Warsinger

by James Osiris Baldwin

  The rifle kicked so hard that it jerked me in a half-twist to the side and nearly pushed my arm out of its socket, but I had been a good shot in life and I was still pretty fucking good, because the whale-sized round took the thing right in its stupid fucking chest. It blew the chunk of mud and rock right out of the core socket and caused the machine to convulse and spasm, its arms jittering wildly. The core was wide open. I threw the gun aside, burned some AP on Mantle of Night to jack my speed to max, then charged in slashing. Jump, then the Blood Storm chain. Something thumped against my back and took off nearly 500 HP – putting me into red, but recharging enough AP that I could get off one more big combo… and then the core cracked and burst, spewing a stream of spoiled mana into the guts of the machine. I got the fuck away as the Tomb Guardian belched a plume of smoke, jerking, then slumping over from the waist onto its face. The purple energy holding it together collapsed, and then the entire thing came apart. The head, arms, weapons, everything fell to the ground with a deafening crash.

  There was no time to relax yet, though. Karalti backed into the room, firing the pistol at the shades pouring through the door: seven of them, who yelped and chittered as one of them took a Phantasmal round to what passed for its face and vanished into a curl of smoke. Exhausted, my armor shot to shit, with blood in my eyes, a chest full of broken ribs and a dick shoulder, I used the Spear to lever myself up to my feet.

  “You guys don't fucking learn, do you?” I flicked the weapon out, coils of black flame curling up to wrap around my arm, and dashed forward. The shadows reached for us as I sprinted past Karalti and blew the rest of my AP on one final Umbra Burst. Shadows screamed as whipping tendrils of dark energy latched onto them and sucked them dry. One by one, they snuffed out like candles. When the last one disappeared, I crumpled to my knees and groaned.

  [You have defeated Tomb Guardian!]

  [You defeated Lesser Wraiths!]

  [You gain 1522 EXP!]

  [Congratulations! You are Level 24!]

  [Karalti gains 1522 EXP!]

  [You have unlocked new locations: Karhad Bathhouse, Tannery, Fertilizer Production. You gain 50 BP and +200 Renown (Myszno, Renown (Karhad))]

  [You completed Quest: The World Beneath. You get 1550 EXP!]

  [Congratulations! Karalti is Level 14!]

  “Urrrgh.” I rested my forehead against the cold haft of the Spear, clutching it with both hands. My HP jumped up with the level, but there was a nasty stabbing pain in my chest that wasn’t going away. I ransacked my Inventory for the Bonefuse potion I kept for times like this and chugged it. There was a painless 'pop', and then a weird crunchy sensation as the alchemical brew pulled my ribs out of my lung, re-aligned them, and set them where they were supposed to be. I grimaced, then drank a Concentrated Moss Tincture before I bled out.

  “Here.” Karalti came up beside me, my helmet in her hands. She had already gone through her Sailor Moon schtick and had leveled up while I hadn’t been paying attention. She was slightly taller, her hair about five inches longer than it had been a couple minutes ago. It fell over me in a gently perfumed wave. “Wow. That was a hard fight.”

  “Yeah. Not as hard as Nocturne Lament, but damn.” I smiled at her, taking the helmet from her. She was pale, her brow a little sweaty. “You used a lot of mana.”

  “Yeah.” She tentatively smiled back, her eyes bright in the gloom. “I'm sorry I wasn't much help.”

  “If those shadows had gotten in while I was fighting the Tin Man over there, we'd have been fucked. You did exactly what we needed you to do. You’ve got two bonus Lexica now you levelled: what do you want to spend them on?”

  “Magic? Hmm. I think we should improve Teleport. Maybe save the other point until I turn Level 15. I get a Path ability then, and some good spells might open up. Between now and then, I need to learn to fight in human-shape.”

  “You will. You'll pick it up so fast your head'll spin, Tidbit.” I pulled my helmet on, then went into my HUD and boosted Karalti’s teleport ability. She could use it four times a day now, instead of three. “Or Vash's will, because you'll cold-cock him when he isn't expecting it.”

  She got a smug, vaguely predatory expression. I could almost see her tail swishing as she turned, put her hands on her hips, and considered the wreckage of the Tomb Guardian. “You know... that thing looks kind of like a little Warsinger, doesn't it?”

  “Yeah.” I heaved up to my feet and went over to it, poking through the shattered metal until I got the 'Loot here' alert. I brought it up, and grimaced when it displayed only two items: a [Broken Golem Core] and [Unknown Metal Scrap x 50]. “Bleh. Shit loot, but I bet Rin will be able to find a use for the metal. Jeez… it weighs a ton.”

  “I can take some. What do you think it was guarding?” Karalti went over to the bricked-up tunnels, prying around it.

  “Well, the name suggests a tomb somewhere. Seems weird that there'd be a tomb in a sewer, though.”

  “Not if it wasn't always a sewer,” Karalti said. “Maybe it was a nice clean river once. Where are we on the map?”

  I checked. “Almost right under the university.”

  “Remember what the looter's note said about the university protecting something with magic?” She pointed at the hulk of the Tomb Guardian. “I bet the mages knew this was here, but it didn't do anything for a really long time.”

  “Either that, or they made it and hid it here under all the shit.” I went over to the plugged-up doors and put a boot against up against the surface. As I did, a HP ring jumped up. “These door barriers have five thousand hitpoints? Guess we're going to be digging for a while.”

  Karalti cocked her head, then went over to the giant rifle. She hauled it up with a grunt of effort, setting it over one shoulder before beaming at me. “I’m getting pretty good at shooting. This should make it faster.”

  Chapter 26

  It took us a while to hack and blast our way through the doors. One of them led to the ass-end of the Fol Alugut. There were more dung beetle-like [Guardian Drones] here, frozen in the moment that their controller had died. Some of them were halfway through pushing clumps of sewer cement into position, back legs resting up on their payloads. There was approximately a ton of balled-up waste in the huge sewer channel that opened up into a filtering pool. Foul liquid sprayed out through the cracks in the lumpy mass, which gurgled and rumbled like the stomach of a green recruit after his first meal at the One Dollar Chinese Food shack outside JBLM.

  “Okay, Tidbit. Are you ready for the worst experience of your entire life?” I braced like a sprinter, the Spear held low in one hand. “There’s so much liquid fertilizer backed up in this bitch that it could run for President AND the Senate in all thirty states and three provinces. It is going to be The Worst. Capital T, capital Worst.”

  “Ugh. Just get it over with.” Karalti clamped her hands over her nose, drew a deep breath, and nodded.

  “Today’s monologue has been brought to you by Three-Day-Old Leftover Tacos.” I steeled myself and dashed forward, lashing out with one final blow of Shattering Darkness.

  The congealed mass squealed as it froze solid, and I had barely changed course when the barrier exploded out into the tunnel and blasted a month's worth of raw sewage into the unsuspecting canal. Karalti and I fled the room ahead of a billowing cloud of noxious gas that pushed us out the door like a giant sulfurous hand. We stumbled to the next entrance in the cistern and ran down the stairs. It was comparatively unstinky down here, cool and dusty. About halfway down, we stopped and gratefully gulped lungfuls of fresh air, then continued down the winding narrow stairs. They fed out into a dry, barrel-shaped tunnel. There was no sewage here, no rats, and no moss or fungi. Grates were set along the dusty walls. They all looked surprisingly new, and as I pulled up to one of them and held the torch up, I saw why.

  “New steel.” I tapped one with a nail. The metal was still shiny. “And are these... runes?”

  “Yup.” Karalti looked at them, weaving her head like a c
urious eagle. “Words of Power... they're almost the same as the ones I use for my Circle of Protection.”

  “They keep undead out?”

  “Not just undead. Everything. But they don't work anymore. There's no mana in them.” Karalti pressed forward, strumming the bars as she passed by. “The note said it the entry they wanted was the third grate from the end of the tunnel... oh.”

  “Oh what?” As I joined her where she'd stopped, the torchlight swept over the shrunken, dried-out husk of the last looter. “Ohhh.”

  He - or she - had crumpled to the ground like a wet paper bag, the life sucked out of him by the shades. There was a sword and a broken [Guardian Drone] nearby. They hadn't broken the bluesteel bars - they'd used a mallet and chisel to break into the wall, carving a narrow tunnel into the shaft beyond.

  “I guess they disturbed the Tomb Guardian's drone units, and they activated the mothership,” I said, toeing the broken artifact. “Do you think those words of power are old?”

  “I don't think so? They look like the kind human mages would use.” Karalti poked her head into the tunnel, then slid in with a little 'hup' of effort. She kicked her legs at me. “Push me in!”

  I caught her feet, and helped to slide her into the shaft, then unequipped my armor and did the same thing. We commando crawled in, the tunnel sloping down. On the mini-map, I could see that we were now right underneath the University... and more specifically, right under the University's cathedral. After a few more minutes, we dropped out of the shaft into a huge, echoing chamber... and as we lit up a second torch, deja-vu slapped me upside the face so hard my eyes widened.

  In the great circular chamber were a ring of dragon-sized biers. It was an almost perfect mirror of the chamber I had stumbled into in Taltos, the one under the grand old Cathedral of the Maker in the center of town. However, there was one notable difference. When I pulled up in front of one of the biers and cast the torch around, I saw it was empty.

  “Oh my gods…” She passed by me in a daze, going to her knees in front of the black stone platform. She swept her hands over the dusty plaque, clearing it off. “ Tanrilar tarafindan. The Haven of the Eggs. Hector... this is...”

  “A burial chamber from the Aesari Wars period, yeah.” Just like the collective tomb in Taltos, this place had the quiet, hallow hush of a church. It was hard to believe the sewers raged under the streets around it, but no matter how hard I strained to hear it, there were no sounds of water to be found. There was nothing but a thick, heavy silence.

  “There were children buried here, Hector,” Karalti whispered, her voice trembling. “This was the tomb of the hatchlings killed when... when... “

  “When what?” I knelt beside her, looping an arm around her narrow shoulders.

  “When the Aesari massacred them. It... it says... that the Solonkratsu here shook off the geas binding them with the help of the demigoddess... wait, that can't be right.” Karalti sniffed, bending down until her nose almost touched the stone. “The Demigoddess Taltas, the royal daughter of Khors?”

  “Taltas? Like... Taltos?” I blinked. I knew that the capital of Vlachia was named for the theoretical demi-god son of Khors, one of the Nine and the patron deity of the country. “You sure that says 'daughter'?”

  “Yup. And the word they use, ‘kralis’, is only used to describe queen daughters in Solunkraati,” Karalti said, nodding. “It's not used for boys, ever.”

  “Huh. Guess they're gonna have to make some changes to that big statue in the middle of the market plaza.” I scratched my jaw, looking around. “There's a tomb just like this under Taltos. There should be chambers for humans here, too.”

  “I hope not.” Karalti stood, swaying uneasily.

  We poked around the great tomb, and sure enough, there were radial flights of stairs that led to smaller catacombs. Some of them contained the graves of the beings called Tulaq - slender winged creatures that were equal parts greyhound, falcon, and pronghorn antelope. Most of the graves were empty, and one had been preserved under glass. A trestle table sat nearby, spread with sheets of thin paper and sticks of charcoal.

  “The scholars in the university must have been studying here,” I said, holding the torch up to the walls. There were rows and rows of spiraling, ornate symbols painstakingly engraved into the brass paneling. “Can you read these?”

  “Nuh uh.” Karalti shook her head. “Weird language, though. It's full of Words.”

  “Language usually is.”

  “No, silly. Not words. WORDS.” She uttered an exasperated sigh.

  The human graves were at the end of the hallway, the bodies still mostly in place and intact. A faint musty smell permeated these rooms, the odor of flesh long turned to dust. We left it in peace, returning to the main hall and trying another corridor... but as I took my first step past the threshold, I felt - and heard - the air around me sigh and pull back toward the main chamber.

  “Huh?” I stopped, looking back in the direction of the faint, icy cold draft.

  Karalti chirped curiously. “What?”

  “I thought I...” There was a whispering in the wind, the sound of words too soft to hear. The Mark of Matir chilled, and I found myself drawn back, angling for one specific branch of the tomb. As I walked, the hissing, tickling air built in intensity, stroking the back of my neck like cold fingers. When I stepped in, the breeze gusted and blew out the torch in my hand. And there, in the shadow of the door, I saw an even deeper darkness at the end of the hall. Matir’s star blazed like a black sun on the face of a round metal portal as thick as a bank vault door.

  Karalti followed warily as I was drawn closer. When I was at arm's length, I reached out, and carefully placed my hand down on the door. As I did, eight other symbols flared to life, casting an opalescent glow across the floor. A white hourglass, a green heart with spirals in place of arteries, a blazing red hammer, a hexagon struck through with a sword... the symbols of all of the Nine.

  “Hail, Herald,” the air hissed. “Hail to you, Daughter of the Black God.”

  “Oooh...” Karalti shivered pleasurably.

  A pulse of energy rolled through the pit of my belly like a shot of tequila. The symbols winked out, and the door soundlessly rolled back into the wall, opening into an undisturbed burial chamber bathed in warm golden light. I stepped in, awed. The sealed vault still smelled like incense, scents I was pretty sure were frankincense and myrrh. Magelights hovered patiently over a great planetary diorama, the center of which was a golden globe of Archemi. Or... was it? As I got closer, I saw that the planet in the middle of the diorama was far too large, and contained no fewer than six continents. On one of the rings orbiting the giant planet was a much smaller one with only two landforms. One was the easily- recognizable fortune-cookie shaped continent of Artana. The other was the Africa-like continent of Daun.

  “Holy shit. That's Erruku!” I gently spun the big golden globe. As it rotated, the little Archemi globe began to move around it, along with several other, even smaller planets. “Erruku has continents?”

  Karalti was in as much awe as I was, trying to figure out what she was seeing. “But… Erruku is the moon. Nothing lives there.”

  “That we know of.” The enormous moon that lit Archemi's skies was, indeed, nothing but a swirling yellow circle in the sky.

  The diorama was only one of many treasures in this room. Karalti broke away to poke through it all while I advanced to the inner chamber. This place was very different to simple, austere tomb I had been teleported to under Taltos. It was as grand as anything ever dug out of Ancient Egypt. There was furniture and pottery decorated in gold leaf, statues made of bronze so old it had turned black, artificed machines that had fallen apart into their fragile components. The walls were covered in engraved tablets written in a curving right-to-left script I didn’t know. All of the letters were connected by a long line across the top of each word. I couldn’t imagine how much value this would be to the University.

  At the end of the inner cham
ber was an even smaller one. It contained a sarcophagus that looked to be made of solid gold. Graceful Tulaq were molded onto the corners, the tips of their wings touching. The walls and ceiling were painted like the walls of an Egyptian tomb, showing a sequence of images all featuring the same man. He was very tall, with a huge red beard that fell to his waist. He dressed in blue robes, a tool belt, and golden gauntlets. In some scenes, he praised a great burly effigy of Khors in front of a huge volcanic forge. In others, he oversaw teams of humans and Mercurions in the construction of a single huge hand, or a giant scimitar as long as ten people. But in the central image, the one directly behind the head of the sarcophagus, he was not featured at all. The image was of a Warsinger. And not just any Warsinger – THE Warsinger. The one that I had seen when the Ruby of Boundless Strength bonded itself to the Spear of Nine Spheres.

  Chapter 27

  In the vision, she had been nothing more than a sand-veiled silhouette striding through the desert, but the silhouette was unmistakable. She – this Warsinger was definitely feminine – was rendered like a mechanical saint. She had a pair of curved golden swords crossed over her chest, and a great flaming halo that hung behind her narrow head. The Warsinger’s helmet was styled like a falling meteor, with an angled crest of spikes surrounding a single long tail, all of it swept back from an impassive angular visor. A great flaming halo hung behind her head, and her feet were shrouded in fire. The artist had even detailed the engravings on the Warsinger’s armor. Roses twined around her hands, up her arms, across her chest and up her neck to either cheek, ending just beneath the baleful glowing grates of its her eyes.

  “…The third aspect is the mantle of the Warsinger. It was the Warsingers who turned the tide against the Drachan and gave us time to create the Caul.” The whispering, sweet voice of Lahati turned over in my memory. “You already know of one of them: Sachara Ha’Shazir, the Demon Queen, pilot of the Warsinger Withering Rose and the Empress of the Shalid.”