“But I will give you some aid in locating the herbsss for Marantha’s Trial,” Jasper finished. “And that is worth the collection of ghostbell. You would be surprised how few aspirants come here first, so bedazzled are they by the dragonsss and the terror of the Trial. Now, look at this map.”
I stood beside the librarian as he opened the map out on the table, searching over it. It was a map of the local lands: the fort, the road that led into the forest behind it, and then the marshes where the road ended. There was a ghostly red outline of a broken city extending through the marshy forest, all the way across the land dividing the swamps from the old battlefield and what I assumed were surface ruins, and then the base of the Eyrie. As I took it in, an alert informed me that the Map of Palewing Crater had been added to my Inventory.
“You will search the shores for widowberry, which grows on small bushes with dark leaves, and green algae, which is plentiful where the water laps the mud. Look around here for king’sss sorrow.” Jasper indicated the deeper area of the swamp. “And with it, you will find ghostbell. Blackweed is found under deeper water, growing in the silt below the surface, and is plentiful. Crimson lily grows in shade, sunwort in bright light, and you will see those areasss when you enter and move forward...”
As we worked through the map, highlights appeared on my virtual copy, indicating areas of potential search. I could flip through them, bringing up a circular ‘zone’ that was shaded in, showing me where I was likely to find the various herbs. When we were done, I nodded. “Mind if I use the Herbalism Tome before I go? I’ll be taking a hookwing, so I can come back once I’ve found your herbs, learn my skills, and go back into the swamp.”
“Of course. And do not worry, it does not take an aspirant three daysss to reach the temple with their ingredientsss, unless they are very unlucky inside the ruinsss - or do not have the foresight to visit me.” Jasper rolled the map up, and handed me one of the books. “Open this to the first page.”
I took it - it was lighter than I expected - and did as he’d said. A brilliant green sigil crawled on the page, and I got a telepathic prompt: “Do you wish to use Skill Tome: Herbalism (Beginner)?”
“Yes,” I thought back.
The sigil flared, and the book discharged a pulse into my hands. The influx of information was like warm water poured between my ears. My temples grew hot, and my head pounded painlessly - but as soon as it began, it was over.
[Your Herbalism skill has reached level 6!]
[Your Herbalism skill has reached level 7!]
[Your Herbalism skill has reached level 8!]
Suddenly, I knew exactly what Jasper wanted, and why. All the plants were used for making different colored inks, except for the ghostbell. That one was made into an invisible ink that dissolved other colors on parchment and vellum and made them easy to sponge off.
“Alright. That helps.” I shook my head, clearing the last of the magic fog out of it. The sigil inside the book was no longer glowing. “This kind of magic isn’t toxic, is it?”
“Greencrystal is a ssstable form of mana,” Jasper said. “It is only slightly toxic... as much as breathing in the smoke of the city for a minute, or less.”
“Huh. Well, thanks.” I rolled my shoulders, and was about to leave when a final question occurred to me. “By the way... is the Trial of Marantha as terrible as it’s made out to be?”
The Meewfolk blinked his huge, luminous blue eyes, pacing back to the ancient book he had been working on. “It is worse than you expect. Remember to wear gloves and washhh them thoroughly when you collect king’sss sorrow. The juice is poisonous enough to stop a man’s heart if it splashes hisss skin.”
Chapter 31
After the library, I went back to the fortress courtyard and the stables, and found Lucien saddling his gold-and-brown hookwing with saddlebags, a camp roll, and other useful gear. He smirked when I pulled Cutthroat out into the open, hauling on her bridle reins. She hissed continuously and shrilly and tried to drag her feet on the ground.
“Why do you keep her?” he asked, watching as I hitched the spitting, stamping hookwing to a post. “They have better mounts here, you know.”
“She’s good practice,” I said, and started back for her gear. “Cutthroat might as well be flying half the time. I always liked temperamental rides.”
“Redheads?” he snickered.
“Bikes with too much torque and a lot of snarl,” I replied. “I was a motorcycle stunt rider.”
“I see. So, what now? Heading for the swamp?”
“That’s the plan.” When I came closer to Cutthroat, I made sure to do it from the side. She bristled as I approached, but let me equip the saddle blanket, saddle, breastplate, crupper, and bags. The two saddlebags didn’t match, but I hardly cared. They raised my inventory capacity from 30 to 80. “How’s the real world?”
“Very bad,” Lucien replied. “Los Angeles is gone.”
“Gone?” I chuckled, not even sure why I was laughing. “What do you mean, ‘gone’?”
Lucien wasn’t laughing, not even nervously. “They just declared it. The entire civilian population is wiped out. Dead. The only survivors are the ones in Beverley and Golden Point Shards.”
“Well, at least we’ll still have celebrities, Hollywood producers, and investment bankers to rebuild the world for us,” I joked, half-heartedly.
“It’s not funny,” Lucien replied tersely.
“You seemed to think killing people sounded like a whole lot of fun yesterday.” I stashed everything I didn’t need to carry on Cutthroat’s back, to her great displeasure. “To you, this is just a game. I’m one of those people who were wiped out. You’re not.”
Lucien regarded me aloofly. “Not yet. But there’s talk of the Pacific Alliance calling for a nuclear strike on my Shard.”
“Then be glad the backup servers for Archemi are in space.”
The other man’s eyes narrowed. “You really don’t care, do you?”
“I care a lot. I cared about the people on the ground, but they’re all dead now.” I turned to face him again. “I don’t care about the people who started the war. And why should I? They made it into the tower on time.”
“The Alliance started the war-”
I snorted and rolled my eyes. “That’s propaganda, and you know it.”
Lucien flinched as he cleared his throat. “Anyway, my parents worked for the UN right until the end. I was overseas when they called the draft.”
Of course you were. “And you came back just in time for Shard intake and exemption, right?” I said, going around Cutthroat. Being careful to avoid her claws, I pushed her hook-arm up and reached for the swinging end of the cinch. “You want to know why I sound like I don’t care? I’m exhausted by how much shit I saw out there. All my buddies died. My house smelled like a rotting corpse when I went to go find my brother. This is the only world that matters now.”
“I see.” But he didn’t look like he ‘saw’ much of anything.
I came back around, and was reaching to unhitch Cutthroat from the post when she suddenly twisted her head and clamped her jaws on my arm. Her teeth dug into the leather, and I jerked my arm back reflexively. The glove slipped off, and instead of my arm, her powerful jaws crushed the empty gauntlet.
“Fucking hell, Cutthroat!” I whapped her neck, and she dropped the gauntlet with an indignant squawk. Annoyed, I picked it up, and stood to see Lucien staring at my bare hand - and the Mark of Matir.
“What’s that?” he asked. “Some kind of tribal tattoo?”
“Yeah.” Quickly, I pulled the gauntlet back on. “Lots of tattoos in Tungaant. Lots of body modification in general.”
“Oh... well, that doesn’t surprise me. Nomadic plainsmen, and all.” Lucien nodded, eyebrows arched, and used the fence to mount his hookwing. “Well, I’m going ahead. Perhaps we’ll see each other before the Trials. If not, good luck. You’re going to need it, with that hookwing.”
“Sure. Good luck.” I grunte
d without looking at him. I told myself it was mostly because I was busy trying to stop Cutthroat from disemboweling me while I prepared to get on her back.
Once I was mounted, the big hookwing settled down. When I urged her to a walk, she flicked her tail and started off obediently, but sullenly. We were getting better.
I rode her through the castle grounds and around, heading for the rear gate that was marked on Jasper’s map. Six guards were stationed there: two by the door inside, and four outside. One of the interior guards nodded to me and pulled a lever to raise the gate, admitting us out into the wilds beyond the fort.
Like the front of the fort, the back had an area of cleared foliage and cut trees, but the lush forest began barely a hundred feet from the walls. It only grew thicker as we plunged down the narrow trail that led into the wilderness. I’d expected to feel nervous, or even to have flashbacks of the jungle battlefields I’d fought in, but there was only a dizzying, growing sense of freedom as we plunged down the trail. It was only a matter of time before these wild places were colonized by the waves of refugees that were sure to pour into the game soon, but for now, the forest that separated Fort Palewing from the Eyrie was a wild place, dark and green and damp and without another human soul in sight. There were no tattered flags or broken spears… just me and Cutthroat.
“Yah!” I urged Cutthroat to a lope, rising from the saddle as she picked up speed.
The hookwing barked a high, raspy cry and began to sprint down the trail. I grinned, half-standing in the saddle like a jockey. The wind rushed by, and for the first time since I’d arrived in Archemi, I felt it: the thing that had made me a rider and a stunter. The Edge. The point where you were doing something dangerous, where excitement and fear became indistinguishable and there was nothing but the rush of the wind and the pounding in your temples, and the madness… the mad joy that caused me to shake off one of the stirrups and bring my foot up on the base of Cutthroat’s neck.
“Steady… steady…” I measured the rhythm of her gait with my foot, gained my balance, and stood. My spirits lifted. I was surfing her the way I’d surfed my bike a thousand times. It was wobbly at first, but I got the hang of it… all the way to the point where the trail softened, and my hookwing sharply skidded to a halt in front of the mud and sent me flying.
“OH YOU FUC-!” Whatever other colorful names I had for Cutthroat were cut short when my face met the trunk of a tree just off to the side of the path.
That was why they called it the edge. Sometimes, you went over it.
There was no birdsong out here, no other sounds except the croaking of frogs and the wind whispering through cattails as I rolled over, sat up, and waited for my head to clear. Cutthroat snuffled over the mud, uncaring as I got back in the saddle and urged her forward. The ground was getting wetter and muddier, and as we pushed down an even smaller trail, I thought I heard a distant humming sound... like a hornet’s hum, if the hornet was the size of a cat.
Cutthroat put her head down and began to slink as we broke out near the edge of the swamp, walking with a quiet predator’s step. Beyond the treeline and the wall of reeds that fringed the area, a couple of huge, two-foot long dragonflies flitted and battled one another in the air. I braced my spear, studying their movements. The [Giant Dragonflies] had health meters, but dragonflies weren’t normally aggressive insects. No stingers, weak jaws.
Cutthroat weaved her head from side to side, staring fixedly at the dragonflies. I was about to urge her to leap out when a small shape cut through the reeds at the water’s edge - a fox. In a split second, the dragonflies stopped fighting each other and turned on the newcomer. The fox had turned and was starting to run when they hit it, ejecting huge, dripping spines from the end of their tails into the animal’s back as it tried to hide. The fox yelped piteously as it went rigid and tumbled into the water, dead.
Oh. Okay. Right. So this was basically Australia. Everything here was horribly poisonous and out to kill me.
I made sure I had a tight grip on the saddle, and when the [Giant Dragonflies] swooped down to start eating, I kicked Cutthroat in the ribs and urged her into a charge.
The raptorine hookwing darted out, head flattened, her tail held rigidly behind her. The dragonflies noticed us and buzzed upward when her feet splashed into the muck. I slashed with my spear and struck one out of the air. My mount nearly threw me off her back as she sprung up and forward. With a hiss, she took the second one down with her long claws. The one I’d knocked to the water had its wings stuck, but it arched its long abdomen and jabbed at my leg, scraping off the metal greave protecting my skin and ripping through the fabric beneath.
“DIE!” As Cutthroat spun, I plunged my spear down into the dragonfly’s underbelly. Its carapace cracked with a satisfying crunch, and the insect thrashed wildly before expiring. My mount, grappling with the other one, tore its head off with her jaws and spat it into the water. She’d been stung once, but hardly seemed to care as she messily devoured the twitching remains of the insect skewered on her claw.
“Gods, that stinks.” Wrinkling my nose, I slid out of the saddle and dropped down into the ankle-deep water. It was warm and fetid. I looted the dragonfly for some [Blue Chitin] and [Dragonfly Ichor] - potion ingredients, most likely - and the body of the unfortunate fox for a [Raw Pelt] and [Fox Meat]. “Into the Inventory you go.”
Once that was put away, I looked around, and was pleased to see that two of my quest objectives were right here. Green algae floated in the stagnant water, and collecting five was as easy as dipping a wide-mouthed flask into the muck. There were crimson lilies here, too, growing in a cluster among the reeds. I picked more than I needed, and watched with satisfaction as the accompanying advanced Knowledge updated in my Glossary.
Behind me, a raven called: a low, throaty rattle, loud enough and close enough that I turned to look.
Everything went black.
It was like the void before character creation. I was breathless, bodiless, yet somehow still present. The world flooded back after a second of nothingness. I was on my knees, about to stand up when everything blanked again.
What the fuck is going on?! The darkness lasted longer this time. When virtual reality returned, I was flat on my back, lying on top of the glassy surface of the water. Cutthroat was sitting in the muck, resting on her tail, staring vacantly through me. The swamp was utterly silent.
My skin crawled as I sat up. The surface tension suddenly gave way, and I yelped as it dumped me into the water. It splashed normally as I pulled myself back out. I could feel the skin of my arms when I rubbed them, and breathe in the earthy aroma of the marsh. “Cutthroat!”
At her name, the light returned to the hookwing’s eyes. She shook her head, as if dazed, and wandered over to me. She ducked her head and pressed it against my hand, and that scared me as much as her blank stare had. It was completely out of character for her to seek affection.
Suddenly, the sounds of the environment returned. Croaking frogs, rustling reeds, the slosh and gurgle of water lapping on mud. Heart hammering, I turned, searching for anything out of place. Then I went into my HUD again. It was possible I’d triggered some kind of glitch by sorting my Inventory, but everything in there looked normal. I checked my stats, character sheet, message center. No creepy messages. No messages at all, actually.
Chewing my lip, I lay a hand on my hookwing’s black feathered neck, wary of her personality flipping back to being aggressive and bitey, and fired off a quick report to the Devs about what had happened. Then, with the unpleasant sensation of eyes lingering on the back of my neck, I resumed my search for plants.
It might have been my imagination, but the swamp sounded subtly different than it had before. Cutthroat followed me, but as the minutes passed, her normal personality resumed itself. She snapped irritably at flies and at my hand when I went to stow [Cattails x 10] and [Kudzu Fiber x 20] for eating and making baskets. I quickly found the blackweed, sunwort and widowberries for Jasper - widowberries, a
kind of nightshade plant with poisonous fruit, were everywhere around here. As I was gathering some spare berries into a sack for Alchemical experimentation, I got a PM from Baldr. He was still in my party, though we were out of range for any EXP sharing or bonuses. All it said was: “WTF?”
“I know, right?” I replied, sloshing through the muck. We were deep in the marshes now, and I was in one of the highlighted areas supposed to contain king’s sorrow, the virulently poisonous plant we needed for the Trial. “You felt that too?”
“I blacked out. Well, the world blacked out. Just woke up. What time is it?”
Only just woke up? I checked my HUD. “Just going on eleven hundred hours, local time.”
“Shit. I was out for an hour.” Then it hadn’t just been me - but the event might have affected us all differently. “Some kind of fuckup on the outside, maybe? Do you feel okay?”
“Maybe. And yeah, I think I’m fine.” But Baldr seemed vague and out of sorts.
“I logged a report with the Devs,” I messaged, pushing aside a waving forest of cattails. Then I froze. “And I... I’m going to have to get back to you.”
“What? Everything alright?”
Behind the curtain of reeds was an open space of shallow, brackish water. A small stone hexagon pillar rose from the middle of the pond, pitted and cracked with age. Matir leaned against it, arms folded, his cloak thrown back. The avatar of the Black God looked taller and thinner than I recalled.
“I hope so. BRB.” I closed the chat with Baldr, and waded forward to greet him.
Chapter 32
“Hello, Hector.” Matir was toying with a very dark red stem of leaves and berries in his long hands. I recognized the spindly branches and the soft blood-red fruit immediately. It was a stem of king’s sorrow.
Archemi Online Chronicles Boxset Page 27
