Archemi Online Chronicles Boxset

by James Osiris Baldwin

  I was looking at a part of Archemi's ancient history.

  The thing that had brought down those ships was a motherfucking Warsinger.

  Chapter 35

  The [Prototype Revenant] lurched into full view, plunging the gorge into darkness. This Warsinger didn't have the angelic elegance of the great construct the Ruby of Boundless Strength had shown me. It was held together by rust and sheer awesome willpower, shuddering on every step. Parts of it were stripped out and crumbling with corrosion. Its great breastplate rattled, hanging loose on one side. There were multiple dents in its death's head face. Something about the way it was moving suggested to me that there was no human mind behind the wheel. A drone - or a golem.

  It wasn't all good, though. The choking mist swirled around it like a trailing cloak, bleeding off into the air. Other than the massive weight churning up the earth, it was strangely silent for a machine in its condition. No creaking, no squealing, no grinding parts. The grip on the spear was firm and steady, and that tail looked like it was capable of dealing some serious damage. I shrank back into the shadows as it halted, head half-turned. Its posture as wary and still as a stalking hunter.

  A great hum began to build in its body, rattling its armor. My eardrums buzzed like a sub-woofers as the air as the mist around the [Prototype Revenant] seemed to catch on the wind. The air was suddenly almost too thick to breathe. I was just about to try and change cover when the Warsinger emitted a piercing, impossibly deep sound that filled the canyon like a spectral dirge. Gravity seemed to increase ten-fold, crushing my body flat to the ground and forcing the air from my chest. A wave of involuntary fear left me gasping on hands and knees. Above me, Temaz let out a piercing cry and launched himself from his perch, fleeing in terror.

  The Warsinger tensed.

  "Dammit, bird!" I hissed.

  Temaz blundered into the mist and slowed in the air, screeching as the fog wrapped his wings and trapped him like a fly in amber. The Warsinger swiveled toward the unfortunate quazi, and slowly lifted its free arm. The limb jerked and shuddered with the effort of raising it, the fingers twitching... then striking out like a snake. Its fingertips were extendible, shooting out like a chameleon's tongue to delicately pluck the quazi from the air. The bird kicked and squirmed, but Temaz was the size of a gummi bear in the Warsinger's hand. With slow-dawning horror, I watched as the machine opened its skull-like mouth, revealing a nest of interlocking grinders.

  “Oh jeez.” I clamped my hands over my ears.

  The Warsinger pressed the struggling bird into its maw and woodchippered it. The quazi's screams were mercifully brief, cutting just before a cloud of reddish dust blew out of a vent on the Warsinger's head. The brilliant white mana in its tail and corona flared, becoming a steady glow for a couple of seconds before fading. They resumed flickering and spitting, and the Warsinger turned and began to stumble off the way it came.

  Sangheti’tak. Slowly, I dropped my hands and just knelt there, struggling to breathe. I had played a lot of games in my life and fought some bosses that did pretty nasty shit. But this thing... this thing was fucked up.

  "What the hell am I supposed to do against THIS?" I hissed at myself. I checked my quest log to see if there were any pointers I'd missed or clues I could collect. There was nothing except the reality of fighting a two-hundred feet of carnivorous war machine by myself.

  I pushed myself up to a crouch and thought back to Indonesia. The Pacific Alliance deployed a lot of Powered Armor Infantry, which we’d shortened to ‘PAIN’ for a reason. Heavy powered armor could take a couple of RPGs to the face and be just fine, but all machines have two major weaknesses: heat management and fuel systems. Machines with pilots had a rather obvious third weakness: they relied on the command of the squishy blood bag inside. We had a tactic that we called the Crab Pot, where we’d shoot quicklime into the air intakes and then either trip the mech or hit them with water cannons, boiling the pilot inside.

  This Warsinger probably didn't have a pilot who could be crabbed. It was possible, but I wasn't willing to bet on it - not when the penalty for losing was a one-way journey into the magical land of hard vore. It DID have a fueling system, which unfortunately seemed to be at the top of the body and mimicked at least part of a human digestive tract. Given that I was pretty sure white mana was toxic enough to kill me and the cliffs barely reached its shoulders, that was not nearly as likely a target as the heat management systems. I hadn't seen any vents on it, other than holes made by rust, but magic or no magic, moving that much mass generated heat. Lots and lots of heat. That heat had go somewhere, managed by vents, heatsinks, tubing and insulation. If the machine was like a human body in other ways, the majority of the heat was going to be generated and vented in the joints and in the middle of the torso.

  My gaming experience came to bear, too. I knew that titan bosses tended to be multi-stage. You didn't usually just ball up on some enormous thing and wail on it with your tiny weapons until it exploded in a cloud of glitter, unless you were playing an MMO. Archemi wasn't an MMO. It wasn't single-player, but it wasn't an MMO.

  With one eye on the gorge, I opened up my menu to see what I could equip or ready for this fight. I already had my best gear equipped: the full Raven Suit, plus the Belt of Tiger's Spirit, which fortified me against fear. I switched the Raven boots out for my good old Tuun boots, the Boots of the Winding Path. They gave me +10 movement-related checks on unstable surfaces, and +5% stamina. I needed both of those things very badly.

  I checked items next. I had picked up a couple of [Crude Grenades], some pitch, and a better dagger from the armory before I left, but there wasn't a lot of good-quality weaponry at the Prezyemi Line - pretty typical for basecamps in RPGs. The grenades were definitely going to be useful. I hooked them onto my belt for easy access.

  My stock of potions was up to date: ten [Concentrated Green Moss Tinctures], an array of antidotes to cure most basic status effects, some [Roseroot Decoctions] for stamina, another [Bonebreak Potion] in case I needed it. I had a lot of ingredients, too. I was mostly interested in the list of chemicals instead of the herbs:

  Hydrochloric Acid x 10

  Nitric Acid x 10

  Bluecrystal Mana x 1

  Swamphag Queen Slime x 140

  Stingcrab Blood x 31

  Gastina Sap x 22

  Stranged Bear Bile x 10

  Sodium Bisulphate x 3

  Oil of Vitriol

  Pine Tree Resin

  Cinnabar x 5

  "Hmm." The acids were probably about all I had to throw at it. Playing with Cinnabar – which was basically crystallized Mercury - was not smart. The Broodmother's slime WAS electrically conductive, but I had no idea if the Warsinger ran on electricity or not. I flagged the acids and slime as 'Quick Slot' and dismissed my HUD.

  I used Spider Climb and swarmed up the side of the cliff like a gecko. The Warsinger was easier to spot from up here. It was concealed by its cloak of mist, but the mist itself was the giveaway - it was noticeably thicker around the machine, which was heading north along the Pass. I ninja-ran after it, skipping from rocks and leaping from scrubby fir trees to close the distance as quickly as I could. When I came up on it, it was hunting through the ruins of the second ship - the warship, which had been dashed to the ground in pieces. The earth around here was even more treacherous, if that was possible. The road had split into a great gaping chasm.

  "Hey! Clanky!" I picked up a rock and hurled it from the edge of the cliffs as hard as I could. "Let's play tag!"

  The rock sailed out and hit the Warsinger's bicep with a tiny little 'tink!' before bouncing off and falling into the void below. Slowly, the machine's head turned to face me, just in time for the second stone to boink it right on the teeth.

  A HP ring came to life behind its head. The ring filled five times, and then a black skull appeared beside its name as it entered combat.

  “Oh.” I swallowed, taking a step back. “Wonderful.”

  The Warsinger emitted
a resonant moan, then reached an enormous hand toward me, as if to snatch me up the way it had the quazi. By the time it slammed down, crushing trees and sending the ledge I'd been standing on tumbling to the road, I was already running.

  "Come on! Let's go for a jog!" I shouted at it, fleeing for my life.

  The Prototype put its head down and charged after me like a bull. Even with the Boots of the Winding Path, running became increasingly difficult as it gained alongside me. The ground rippled like a wave pool, liquefying and sending rocks crashing down. But if I didn't run, I was golem chow, and if I was wrong about how to fight this thing, I was also fucked.

  The Warsinger caught up with me easily, able to outstride me even at a sprint. Its huge tail arched up over the cliffside, slamming down into the rock. I spammed Shadow Dance to avoid being stabbed, but caught the shockwave. That alone dealt damage.

  [You take 280 reduced impact damage!]

  "Fuck fuck FUCK!" There was no poison debuff, thank goodness - just a big chunk of missing health. And that was on a SUCCESSFUL dodge. I only had 1524 total HP. A solid strike would wipe me out.

  The stinger lifted, drooling venom, then slammed down again in front of me. I screeched to a stop, then threw myself to the ground as a huge hand sliced the air over my head. In desperation, I drew a grenade, pulled the pin with my teeth, and hurled it. It landed in one of the Warsinger’s empty eye sockets, rolling back and forth until it detonated.

  The explosion made its head jerk back. Another piercing moan split the air. The creature’s prehensile fingers shot out, skewering trees and driving into the ground like harpoons.

  "Hyaaa!" I slammed a HP potion and flew at them before he pulled them back, flaring with dark light as I landed all twenty combo hits of Blood Sprint, boosting my speed, healing most of my lost HP, and inflicting a Curse on the Warsinger.

  [You hit Prototype Revenant for 110 damage! HP: 24,890/25,000]

  110 damage?! That was about a tenth of what I should have inflicted with all those hits. A small HP ring appeared just for the Warsinger’s hand, showing a tiny sliver of green nicked off the end.

  The Warsinger flinched away, mouth gaping, and belched a cloud of mist into the air.

  [Warsinger uses Dark Mist!]

  [You are immune to Corruption!]

  “Immune to Corruption…? OH FUCK!” All around me, the trees were rotting at the speed of light, dumping their foliage, then their branches, then snapping under their own weight to tumble down. I dodged one only to get brained by another. The trunk barely clipped me, but it was enough to send me flying across the ground. The scorpion tail smashed down into the stone barely five feet from where I landed.

  “Fuck fuck fuck!” I began running again, vaulting the fallen trees as the Warsinger picked through them. There was a squeal, and I looked back to see the Prototype popping a struggling boar into its mouth like a bon-bon.

  My confidence was faltering. There was no way I could do this. This Warsinger was the kind of boss you needed an army to defeat… or another Warsinger.

  The huge machine began to charge after me again. I had some distance on it this time, which was what I wanted. It forced it to move fast, building up heat and burning off mana. The tiny amounts it was extracting from the animals it had eaten were only going to last it so long. If I could wear it down, it would start to slow. It was a question who wore out first - it, or me.

  I led it on almost a mile before it caught up, charging down the canyon with one shoulder down, the lance raised in the other hand. I tensed, ready to dodge, but the Warsinger didn’t aim at me. It threw the Spear at the base of the cliff instead.

  Holy shit. It’s smart. Famous last thoughts, as the shockwave flung me into the air like a ragdoll.

  The Revenant let out a mournful foghorn blast of sound as it drew the Spear back, then thrust it deep into the ground between its feet. As I sailed through the air and time dilated, I spotted what I’d been looking for. The Warsinger’s shoulder guards lifted, thrusting an array of red-hot heat sinks into the air that began discharging clouds of steam. As it did, the machine began to sing an eerie, mournful song. The weapon picked up the resonance like a tuning fork, and the earth began to rumble.

  [Prototype Revenant uses Seismic Dirge!]

  The song deepened to a tooth-shuddering bass roar, a sound of destruction so intense that my flesh crawled on my bones. There was no dragon to catch me as I fell. I soared down toward the enormous mecha as the soil and rocks below surged like waves, and in desperation, called on the Mark of Matir.

  Spider Climb kicked in just in time. I smashed into the side of the giant spear hard enough to almost feel my soul leave my body, clinging onto it until the earthquake stopped quaking, and the Warsinger began to pull the Spear out of the ground.

  I held on, teeth gritted, as it swung the weapon up without even seeming to notice me. The metal haft was rough, it's surface so pitted that I could cling like a rock climber. When the shaft became horizontal, I scrambled up and sprinted until it became impossible, hung on for dear life, and then ran when I could. The Warsinger swung around to stride back the way it had come, sending me flying just as I tried to Jump onto its clenched fist. Suddenly, I flashed back to the moment I had tried to land on Karalti’s back and failed. I couldn’t let that happen this time.

  I used Umbra Blast to push myself into the air, then dashed forward. The edged cuff of the titan’s gauntlet swung up to meet me, and I landed - not from a 90-degree overhead drop, but on a 60-degree slope. My feet hit the angled surface. The cleats of my boots dug in, and I was able to find a handhold and cling on like Spiderman. With a touch of awe, I realized why I hadn’t been able to stick the landing on my dragon.

  No sooner had I begun to revel in my own genius than the Warsinger realized it had a passenger. It looked down at me, almost as if curious, and reached over to pluck me off its wrist. That meant it held its wrist steady, long enough that I could vault the rim of the gauntlet and run up along its forearm. It clumsily slapped down like it was trying to crush a mosquito, then tried again, higher. I circled around to the inside of its elbow. There was a narrow ledge formed by the edge of its forearm, and a rail around. Great, dust-choked, greasy gears ground silently inside, the metal covered in lines and lines and lines of glowing magical symbols.

  “It slices! It dices! It blends!” I held on for dear life as the Warsinger picked up its arm and tried to shake me off. “It has orifices where nothing should ever have orifices!”

  My stamina was draining with terrifying speed. Just when I thought I couldn’t hang on any longer, the Warsinger stopped shaking. Its arm sagged, and above me, the shoulder guards lifted and the heatsinks ejected, along with a billowing cloud of scalding gas that wreathed around its head. And then it began to hum again, just like it had when it had when it used its cloak of mist to catch, and then eat my damned quazi.

  “No! You junkyard piece of shit!” I snarled in Korean, too frustrated to remember English for a moment. I chugged two stamina potions and Jumped as high as I could up along its arm. It got hotter the further up I went. I caught onto the edge of the upper arm plate and groaned as the air thickened, my lungs struggled, and then gravity pulled me down in the direction of the earth.

  I hooked my fingers and dug my feet and hung on as what felt like half a ton of pressure tried to drag me from the Warsinger’s body. My elbows popped. The muscles in my arms began to tear with a prickling pain, and my HP began to trickle away. Twenty, fifty, a hundred points. There was just enough traction that I could stay on, gasping, bleeding from the corners of my eyes with the terrible pressure that bore down on my body.

  [298 damage! You are suffering Internal Bleeding! -5 HP per second, -20% strength! Heal at least 150 HP to staunch the wound.]

  Cursing, I chugged a healing potion and scrambled as a five-fingered shadow loomed above. The Warsinger couldn’t bring its arm all the way across its chest to slap me. The limb jerked and shuddered with effort as it held it level, trying to
track me with its harpoon fingertips as I zig-zagged up to its shoulder. The ground was now hundreds of feet down, the platform I was running on both extremely unstable and extremely hot. Steam boiled out from under the edge of its shoulders, channeled up from deep within the Warsinger’s body.

  I hacked up some blood as I Jumped and drove the Spear down into the thick arterial cables between neck and shoulder. The blade barely scratched it, but as soon as it bit into the metal, I roared and charged energy through my body and the weapon. Dark energy peeled out from me, forming into jagged bolts that struck the monster and seared the corrosion off it. “HURRRRAAAAGH!”

  The golem bellowed, swinging its tail down toward my back. I saw it coming from behind my head, and Shadow Danced just in time before the Warsinger punched the stinger-spine straight through its own armor.

  The mecha made a strange squealing sound, struggling to pull its weapon from its shoulder. A pulse of white light shot through the tail and seared my eyebrows from my face. I backed away with a shout, and got nailed through the calf by one of the Prototype’s fingers. The retractable, prehensile cable burst through my armor and flesh beneath like it wasn’t there. I desperately caught onto the edge of the Warsinger’s shoulder guard, snarling in agony as the finger retracted, leaving a gaping hole that poured blood into my boot.

  [You take 550 damage! You are hemorrhaging! Heal at least 225 damage to staunch the wound!]

  I spammed three healing potions from the hotbar as debuff icons flickered to life, then extinguished as the potions took hold. The Revenant began to shake again, slapping me from side to side. My stamina sunk down to 10%, 9%...