Archemi Online Chronicles Boxset

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “Yeah, she’s overcome by my razor wit,” I replied. “What do you make of this?”

  “What is it?” Suri took the pendant as I reached out and handed it over.

  “This fell off the guy I was beating on last night. His apprentice claims it’s his maker’s mark.”

  “I recognize it,” Suri said, looking over it. “The Volod has some carriages with this symbol on it. Belongs to one of the Royal Craftsmen. Nice bit of work.”

  That lined up with what Rin had told me, at least. “Yeah. He and all his apprentices wear the same necklace. My menu has logged it as a piece of evidence we need to complete the Slayer of Taltos questline. Maybe we could find a mage who could track Kanzo with it?”

  “Maybe.” With the reins resting in one hand, Suri began to manipulate the strange little pendant with the fingers of the other. “Huh.”

  “What?” I glanced over, just as the pendant bent forward, and the ‘stinger’ of the bee popped out from the end of its abdomen.

  “Oh, yeah. That’s tricky.” She hooked her fingernail into the gap in the bee’s back, pulling a tiny switch forward so that the pendant straightened and the illusion of an insect braced around a solid iron rod was back in place.

  “You are some kind of wizard, aren’t you? First you seduce my hookwing, and now you’re giving my bee an erection.”

  Suri chuckled, flicking the pendant in half again. “Make that fuckin’ party request already, won’t you?”

  Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten about that. I brought up my HUD and queried ‘Form Party’ while Suri held the pendant up and squinted to examine it. I sent the request, and a few seconds later, she joined. My eyes bugged a bit when I saw her level, class, and abilities.

  “Holy fucking shit.” I gaped, bringing up her sheet. “You have forty strength? At Level 17?”

  “Yup.”

  “Forty. Four zero.”

  “Yup.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “Karalti doesn’t have fifty strength points, and she’s a fucking dragon. How long have you been playing in Archemi?”

  “About as long as you’ve been off your meds, if you think I’m ‘playing’ at anything.” she replied laconically. “But you know what? I think this necklace you found is a key. Have a close look at the stinger.”

  She held the pendant back to me. I leaned over and snatched it by the chain, frowning. The stinger of the bee wasn’t actually sharpened: it was a thin triangular strut that fit into the iron rod that formed the pendant’s spine, just long enough that it nested inside the bottom part of it. The little thing was polished smooth, and etched with hair-thin designs around an oddly symmetrical pattern of tiny holes.

  “See those little dots on it?” Suri asked, keeping an eye on the road. “Reminds me of a hexagonal laser-patterned matrix. My bet is that our master craftsman has some kind of mage lock rigged up that can read the Words of Power that are transcoded into those dots.”

  I stared at her in blank disbelief for a couple of seconds.

  “What?” She glared back.

  “Okay, let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re some kind of min-maxed barbarian chick born in medieval Dakhdir. But know what a hexagonal laser-pattern matrix is?” I asked.

  “Sure I do,” she replied. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Okay. Can you actually describe a laser?”

  “It’s… It’s…” The woman’s eyes glazed over briefly. “Some magitech artificer thing, I don’t bloody know. I’m not a wizard.”

  I puzzled over that in the awkward pause that followed, and then it occurred to me. Whatever was up with Suri, I could probably talk to her using the language of Archemi’s mythos. “You know, I think I know what’s going on here. You’re Starborn, right?”

  “That’s what people keep saying.” She looked away uncomfortably.

  “You probably know because of one of your, uhh, ‘past lives’. You know how we Starborn types remember bits and pieces of those?”

  “Probably. Which is why I don’t give a shit. This life’s been more than enough to keep me busy.”

  “Right. Okay then.” I sighed. “So, what do you want to do? Go to the palace, or go back to Rin’s shop and see if there’s something this key fits? The more evidence we can take back to the Volod, the better.”

  “I reckon we could go check out Rin’s place. We’re not in any rush. There’s forty-six hours left on the clock.” Suri ran her tongue over her teeth, and reined Cutthroat to a slow walk. We were at the top of the hill, about to cross the grand bridge that led to the gatehouse in front of Vulkan Keep. “You have a point about the pogrom thing. Andrik’s alright, but he’s a racist cunt. Took a while to even come around to me, which is odd because of how keen he’s been.”

  “Keen?”

  “Keen, as in he’s got the hots for me.”

  I shook my head and blinked a couple of times. “What?”

  Suri gave a testy little sigh. “He wants to fuck me, idiot.”

  I framed my lips around a silent ‘Oh’ and nodded.

  “Anyway. Even if we bring him the Slayer’s head in a bag, he’s gonna want to take it out on all non-humans... but if we bring him evidence that this guy is acting alone, it makes it easier to argue that it’s only one or two Mercurions involved.”

  “That was what I was thinking.” I nodded, and tapped Karalti on the neck. “Time to turn around and head back to Rin’s.”

  Karalti made a noise of disgust. “I’m hungry. I wish we could just fly there.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Won’t be long now. But you know what this means, right?”

  “Wat?”

  “We have to start flight training. And you’ll be carrying a hell of a lot more than forty pounds in the backpack.”

  “UGH.”

  It was mid-afternoon by the time we reached Rin’s workshop. It was shuttered, and the door was locked. The lock didn’t look anything like the little pendant key.

  “Bugger.” Suri examined it for a minute or so, twitched her lips, and then took a small rolled-up pouch from thin air. “Spot for me. I think I can open this.”

  “What? You think we should just like… break in?” I raised my eyebrows. “I’m not okay with that. Rin’s not a bad person.”

  “You said she interfered in an arrest,” Suri replied. “I’m not okay with that. Until proven otherwise, she’s an accomplice to a serial killer. Accomplices have every reason to seem like good people. I’d rather search the house without her hovering around.”

  She had a point there. Resigned, I took up position to watch the alley. “How does a Berserker learn how to pick locks?”

  “Sometimes you have to ‘zerk with finesse,” she replied primly.

  “Finzerking?” I wrinkled my nose.

  There was clicking and scraping from behind me, then a muffled ‘click’. I turned in anticipation, only to see Suri get to her feet, fists balled.

  “ARRRRGH!” She smashed the door in with one booted foot, nearly taking it off its hinges. I jumped about a foot in the air. Cutthroat hissed. Even Karalti flinched.

  “What was that about finesse?” I asked, following Suri inside as she stalked ahead.

  “Damn thing’s Master quality. Broke my last lockpick,” she muttered.

  “Well, I guess 40 Strength makes anything finessable,” I said, strolling in after her.

  “Wait! Hector!” Karalti made a honking sound of confusion and distress behind us. “I can’t- I’m stuck!”

  I turned to see my dragon’s head and shoulders wedged into the doorjamb to either side. She was looking at me with pitiful desperation, her horns flat against her head.

  “Aww shit. Hang on.” I went back to her as she shoved against the confines of the door. It was solid stone, and it wasn’t budging. Her wings were too wide for her to fit. “Whoa there, girl…”

  My little Tidbit, who had only been a bit larger than a cat last week, was now the same size as my war-bred hookwing. There was no way she was getting in here.
As I walked over to her, she strained her head toward me, huffing blisteringly hot air across my face and neck.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” I said, trying to soothe her. “It’s okay, girl. But you’re going to have to stay outside.”

  “Stay outside!? What if something happens to you inside!?” She butted in against the stone, then swiveled her head around on her long neck. “I can’t -Hey! There’s another way in over there!”

  I followed her line of sight. It was true: there was a pair of carriage doors at the other end of the workshop. But that still didn’t mean she was going to be able to follow me around the way that she had three levels ago.

  I reached up, and cupped her jaws to either side. “It’s too small in here for you, Karalti,” I said firmly. “You’re growing, and getting stronger means getting bigger. We knew this was going to happen someday, and that day is now here. Go wait outside.”

  To my surprise, she hissed at me, jaws open wide, and tried to push through – but it was no use. She couldn’t even get proper leverage in the narrow alleyway. Karalti sat down on her haunches right inside the doorway, throwing her head from side to side like a toddler having a tantrum. “I don’t want to be left out!”

  “I know, girl. I know... but...” I gestured to the doorway. “Don’t worry, alright? You can watch from there and keep an eye out for Rin. I’ll make sure that when we bed down, we get a space we can share. Okay?”

  “No! I don’t want to be out here while she’s in there! It’s not fair! It’s not!” Karalti bellowed this time, napalm dribbling from her jaws. She got to her feet and turned, clumsily smacking the doorframe with her wing edge as she ran back down the alley. “It’s not FAIR!”’

  “Karalti!” I jogged to the door in time to see her shove past Cutthroat, who halfheartedly snapped at her on the way past. When she reached the street, she launched into the air at a sprint and a wave of boiling heat, sending pedestrians scattering with angry, frightened, and then wonderous cries.

  “Let her work it off,” Suri said from behind me. “She’s... what? What level now?”

  “Four,” I said. “I think that’s about twelve in dragon years.”

  “Girls are all like that at her age.” Suri smiled ruefully. “Don’t worry, mate. She’ll come back.”

  I watched as Karalti spiraled up into the sky, roaring and flaming. When I reached out along our telepathic link, I heard only angry white noise. “It’s not that easy. What if someone tries to capture her? What if-?”

  “No one’s gonna capture her. There’s not a quazi in Archemi that can fly like that. Just let her work off some steam. She’s been up your ass and in your business since she hatched, and now she’s suddenly being left out. Even if it wasn’t anyone’s fault, I’d be pissed off. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Yeah.” I dug my fingers into the edge of the door. “Guess we better find whatever this key opens. Rin’s already going to be furious when she gets back... I don’t want her to think we’re stealing.”

  The forge and furnace were down to a simmer, and Rin was nowhere to be seen. Neither were her automatons. I found myself feeling oddly guilty as we began to search around, looking for chests or doors that would fit a key as tiny as the one hidden in the bee pendant.

  “You have any idea what a mage lock looks like?” I lifted a small lockbox and tried to match the key to it, but no luck.

  “Usually like a round... Christ, what did they call them IRL?” Suri frowned. She was walking along the walls, knocking every few inches to check for false panels. “Dead... bolts? Deadbolts? But with a crystal face and conduits for mana. You insert the key and the mana flows into the dots and along those designs.”

  “Really? Those designs are tiny. He must have sat there with a magnifying glass to do that etching.”

  “Probably did. That’s what separates Mastercrafting from amateur though, right? The better you are at crafting, the less mana you need.” Suri stood back and sighed when she reached the end of the wall.

  I wandered to the back of the shop, scanning the walls, ceiling, and floor until supernaturally sharpened vision snagged on something in the far corner of the workshop: a break in the pattern of an old rug on the floor. I strolled over, crouched down, and lifted the rug up. Yup.

  “Here,” I called back. “Found a trap door.”

  Suri joined me, and looked down, hands on hips. The door I’d spotted was closely fit into the floor, with a thin wire handle to lift it. I pulled it up and to the side, revealing a ladder going down into a musty basement corridor.

  “Can you see in the dark?” I asked.

  “Nope,” she replied. “Can you?”

  “Sure can.” I hung my legs into the hole and caught the ladder.

  “Gentlemen first, I guess.”

  Then a high girlish voice pierced the air. “Hector?! What are you doing here!?”

  There was the sound of items crashing to the floor, and Suri and I both looked over to see Rin standing inside her doorway. She was wearing the smooth metal mask I associated with Mercurions over her face, but there was no masking her sense of shock - or betrayal.

  Chapter 16

  “Why did you break in here?” Rin stood among her dropped packages, fists balled. Her automata crowded in behind and around her, crossbows swiveling to point at us. “This... this…this!”

  Suri stepped forward, drawing her axes and flipping them over in her hands.

  “Wait! Both of you, wait!” I scrambled back out of the trapdoor. “No murdering!”

  “I welcomed you into my home! I t-trusted you!” Rin shouted. “Why did you break in like this!?”

  “Because your master’s killed four men in cold blood,” Suri replied. She watched Rin cautiously. “And we’re the investigators hired by the Volod to find out why.”

  “We haven’t spoken to Andrik about Kanzo yet,” I added quickly, “But we HAVE to investigate. You weren’t home... and...”

  “So you destroyed my door?! I should... I should... UUUGH!” Rin shook her head, waving her fists close to her face. Then she sunk down into a crouch and began to sob.

  “Jeez,” Suri muttered. Her aggressive stance faltered.

  “You didn’t have to b-b-break in!” Rin stuttered, burying her head against her knees. “I would have... I’d have...”

  ‘Jeez’ was about right. Deflated, I went over to Rin, doing my best to ignore the way Lovelace and Hopper turned to track my movements, and knelt beside Rin to awkwardly pat her on the back. “Hey, kid. I’m sorry, alright?”

  “Its... its... its...” She couldn’t seem to say anything other than the one word as she began to rock back and forward.

  At a loss, I took Kanzo’s honeybee necklace from my pocket. “Hey, look. Kanzo dropped this the other night. Did you know this necklace was a key?”

  “K-k-key?” She looked up. The smooth bowl-like surface of her mask seethed with hairline runes, the mana flowing under a layer of fine glass.

  “Yeah, look.” I fiddled with the bee until the stinger popped out. “Bee boner.”

  “T-That’s... what? M-m-my necklace can’t d-d-do that.” Rin didn’t sniffle as she sobbed – Mercurions didn’t exactly make mucus or saliva or anything – but her voice was tight and thin. “Kanzo d-d-dropped that?”

  “Yeah. And I figured that might be the case. That’s why we came here, alright?” I rubbed her back soothingly. “I get that this is your house, but we don’t have much time. I’m really sorry we broke in instead of waiting for you.”

  Across the room, Suri sighed and hung her axes back on her belt.

  Rin reached up with a slim hand, and took her mask off, revealing her face. She looked between us. “I-I want to know why Kanzo hurt those men too. But I-I don’t think you’re going to find anything here.”

  “That trapdoor over there. Do you know what’s downstairs? There might be something this key opens.”

  She shook her head. “J-Just the boiler room, and cleaning stuff.”

  “We’re still g
oing down there.” Suri joined us, keeping a wary eye on Hopper and Lovelace. “You want to know why we broke in? Because either we can search this place top to bottom, or the Volod’s soldiers will. Hector figured you’d prefer it was us.”

  “I get it, okay?” Rin looked up fiercely. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “This is Suri. She was looking into the murders before I joined in,” I replied.

  “Yep,” Suri crossed her arms. “And all roads lead here, kiddo.”

  “I’m not a kid!” Rin climbed to her feet, an impressive five-foot nothing, and scowled up at her.

  “You come up to my sternum,” Suri drawled back. “Anything below tit-height is either a kid or a dwarf.”

  Rin got to her feet. “Well... from here you... you look like a… like a pair of angry walking boobs!”

  Suri and I busted up laughing at the same time.

  “It’s not funny!” Rin shrilled.

  “Glad you noticed,” Suri said.

  Rin’s cheeks flushed blue. “That’s not what I meant!”

  “Then what did you mean?” Suri leered down at her.

  “That’s not… I wasn’t-!” the Mercurion spluttered.

  “You want a better look, little girl?” Suri arched both eyebrows, bent forward at the waist, and pulled her collar down to flash her half-mile of clevage. Rin squealed and covered her eyes.

  “Okay, okay… that’s enough mirth for today.” I waved them on. “Let’s go and get this over with.”

  I went down into the basement first again, dropping from the ladder into a dim hallway. Rin followed behind, muttering to herself. Something about boobs and forced entry.

  “Are there any lights down here?” I called back.

  Rin stopped grumbling, and paused for a moment. “Oh, yeah. Orisel.”

  When she spoke the word, torches came to life on the walls: glass spheres sparkling with mana. Suri whistled appreciatively.

  “Your boss must be rich as hell if he can afford bluecrystal lighting,” she remarked.