“Hya!” I nudged her in the ribs, and twitched the reins.
Cutthroat started at a walk, slinking out of the stable, and when we reached the courtyard, she picked up her feet and began to run. There were roars from overhead as suddenly, the fortress was shrouded in the shadows of enormous wings.
Dragons. The Skyrdon were here.
Chapter 44
Our only hope was the wild forest that surrounded the fortress, and the ruins that littered it. We were going to have to disappear into the mountains. If we stayed out in the open, we were as good as dead.
“Hiyah!” I slapped the reins, urging Cutthroat to a gallop, and we tore our way through the fortress grounds toward the rear gate. She kept ahead of the bellowing dragons as they circled the fortress. As we approached the gate, my heart sunk. Some guards were milling around in front of the winch that opened the exit. I was going to have to bluff my way through.
“Open the gate!” I yelled, reining Cutthroat back to a lope. “Open the bloody gate!”
“What’s going on!” The man closest to the winch called back.
“Thieves disguised as the warden’s men stole an egg from the Eyrie! They’re escaping!” I had to bring Cutthroat to a prancing, hissing stop, reining her in tightly to stop her from throwing me off in irritation. “I’m giving chase while the commander searches above!”
“Through here? Into the woods? But we didn’t... the only people who’ve been through here was that city inquisitor and his bodyguard.”
Holy shit, Kira and Owen had made it out. I shook the spear at him. “And who do you think took the egg? Just open the goat-sucking gate!”
The soldier paused for a moment, features slack, then cursed and began hauling on the gate mechanism. “You there, soldier! Help me!”
As soon as the gate was high enough for me to dash out, I kicked my mount to a run, and off we went.
We pelted out down the road, and as soon as I was able, I turned Cutthroat off the rutted trail and into the trees. The hookwing shrilled with alarm as we careened through the brush in the dark, but she was so focused on running without falling that she forgot to worry about me being on her back. With every stumble and leap, I felt like my shoulders were going to dislocate under the heavy weight inside my pack. I ground my teeth, and hung on for dear life as alerts flashed. Hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and the pee meter. Thanks, Ryuko. How would I ever remember the need to piss if you didn’t tell me?
Behind us, the fort came to life. Lights went up, sending flickering orange shadows through the blue-green of the forest, but we quickly left them behind. A smarter man probably would have taken a hookwing that was more tractable than Cutthroat, but there was one thing I could say for her: the bitch could run like the wind. She was easily the strongest and fastest beast in the stable, even if she was likely to attack me as soon as I got down off the saddle.
The trees hissed as we flew by them, and dirt sprayed up under Cutthroat’s clawed feet. I tucked my head and stood in the stirrups, bent forward like a jockey, and coolly searched my mini-map for anything that could help us. Here and there were small question mark icons, indicating places of interest. There were a small cluster of them not too far from where we were. There was a good chance one of them was a dungeon entrance.
A great rushing sound overheard sent a chill through my chest. I turned to look at the shadow cutting through the trees barely a hundred feet behind us, and drove my hookwing sharply to the left as the air sucked back around us.
A thunderous, superheated blast of fire cut through the forest, blowing up a cloud of burning leaves, splintered wood, and crackling earth in a twenty-foot line that set everything in front and around it on fire. Cutthroat screeched as the dragon blew past, rocking the trees, and I forced her to weave, back and forth, as more wing shadows joined the first.
Fire roared overhead, searing through the greenery. The dragons were burning the woods methodically, setting the forest aflame to flush me out. To get to the ruins, we were going to have to ride through the blaze.
“Ey ey ey ey!” I urged Cutthroat, turning her by the nose toward the leading edge of the forest fire and the cluster of question marks. “Come on!”
The hookwing snarled, slowing and shaking her head, but when I kicked her heaving ribs, she lowered her head like a bull and charged. Flames licked at us from every side as we scrambled across the hot earth, roaring everywhere around us. I held my breath against the smoke, squinting ahead, and nearly lost my seat as Cutthroat leaped over a log I hadn’t seen and charged down into a waterlogged gully. Stone plinths loomed out at us through the haze, the remains of ancient statues mostly buried under the muck.
Then, overhead, a huge tree creaked. The wind rushed as it toppled, a flaming pillar headed right for us.
Cutthroat came to a stop with a cry of warning, too sharply for me to hang on. Suddenly, I was flying. My reflexes kicked in just before I hit the ground, and I rolled under the tree as it crashed to the ground, tumbling head over ass and sliding to a hard stop against an outcrop of stone. The egg!
The fire was catching up to us, and through the crackling roar of the flames, I heard the resonant, booming cries of the Skyrdon’s dragons calling to each other. Shouldering my backpack, heedless of the flashing warnings in the corner of my eye, I staggered up to my feet. “Cutthroat! Heel!”
The hookwing snapped her jaws and tossed her head, but to my surprise, she obeyed. I ran down deeper into the gully with the dinosaur in hot pursuit, staggering under the weight of the egg. We splashed along in fire-heated water that was slowly deepening and getting cooler, and soon, the sides of the gully were above head height. Ahead of us, I saw our goal: an odd, unnaturally-shaped cave entrance shrouded with vines. It took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t actually a cave - it was a tunnel, an ancient aqueduct still carrying water from the depths of the half-buried city.
We splashed in, pushing aside vines as we fumbled into the darkness. The light from the fire raging outside lit our way until the tunnel turned, plunging us into the chilly damp I associated with Cham Garai and the swamp. When Cutthroat was close enough that I could take her reins, I gathered them up and led her, nearly blind, into the shelter of the ruins.
While the forest was burning, the Skyrdon wouldn’t be able to search for me on the ground. Panting, back aching, I didn’t stop until I could hear nothing but the drip of water, the echoes of our own footsteps, and the distant cries of dragons.
We came to a halt in a dark stone chamber defined by the huge patches of glowing fungi that grew on the walls. In near darkness, I slid to the ground and shrugged the pack off, then onto my hands and knees to search around for something to start a fire with.
Then I realized that, since the fall I’d taken in the forest, the backpack hadn’t moved. Hadn’t chirped. It had gone still, and silent.
“Oh no.” My first instinct was to abandon the search for tinder and timber. Then training kicked in. Fire was a priority. If the hatchling was injured or - gods help me - dying, then I needed light to see what I was doing. She needed warmth, because it was cold and wet down here. Cutthroat needed warmth to recover her strength.
I scratched together old wood, vines, and what felt like dead leaves and twigs, clumps of dry moss, and any anything else I could find. I got my flint and tinder out of the front of the pack and struck it over the lightest tinder. My hands were shaking, and it took a few minutes to get it lit, but once I placed the tinder on the wood and leaves, it caught readily.
The room was large, in the shape of an hourglass, and hanging with vines. Aesari engravings were still visible, the walls featuring broad, patterned bands, and the stylized figures of winged, helmeted figures. As soon as I could see, I clambered back over to the pack, brought up my Inventory, and removed the egg.
The pack disgorged it into my lap, where it barely fit. The shell was cooler than it had been in the hatching grounds, and it was no longer moving.
“Fuck!” Shuddering with effort,
I carefully shuffled over with it to the fire, and put my ear against the side. At first, I heard nothing... but then a tiny, wet gasp reverberated from inside, a burbling sound, like something suffocating.
“Hang on in there!” I pulled my dagger and wedged it into a crack at the very top of the shell. It skittered away and cut my other hand, but I kept stabbing, flaking the tough material away, layer by layer. Chips became shards, and when I reached the toughened inner ‘skin’ holding the baby dragon in place, I cut a hole in it, reached in, and began to pull the shell apart with my hands instead. “Breathe, goddammit!”
The dancing firelight shone wetly off tiny black scales: the little dragon’s shoulder. I tore at the shell frantically, ears ringing, not even sure I was supposed to be freeing her now. Maybe I was killing her by doing this. Maybe she was already dead. My nails were bleeding, but I barely noticed the pain.
At some point, the egg became easier to break down. I opened it about halfway around, and carefully cut away the membrane. The wyrmling’s weight began to tear it around the edges of the open shell. It gave way suddenly, spilling the gleaming black creature to the dusty floor. She was fully formed, perfect and beautiful… but she wasn’t moving.
Swallowing around a knot of panic, I pressed fingers into her neck, searching for a pulse, and checked her breathing with the other hand. The long, wedge-shaped snout was motionless, eyes sealed, but my fingers found a slow, thready, barely-there pulse. Without a second thought, I levered open the little dragon’s jaws and depressed her tongue with my fingers, turning her head. Fluid poured from her mouth to the floor. Once her airway was clear, I stuck my face in as far as it would go, and began CPR.
“Come on, baby. Come on.” Three breaths, ten chest compressions. Deep compressions, pumps that would have broken a human’s ribs. As I alternated respiration and compressions, Cutthroat slunk over to us and lay on her belly beside the fire, licking her wounds.
I was on the rebound from a compression when the tiny dragon’s hind leg kicked. Her awkwardly-thin neck rippled, and she frothed at the mouth, thrashing weakly. I growled, left off, and grasped her jaws top and bottom, forcing her to stay on her side so that she didn’t lurch up and breathe the fluid in again. Sweat poured down my face. “That’s it... you can do it. Come on, kid! You can do it!”
The wyrmling’s tongue lashed, and then she began to cough. Liquid bubbled up from deep inside of her chest, expelled as she panicked and struggled against my hands. She caught my leg with a foreclaw, slashing the leather, fabric and the skin beneath like it wasn’t there, but I hung on while the dragon - about the size of a Doberman - unpeeled one wet wing from her flank and began to flap it in the air. She gasped for breath. When her coughing became clearer, I let her go and moved back out of harm’s way, chest tight with mingled wonder and relief. The little queen lurched up weakly, still hacking as she pawed at her sticky eyelids.
The dumb thing was going to scratch her own eyes out. I rushed back to her, caught her narrow head and her wrist, so much like a bird’s, and pulled her talons away from her face. As she jerked her head away blindly, I used my thumbs to unseal her eyes. The little dragon squawked at the small discomfort, blinking, and then looked up at me. Her gaze locked with mine.
The wyrmling’s eyes were a deep, shocking amethyst purple around a core of pure silver-white. A rush of wonder filled me. There was nothing in them but pure, innocent love, yearning that punched through all my grief, my fears, my self-doubt, the pain of betrayal and the lingering sickness of the Trials. Never again would I be alone. She saw me in a way I’d never seen myself, that I could never see myself... as someone worth loving.
My dragon’s adoration intruded into my mind without words: an empathic push of need, possession, admiration. And with it came a name.
“Karalti,” I murmured.
Karalti chirped, and pushed herself trustingly into my arms. She wasn’t a black dragon at all. Karalti’s scales were a deep, deep indigo, and they caught the light of the fire with every color in the rainbow, gleaming with seams of bright blue and green, scarlet and orange, gold and violet... as if they were made of black opal.
Karalti didn’t speak with words, just feelings. She was scared, exhausted, and very cold.
“It’ll be okay, Tidbit.” I absently reached up to smooth my hands over her head. She still had a small beak - the egg tooth - and her supple skin was as smooth as warm leather. Even her horns, barely more than round nubs hinting at the magnificent crown-like crest she would have some day, were warm to the touch. “You’ll warm up. I’ve got some meat in my pack.”
She shivered with shock, clinging to my body with her wings. It was the most natural thing in the world to want to protect her, help her, and any pain her claws might have caused me receded whenever her eyes met mine.
So while the world burned down outside I knelt there, bleeding, soothing her: Karalti the Many-Colored, the Black Opal Queen, and without a doubt the loveliest dragon in all of Archemi.
Book 2: Trial by Fire
Chapter 1
Riding an angry, hungry dinosaur is hard at the best of times. Riding an angry, hungry dinosaur through a crowded city port with a stuffy nose and a baby dragon kicking you in the kidney? Welcome to the glamorous life of a virtual reality video game adventurer.
“Karalti! Can you not!?” I hissed down toward the struggling bundle that wriggled inside my cloak, struggling to control my mount as she snapped and lunged at passersby.
“Karalti see!” The hatchling scrabbled with her feet again, thrusting her gleaming black opal nose out from underneath the cloak. “Ahh! Smells good!”
“Karalti!” Fighting not to sneeze, I reined in Cutthroat with one hand, and shoved Karalti’s snout back under the cloth. She squawked with indignation.
“Nuuuu! Hector!” Her telepathic voice whined inside my head. “Karalti see!”
“Karalti keeps her snoot out of sight before the bad men come and take her away.” I thought back, trying to sniff back the mucus that was threatening to run out my itching nose. It was the Common Cold debuff, which I’d picked up from sleeping out in the woods on a cold night. The debuff wasn’t serious – a 5% reduction in my Perception skill – but it had me on edge. About a week ago, before I’d been uploaded to Archemi, I’d died from the flu in real life. I hated being sick.
“The bad men aren’t here,” Karalti grumped back.
“You don’t know that, and neither do I. Please stay hidden.”
“Bleeh. Oki.”
She managed to contain herself for all of five seconds before her snout poked out again, nostrils working. “Smells sooo good-!”
“Stop it!” I immediately regretted growling aloud, because the itch in my nose built to a sudden sneeze – and Cutthroat lost her goddamned mind. The hookwing roared and spun her body to the right, and rammed us into a stand loaded with ice and teetering piles of freshwater fish.
“What the- ARRGH! MY FISH!” The vendor sprung up as the stand collapsed. “My godsforsaken FISH!”
My irritable Allosaurus-sized war machine bellowed down at him. Swearing as only an ex-soldier could, I hauled on her reins and got her back under control. Only for a moment. The fishmonger ran out in front of Cutthroat, screaming: "My family will starve! Starve! My fish are ruined!”
Cutthroat was a hookwing: a feathered raptorine dinosaur who was eight feet tall at the shoulder, about twenty feet long from nose to tail, with tattered plumage as black as pitch, blazing golden eyes, and a temperament that could only be described as ‘nuclear’. Each one of the hooks her species was named for - the fused digits of her hands - were wickedly sharp scythe-like claws as long as a bastard’s sword blade. I barely even had time to wince before she lowered her head like an angry bull and charged the man down.
The vendor screamed. I screamed. Karalti screamed because screaming was fun. Cutthroat roared as she knocked the man to the side and darted her head towards his gut, and the only thing that saved his life was the iron muzzl
e that encased her head like a cage.
Instead of eviscerating him, Cutthroat nipped his shirt through her face-cage, picked him up, and threw him. I didn’t even see where he landed – Cutthroat was off down the road, boiling with saurian road rage, and I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop her.
“Sorry! I’m really sorry!” I called back over my shoulder.
“Funny fish guy! Karalti see!” Karalti’s entire head popped out through the gap in my cloak this time.
My HUD flashed an alert. [You have lost -250 Reputation in Bryos. Current Reputation -125: Troublemaker. Law enforcement has been alerted.]
It was enough to make a man weep.
Cutthroat charged all the way down the main boulevard beside the docks, scattering people out of the way. I hauled on her reins, but it wasn’t until the rings were about to tear out of her nostrils that she finally stopped, sneezing with irritation. Karalti giggled the entire time, and she kept trying to stick her fucking head out.
I took several deep breaths, fighting down the twin urges to yell at her and plead with her, and marched Cutthroat down the dirty road. “Karalti - I know it smells great here, but you need to stay under the cloak. We now have T-minus ten minutes before the Mata Argis arrive.”
“Oopsie.” Karalti said soberly.
“Yeah. Big oopsie.”
The city of Bryos was the largest in Ilia, bigger even than the capital, Liren. It was, however, by no means the prettiest. The Bryos Skyport was a filthy sprawl of markets, docks, taverns, inns, whorehouses and warehouses. Sailors, beggars, and merchants vied for space. The magitech engines of flying ships from all around the world hummed, roared, and surged at the ends of the wharfs. The air was full of the smells of fish, frying food, dung, magic, and machine grease. Behind the racket, the thunderous sound of Archemi’s harsh oceans could be heard below us, the sound of waves the size of mountains washing up against even taller cliffs. If it weren’t for the HUD - my Head’s Up Display - the HP rings that flashed into view when I focused on people, and the way that certain objects were framed by rings of different colored light and labels, I’d have completely forgotten that Archemi was actually a videogame.
Archemi Online Chronicles Boxset Page 36
