Spear of Destiny

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “You once told me you were a kinslayer,” I said, slowly. “I admit I’ve wondered.”

  His eyes flickered open again. “It is a long story.”

  I shrugged. “I’m a patient guy. Sort of.”

  Vash fell silent for a time. His muscles loosened, his breathing slowed, and his skin bloomed with a healthy pink glow. He was somehow consciously controlling his body at a very deep level. Slowing it down to head off stress.

  “I was born in the plateau country about a week’s ride south-east of Norbu, the town which is the center of Tuun life in Vlachia,” he said calmly. “The Dorha clan was wealthy, with a thousand head of cattle. My mother, Lhaho, was a strong woman who managed us with kindness and competence. She had four husbands, with three children by two of them: me, my little sister Saaba, and my elder sister… Tsunda.”

  He paused after speaking her name, grimacing like a man with a stomach ache.

  “Saaba was a gentle girl. Full of energy and very playful. I loved her fiercely,” he continued. “But Tsunda, aiyai-yai. She was never quite right in the head.”

  “What was wrong with her?” I asked.

  “From early in her life, she was prone to wild dreams and fiery rages. If something upset her, she would cry and scream until she vomited. If she was happy, she’d become manic, unable to sleep.” Vash’s eyes grew distant as he spoke. “She was very violent. She once bit my mother on the face so hard she took a mouthful of her flesh.”

  “Like... as a toddler?”

  “No. As a girl of eight,” Vash replied. “But it gets worse. Around the time she started her moonblood, she began to hear voices and see terrible visions, hallucinations so overwhelming that she would claw at her skin, pull her clothes off, and attack people who were not there. Every day, from dawn to dusk, she ranted and raved about ‘metal demons’ and people being killed by swarms of black bees or wasps. Trees terrified her. She spoke of nations built of black crystals, shattered by fire and explosions, and countless people dying. She became paranoid of us all, convinced that we would murder her. Her violence became not only frightening, but dangerous.”

  “Sounds like some kind of psychosis. I saw guys crack like that in Indonesia a few times.” I glanced at the web of scars that divided Vash’s face. He might have been handsome once, in a wolfish kind of way. Someone had smashed an axe into his face six or seven times and left the front of his skull crazed like a broken mirror. I was starting to figure who that might have been.

  Vash shrugged. “Who knows? Regardless, my parents and grandparents were devastated. Tsunda was the family heir, and she was unmarriageable. My grandmother did not believe that Tsunda was sick with an illness. There were only two possible answers: either she was possessed by demons, or she was a shaman. A young shaman who desperately required the guidance of a master.”

  “Oof.” I winced. “Was it Tsunda who smashed up your face?”

  He nodded. “When she was fourteen and I was eight, Tsunda began to abuse us terribly. She hated Saaba, and was convinced she was one of her metal demons. Saaba was only three, but Tsunda was convinced she would destroy us all. I taught Saaba to hide from our sister and took Tsunda’s attentions onto myself. Beatings, shouting, and worse. But one day, she pushed me too far. She demanded something of me I would not do. I stood up to her and she backed off, but once we returned home, she took the axe from the chopping block outside my father’s yurt and attacked me in a frenzy. I nearly died.”

  “Holy shit.” I let out a terse puff of breath. “Is that… like… how you became a Baru?”

  “No, no. My grandparents were able to treat my wounds, though I had to wear bandages on my face for months.” He rubbed the edge of his thumb over one of the crooked white gouges in his cheek. “After Tsunda attacked me, my mother ordered she be tied to her bed. We all knew she could no longer be managed at home. There was a vote, with some of the clan saying she should be taken to Solonovka to see a Vlachian doctor. But most of my family still did not believe Tsunda’s condition was a physical illness. Tsunda’s father, his brother, and their mother volunteered to take her to see the Abbott at the Temple of the Pure Body in Norbu. They undertook the two-week trek to the monastery, dragging Tsunda on a sled. But during my family’s stay, Norbu—and most of the populated Southern Highlands of Myszno—were struck with plague.”

  “They got sick?”

  “Worse.” Vash shook his head. “My clan-father, uncle and grandmother were healthy when they fled the city, but they carried the plague on the clothes and blankets they had bought for us while they were there. When they returned to the plateau, they embraced us and gave us souvenirs, and then we ALL got sick. Every single one of us.”

  I shuddered. “God. I know what that’s like.”

  He rolled his shoulders. “The elderly died first. Mother died because she insisted on caring for her sick parents. Our clan-fathers died because they tried to save the woman they loved. Our ranch hands died because they looted our lumber and iron and tried to run, sick and crazed, into the mountains. Tsunda, weakened from ritual fasting, somehow held on until the end before she expired. But Saaba and I did not die. We were deathly ill, and for five days, we faded in and out of fever, coughed water from our lungs and choked down scraps of food when we could. Our skin and mouths became blistered. We were covered in awful rashes that transformed into deep bruises.”

  I listened to him in disbelief. The symptoms Vash had described were identical to HEX: a two-week latency period, followed by a five-day spiral into death. The only difference between what I’d been through on Earth and what had happened to him on Archemi was that HEX had a hundred-percent mortality rate. But otherwise…

  “I cared for Saaba as best I could, fully expecting to die at any hour,” he continued. “We barely survived, but when we convalesced, we realized that we were going to perish anyway. There were no adults. The herd had strayed. The food gathered and stored in the yurts were rotting. I ate what I could, but Saaba could still take nothing but thin broth. My little sister... I’d spent her whole life protecting her, helping her. She was only seven, and I was a boy of twelve by that time. The other clans of the plateau would not help us, because of the plague, so I did the only thing I could think to do: I packed our things onto our sturdiest camel, let Saaba ride in the saddle, and set out with her for Norbu and the temples.”

  “Damn.” I whistled. “I’m sorry, man.”

  “Mmph.” Vash gazed up at Erruku as clouds dimmed the moon’s steady golden light. “The trip to Vhashti Shar, our temple of Burna in Norbu, is arduous. A two-week trek through the same black mountains where you say you found Burna’s tomb. We were tough children, born and raised in the wilderness, but we were weak and delirious and very, very young. We fought wolves and harpies, we killed and ate mountain goats to stay alive. But when we were about halfway to the monastery, pushing ahead through awful snow, we were struck by a rockslide. I was walking on foot and managed to avoid being crushed, but the camel carrying my sister was not fast enough. The slide buried him and Saaba together. I ran back and began digging. I dug until my hands bled. Eventually, I found her. She was still alive, trapped under the rocks and snow and sheltered by the twisted body of the animal that now crushed her. I fought with everything I had, but no human child alone could have moved that camel and the stones holding it down. I tried to pull her free, and almost tore her in half. Her legs were gone.”

  I watched him, saying nothing.

  “She knew it as surely as I did.” Vash shook his head slightly, staring bleakly at the horizon. “Saaba was only little, but she was a herder’s daughter. She had seen livestock caught in avalanches before. While she wept from agony, she looked me straight in the eye and asked me to end it. Painlessly, quickly.”

  Vash squeezed his eyes shut, his thin mouth twisting down.

  “You did the right thing,” I said softly.

  “Of course I did. I knew it then, and I know it now.” He drew a deep breath, his grey eyes clouded with ol
d pain. “But just because it was the righteous action to take did not mean I could bear to live with myself. I dug a little trench in the snow and lay down, sung a song to Burna, and went to my death. What I didn’t know at that age is that while death from the cold is peaceful, it takes a very long time. You fall asleep, your heart slows, and if you stay just barely warm enough, you enter a kind of strange sleep. It was in this state that my future Master found me. The Baru, Tantun Gorta. He was on his way back to the monastery when he came across the avalanche and found us, brother and sister, with me lying as if composed for burial. He sang the rites and burned what he could of my sister’s remains, then wrapped me in a shroud. His plan was to take my body to the charnel ground at Vhashti Shar. The valley where the accident took place was so cold that no animals had come to eat us.”

  I nodded. That was a big deal to the Tuun. Vash’s people—our people—disposed of the dead via sky-burial. Corpses were left out on a special hillside to be eaten by a species of giant fly bred especially for the purpose. The flies ate the bodies before they putrefied, leaving nothing but small amounts of alchemically hardened bone. That bone was given to the family of the dead, typically to be carved into commemorative beads like the ones Vash wore in his hair. The average Tuun believed that if a body was allowed to rot or wasn’t given rites, the soul wouldn’t separate from the corpse, and it would come back as a ghost.

  “Gorta carried us all the way to his camp. He chanted the Rite of the Fly-Headed God over me, and as he tells it, nearly pissed himself when I opened my eyes and looked right at him.” Vash smiled faintly. “Master kept me alive through the most agonizing weeks of my life. Dying from the cold is easy, but rubbing warmth back into frozen flesh is pure torture. Still, it was a miracle that I had lost nothing but my smallest toes and a couple of knuckles to frostbite. He brought me to the temple, and I was told that I would become a Baru.”

  “Told?” I frowned.

  “Yes, Dragozin. Baru are fated people. Like your Karalti, I entered Burna’s realm as a child and returned. And thus, I reluctantly commenced my education.” He shrugged. “But that leads me to my request of you. You see, I have never been able to return to my home. That avalanche is still there. It was there when, after twelve years spent at the monastery, I tried to return. Reaching that place is now impossible by foot, even for me. The only way to get there is to fly, but there is no airship capable of reaching that altitude, and no quazi in the world that is strong enough to endure the winds that rage through those mountains. Dragons brought our people to the plateaus of Myszno, and dragons are the only way I could possibly return to see if any of the other clans survived, as well as give my family their proper rites. I have lived for nearly thirty years without closure on that chapter of my life, Hector. I would ask that you and Karalti help me to finish what was started.”

  I nodded slowly, thinking it over. “We can take you there, for sure. I’d be honored to.”

  “It may not be easy,” Vash warned. “Tsunda… only the gods know what she might have become. She died in bondage, raving and howling while strapped to her bed. By the time she passed, no one had the strength to do anything about the body. She was left to rot in despair.”

  I cracked my knuckles. “I ain’t afraid of no ghost.”

  Vash snorted. “I surely hope not. Shall I do the formalities?”

  “Go for it.”

  New Quest: The Daughter of Madness

  Your companion, Vash Dorha, wishes to return to the remote and wild plateaus of south-eastern Myszno, where his family once prospered as semi-nomadic herders. After seeking treatment for his mentally ill elder sister, [̴̭̩̇̌F̴̡̗̃Ẻ̴̹T̷̳̚͠C̴͉͠H̸̩́Ȩ̷͠R̷͇̩͘R̷̮̐̕O̶̜̐̄R̶͕̿͛:̴͎͈̍N̷͖̚͝U̸͉̽͝L̴̟̋L̴̯̿]̷̯͐͝, the entire clan was slain by a plague that killed everyone but Vash and his younger sister, Saaba.

  The bodies were not buried or given the rites the Tuun consider vital to help the spirits of the dead move on to the next world, and Vash is worried that his family may yet suffer as ghosts, revenants, or worse. He has asked you and your dragon to take him to his childhood home so that he may put his family to rest and move on from his pain.

  Rewards: Path perks (Baru, Dark Paragon), 3000 EXP, Special Items, Temple of Burna (facility).

  Special: Only you, Karalti and Vash may attempt this quest.

  A wave of déjà vu rolled through me as Navigail’s voice skipped over the glitchy line. I clutched my head as it—and my shoulder—both throbbed. I wobbled, briefly losing my balance until a firm hand snapped around my forearm and straightened me back up.

  “Hector?” Vash’s voice was stiff with concern. “Are you well?”

  “You don’t see that?” I replied, rubbing my eyes. The brief wave of dizziness had already passed, but I felt… odd. Driven by the sense that I needed to remember something.

  “See what?” He let go of me, watching me cautiously.

  “The error,” I said. “Your sister’s name is all screwed up. The last time that happened to me with a quest, Ororgael was tangled up in it. It was Andrik Corvinus’ name, that time. Suri was able to see the same error in the Wiki.”

  Vash blinked, then looked up and slightly off to the right, scanning the text he’d submitted. “No. I see no errors. If I play it back, it sounds normal to me.”

  “Maybe it’s just me, then. My last death screwed with me pretty hard.” That thought was no less chilling than the idea of Void creatures or a ghost erasing her name from a quest, and I had to push past some hesitation before I was able to accept the job. “Do you want Suri to come? Or Istvan?”

  “No. It is not that I do not wish for their company, but this is a matter for those who are aligned with Darkness.” He shook his head. “For all that he has had his share of grief, Istvan is not a dark person. Nor is Suri. This is a task for gloomy men like you and I.”

  I grinned. “Are we talking about the same Istvan? The drill sergeant? Mr. No Fun?”

  Vash chuckled. “In the public eye, Istvan is forever aware that he is the half-breed orphan among Vlachians. But when the mask comes off and he feels like he can be himself, he is a playful man. Sensitive and artistic.”

  “Artistic?” I gave him an odd look.

  “Hrrn. Music. He plays the fiddle and writes songs, and is good at both.”

  “Huh. Never would have guessed.”

  “That is by design. He is talented, but he has no desire to be known for his art. It is something he does mostly for himself, by himself.” Vash’s eyes grew distant. “He and I are both plagued by grief regarding family. I wish to purge myself of my old attachments so I can help him live in the present, and fall into his arms in the knowledge that I am not simply another of his many burdens.”

  I clapped Vash on the shoulder. “I don’t think he thinks that way.”

  “Nor do I,” he said, briefly covering my hand with his own. “But I have a tendency to dwell on dark things.” “Tell you what.” I bobbed up to my feet on the edge of the wall, and hopped backwards to land on the parapet. “Once this thing with Bas is over, it’s grinding time for me and Karalti. We’re going to try and power level. Barring some new crisis, we’ll work hard at it—and as soon as we hit Level 32, we’ll do this.”

  “As you say.” Vash stood up as well, stretching his arms behind his back. “I am grateful, Dragozin. Not many people would undertake such a difficult quest on behalf of a friend.”

  “Any time, man.” I nodded. “But hey, speaking of quests: mind giving me a hand with one? I have to collect a shit-ton of herbs. We have to stock up on medicines and take them to Karhad in case that Thornlung plague spreads.”

  “Of course. And if it does, I shall treat the sick. I am immune.” He also rose, stretching his arms back.

  “Immune?” I was starting to head to the edge of the wall, but turned. “Wait: the plague your family got. That was thornlung?”

  “The very same,” he replied. “Why, Dragozin? You look like you’ve seen a ghost of
your own.”

  “Yeah. It’s just…” I trailed off, not sure how to explain it to him. “In my life before Archemi—Earth—there were two back-to-back global wars between the world’s superpowers. The second war, and the world, rapidly disassembled when a virus—a disease—got out of control. The symptoms were exactly like how you describe thornlung. And I mean, exactly. There are some differences in the outcome. HEX had a 100-percent mortality rate, for one thing. It isn’t treatable, because it wasn’t a natural virus.”

  Vash’s nostrils flared. “Explain.”

  “I don’t think I can,” I replied, struggling for words. “It’s… uh… imagine a tiny Stranged particle riding on an artifact smaller than anything you could see with the naked eye. The artifact can drill through cloth, skin, and armor and deliver the particle into someone’s body. Then it lies dormant for two weeks, so that person goes and gives it to other people, before it activates into a disease and kills them. That’s what HEX did. It was a weapon, made to kill people with disease.”

  Vash’s lips worked as he struggled to find the right thing to say. “That is hideous. Who released this weapon?”

  “No one knows,” I said. “My side of the war blamed Suri’s people’s side of the war. Her side blamed mine. Europe blamed both of us. When I got sick, they’d already called an emergency armistice, because billions of people were dying.”

  “Billions? Billions of people?” Vash’s brow furrowed into deep lines as he tried—and probably failed—to comprehend a number which didn’t really exist in Archemi. “It never occurred to me that Starborn could be refugees from a dying world, but I suppose it makes sense. And I am glad you have found a better place here.”

  “Yeah. Me too.” I looked toward the west, the direction of Ilia and Revala. Ororgael, Lucien and Violetta were working toward their goals somewhere over there, separated by thousands of miles of mountains, plains, and ocean. “This is a good place. And as long as we fight for it, it’ll stay that way.”