Kingdom Come

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “Lance the abscess and drain the wound,” I said. “Then the yellow po… "

  "No!" Masha slapped her hand on the counter. "Wrong!"

  "Oh, right. Sanguine’s hot and moist, so you have to... dry it out and cool it down," I said. "So we lance and apply alcohol to dry it, then the poultice to cool it, then give him the potions. And water after that?"

  “Correct. You do not want to give a man fluids for a sanguine condition. This is a Concentrated Oil of Garlic poultice. It will remove the Blood Poisoning status effect.” Masha took a clean scalpel from her apron pocket, dunked it in a small vial of alcohol, and swirled it around. “You need garlic oil, red rashovik, and activated charcoal to make it. You simmer the rashovik in the oil until it turns bright scarlet, then add the charcoal. Mix, wrap, drain the wound, then apply it straight on.”

  [New Herbalism recipe learned! Concentrated Oil of Garlic poultice]

  Archemi didn’t have any healing magic – at least, not healing magic that was available to players. Instead, it had a comprehensive medical crafting system comprised of four interrelated skills: Field Medicine, Surgery, Herbalism and Alchemy. Herbal potions could restore HP, cure common debuffs, or give buffs, and they were safe to use on NPCs. Alchemical potions contained mana, monster parts, and other magical ingredients. They could heal critical injuries, regrow limbs, raise the dead or create mutant dragon riding smartasses like me, but most normal people – read, NPCs – couldn’t consume alchemical potions without a risk of being fatally poisoned. The four healing skills were closely interlinked. You had to sometimes perform a surgery, then apply a potion. Properly diagnosing a patient using Field Medicine made them more likely to survive surgery and/or an alchemical healing process. Scientific advances in the field were possible, and were rewarded by the game. I’d never considered a medical career in the real world, but Archemi made it kind of fun, in a survival crafting-kinda way.

  I watched as Masha dabbed a sticky white substance onto the man’s hand, waited a few seconds, then began to cut into the numbed flesh. The stablehand lay there, sweating and squirming as she squeezed pus from the infected area. I watched her flawlessly play the required minigame, following a series of holographic directions that showed her what to squeeze and when. Once she cleared it, she applied the poultice. A Status meter appeared, counting down from 60 seconds. At the end of the minute, his Blood Poisoning debuff vanished.

  “Now we give the potions. This is Goldenseal Tincture. It cures fever.” She swirled the yellow bottle around, then put it to the man’s lips. “Drink it, and no whining.”

  I glanced down at the other two. “What's that alchemical potion?”

  "That is Bloodmoon Decoction.” Masha held the man’s head as he grimaced and sputtered. “If our hard worker here turns up his heels and dies, I’ll pour that one down his neck. It restarts the heart, purges blood clots and fluids from the lungs and brain... but it’s dangerous, like all alchemical medicine. If it doesn’t Strange the person drinking it, it will blind them. One hundred percent. All the blood vessels in the eyes burst and turns their eyes red. You can always tell someone who drank Bloodmoon and lived to tell the tale.”

  Her patient shuddered. “I’d rather die, Master Healer.”

  “You were begging for your life just a few minutes ago! So which is it? And before you tell me a life without eyes is no life at all, what about your children?” Masha scolded. “The Volod will give your family a pension whether or not you’re alive, but your son will prefer a blind father than no father at all.”

  I sat back and watched them bicker, but as the stablehand’s status effects ticked down and then vanished, he got noticeably better. His fever broke, and then his hand began to look less critical.

  “Alright. You take this second Goldenseal Tincture before you go to bed. Yes, it’s bitter, but you must drink it all.” Masha helped him sit up once the second-to-last debuff vanished. “If you don’t, the Blood Poisoning will come back, and we’ll have to do this all over again.”

  “Yes, Master Healer.”

  “You come back tomorrow for more medicine, or I’ll send Stanislaw to pull you in by the ear. You’re not Starborn like this strapping Tuun here. You need more than one day’s course.”

  The man grimaced. “Yes, Master Healer.”

  When he was sent off, Masha went to go and wash her hands. When she returned, the old woman regarded me shrewdly.

  “How’s Rutha?” I asked her.

  “Not good. Not at all.” She shook her head, rubbing her hands with a clean towel. “Her skull has a fracture, and the join is still soft. She has dried blood in her nose and ears, which may mean there is damage to her brain. There is no miracle cure for brain damage, I’m afraid. She may awaken tomorrow, or she may awaken in a month, or she may never wake up. I hate to say it, but she is now in the hands of the gods.”

  I looked away for a moment. “Can I see her?”

  “I want the medicines I gave her to settle in her blood before I let any visitors in,” Masha replied. “But that will not take long. You can stay here, keep yourself busy.”

  “Actually, Ignas recommended I see you," I replied. "He said that you could tell me about Myszno. And I was wondering if you could teach me Vlachian, maybe Churvi as well."

  The old woman cocked her head with birdlike curiosity. "Churvi? Why would you want to learn that?"

  "I want to fit in.” I shrugged. “Also, I have a hunch that my honorary noble title might become less honorary, more practical.”

  "Hmmph. A Tuun turning to landed gentry? Even with your dragon and your fancy spear, that would not go down very well with the other great houses of Myszno. But my people… if you show an interest in our ways and honor the borders of our lands, that might be a different story. Yes, I can teach you Churvi - Khel Khammun, as it's properly called. I can teach you Vlachian as well, and it is wise that you ask to learn from me. The Vlachian spoken in the East is a different dialect from the capitol. They do not speak your White Sail Alliance pidgin there, either: you must be fluent. People in the big city will think you sound rural, but the inhabitants of Myszno will take to you faster if you sound like a local."

  "Figured that might be the case. I don’t give a shit what people here think." I bought up my character sheet to check my available skill points. After my last level, I had four remaining. "How many points do I need?"

  "Three for basic fluency in Churvi. You already know some Vlachian, so you only need two points to become fluent in that tongue."

  I winced. "Damn. Only have four."

  Masha thought for a few moments. "Then I can teach you enough Churvi to survive, and you can learn the rest while you are there. Once you have a start in a language, you can invest a point here, a point there... by practicing it, you will also improve without the need to invest points – though that takes more work. Of the two, I dare say that Vlachian is more important."

  "Yeah, it is." I nodded. "Official language and everything."

  Masha gave a curt nod, and a prompt jumped in the corner of my eye. I pulled it over, and a holographic trade screen appeared between us. Before I could make my selections, I got a tutorial prompt.

  [Do you wish to learn more about Language Skills and Abilities?]

  "Yes," I thought back.

  The prompt unraveled into a tutorial pane, which my HUD narrator read to me:

  Languages in Archemi

  Archemi is a diverse place, with several major sapient species and hundreds of organically generated regional languages and cultures within the five basic playable races: Artanese Humans, Dauntan Humans, Lysian elves, Meewfolk and Mercurions. To learn a new language or dialect in Archemi, you must spend skill points to gain initial fluency, and from that point, you must study and practice speaking, reading and writing your new language to gain mastery.

  The skill point cost and practice time is automatically calculated on the difficulty of the language relative to your intelligence score and the languages you already know
. You can often spend fewer skill points if you are willing to put in more time practicing. If you urgently need a language to complete a quest or travel to a different country, you can spend more skill points to gain fluency more quickly. If you love to study and learn without spending any points, you can do that too!

  Language acquisition using skill points is faster, anywhere between one to ten minutes. You may experience a brief sensation of dizziness and a warm feeling in your temples as Archemi's GNOSIS system uploads the language and primes your brain to be able to speak. As this is the Beta testing phase of Archemi Online, you should report any adverse symptoms to your supervisor. Revisit our Health and Wellness TOC for more information on GNOSIS.

  I frowned. That was weird. None of the other skills I'd learned, or my fantasy combat abilities had needed a disclaimer. "Can you hold on for a moment?"

  Masha shrugged, and waited while I PM'd Rin. "Hey, sorry to interrupt you, Admin Girl, but why is there a TOS health advisory for learning new languages via skill points?"

  "Oh, it's nothing to worry about," Rin replied absently. "There were some problems with language processing during alpha testing. I guess the company lawyers made us include it."

  "What… kind of problems?"

  "Scrambled speech, mostly. People would mix up the fictional languages with their native tongues when they were offline. That was during the civilian game testing phase, mind you. As it turns out, uploading linguistic fluency to the brain is REALLY complex, but the Creative Design Board were adamant that we needed multiple languages for immersion and marketing down the track. You know... it gives players the feeling of being in a kind of club or tribe if they have a language only Archemi players can speak. I heard the military had a huge problem with memory loss in the early days."

  "You mean like Suri?"

  "I don't know. Maybe. Listen, I-I've got to go... I'm in the middle of crafting medicine packs for me and any other Mercurions in Myszno. Don't worry about the language stuff. You're safe: it was worked on a lot before the beta testing began."

  "Right. Thanks." Not exactly reassuring, but I didn't have much choice: not if I really wanted to sort out the Myszno situation. Sighing, I waved the PM window aside, and selected my languages. "Vlachian first. Teach me the Myszno dialect."

  Masha nodded, and then looked away with an expression of intense concentration on her face. A few seconds later, I got a prompt.

  [Would you like to learn your new language: Vlachian (Eastern)?]

  "Yup."

  [Starting upload. Please close your eyes and minimize sensory interference during the transfer.]

  It occurred to me then that the Ryuko Corporation might not have tested language acquisition on people who’d been perma-uploaded to the game, but there was no time to ask before the upload began.

  Chapter 6

  A powerful wave of dizziness swept over me, and then a sense of warm fullness pushed behind my eyes and against my temples from the inside. It wasn't painful, but it was definitely not comfortable... though it was kind of awesome, too, because I literally felt my mind begin to recall words I'd heard and make connections between them and the things they referred to. The knowledge poured in like hot sand, with every grain a word or a letter or a fraction of meaning. I wasn't sure if I was going to claw my face off or start gibbering in tongues by the time it finished, but sure enough... I could suddenly understand the murmured conversations in the hospital ward beyond the door.

  "Damn." I shook my head and cracked my neck. "That's kind of nifty."

  "Heh." Masha grunted her amusement. "If only we were all Starborn like you, eh? Ready for Churvi?"

  "Hit me."

  We repeated the process for the second language: money and skill points went in, and language came out. It seemed easier to learn than Vlachian, with less discomfort. Once the trade pane was closed, Masha gave me a shrewd look.

  "Come," she said in her native tongue. "We should make the rounds of the hospital. You should be able to learn the skills of a healer while we wait for your lady to rouse. The guard will come out of her room when she wakes.”

  I heard her speaking the foreign tongue - a language that sounded a lot like Mongolian to me - but the words made sense. It wasn't an unfamiliar sensation. I'd grown up bilingual, speaking English in public and Korean at home, but learning a new language so quickly was definitely a new experience.

  "Sure." I nodded. "Mind if I ask you about Myszno while we work?"

  "Not at all. Few people here are interested in my homeland... it is refreshing to have someone ask." Masha gave me a sharp nod, gathering her tool bag. "Where to begin?"

  “What are the Thunderstones?” I asked. “We can start there.”

  “Ahh…” she nodded, sweeping ahead into the ward. Seven patients waited for us. Rutha had been taken to a private room, guarded by a tattooed Knight of the Red Star outside. “The krr’akhi. No one knows what the Thunderstones are. They probably do not exist, except in stories and songs.”

  “Do you know any of them?” I tried to mask the desperation I was already starting to feel.

  “Yes, of course.” She huffed a little. “The most famous story is one you’ll hear in taverns everywhere while you’re in Myszno. It is the tale of Burna and Lahati.”

  That immediately piqued my curiosity. “Burna?”

  “The Nightfather.” Masha sketched a small gesture on her brow. “Here, he is known as-”

  “Chernobog, or Matir,” I finished. “Yeah, I know. His name is the same in Tuun’haar. We call him Burna as well.”

  “Interesting. But to return to the story.” Masha sucked on her tooth for a moment, getting her words together. “Once long ago, the Solonkratsu were a learned and skillful people who built great palaces and cities across the world with the aid of their handmaidens, the Tulaq. There were many queens, but the greatest of them lived in Vlachia, and she ruled all the dragons from the crushing waves of the Black Sea in the east to the Bay of Swords where Taltos now stands. Her name was Lahati the White Frost, and she was quick and wise and beautiful, but so fierce that no other queen dragon could best her in combat. She was born white as snow, with horns and claws like polished diamonds, and eyes of black fire that could pierce a man’s soul. She grew great and sleek and lovely, so swift that no dragon buck could so much as lay a claw on her no matter how hard and fast they flew.”

  “One day, Burna was walking the face of the world as a man, and he saw a brilliant light streak across the sky. It was Lahati, followed at a distance by many struggling dragons: her suitors. She winnowed the air like a swallow, forever out of their reach, and the god found himself fascinated. He shapeshifted into a great bull dragon with stars for eyes and scales as black as pitch, and took to the air to join the mating flight. He flew as fast and as high as he could, dashing other dragons out of the air in his lust. When Lahati heard their screams, she turned to see him closing on her.”

  “The great bull caught the queen in the air, and in the fury of their first coupling, the god turned Lahati’s scales to obsidian, save for the white marks of his teeth on the back of her neck. The marks looked like the petals of a chrysanthemum, and so she assumed a new name and became Lahati the Chrysanthemum Queen. She was the beloved mate of the Nightfather for all her days, and when she died, he wept for a day and an age. Not even the Prince of a Thousand Names could call his beloved back to life when the Lord of Time came to take her to the grave. Wherever Burna pounded the earth in his grief, great craters appeared. Wherever he drew his claws, valleys and canyons were made. He wandered east, and he reached the Black Sea, he went to his knees by the ocean and screamed Lahati’s true name, the Words only he knew. The peaceful water turned furious and black, and there where he knelt, the Thunderstones erupted from the earth. It is said this is why the Black Sea is so incredibly fierce, and why the Dark God no longer walks with us as man or dragon, for he cannot bear to live without his queen by his side.”

  While she spoke, the Mark prickled on the back
of my hand. I felt a strange longing, and almost reflexively checked my telepathic link with Karalti. She was outside, warm and comfortable. Sleeping, probably. “Huh.”

  “That is all I know of the Thunderstones. If you want older stories, you will have to visit the shamans or the monks. That could be why you wish to go to the village of Myszno, hmm? There is a Tuun monastery there.”

  A monastery? “How do you get to Myszno Village from Vastil Pass?”

  “Well, you fly to Vyeshniki, then cross the Sarviz River and head south, into the highlands. Unfortunately, that is all I know… and the land has probably changed a lot since I was a girl.” The old woman shook her head. “Now, here: I’ll give you the recipe for Concentrated Green Moss Tincture, and you go and prepare it for me. Then you may ask another question.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Sure.”

  Getting a simple recipe uploaded to my memory was nowhere near as intense as learning a language: a prompt, a pause, and then ‘ting’, I knew a new recipe:

  Concentrated Green Moss Tincture (Herbal)

  Heals 150 HP over 120 seconds

  Requires: Green Moss x 3, Lye x 1, Aqua Regia x 1 (Hydrochloric Acid x 3, Nitric Acid x 1), Pure Alcohol x 1, Bottle.

  Sell Price: 30 rubles (silver)

  While Masha worked, I mixed the Aqua Regia, then mashed the moss and added it to the powerful acid, dissolving it. Once the thick green sludge turned yellow, I added the lye – carefully – and let it froth and bubble until the liquid settled and it turned a bright lime green. Then I sieved it into a pot, added the alcohol, and transferred the liquid to three bottles. For my efforts, I got 5 Skill EXP toward Herbalism.

  “Okay. Do you need anything else?” She asked.

  “If you’re able to, tell me about the city that fell to the Demon,” I said. “And about the different counties?”

  “Hmm.” Masha scowled thoughtfully as she administered one of the potions to a semi-conscious man with a badly broken leg. “Well, Myszno has only three cities of any size. They are Karhad in the south, Litvy to the north-west, and Boros to the far north. Karhad is the Ducal seat, where the House of Bolza reigns. It was the capital of Myszno long before it became part of Vlachia, a place of learning and industry. There are factories and mills, and many artisans live there. Lumber, metals, and mana are shipped from Boros to Karhad to be refined before they are sent back to Litvy, where they begin their journey west to Taltos. Here – thread this needle for me. My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be.”