cinnabar – which was basically crystallized Mercury - was not smart. The Broodmother's slime WAS electrically conductive, but I had no idea if the Warsinger ran on electricity or not. I flagged the acids and slime as 'Quick Slot' and dismissed my HUD.

  I used Spider Climb and swarmed up the side of the cliff like a gecko. The Warsinger was easier to spot from up here. It was concealed by its cloak of mist, but the mist itself was the giveaway - it was noticeably thicker around the machine, which was heading north along the Pass. I ninja-ran after it, skipping from rocks and leaping from scrubby fir trees to close the distance as quickly as I could. When I came up on it, it was hunting through the ruins of the second ship - the warship, which had been dashed to the ground in pieces. The earth around here was even more treacherous, if that was possible. The road had split into a great gaping chasm.

  "Hey! Clanky!" I picked up a rock and hurled it from the edge of the cliffs as hard as I could. "Let's play tag!"

  The rock sailed out and hit the Warsinger's bicep with a tiny little 'tink!' before bouncing off and falling into the void below. Slowly, the machine's head turned to face me, just in time for the second stone to boink it right on the teeth.

  A HP ring came to life behind its head. The ring filled five times, and then a black skull appeared beside its name as it entered combat.

  “Oh.” I swallowed, taking a step back. “Wonderful.”

  The Warsinger emitted a resonant moan, then reached an enormous hand toward me, as if to snatch me up the way it had the quazi. By the time it slammed down, crushing trees and sending the ledge I'd been standing on tumbling to the road, I was already running.

  "Come on! Let's go for a jog!" I shouted at it, fleeing for my life.

  The Prototype put its head down and charged after me like a bull. Even with the Boots of the Winding Path, running became increasingly difficult as it gained alongside me. The ground rippled like a wave pool, liquefying and sending rocks crashing down. But if I didn't run, I was golem chow, and if I was wrong about how to fight this thing, I was also fucked.

  The Warsinger caught up with me easily, able to
outstride me even at a sprint. Its huge tail arched up over the cliffside, slamming down into the rock. I spammed Shadow Dance to avoid being stabbed, but caught the shockwave. That alone dealt damage.

  [You take 280 reduced impact damage!]

  "Fuck fuck FUCK!" There was no poison debuff, thank goodness - just a big chunk of missing health. And that was on a SUCCESSFUL dodge. I only had 1524 total HP. A solid strike would wipe me out.

  The stinger lifted, drooling venom, then slammed down again in front of me. I screeched to a stop, then threw myself to the ground as a huge hand sliced the air over my head. In desperation, I drew a grenade, pulled the pin with my teeth, and hurled it. It landed in one of the Warsinger’s empty eye sockets, rolling back and forth until it detonated.

  The explosion made its head jerk back. Another piercing moan split the air. The creature’s prehensile fingers shot out, skewering trees and driving into the ground like harpoons.

  "Hyaaa!" I slammed a HP potion and flew at them before he pulled them back, flaring with dark light as I landed all twenty combo hits of Blood Sprint, boosting my speed, healing most of my lost HP, and inflicting a Curse on the Warsinger.

  [You hit Prototype Revenant for 110 damage! HP: 24,890/25,000]

  110 damage?! That was about a tenth of what I should have inflicted with all those hits. A small HP ring appeared just for the Warsinger’s hand, showing a tiny sliver of green nicked off the end.

  The Warsinger flinched away, mouth gaping, and belched a cloud of mist into the air.

  [Warsinger uses Dark Mist!]

  [You are immune to Corruption!]

  “Immune to Corruption…? OH FUCK!” All around me, the trees were rotting at the speed of light, dumping their foliage, then their branches, then snapping under their own weight to tumble down. I dodged one only to get brained by another. The trunk barely clipped me, but it was enough to send me flying across the ground. The scorpion tail smashed down into the stone barely five feet from where I landed.