[You deal 1983 damage!]
[Suri deals 1221 damage!]
[Broodmother uses Restoration! HP: 1726/15,000]
Across the room, Karalti drew a deep breath. “Hector! Go left!”
The Broodmother spun its bulk around and began to dive back into the pit of slime. But Karalti was faster. Her breath weapon slashed a line of white magnesium fire down the front of the giant worm, and it wailed long and loud as the fire ripped across its wounds. The limbs, each one as thick as bridge cables, smashed down around us, sending chunks of rock and crystal flying. It stopped trying to run away and began to turbocharge in preparation for one last Plasma Blast: a blast that would kill me, Suri and Cutthroat if it was able to get it off.
“Fuck you! Fuck YOU!” I vaulted up onto one of the writhing metal limbs and ran up along its bucking length, waiting for the right moment to Jump, Shadow Dash, and then land on the Broodmother’s open mouth. Fighting shocks of electricity, I rammed the blazing Spear down its gullet, while Cutthroat buried the full length of her scythe-like claws into the monster’s burning belly. Suri was right behind her, using her sword to crack the monster’s carapace open. Bright blue viscera spilled over the ground, and with one final screech, the huge creature toppled. The whip-like limbs went limp, falling to the ground.
[You have defeated Swamp Hag Broodmother!]
[You gain 1600 EXP!]
[Congratulations! You are Level 19]
[Congratulations! Karalti is Level 10!]
[Suri Ba’hadir is Level 21!]
[Rin Lu is Level 17!]
I jumped when the Broodmother began to fall, landing lightly just ahead of the wave of bug juice. Suri dropped her sword, then went to hands and knees, heaving for breath and drooling blood even as a faint golden glow suffused her: her level up. Cutthroat limped off-side and sunk down, panting and wide-eyed with pain. Her left leg was hanging useless, the hip joint soft and deformed. Rin was singed, but mostly unharmed. Her turrets, on the other hand, were fucked - maybe beyond repair.
“FUCK!” I threw the Spear down in a fit of pique, burning off the nervous energy that threatened to turn me into shaking jelly. “Jesus fucking Christ!”
Scrabbling, Karalti twisted and strained one last time until she slipped through the entry to the Broodmother’s lair like a cork from a bottle of wine. “Yeah! We did it!”
“Barely. Fuck me,” Suri gasped. She looked up and around, wild-eyed with fatigue. “Cutthroat? Is Cutthroat okay? She’s literally just five points off Level 18.”
“Of course. Can we find a bug for her to kill or something?” I collected my weapon and went to the ailing dinosaur as she tried to turn around and lick her injured leg. When I crouched in front of it, she growled.
“Easy, girl.” I held up a hand to her, reaching out to gently examine her pelvis. The flesh around her hip joint was soft, dimpling under even a light touch. “Yeah, this is fucked. I have something that might be able to help her, but... it’s alchemical.”
Suri spat to the side and rocked back onto her rump. “What’s that mean?”
“There’s a chance it’ll kill her, or Strange her.” I winced.
“What are the odds?”
“Fifty-fifty.”
Suri scowled, but when she looked back at Cutthroat, her expression softened. After a few moments, she shook her head. “Do it. If she had a choice between death and never being able to fight again, I know which one she’d pick.”
“Yeah. It’s important that we keep her out of the sun for a minimum two days after she takes this. This stuff is crazy phototoxic – she’ll take damage on contact with sunlight.”
Cutthroat fixed me with fierce, intelligent eyes as I pulled my one and only Bonefuse potion from my Inventory. The dark potion cast a deep blue-violet light. I set it aside along with the Spear and held up both hands.
“I have to set this fracture, girl,” I said to her. “Try not to kill me.”
The hookwing snorted, nostrils flexing. Her muzzle tracked me as I lay both hands on the injured hip. As soon as my hands touched her skin, she let out a low, rumbling growl.
“Here.” Suri crawled over took the dinosaur’s head into her lap. She stroked the singed feathers back. The hookwing shivered, and her eyes half-closed with pleasure. “Okay… now. Just be quick.”
Karalti padded over to us and ducked her head, feet booming against the cavern floor. “Will she be okay?”
“That’s the plan.” I got my hands in position, and a virtual diagram appeared that demonstrated what I needed to do and how to push. I had to press the heels of my palms in, hook up, then push forward. All the crafts I’d tried in Archemi had this sort of rhythm-based minigame. “Okay… three, two, one.”
I followed the diagram and put my back into it. Cutthroat screeched, kicking loose rocks along the floor with her other foot, but Suri hung onto her head. The joint slid back into the socket with a crunch. Cutthroat sunk down, whimpering, and nuzzled into Suri’s chest with her snout.
“Yeah, I know.” I picked up the potion and handed it to Suri. “Here. Remember, no sunlight. Two to four days. She’ll lose one percent HP every minute she’s outdoors in the daytime.”
“If she survives,” Suri said. Her brows were knit and her eyes were dark with worry.
Rin and I held Cutthroat’s limbs down as Suri plugged Cutthroat’s nostrils with her fingers and poured the potion into her mouth. The hookwing snorted and gurgled, struggling weakly against our grip. We waited tensely as the bottle drained. When it was all gone, Suri folded the empty flask into her Inventory.
A status ring appeared over Cutthroat’s body. The dinosaur snapped her jaws at me, hissing sullenly, but as a red line began to creep up from the side of the ring, her eyelids grew heavy. Her neck wobbled, and then, with a wheezy sigh, she laid her head on the ground.
“Hey! No!” Suri slapped the hookwing’s cheek, to no effect. The woman looked up at me, wild-eyed. “Is this… is she…?”
As I watched, the ring jumped up a little more. There was no timer, like there had been with the herbal potions I’d used on Zlaslo. “I think this potion takes time to work. Looks like it takes about ten minutes - we won’t know if she’s going to Strange until the end of the process.”
“Fuck.” Suri’s face was impassive, but she stroked Cutthroat’s neck feathers over and over again. “We need to search this place for Brother Whatisface, but I don’t want to leave her. She’s a cantankerous old bitch, but… fuck.”
“It’s okay, Suri. I’ll stay here and look after her.” Rin stepped up, her blue eyes big with determination. “Don’t worry. You go find Vash.”
Cutthroat groaned, semi-conscious, just before I heard a wet crunching sound deep in her pelvis. Suri shuddered and got to her feet. “Christ. This is awful.”
“Yeah.” I looked to Rin. “You sure?”
“Yes.” She nodded, pressing her lips together. “I can’t fight as well as either of you, but I know mana and I know Stranging when I see it. I’ll let you know how she goes.”
Chapter 22
The crystallized slime plug that sealed the Broodmother’s inner sanctum was wedged in tighter than a three-day old booger. It took me, Suri and Karalti wailing on it for about ten minutes to break it up.
“Does this place ever stop being gross?” I stepped gingerly into the blue glowing cavern beyond. “Oh. Just look at that. The answer is apparently ‘fuck no’.”
The cavern was full of eggs and goo in about equal quantities. The eggs were laid in small, mucus wrapped clusters nestled in little hillocks of webbing and bones. Some piles were already hatched and empty. Other nests had zombies bound to them, some of them still moving weakly inside their bonds. And far at the back was a mostly-naked man glued spread-eagle over a nest of writhing, just-about-ready-to-pop baby Swamp Hags.
“Hey, you big old wrinkly bitch!” He hollered in strongly accented Vlachian. “Guess what the first thing your stupid ugly babies are gonna taste when they hatch? These nu
ts! That’s totally fucked up! But not as fucked as you’ll be once I get off this nest and ram my fist into your ass and mouth at the same time! Because your mouth is your ass, and your ass is your mouth, and that’s… really disturbing now that I think about it!”
I had formed a mental picture of the Baru during the course of our journey. Big, brawny, kind of lumberjacky, able to stand toe-to-toe with Lorenzo Soma like a pair of pro wrestlers. The man in front of us in no way resembled this image. Vash Dorha was tall, but he was as lean and lanky as a wolfhound, heavily tattooed, and wouldn’t have been out of place in the grungiest of punk bands. He looked to be in his early 40s, with sharp features that were shattered by a twisting web of deep, gnarly scars. As I’d expected, it was the hair that gave him away as our Baru – his scalp was covered in intricate cornrows, skillfully twisted into a nine-pointed star that came together into a fall of long braids heavy with rings, amulets, beads made of bone and amber, and even human teeth... the relics of the dead, gifted to him by countless grateful relatives.
“You had better – oh, hey! I hear feet!” He strained to look at us as we ran to him as a group, Suri in the lead. “OH. HEY. Na-tsho schrodna, my lady, your chest makes this entire seven-day, twenty-three minute, forty-four-second piss-fuck absolutely worth it. Gods have mercy, you are gifted!”
Suri drew her dagger, glaring down at him. “You’re about to be castrated if you don’t watch your mouth.”
“Oh, lady of the deep, glorious valley, the things this humble mouth could do for the likes of you,” he replied wistfully. But as I came up on him, his eyes darted over to glance at me, and the pale grey irises turned stormy and dark. “But you. You! Büü yirt! Do not come near me!”
I hesitated, confused, and then realized what his deal was. I sighed. “Oh. Right. The Moon Pact thing.”
“Moon Pact thing?” Suri cut away the hardened slime as quickly as she could while keeping her boobs out of nuzzling range.
“Remember when Andrik beat Rin to death in the Throne Room of Vulkan Keep? And I broke that oath to stop him from killing us all?” I gave Vash a pointed look. He scowled back.
“Oh, that. Yeah, that wasn’t much fun.” Suri got Vash's arms free, and was working on his legs when the first Swamp Hag larva split its thick, rubbery eggshell and plopped out onto the floor. She raised the knife to stab it, but Vash was even faster than Lucien. His arm snapped up to catch her wrist mid-strike.
"No, no, no." He shook his head and released her after a second. “Leave the little snot-goblin be.”
She blinked at him a couple of times, but eased up. “Leave them be? Are you joking?"
"Do I look like a clown?” Vash's asymmetrical mouth twisted down at the corner – for a second, before his face split into a cheesy, surprisingly attractive grin. “Of course I do! But seriously, there’s already been enough suffering here.”
Suri hacked and sliced, and in another minute, the monk was free. He got stiffly to his feet, rolled his shoulders, and grunted. His bare arms were tattooed solid black. He glared at the exit like it owed him money. “Ai-yai-yah, my spine. Thank you, lady. Now, if I don’t get a piss, a drink and a smoke in the next thirty-three minutes, I’m going to kill this lying Rotzlöffel on principle.”
“Fuck you,” I snapped. “We just saved your skinny ass.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, meshugga.” Vash took a step forward me and brandished a finger. “Your dick will never be long or hard enough to take that quest. My cheeks would crush you like a maggot, except… we do not crush maggots, do we? Like this little guy.” He crouched down to pat the baby Swamp Hag as it inched its way across the floor. “See? Harmless. And look at its little mouth-butt!”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and willed the pain to stop.
“Okay mate, look – my hookwing is fucked up and I’ve had just about enough of this. It’s time to drag you back to the funny farm.” Suri wiped her dagger clean, then sheathed it. “Can you walk?”
“Of course I can walk!” He flipped his braids over one shoulder and limped off toward the door. “Na-tsho schrodna, ‘can I walk’? What do I look like? A worm?”
I rolled my eyes and looked over at Suri. She shrugged, her expression slightly pained.
“Istvan’s going to be thrilled we found you,” I said as I trotted off after him. “Fort Korona is-”
“You! Bitga yaru!” Vash rounded on us in the doorway, pointing at me. “Your whore’s mouth is not clean enough to speak my prince’s name! I’ll make my own way back.”
“Woah woah woah." I held up both hands. “Dude, no. You aren't storming off through the swamp by yourself, okay? We were sent to find you and take you back."
"We have a dragon and can fly you back to Korona,” Suri added. “It’d be a hell of a show for the garrison.”
The D-word stopped him in his tracks. He turned to face us, eyes wide. "Dragon? Are you shitting me? You travel with a dragon?"
"Yeah." I felt a tic start at the corner of my eye. "And like the rest of us, she’s tired and beat up and really wants her dinner, so if we could play nicely and act like grownups until we get back to the Fort, that would be great."
"Take me to this dragon," he said, to Suri. "I must pay my respects."
Suri looked to me, her eyebrows raised. "She's Hector's dragon. You need to talk to him, mate."
"No." And with that, he started marching for the entrance to the main cavern again.
Suri clicked her tongue. “Jeez. I can’t be fucked with this.”
“Yeah. I always thought monks were more like… you know…” I hesitated, thinking of the word. “Contemplative?”
Suri snorted. “You gonna be able to straighten things out with him?”
I shrugged. “I knew something like this would happen when I broke the Kara Bukat Talom. It’s okay.”
“It’s not, because if you hadn’t, Vlachia would be in the shitter right now.” Suri jerked her head toward the door. “Do we need to be worried about him pushing you off your dragon?”
I shrugged. “He’s been polite about it so far. He could have just gotten up and tried to kill me. That’s what he’s supposed to do. Breaking the Kara Bukat Talom is a big deal.”
“There’s gotta be some exception,” Suri said. “You saved my ass and headed off a royal assassination.”
I shrugged with my hands. “Planning assassinations is one of the things it’s used for.”
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ.” Suri made a sound of disgust. “Well, let’s go get him before he tries to jam his tongue up under Karalti’s tail. Gods knows he seems like the kind of bloke who’d try.”
We trooped back out to find Vash huddled over Cutthroat with Rin. He laid a hand on the great dinosaur’s neck as she grunted and twitched, closed his eyes, and chanted a short prayer in Tuun. A little green plus sign appeared next to her potion status ring, which was now 91% full.
“That should help. She looks like she is struggling through a Bonefuse brew, eh?” He asked Rin.
The Mercurion’s brilliant eyes flicked me to me. “Uhh… I think so?”
“Excellent. Now, excuse me.” Vash stood and went to Karalti, who was busy preening under the edge of her wing. She perked up as he approached. I shook my head and went to join the vigil over Cutthroat.
“How long until we know?” Suri asked.
“About a minute.” I squatted back on my heels, one hand resting near the Spear.
Cutthroat moaned as the status climbed to 97%. I checked the buff that Vash had given her: it improved the Stranging rate from 50/50 to 60/40. Suri sat down on the slimy ground and scooted forward until she could take the hookwing’s head onto her lap. She stroked her behind one eye as the twitching intensified.
[98... 99…]
The hookwing’s breathing caught, and for a moment, everyone went still. A whole second passed, and then one golden eye snapped open, its pupil contracting to a tiny pinpoint that rolled up first to look at Suri before affixing its baleful gaze
onto the rest of us one by one.
“HUUURRREE!” Cutthroat kicked a couple of times, then struggled up off the ground into a limp. Suri let go of her, and we watched anxiously as the hookwing hopped a few steps forward, then gingerly put her weight on the left foot.
The three of us let out a sigh of relief.
“Phew!” Rin dusted herself off and pushed her mask up to show her face. “Nice crafting, Hector! Looks like it worked perfectly!”
“Yeah.” I rubbed the back of my head. My braid was messed up from the fight, and I fought down the urge to pull it out and re-do it. Vanity had to wait. “I would have kicked myself if we’d lost her. She’s my second-favorite murder chicken.”
“AHEM.” Karalti looked up from her silent conversation with Vash, who had knelt in front of her. Her eyes narrowed. “WHAT did you just call me?”
“I didn’t call you anything.” I crossed my arms and grinned back at her.
Suri came up and bumped me with her hip. She looked better now, the shadow of worry no longer written onto her face. “Hey, lover boy: now I know my baby bird isn’t gonna die, want to go loot the Broodmother with me?”
“Sure.” I made a face at Karalti, and she flicked her tongue between her teeth, letting it hang like a blue flag from her mouth.
We trudged over to the massive corpse. The Broodmother was almost shapeless in death, like a huge raw haggis that had been split with a knife. Moving stiffly, Suri slowly crouched down and began scanning her HUD. “Let’s see… lot of monster parts here, potion boy. Oooh, blue-grade mana.”
“I need that!” Rin called out.
“Hot.” I cozied up to Suri’s side, leaning in a little while I did the same thing she was doing. The Broodmother had a lot of loot. Yanik [Marsh Scout armor], weapons, money, jewels…
Archemi Online Chronicles Boxset Page 99
