Archemi Online Chronicles Boxset

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “Not a word,” Ignas said. “Apparently he nurses some conspiracy theory that I am in fact a doppelganger, bred by Mercurion organized criminals in a vat so that they might rule from the shadows.”

  “You’re saying you weren’t?” I grinned at him.

  He demurely rested a hand over his heart. “The vat is a private matter.”

  Once we finished laughing, he made a gesture and continued. “Vastil County is currently the wealthiest county in Myszno. The Pass the county is named for is a major shipping route between Vlachia and Jeun. This is also somewhat confidential information, but our military airships are manufactured in Litvy’s hangars. Let us say that our young Lord Soma possesses a sense of entitlement beyond his station.”

  “Ambitious, huh?” I sat back in my seat and drained the rest of my glass.

  “Oh, it gets better. You see, when the Voivode fell, it was Bolza’s loyal Castellan, Captain Istvan Arshak, who took command of his lord’s banners. Captain Arshak is everything anyone could want in a military commander. He is competent, inspiring, brave and intelligent. His troops love him. There is one problem: he’s a bastard of mixed Yanik and Vlachian heritage, which means he shall never have Vlachian peerage. His father is a Yanik prince.”

  “Who are the Yanik?” Suri asked.

  “They are a native people who dwell in the Endlar. They are known to be fierce warriors and dinosaur tamers. However, in Vlachia, being the son of Yanik royalty is about as worthy as my title of ‘the King of Cats’.” The Volod made an irritable gesture. “Personally, I couldn’t give a rat’s arse if a man has foreign blood in his veins: once a knight has been sworn in, he’s been sworn in. Many of Myszno’s best cavalrymen and scouts are Yanik. However, a lot of the provincial noblemen have nothing better to do with their time than fuck their sisters and draw figure eights on their family trees, and Lord Soma in particular takes great offense to this ‘swamp rat’ taking control of ‘his’ army.”

  “Then tell him to quit it, or you’ll bring down the royal hammer,” I said.

  “I have. But there must be action to back up the royal decree. Provincial lords are masters at making messengers disappear in the woods, or accidentally dropping their parchments in the kitchen hearth.” Ignas gave us a thin smile. “And that is where both of you come in. Your titles were, up to this point, an honorary peerage. But I rather fancy the idea of having immortal, loyal vassals in a strong position in Myszno, for reasons that should be obvious… and so I am considering extending that title into a true peerage, and specifically giving you the title of Count and Countess of Racsa, Voivode and Voivodzina of Myszno. This will establish you as a House and make you the reigning lord and lady of the province.”

  I coughed as a slight pressure built behind my eyes. Suri blinked several times, as stupefied as I was.

  Ignas waved his hand. “You will have to fight for the position, but if you succeed, then I will be glad to deed the ducal castle to you. You can either be Voivode and Voivodzina together, or one can rule and the other can willingly accept the position of Castellan or Castellana in its stead. The position comes with great responsibilities, of course, but provincial Voivodes reap most of the wealth of their domain, minus taxes and the king’s due. What do you say?”

  “I...” I looked at Suri. “Uh... what kind of responsibilities?”

  “A lot of rebuilding and replanting.” Ignas shrugged. “Resolving disputes, making appointments, acting as a judge for both local and national causes. You must deal with the Satraps and their intrigues. Your peers and subjects will both test you and reward you. The normal burdens and privileges of power, in other words.”

  “I need a bonded spawn point,” Suri said. “I don’t wanna be a Vulvazela or whatever, but I need somewhere to revive when I die. I’d be happy to become Castellana of an estate. Count me in.”

  [You have gained new Knowledge: Politics of Vlachia (C-grade)]

  [Quest Updated: Unto Death]

  Despite the urge to stand up and scream ‘yes!’, I hesitated. The AI was supposed to only offer quests within my capacity… but I didn’t feel capable of looking after two million people. Hell, I could barely take care of myself and Karalti.

  Ignas cocked his head expectantly.

  “I’ll need to think about it,” I stammered. “Your Majesty, I already have a lot of responsibility weighing on me, between Myszno, my duties to Matir, then Karalti and the Spear and now Rutha. I’ll think about it and make a decision after that.”

  The Volod stood up from his seat. “As well you should. My father always said it was better to plan twice and act once. It can wait until the Demon has been defeated… but there is foolishness to be found in thinking too much, as well. Will I see the pair of you at the sendoff in the morning?”

  I rose and saluted out of habit. To my surprise, so did Suri – in the Pacific Alliance style, with the straight right hand beside her eye, the left arm crossed in front of her torso. “Yes sir.”

  “Good.” He gave us both a tired smile. “In light of this morning’s debacle, you have no idea how relieved I am to know we have our own Starborn to aid us.”

  Chapter 9

  The gravity of the Volod’s words hung over us as we walked back to my suite. When we entered, Suri locked the door as we fell on each other as soon as the bolt turned: me kissing her with my fingers woven through her hair, her hands roaming over my chest, sliding down my belly to my belt.

  “So how was the festival?” I managed to gasp against her mouth.

  “Good. Real good.” She was struggling to unbuckle it. Her breath was boozy and sweet. “I missed you.”

  “You ready to hit that bed?” I stopped her for a moment. “I need a yes.”

  “Yes. Less think. More naked.” She leaned against me, tugging my shirt out of my pants.

  Suri’s dress was like a smooth second skin. I unhooked the straps over her shoulders, pressing her down onto the bed and straddling her hips. Despite being such a big woman, a Tank class who maxed out her Strength every level, she folded down easily beneath my weight. When I took her nipple in my mouth, she pressed her chest up against my lips. And when I accidentally pinned one of her wrists, she arched her back, moaning open-mouthed.

  “You okay?” I looked up at her from just below her sternum.

  Suri nodded, but she was tongue-tied, her face flushed with heat.

  “Come on now, yay or nay?” I drummed my fingers on her trapped hand.

  She nodded again, more vigorously this time. “More.”

  I leaned up over her, caught her wrists, and put them over her head. She stared up at me, panting. I’d hardly even touched her, but her eyes were dark, her thighs were shaking... and not only with pleasure. There was something else there, too. Fear? Or just intensity? It was something I hadn’t seen before in my limited experience with women. She must have sensed my hesitancy, because she gasped: “I’m okay.”

  I slid a hand down along the deep curves of her waist, her belly, and worked my hand under her dress. My fingers found soft skin, a short, soft dusting of hair... then a hot slickness that told me she was more than ready. I gently explored with my fingers, keeping her wrists to the bed with the other hand. Suri writhed, hips jerking when I slid one, then two fingers inside her. There was something about the way she was acting - something she was doing - that drove me nuts. It was the way the dark, predatory energy built in my muscles and my cock.

  Jaws clenched, I roughly knocked her knees apart. She drew a sharp breath with a strange, heady cocktail of desire and apprehension as I knelt up between her legs and undressed. When I was nude, I crawled over her and leaned down to kiss her neck. She bared the side of her throat to me, hands loosely balled against my chest, and I bit down.

  “Hector!” She gasped my name, arching, clawing weakly against my arms. Her voice was high-pitched and girlish, thrilling along my skin as I rubbed against the wetness clinging to the inside of her thighs. But as I did, I realized something. Suri did sound girlish. Yo
ung. And she was tense, despite her submissive body language. Very tense. And even though she was gasping, writhing and wet, there were moments where it felt a lot more like struggling.

  “Look at me.” I backed off, grinding down the bestial urge to thrust into her. Instead, I caught her by the chin, gently guiding her face up. She was sweating now, shaking like a leaf. There were half-formed tears in her eyes. Her breath was shuddering, and still smelled heavy with liquor. “Suri... hang on. We need to slow down.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I d-don’t know what’s wrong.”

  “It’s okay. Hey…” But my body was not in agreement with my head. The testosterone was pumping, and it took a moment to rein in the pure, bestial lust. My nostrils flared as I fought for control. Suri audibly flinched at the sound. That alone told me that I was making the right choice.

  I backed up, put her legs together, and rolled to the side. I gathered the woman into my arms and pulled her into a tight embrace.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She kept chanting it as she buried her head against my chest. “I’m sorry, Hector, I thought I could do it. It’s been so long, I thought...”

  “Hey now. You don’t owe me shit.” I rocked her a little, trying not to rub against her skin. The slightest touch was like a shock that lit up my nerves. “Was it the pressing you down, was it the biting...?”

  Suri shook her head, and a small, high sob tore from her throat. The sound was an instant boner-killer. I was grateful for that. For several minutes, I just held her, feeling her silently weep against my chest. After a while, she shook her head and leaned away enough to sniff and dash at her eyes. “Hector, I’m so sorry. Please… it’s not you.”

  “It’s okay.” At a loss, I reached up to stroke her hair, her neck, her shoulders. “Whatever it is, it’s okay. Hang on... I’m going to put my pants on, okay?”

  “No... no. Please, don’t.” She clasped my arm, pressing her nails in.

  “It’s okay.” I felt like a broken record, but those words were the best I had. “You’re safe with me, alright?”

  Suri’s eyes reddened, and she nuzzled at me urgently. “It’s so frustrating. Hector. I was a hundred and ten percent into it. Everything felt amazing, but then... then I... I flashed back to those motherfucking Architects dragging me down to the Hole when I was a girl, and... it just...”

  I kissed her. Her cheeks, her neck, the backs of her hands. “It’s okay.”

  “I thought I was stronger than this.” The muscles of her jaws bunched as she ground her teeth. “I thought... we’d already fooled around, right? Maybe if I just had a drink, I could relax enough to go through with it. I wouldn’t think about those bastards or that place. But I can smell it. I can smell the room where they used to torture us.”

  I was cooling off now. The frustration and the blue balls were under control. “That’s what trauma does, right?”

  “Yeah. I guess.” Suri sniffed, and looked up at me again. “It’s just fucking humiliating. And frustrating. I’m rearing to go, and so are you.”

  “Then we cool off and try again. That’s the first time we tried all clothes off… we just have to go a bit slower.” I pressed my lips to her forehead - a gentle, chaste kiss. She shuddered, some of the tension leaving her body. “And right now, we’re stressed. We just came out of a meeting with a king about the biggest quest either of us have ever taken.”

  “I know. And I don’t know about you, but I’m scared shitless. I don’t want to die and go back to Al-Asad, Hector. I can’t.”

  “Then you should stay here,” I said. “The game system doesn’t know that you can’t set a respawn point, and we’ve been given a quest where we can expect to die at least once. Probably more than once. I’ll go and you can join us when we retake the castle.”

  She lifted her head, the muscles of her jaws working. “No. I can’t do that, either. Even if I was chickenshit enough to skip a quest where my friends are at risk, the quest could switch up and exclude me from the reward, and then nothing changes. Andrik promised me a title and land in return for catching Kanzo. Once we threw in with Ignas, nothin’ ever came of it.”

  A pang of guilt squashed down the remainder of my ardor. I was the one who’d talked Suri into switching sides on The Slayer of Taltos questline. “I’m sure Ignas could give you a place. Have you asked him?”

  “Yeah.” She eased down a little. “Nothin’ he can do. He tried to give me a quest, but I couldn’t accept it. I can’t accept any quests unless you or Rin do.”

  “You can’t?” Now that I thought about it… I never had seen Suri accept a quest. “Damn. Why didn’t you say something?”

  She shrugged uncomfortably. “Only way I level up is through combat and group quests. I tried buying a house with the gold we got after the coronation. The guy fuckin’ vanished.”

  “As in, he wouldn’t stick around to make the sale?”

  She shook her head. “No, as in, he literally vanished. He was sitting across the table from me, and then ‘poof’. Vanished. My last chance at getting a new respawn point is this quest. One where I’m grandfathered in by another… uhh… ‘player’.”

  “It’ll be okay. If we take the title, Karalti and I can name you Voivodzina or Castellana.” Frowning, I stroked her hair. The strands of copper and scarlet and orange looked thick and wiry, but hers was actually very soft. “That should fix that problem.”

  “Okay.” She swallowed nervously. “I hope I’m not pressuring you.”

  “It’s alright. I’ll let Ignas know I’ll go ahead with the land and title thing tomorrow morning.”

  “You’re wound up about it, though.”

  “Yeah. I mean, even just the responsibility of owning a house, let alone a whole castle… Do you know how few people my age even rent their own apartments now? I can’t imagine what it’s like to have that much responsibility. How the hell do you clean the place?”

  “You get other people to do it. Butlers and shit.” She lifted her eyes to look up at me. “I want to make sure we pay ours well. None of this slavery shit.”

  “For sure.” I nodded, and for a short time, we curled up together in comfortable silence.

  When she spoke next, she sounded almost shy. “You know, you’re the only man who’s ever done that.”

  I cocked my head. “Done what?”

  “You never touch me without asking first,” she replied.

  I shrugged. “You haven’t told me much about what went down at Al-Asad, but it seems like a lot of people just thought they could lay hands on you whenever they wanted.”

  “Yeah.” She closed her eyes again. “They did. I wasn’t complaining or anything... actually...”

  She trailed off, and then chuckled to herself.

  “What?” I asked.

  She licked her lips. They were puffy and full, dark even without lipstick. “It makes me feel safe.”

  “Good. Because, well, you know... I care about you.” I held her close, gazing at the fire. Someone had come in earlier and had relit it, and the flamelight danced over everything in brilliant, almost hallucinogenic color. “I’m pretty sure I love you.”

  “Pretty sure?” She rolled up to lean on my chest. Her hair brushed the side of my neck. “No, don’t answer that. I’m just playing around. I know it’s too soon to say.”

  “We’ll know by the time we wrap up Myszno.” I yawned. Then, I noticed that my HUD was warning me: The Fatigue penalty was back. I’d only slept off the Exhaustion debuff. “I don’t know about you, but I’m beat. How about we hit the hay? You know, before Karalti gets back and starts screaming at the window?”

  “How about you unequip your clothes and let me rub your back until you fall asleep?” A wicked light danced in Suri’s eyes.

  “Just my back?” I stuck my lip out. “What about Front-Hector?”

  Suri laughed, rich and sultry. “Front-Hector gets a turn, too. Maybe not the way we were thinking, but I can figure something out.”

  She was
still a little shaky as she climbed over me and began to kiss her way down. I grunted, shifting up against the heat of her lips and tongue, then gasped as my cock pressed up between her breasts, rubbing along her sternum.

  “Does that work?” she asked.

  My breath caught when I looked down at her. “Yes. Yes, it does.”

  She laughed her beautiful warm honey laugh and pressed her breasts together around the shaft, then bowed her head to cover the rest with a hot, eager mouth. With my fingers tangled in her hair, I might even have pushed her down a bit. Gently.

  It was late when we passed out into a deep velvet sleep, with me sprawled out on my back and Suri curled into the crook of my arm. I was as relaxed as I’d ever been… and maybe that was why tonight, of all nights, I dreamed of the Total War.

  It was the Crescent Front. My first tour. My Regiment loaded out into the rain, with tank and mortar fire for cover. The heat of the Indonesian jungle drug at my skin like clammy fingers, pulling at my limbs as I ran. The weight of the pack on my back and the rifle in my hands dragged me down with every squishy, muddy step. At any moment, it felt like I’d trip and be trampled into the muck of the battlefield… the marsh where I expected to die.

  The ground rolled and shuddered under the impact of Pacific Alliance artillery. Glowing Praxis shields kept most of them from hitting us as we stumbled out of choppers and carriers and zig-zagged toward the rainforest. I couldn’t see or hear anything over the rotors, the explosions, the smoke. My helmet was supposed to help me target hostiles in the dark, but the HUD was on the fritz, screwed up by the EMP shields while the shells rained down like fireworks. Our side, their side… I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. There was nothing except the terrible heat, the explosions, the pain in my head, and the awful, gnawing fear, like a worm eating through my guts.

  Then, through the yellow smoke, I saw my first live enemy. A Taipan Heavy, Australian powered armor slogging through the mud and smoke toward us. It flickered like a bad TV, its camouflage on the fritz. The guy inside had to be as scared as I was. It leveled its barrels at the scattering assault force, just before an RPG took it out. The explosion lit up the marsh, revealing the others running in from behind it. They all had glowing HP rings behind their heads, like in a game… and that’s when I realized I was dreaming.