I lost track of the room around me, my body, and sounds and smells of the present. Mentally, sensorily, I was back in the desert, mouthing off to Baldr, sending Karalti off, then realizing that the man in front of me wasn’t Baldr at all. It was just Ororgael. I listened with growing horror as he explained Baldr’s fate, then initiated the fight. There was a dream-like quality to the whole thing, the feeling of watching the battle like a movie. I was taken aback to see that Ororgael’s hand-to-hand skills were surprisingly sloppy, and all things considered, past-me was able to keep up with him. My excitement built as I landed what had to be a critical hit, the kind of vital strike that Archemi normally ruled as an insta-kill... but then the Heart of Memory’s feed blurred, and the next moment-
“Wait.” Suri’s voice broke through the feed. “Can you roll it back? What was THAT?”
I concentrated as the video dissolved into a bright flash of light, and scrolled it back to look at what Suri had spotted. The Heart of Memory recorded my vision as it existed in Archemi. I had about 210 degrees of peripheral vision thanks to the Trial of Marantha, and sure enough, my eyes had glimpsed something weird. While I had my vampire claws buried in his heart, a shimmering half-seen figure had come up on me from the side. It was transparent, like heat haze, but it hauled me off Ororgael and sent me flying.
“That must be the ‘invisible bodyguard’ Rutha told us about in Taltos,” I said.
“Yeah, right on. Let’s keep going. See what else he does.”
As I came out of the Shadow Dance, I saw the same shimmering figure merge into his body—and as it did, his whole demeanor changed. In a few seconds, he went from flustered to stone-faced. His entire expression shut down before his eyes and mouth flew open and he tracked me with what could only be described as a concentrated nuclear blast. From his face.
“Jesus Christ,” Suri whispered.
“That must have been what killed me.” But to my surprise, the feed continued.
I crashed onto Withering Rose’s back and rolled away, my armor melted and blasted beyond recognition. The fighting went to ground, but with my distant perspective on the battle, I knew I was about to lose. The air around Ororgael glitched and shivered, as if reality was trying to reject his very presence. He grasped my wrist—my left wrist—and I watched nervously as he leaned in toward me with wild, solid black eyes as his face fluxed.
“Do you see this? It’s the visual manifestation of an anti-viral program, one designed to cure anomalies like you. I can give you a fresh start, Park. So don’t worry about your friends, or the queen. Once I rid the world of squalor and bring order back into the system, they’ll be grateful.”
Ororgael’s hand liquified into a silvery goo that crawled up my arm and over my scarred shoulder, toward my face.
Increasingly apprehensive, I watched myself briefly panic, then leverage Archemi’s quick-consume feature to drink most of the liquid mana in my inventory. There was no pain, remembered or otherwise: just light, and a whirling, spinning blur as the Heart of Memory was flung away by the detonation. When the blaze cleared, all that was left of me was a star-shaped smudge of charcoal on the back of the Warsinger. But the Heart was still there, recording a much narrower and blurrier field of vision, and so was Ororgael.
“Hah...” Swaying on his feet, Ororgael slowly picked himself up from the epicenter. His feathery hair was burned away, his mirrored silver plate soot-covered and smoking. He almost seemed to be drunk, or half asleep, until the ghostly figure merged out of him. As it did, his form solidified again. He shook his head, as if awakening from hypnosis.
“Of course I can hear you,” he muttered. “Always the same shit, the same lies. But I’m not afraid of you anymore.”
He dropped his sword, then stumbled to the left a few steps. There, he planted his feet and held out his arms, craning his neck to stare up at something we couldn’t see.
The sky darkened, and a great winged shadow fell over Withering Rose.
“It’s right underneath me!” Ororgael shouted. “Get it out of there! Now!”
A mournful, bass keen boomed from overhead. Sand slithered, picking up into a cyclonic wind that picked up around the Warsinger’s body. Withering Rose began to tremble, rumbling like an earthquake and a thunderstorm all in one.
Ororgael left the spot he’d been standing, walking over to the Spear of Nine Spheres. We watched him scoop it off the ground and hold it up close to his face, as if examining the blade. Then he screamed, dropping the weapon as the Pearl of Glorious Dawn wrenched itself free from his forehead and snapped into its socket. The Spear clattered to the Warsinger’s back, then vanished as he clutched at the wound, blood pouring through his fingers.
“Fuck!” He roared. “Motherfucker! Hyperion: I’ve changed my mind. Trash this piece of garbage!”
The red sand of the Bashir Desert rose around him like a curtain, howling as the unnatural darkness around him deepened. There was an intense warping sound—and then a pure beam of absolute blackness flashed down from the sky, drawing the remaining light of day with it in an incandescent flash. The narrow beam pierced Withering Rose like an arrow from heaven, throwing up a cloud of filthy smoke. It covered everything.
The recording cut.
“FUCK!” Suri banged her fist on her knee, rising to her feet in agitation. “That absolute cunt! The Warsinger’s gone!”
“Hang on: We don’t know for sure. We have to see what happened. As soon as Karalti gets back, we’ll gear up and go.” Stomach twisting anxiously, I rolled the footage back to the point where Ororgael was ranting about his antivirus goop, and paused. Listened to it again. “What does ‘squalor’ mean? I’ve heard the word before, but I flunked English at school.”
“Uhh...” Suri stopped pacing and looked back at me. “I dunno. I never even went to school.”
“Your Majesty: ‘squalor’ means the state of being extremely dirty and unpleasant, especially as a result of poverty or neglect.” A voice as dry as dead leaves crackled through the still air of the Ducal Suite.
Suri and I both looked up to the front door. As a Greater Shade, Mehkhet the Illuminator resembled the man he’d been in life. Bald, clean-shaven, with a thin beaky face and lips pursed as tight as a cat’s butthole. He was made entirely of frigid shadows, a darkness so cold and pure that his robes trailed a cloud of frost as he hovered over to stand in front of us.
“Oh.” I gave him a little wave. “Hi, Mehkhet.”
“Good afternoon, Master.” He gave me a stiff little bow, before refocusing on Suri. “I shall have to instruct you on your diction and comprehension if you are ever to rule as your ancestress did, your Majesty. Such scholarly deprivation cannot stand.”
“Fuck dictation and comprehension,” she snapped. “How long have you been here, sticky-beaking around?”
“Not long,” he replied hollowly. “I’ve been haunting—so to speak—the ruins of the castle library since you returned. But I felt something stir the air just before, as if the name of some terrible evil had been uttered inside this tower. Capital-N Name, that is. I came to check on you out of an abundance of caution.”
“Everything’s fine.” Her eyes were stormy with mingled anger and worry as she resumed pacing. “No demons, no nothing. Just one busted Warsinger and a fuckin’ crazy idiot of an Architect. Baldr, or Ororgael or whatever he calls himself: he knows that the Drachan’ll kill him too, right? If we can’t stop them?”
“I... don’t think he does,” I said. “Judging from what we just heard, he’s batshit insane and is living in some alternate reality where he’s the hero and I’m some kind of evil virus.”
“Tyrants are apt to create their own realities and their own version of the truth,” Mehkhet replied, sourly. “I am glad all is well.”
“Withering Rose isn’t ‘well’. She’s fucked.” Suri got to her feet. “We have to go see how much damage Ororgael did to her, Hector. Where’s Karalti?”
I closed my eyes and concentrated, sensing out along the
Bond. “Karalti? You manage to find something to eat?”
“Sure did!” She chirped. “Why? Is something wrong? You DEFINITELY sound stressed out now.”
“We just watched the footage from the fight with Bal... Ororgael,” I said. “It’s not good. He called some kind of fucking orbital strike on Withering Rose. We need to go scout her out, as soon as possible.”
There was a pause. “What if Ororgael’s still there?”
“After four days? I doubt it.” I shook my head. “Either he cheated and found a way to magically move eighteen-hundred tons of metal to Ilia already, or it’s still there and we’re in a race with Ilia’s navy to retrieve it.”
“Right. Well, I can teleport twice more today, but after that I’m going to be really tired,” Karalti said. “My stamina is bleh after Lahati’s Tomb. Meet me out in the courtyard when you’re ready. Oh! And don’t forget! Today’s potion day.”
“I know. I haven’t had time to check with the Masterhealer and see if she got any more King’s Grass,” I replied. “Give us fifteen. We’ll be out and ready to fly.”
“Okay!”
My eyes flickered open, and I looked up to see Suri waiting expectantly.
“She’s back,” I said, getting to my feet. “Let me go see if I can scrounge some better armor from Captain Vilmos. As soon as I’ve got some protection, we can go back to the Bashir and see what we find.”
Chapter 14
Twenty minutes later, we were in the air and ready to jump back to Dakhdir. I hung on to the saddle without any tie-downs, as relaxed as a surfer kneeling on his board. Suri, who hated flying, was strapped to the saddle with her chin down and her shoulders hunched.
As my dragon beat her wings and gravity pushed down on my shoulders, I felt my breath catch. Karalti had gotten stronger and faster with her last level. She always did, but this time it was like going from a 650cc street bike to a 1000cc road hog. I could feel the magical radiation of her body through the saddle, the incredible muscular power driving each wingbeat. The earth fell away with dizzying speed, giving us a phenomenal view of Kalla Sahasi.
“Ready?” Karalti’s sweet voice broke through my distracted wonder.
I pushed down the visor of my borrowed helmet. “Always, Tidbit.”
My teeth hummed as Karalti summoned her mana. The dragon let out a piercing bellow, straightening out into a gentle glide. That was the sign for me to lock my hands under the saddle grips. I did just that, and braced in anticipation of the frigid darkness that enveloped us as my dragon Teleported.
For several long seconds, we hung in a rushing void of empty space. That was normal. There was always a pause in the game when Karalti jumped. But this time, something about the space around us set my teeth on edge. Normally, the only thing I ever felt was the triple-beat of our hearts, mine and Karalti’s. But as we passed through, it felt like someone—or something—was staring at the back of my neck. Before I could work out what or who it was, we burst out of the cold into a screaming cloud of whirling black sand.
The sandstorm blasted us with such force that Karalti was blown violently to one side, her wings filling with hot air and gravel. Suri screamed a warning even as I slipped and crashed against my dragon’s back. Time slowed as I scrabbled along the leather, then activated one of my Mark of Matir abilities, Spider Climb. The Mark flared with cold fire, and just before I tumbled off into the air, I slapped my hands down onto the saddle. They bonded to the rough leather like Velcro.
“Arrgh! What the hell?!” Karalti’s wings flapped like wet laundry in a hurricane, threatening to snap. She gave up trying to beat them after a few seconds of heedless tumbling, rolling with the wind and diving to regain control. “Hold on! We have to break through this!”
With a snarl of effort, I pulled myself up, arm over arm, until I grasped the saddle grips once more. I was so stunned I barely even felt scared. The sand slithering through the cracks in my armor looked like ground pepper, and it was gritty and sharp. And even weirder, the searing heat of the desert was gone. It was cold. Lightning flashed inside of the cloud. An eye-watering metallic smell clung to everything.
[Warning: Extreme Stranged terrain. You are immune to Stranging, but may take damage.]
[Warning: this area is contaminated with nnnnnggghhrrrrrrrrrrvvvvvvvvvvv-]
The HUD’s narration blurred into an error, then abruptly cut.
“Urrgh!” Karalti snarled with effort. “Get in close, guys! I’m going to dive!”
“Roger that.” I flattened down, hooked my feet under some straps, and put my head down. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Suri bracing with her head between her arms.
Karalti’s wingshoulders pitched us like a rollercoaster as she navigated the crosswinds, weaving through them like a boxer dodging punches. When she found the eye of the storm, she tucked her wings in, curved her body, and dropped into a sharp hairpin dive. The wind drew claws over us, Stranged sand screeching over armor and scales, until finally she burst out underneath the storm and into the open air.
There were only two words for what we saw through the haze of dust and ash.
Holy and Shit.
Withering Rose was still there. The great machine, a magitech mecha the size of a skyscraper, was sprawled on the sands like she’d been gunned down from behind. She had been separated into several pieces, her metal entrails trailing from the edge of her torso. For a thousand feet in every direction, the desert sand had been turned into a hellscape of molten sand and shattered glass. Violently mutated, smoking sandworms were impaled on huge jutting shards of gray crystal, a shattercone of burned and blackened spines that spread away from the wreck of Withering Rose like the petals of a lotus.
“What... what is this?” Karalti’s telepathic voice was breathless, with none of its usual girlishness. “Did Ororgael... did HE do this? Or...?”
“What do you think? Of course he bloody did this! He’s fucked the Warsinger six ways to Sunday and now we’re the proud owners of a fuckin’ thousand-ton paperweight.” Suri briefly forgot her fear of flying, straining against her harness to take in the scene below. “FUCK!”
The Mark of Matir was ringing like a bell, jumping and throbbing just under my skin. I was shocked enough that my fingertips, lips, and the tip of my nose started buzzing. There was only one weapon on Earth that could cause this kind of wholesale, almost alien destruction. Somehow, some way, Baldr had nuked the fucking desert.
“Hector?” Suri’s voice broke through on our HUD party chat, startling me. “I know Rose here is basically buggered, but I’m still getting a HUD ping on my gear. We need to go down before we take too much more damage.”
Damage? I glanced at my HP ring, and sure enough, the green bar was painlessly ticking down by one point every few seconds. I glanced over to my HUD and drew the mini-map of the area into focus. Sure enough, there was a small golden dot on Withering Rose’s back. “Yeah. Let’s do a snatch and grab. We can’t stay for long.”
The closer we got, the worse it looked. Not only had her torso been separated from her legs, but her aurum armor was caved in toward the left side of her back. She had a deep, deep hole about the size of a basketball punched through her, like an entry wound. It made me want to see the front of the machine’s chest, but between the sandstorm and the wind, there was no way we were getting under the chassis.
The dragon struggled to drop into a hover, riding out sharp gusts of air. Once she touched down on Withering Rose, I crawled over to Suri to help her get out of her harness. When she was free, Karalti squatted to let us off. I jumped down to land lightly on my feet. Suri slid down, grunting as her armor clashed against the metal surface. Her Inventory sack sat neatly on the surface of the Warsinger, unaffected by the storm: an oddly unrealistic video game thing in this otherwise hyper-realistic world.
“Why the hell did he destroy her?” I reached up to grip the top of my helmet, surveying the damage. “To stop us from getting it?”
“Maybe?” Karalti stalked over
to the hole in Withering Rose’s armor. “Ugh. Oh gods... aaaack!”
“What?” I left the edge of Withering Rose’s breastplate, jogging over to join my dragon as she reeled back, gagging.
“The smell!” She hacked like a cat about to throw a hairball, tail lashing. “It smells like... I don’t even know what that smell is!”
I approached the hole warily. It was the spot where the black beam Ororgael had called from the sky had hit the Warsinger. It was a deep, smooth entry wound, like the aurum had melted and curved around the incredible force the beam had exerted on it. I couldn’t smell anything, but looking down at the hole made me feel dizzy and strange. Maybe it was my dragonrider vision getting overwhelmed by all of the particles of charred sand in the air, but something about the darkness inside of Withering Rose’s torso seemed... wrong. It seemed to suck the remaining light, expanding outwards until I blinked. I absentmindedly reached up to grip my left shoulder, the shoulder that with the glitched out chunk of dark nothingness where flesh was supposed to be. The Mark of Matir was still prickling.
“You alright?” Suri nudged me in the other arm, startling me out of the trance.
“Uhh... yeah.” I blinked and shook my head, and when I looked back at the hole, it was still the same size as before. “Let’s get out of here. There’s nothing we can do until we bring ships capable of carrying the Warsinger back to Litvy. Maybe we can repair her, and if we can’t-”
My words were cut off by a garbling off-key shriek that seemed to rise up from the desert around us. I clamped my hands over my ears as the keening rose to a painful volume, deepening to a rumbling roar. The Warsinger’s body began to shudder underneath us.
“Okay! Time to go!” Karalti brayed in alarm, beating her wings stiffly by her sides.
I caught Suri’s hand, steadying her on the rocking surface. She had terminally low Dex; I had enough for the both of us. Karalti bowed down so that Suri and I could climb her neck to the edge of her wing, pull ourselves up kicking and scrabbling over the edge, and run—or in Suri’s case, crawl—up along it to her back. I threw the saddle straps into position as another head-splitting shriek echoed over the dunes.
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