Archemi Online Chronicles Boxset

by James Osiris Baldwin

  I blinked a couple of times. “Every part of that is above my paygrade.”

  Rutha limped to the edge of the disk and brushed the scattered snow and dirt off the surface, revealing a pane of cracked quartz that crawled with acid-etched sigils. “This is the crucibus, which processes azurine and emeraldine into liquid fuel and gas. The gas is mostly azurine, so it’s the most psionically active form of mana the ship expels. That’s how the Navigators feel the air around the ship and adjust the position of all the rudders and flaps.”

  “Of course it is,” I replied. “Silly me.”

  “I only hope I have enough energy to properly assess it and start the siphon.” Rutha waved me back further, and held her gauntleted hand over the exposed crystal pane. She took a breath, let it out, and then made a series of gestures with her fingers. The gauntlet flared to life, blue light pulsing softly along the flowing lines of script engraved into different parts and pieces of it. What looked like electricity snapped between her fingers and the pane. I watched her curiously as her lips parted and she shuddered. I smelled ozone... and then something that smelled very much like blood. The odor bore into my sinuses, a coppery taste that made me recoil.

  The snow trembled and danced on the surface of the engine, dancing with colors that formed whorls and crawling lines. All the technobabble had kind of disguised the magic part of what Rutha had been talking about, but as her hair lifted and her arm glowed, I began to see the other side of what she was talking about. Sure enough, the glow connecting her with the machine was blue and gaseous, if I understood it correctly - and the green glow was her fooling around with symbols written in the machine. How she did it... that was between her and the crucibus. And the transmajiggy, which was definitely the most important part.

  A rippling wave of raw power washed over my skin. I hung back, burning with curiosity, but wary of the tingling, radiation-wash feeling I was getting from the magic. Rutha was mouthing a silent chant as she brought her other hand in like a conductor. The crawling lines of power resolved first into patterns, and then, to my surprise, script of some kind. The crack in the quartz was spewing boiling gas into the air, but it parted and swirled around Rutha in a slow vortex as she did whatever the hell she was doing, and-

  There was a thump through the air around us, as if everything had lifted slightly and then dropped. I felt myself rise off the ground for a second, just before a flash of light threw me back on my ass. I slid away, staring as a column of raw energy exploded up from the center of the engine and Rutha cried out in pain - or ecstasy - as it funneled into a straight pillar into the sky above us.

  “Rutha!” I flipped up to my feet, halted by the appearance of a new teal bar and a flashing alert: Warning! You are in danger of dying from mana poisoning!

  The teal bar was decreasing rapidly, like a suffocation meter. Coughing, eyes watering, I fled from the overpowering metallic stench - and Rutha. The light was too bright to stare at, like a magnesium flare, so I ran with a hand over my eyes until the teal bar disappeared, the light faded, and I could breathe again.

  I looked back. Rutha was floating. Her hair had lifted, fluttering around her like a veil of liquid mercury as she regained command of her magic. The mana had formed a slow vortex around her and the engine. It was like trying to look at someone through blue stained glass.

  I was boggling so hard I almost didn’t notice the amber quest alert. I final did when it turned red and jumped, startled.

  New Quest: Protect the Sorceress!

  In order to summon help, Rutha, Court Sorceress of Ilia, must sustain a beacon of energy to guide her allies to your location. Unfortunately, magic also attracts unwanted attention: monsters and other Stranged creatures who hunger for mana and the magically-charged flesh of mages. Protect Rutha until help arrives, but don’t get too close - or you could end up Stranged yourself!

  Timed Quest: 5 minutes

  Reward: EXP and Renown

  Rolling my shoulders, I cracked my neck and blew out a tight breath. Sure, why not? A ‘Protect the Flag’ quest, right now, while I was languishing on less than half HP and without any good healing items? Let’s rock.

  No sooner had I accepted than there was a shriek from overhead. I watched with a sinking heart as four huge winged shadows circled us, and shaded my eyes to look up at the sky. It was that moment that I remembered I didn’t have a spear any more: just a somewhat blunt dagger that I’d been damaged by using it to dig people out of the ship. I didn’t have any armor, either, save for my wet leather helmet.

  Scowling, I shook the soupy water out of my helmet, pulled it on, and thumped it down onto my head. “Harpies. Why the fuck does it have to be harpies?”

  Chapter 13

  The first harpy dove with a seagull-like shriek, clawed hands extended for Rutha’s back. I shook my head, knife in hand, and charged it from behind as it pulled up to harass her, tawny wings flapping furiously.

  “HuuuRRAH!” I leapt from the ground and jumped onto the spindly creature’s back, stabbing at its neck and shoulder. The harpy was a skinny humanoid, vaguely vulture-like, and naked. It screeched as my dagger plunged into its flesh, spraying indigo-dark blood from the wound every time it beat its wings. The blood burned my skin where it landed.

  [You stab a Harpy for 10 points of piercing damage!]

  [Harpy is bleeding!]

  [You are poisoned!]

  “What!? Since when in the fuck are harpies poisonous?!” I shouted, dismayed, as a sick feeling of nausea washed through me. The harpy threw me off, clumsily retreating into the air, just as two more dived. I snarled, slashing wildly, dealing damage here and there as I lost HP from the harpy’s toxic blood and the odd scratch. The knife was really the wrong weapon to be using on the damn things. I hadn’t killed any, but so far, I was keeping them away from Rutha.

  “Hector! Can you hear me?”

  The woman’s voice was in my mind, the words forming out of my own thoughts, but in Rutha’s voice. “Uhh... yes?”

  “Hold them off just a little longer! The Skyrdon are on their way!”

  I had no idea what a Skyrdon was, but I hoped they had better weapons and armor than I did. I was back to a quarter HP and sinking. I still had a Dried Fish and a piece of Hard Tack: in battle, consumed food items vanished from your Inventory and folded straight into your HP, instead of you having to eat them. Twelve points wasn’t much, but every point counted in this fight.

  I Doubletapped a Harpy as she flew into my face, raking me with her hind claws. I took 5 damage, but my stabs landed like hammerblows in her ribs. She screamed, and I kicked her away from me before she could bleed onto my exposed skin. The harpy flopped away across the hard ground in a tangle of wings, but there was no time to celebrate. As I recovered from the blow, two more shadows plummeted toward me. I slashed out at the one to my right, teeth gritted against the pain of the slashes the first monster had given me. The wounds faded as my HP struggled up, regenerating as I fought off clutching hands, and then abruptly halting when blue blood splashed across my face.

  [You are poisoned!]

  “I fucking know!” I snarled, fighting not to be lifted from the ground. Once you were poisoned, you couldn’t be double-poisoned, so I laid into the screeching harpies without pause, throwing one off and killing the other. The only good thing about the Poison status was that the continuous damage made my Adrenaline Points charge faster, and that meant more Doubletaps.

  [Warning! You are at 10 HP!]

  [30 seconds remaining.]

  I don’t know what it was: the countdown, the grating screech of the monsters I was fighting, or the fact they were monsters, not humans... but something cut loose in me. All the rage and fear I’d been holding back since learning that my parents were trapped inside the HEX quarantine zone ruptured out past the walls I’d put up around it.

  “JUST FUCKING DIE!” I felt a wave of cold fire twist up through my right arm, the arm that Matir had branded, and as I slammed the knife into the Harpy’s skul
l, a brief look of surprise passed over its ugly face before tendrils of dark energy tunneled through it and blew its head apart. My adrenaline drained to zero, but my HP bar suddenly jumped 30 points.

  I roared wordlessly as harpies mobbed me from the sky: four of them, then eight, as their attention tore away from the column of magic. As the timer turned red, counting down the last ten seconds of the quest, the Mana beacon turned blue, then green, then violet. Rutha shouted something I didn’t understand, flinging her arms open... and the pillar became a field, then a field of twinkling purple gas.

  5... 4...

  [Warning! You are at 10 HP!]

  3... 2... 1...

  [You are poisoned!]

  I was pushed down, bleeding from a dozen cuts, and slashed out weakly at the squabbling bird-women trying to tear me apart. The world turned dark with a rushing sound, and I braced for death - again - as a huge cold shadow fell over us. The harpies screeched in alarm and suddenly took wing like a flock of pigeons, only to scream as a straight bolt of lightning split through the air overhead and incinerated them. The couple who managed to scatter outside of the fire shrilled, winging off to the side. One got clear: the other was snatched by a huge talon as an enormous winged blur shot by us, barrel-rolling at speed.

  Dragons.

  There were four of them, and as they flew back over us, the air thundered. They were at least a hundred feet long, from the tips of their elegant, aquiline snouts to the ends of their whip-like tails. My mouth hung open, pain forgotten, and I struggled up onto my elbow as the blue dragon and his rider came out of their roll and strove for height, revealing the pure white dragon I hadn’t seen.

  [Quest Completed! Protect the Sorceress]

  [You earn 120 EXP!]

  “Hector!” Rutha hobbled over to me and knelt down. She looked exhausted, even gaunt, her cheekbones like knives set underneath her skin. Her long, pointed ears drooped with fatigue. “Oh no... the harpies! Their toxin!”

  “Whuh?” Awe had pushed aside the pain. “Oh, right. Poison. Do you still have any fish?”

  “Yes?” She fumbled back on her scavenged pouch, pulling out the dried fish I’d given her. I grabbed it off her, and as she watched, bemused, crammed it into my mouth. I didn’t even have to chew it - it just vanished, and the sliver left on my HP jumped back up ten points.

  “I-I don’t think fish is a cure for harpy blood...” she said, uncertainly, and then looked down at my wounds. They were healing rapidly. Her eyes widened.

  “Must be a Starborn thing.” The poison was now competing with the HP regen from the food. I dropped a point, gained a point, but it was relatively stable. “I’ll live. These... these are Skyrdon? Dragons?”

  The dragons formed a disciplined formation above, turning on their wingtips and arrowing back toward us from over the ocean. As a unit, they backwinged and touched down, sending snow flying. The lead dragon was a brilliant white and silver creature whose scales flexed like mercury. There were two blues and a green, only slightly smaller than their squadron leader.

  They were... beautiful. Most dragons were either six-limbed – wings, plus four legs – or the four-limbed ‘wyvern’ type dragons. These dragons were the six-limbed variety, but they looked more like velociraptors than traditional dragons. Graceful, with a cat-like quality to the way they moved, their hides shimmered and flexed with holographic color. They had smaller forelimbs, with expressive, dexterous claw-tipped ‘hands’ that they carried off the ground. Their necks were S-shaped and sinuous, their heads almost greyhound-like in shape. Everything about them was streamlined for speed: The backswept horns and barbells, their long, narrow wings, the blades-edge forward profile of their bodies.

  I was gawping at the dragons so hard that I only belatedly noticed the riders. They were tied to their saddles with quick-release point harnesses connected to long braided leather cables. Like their dragons, they were armored for aerodynamic speed. The knights wore swept-back helmets, close-fitting shoulder guards and bracers, and more leather than metal. The armor was well-made and elegant, giving them good protection and mobility while protecting the most vulnerable areas of their bodies.

  The dragons crouched, putting their hands down on the cold ground, and their riders slid down with their lances in hand. Their faces were distorted by their helmets. The lead knight’s visor was solid metal, and my first thought was that there was no way they could possibly see through them, until I noticed the way that the steel smoldered with crawling blue embers... embers that followed a complex sigil pattern.

  I groaned, fighting to sit up as the group of dragon knights jogged over to us. The man in the lead – tall, built like a quarterback - had white-and-steel armor with gold trim, while the others had only blue. He pushed his visor up to reveal a long, hard, starkly handsome face. There was no visible hair around the edge of his helmet, but this man’s eyebrows were golden-blond, and his eyes… his eyes were weird. I couldn’t exactly say why, but he looked like a blond Prince Charming serial killer, until a smile flashed over his mouth and his features softened. Slightly.

  “My Lady Rutha.” The guy in white and gold - Skyr Arnaud? - had a deep, smooth voice. “I’m grateful to find you alive and talking. His Highness has been beside himself since you ceased contact. You’re injured, terribly.”

  “I maintain both my honor and my ability, in no small part due to this man here.” Rutha turned in a swirl of silver hair, looking at me with concern as I leaned against the shoulder of the Skyr who’d helped me to my feet. “Hector, this is Knight-Commander Yoren Arnaud, one of our finest Skyrdon and a champion of the realm.”

  The knight looked me over, and I had the distinct feeling he was unimpressed by what he saw but was too polite to say what was on his mind. He bowed very slightly from the neck. “A pleasure. Hector of…?”

  Rutha’s smile faded a little.

  “Tungaant,” I replied tersely. “A warrior of Tungaant.”

  The knight-commander arched both eyebrows. “Titleless? A commoner, are you?”

  “We don’t have peerage in Tungaant.” The fact was part of the racial knowledge I’d downloaded during character creation. “No noble class.”

  “No nobility? Then who holds the land?” A tiny, condescending smile twitched at the corners of the man’s mouth. I found myself liking him less by the second.

  “Everyone owns the land,” I replied. “There are boundaries set by the temples which are respected, but the steppe is not easily controlled by any kind of elite. We share all things evenly, or we die.”

  “How disorderly,” Arnaud said, biting each word off cleanly.

  “Hector is Starborn, Commander. One of the Stars of Destiny.” Rutha spoke before I could retort. Her words made all of the Skyrdon stand up a little straighter.

  “Starborn?” Arnaud blinked, and for a moment, the patronizing arrogance left his voice and face. “Impossible.”

  The sorceress leaned on my shoulder. “He came back from the dead. He heals wounds in battle... he has all the signs.”

  ‘He’ had a name and could speak for himself, thank you very much, but mystique was to my advantage in such esteemed company. I tried to look heroic and serious, and let Rutha talk. Unfortunately, the knight-commander didn’t suddenly smile and nod. He looked worried… maybe even disgusted.

  “Starborn incarnate in our land. That is how it has always been,” he said, glancing at Rutha’s hand on my shoulder.

  Rutha’s brow creased. She was holding herself together, but it was clear she was reaching the end of her rope. “Well, there are stories of them in Lysian lands, good Skyr. I don’t see why there wouldn’t be representatives among the Tuun.”

  “Hmmph.” Skyr Arnaud said. “Forgive me, lady: we have been talking while you are hurt. Tabetha, Pior: you will transport the survivors to Lys and arrange them hospitality at the Skiathan Orden’s Eyrie. Make sure they are questioned, and held there until they can be seen safely to their homes.”

  Two of the knights: the w
oman who’d helped me up and one of the other men, both bowed. “Yes, commander.”

  I watched Tabetha go to her blue dragon mount, reaching up to the creature’s muzzle with her hands as the dragon bent down. She rubbed his jaw with obvious affection, and the dragon rumbled with pleasure. The connection between them was palpable, powerful. It made my chest lift and tighten a little, that feeling you got when you were a little bit in love with something.

  “As for you.” He turned his attention back to me. “I don’t think we can take you to your homeland, Hector – there are no known waypoints. But we can send you to any of the Warden’s outposts in-”

  “I want to go with you and Rutha,” I said quickly. “To Ilia.”

  Arnaud did the eyebrow thing again. “Lady?”

  “That suits me just fine,” she replied. She was still leaning on me. “Hector did everything in his power to aid me. He led the slave revolt, and bought the ship into our hands through honorable combat. I watched him pull people from the wreckage, even though he was badly hurt, and he fought again on my behalf just now. I vouch for his honor, and I will provide a Writ of Good Standing for him to carry in Ilia.”

  “I cannot see the Warden approving of such a Writ, but as the Lady says.” Arnaud forced a stiff smile. “Come, barbarian. We shall see if you faint on takeoff.”

  Chapter 14

  There’s nothing quite like your first time.

  I still remember what it felt like to sit on my first motorcycle. It was raining, and the air was heavy with the smell of wet leather and exhaust as I kicked the engine to life. I sat there with the engine rumbling through my bones, letting it warm while the instructor led us through the next steps. Even before we’d done our first circuit around the course, I knew that that was it. No matter what else I did, riding these machines was the thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was having the same feelings a second time, but this time, it was for the dragons.