Trial by Fire: A LitRPG Dragonrider Adventure (Archemi Online Chronicles Book 2)

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “Suri?” I queried her name in the database.

  [No such player found.]

  I felt a twinge in my gut: my intuition, warning me of something. I tried a different spelling, but got the same system message. Had she blocked me already? But no… that couldn’t be it. I’d seen her player’s corona in the High Priest’s office just a second ago.

  “Ugh.” I scratched my head and sighed. “Why do I even care, Karalti?”

  “You told me you wanted her on our side, but that’s gonna take longer than one day. Grumpy lady is smart and brave.” Karalti bobbed her head. “And bouncy.”

  That made me chuckle, but I was still annoyed. At Suri, at myself, at the murders. I picked up my pace and hustled for the outside courtyard, whistling for Cutthroat. The hookwing appeared, and before she could give me any shit, we climbed onto her back. I pulled her around, and kicked her into a run, following the glowing marker on my mini-map. Between the quest update and the fact that the listening device had been discovered, I had a feeling our murderer was going to strike soon, and strike hard.

  The orphanage was down near the Skyport: a three-story wooden manor house with an attached warehouse I assumed was a workshop or school. Both the house and warehouse had definitely seen better days. We pulled up with a screech at the front doors, and I vaulted off Cutthroat’s back to the wet cobblestones. The doors were guarded by two men in the chainmail-and-plate uniform of the city guard, and they pulled their swords, scowling with suspicion.

  “Halt! Who-”

  “High Forgemaster Toth sent me. Father Erik is in danger,” I said, holding my hands up. “Has anyone else come in in the last thirty minutes or so?”

  “What? No.” The guard on the left, an exceptionally thin man, shook his head. “Father Erik has a guard posted in his quarters. I see you work for the Volod, but…

  “We’re not supposed to let in anyone with weapons due to there being children inside. Captain’s orders,” the other one said. “Hand over your steel, and you may enter.”

  “The Slayer is in there!” I snarled. “I work for the Volod, and we need to get inside! Let me pass!”

  “We can’t-”

  Karalti marched forward past me. She threw her head back and emitted a shrill roar, splattering droplets of flaming spittle everywhere. “Bad men! Out the way!”

  Both guards jumped out of the way with cries of terror, brushing frantically at the burning spots on their armor.

  “That’s my girl,” I muttered, and barged in past them.

  The inside of the building reminded me of a school. Kids’ drawings covered sheets of curling, yellowed parchment on the walls and the side of the wooden staircase. I fought the urge to barrel to the top of the stairs at full speed. Instead I stealthed it, dropping to a crouch and using one hand to guide my way across the old wooden floor. Karalti dropped down as well, and we silently followed the quest icon to a room behind a pair of double doors. I listened at the keyhole. Instead of the normal sounds I’d expect of a teacher’s bedroom at this time of night: throat–clearing, the rustle of papers, the scratch of a quill, chit-chat between Father Erik and his bodyguard–there was nothing except the swish of fabric, and a soft metallic clinking.

  “Claws and teeth only. No fire,” I thought to Karalti, tightening my grip on the Spear. “The building’s made of wood and there are children in the rooms below us. If you breathe fire here, you’ll kill them all.”

  “Oki.” Her telepathic voice was a whisper. “On count of three?”

  “Yeah. One, two...three.” On three, I kicked the door and charged in.

  And then nearly stopped cold, because holy shit.

  Father Erik and the guard were both dead. The guard lay on his face, a crossbow bolt protruding from his eye. Father Erik was naked, kneeling on his bed, and kept upright by an intricate net of ropes with hooks that stretched his skin out from his body. Standing over him was a tall, lean figure in a hooded cloak. His face was covered with a flat steel mask that burned blue with magical sigils.

  Before I could even open my mouth, the Slayer of Taltos dropped what he was doing, spun in a flurry of black cloak, and dashed for the window.

  Chapter 10

  “Hold it right there, asshole!” I barked, sprinting after him.

  The Slayer didn’t hold anything. He dove through the window with inhuman agility and confidence, leaped across the alley below and onto the next roof. Without slowing, he hit the tiles with a crunch. Broken ceramic skittered to the street three stories below, and he kept running.

  Pulse thundering in my ears, I vaulted the windowsill and triggered my core Lancer ability, Jump. Dark power gathered in my legs and then snapped out. I bounded after him like a cricket. Karalti was right behind me, flinging herself into the sky with powerful beats of her wings.

  “Flank him!” I sailed through the air and landed behind the fleeing murderer, scattering loose tiles beneath my boots. He jumped to the next roof, swung around a metal chimney, and fired something at me: a crossbow no bigger than a Beretta Model 12. I dodged reflexively, already partially off the ground. Just as well. The bolt slammed into the roof and blew a hole in it, sending shards of brick flying into the air.

  Great. He was packing explosive rounds.

  The awkward mid-air correction threw me off course, and instead of landing on the level part of the roof, I hit the slope of it and slid down in a wave of broken tiles. I sprung up desperately at the edge of the gutter, jumping again before I fell to the street below.

  That last minute effort propelled me across the gap, and I triggered my new Spider Climb ability just before I hit the waist-high wall of the balcony on the opposite side. Power surged through my limbs, crystallizing as I slammed into the wall with a crunch.

  “Ow, ow, ow!” Snarling, I scrambled up like a gecko, vaulted over, then ran along the balcony as the killer’s cloak flickered in and out of view above. The obstacles of the city ahead of us seemed to present no challenge to this guy at all. Like some sort of parkour prodigy, he hurdled and pivoted, vaulted and slid through it with eerie precision. Meanwhile, I blundered like a drunk rhino through tables and potted plants, getting on top of one and jumping to the next, wash, rinse, and repeat, until we reached the main road. He turned left across the roofs along the strip. I had nowhere to go but up.

  “Follow him, girl! Be careful!” I urged as I got onto a balustrade, bunched my legs, and Jumped.

  “Oki!” I heard Karalti’s chaaaaaa and saw a burst of white light above. “I got him!”

  I sailed up through the air and managed to grab the edge of the gutter at the height of my flailing arc. I scrambled up in time to see the killer trying to shoot Karalti as she flew rings around him. Her napalm fire was bubbling and flaring on the rooftop. He fired at her, missed, and dodged the next stream of flame, even managing to twirl the edges of his cloak away from it as he fled. My world narrowed down to that retreating back.

  He fled to an adjoining belltower with an open door at roof level: a tall, narrow building where Karalti and I would be less effective.I was gaining on him by the time he vanished through the doorway. For a moment as I followed him through, I really wished I had a gun. He was sprinting up the spiral staircase inside the tower, taking the stairs two or three at a time. I spotted the motion of his cloak in the darkness and ducked as another explosive crossbow bolt shot out with a bright flash,like a tracer round. It slammed into the wall and bounced. The explosion cracked up and down the hollow center of the tower.

  “Fly up from the outside! Cut him off at the top!” I called to Karalti as she tried to follow behind me through the door.

  She reversed course like a swallow as I ran up behind the murderer, sweat pouring down my face. I burst up onto the deck of the bell tower. The wind whistled over the railing, the heavy bell still and silent. Karalti spiraled up, beating her wings to hover in mid-air to my left.

  “Can’t smell him,” she said. “Bad man has no smell!”

  “No smell?”
I leveled my spear and advanced cautiously, ears prickling as I turned each corner and tried to see down to the roof below.

  Like a ghost, the man slid out of the shadows behind me in a wave of rippling black fabric. I saw him in my peripheral vision, and he froze momentarily in surprise as I met his backstabbing blade with the haft of the Spear of Nine Spheres. It hit him in the gut with a dull ‘thud’, as if I’d rammed it into the side of a log instead of human flesh. It apparently still hurt, because he doubled over, his glowing sword skidding off in a shower of blue-white sparks, and the ozone smell of mana seared my sinuses as I sent it skittering away with a foot and carried the kick around. He blocked the strike with one arm, almost absently. There was no crunch of breaking bone. It was like hitting a mannequin made of hard rubber.

  I lunged for him with the spear blade, and he dodged once, twice, and then spun into my guard. I headbutted him. The mask fell off, but all I saw of his face was a silver flash as he grabbed me, spun around, and threw me over the railing like I weighed nothing.

  I caught his clothing as I went over the edge, and pulled him down with me.

  “Hector!” Karalti screeched and dove for us, catching my hair and belt and flapping to slow our descent, but the murderer must have been built out of lead bricks, because he weighed a ton. Karalti almost fell with us, but she helped me orient in the air - when we slammed into the enclosed courtyard beneath the tower, I was on top.

  [You have taken 84 points of impact damage!]

  I grunted with pain as the impact bounced me like a basketball, and managed to avoid sticking myself with my own weapon as I tumbled over the ground, and flipped up to my feet to confront the Slayer. He climbing to his feet from the broken paving stones. He staggered briefly, hunched and limping, but turned to stare me down.

  The Mercurion’s face was not that of a vicious psychopath. He was angelically handsome, his delicate countenance twisted up into a mask of fear and desperation. His eyes burned blue, internal mana spiraling in around white pupils. Silver hair clung to his face and stuck up strangely around the winglets that curved back from in front of his ears. The cuts and tears on his silvery skin were leaking glowing white mana, not blood. I had just enough time to notice that before he bared his teeth and threw something at Karalti.

  Karalti, while agile for a creature of her size, could not get out of the way in time. The gas-spewing device struck her, but she swatted it back toward us with a squawk of alarm. The smoke that billowed from it swept over me with the wind.

  [Warning! High concentrations of mana in the area may cause Stranging in nearby NPCs!]

  [You resist the dispersed mana!]

  For a breathless moment, I waited. Nothing happened, and the Mercurion’s eyes widened.

  “Tarn takhrar, motherfucker!” I triggered Bluster, regaining a few Adrenaline Points and some HP, and spun at him through the smoke with Blood Sprint, dark energy crackling down the length of the spear and into his body. The strike smashed into him, and the Blood Storm combo chain blew him off his feet.

  [You hit Mercurion Assassin for 228 Damage!]

  [You inflict Bleeding!]

  The man backflipped midair, righting himself, and managed to land in a crouch.

  “KIAHH!” I slammed the spear down along the ground. The energy gathered from Blood Storm burst out through the Umbra Blast maneuver. It tore the cobblestones and knocked the Mercurion off his feet a second time. This time, he couldn’t get up. He was visibly panicked now; his crossbow was out of bolts, and the mana flare he’d pitched at us was obviously some kind of last resort. I Jumped forward and pushed the end of the Spear up beneath his jaw, pinning his head to the ground.

  “Mercy.” he croaked. “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand that you’re a sick fuck who just tried to turn me into a monster,” I snapped. “That shit mutates humans!”

  Karalti was rolling on the flare like a cat with catnip. The white gas turned dark on contact with her scales, like thunderclouds charged with violet lightning, then was absorbed into her body. “Funny gas!”

  The Mercurion reached up to push the Spear away, but I dug it in until his fingers slipped away and a thin trickle of mana ran along his jawline. I glared down at him. “You. You’ve got five seconds to tell me who hell you are before I cut your head off and take it to the Volod on a platter.”

  His eyes narrowed. The mana in them roiled like lava, folding into the white pupil and then blooming out again.

  “Three seconds, psycho.” I drew on the Mark of Matir and sent a flash of dark energy down the length of the weapon. The Mercurion cried out, writhing in pain.

  “There are… things worth dying for…” he gasped. “What I am doing is… for one of them.”

  “Alright. Suit yourself.” I put pressure down on the blade to cut his throat.

  “HECTOR!” Karalti shrilled from behind me.

  I sensed the disturbance before I saw it: a puff of air, a cold shadow swimming overhead. I spun away just as something crashed down where I had been standing only a second before. It was a brass-and-steel automaton: a crab-like turret the size of a pit bull. It had four spiked legs, and a body that was little more than a platform for a repeating crossbow.

  It fired bolts in a strafing line, chasing me away from the prone assassin. I Shadow Danced away with a snarl of frustration, reappearing as the Slayer, wide-eyed with terror, scrambled to his feet. Karalti spat a gout of fire that incinerated a crossbow bolt, flapping back up into the air as a second dog-sized artifact bounded into view. This one shot wildly at the pair of us as it approached. I took two hits: one to the arm, one to the calf. Their metal bodies were almost entirely soundless, save for the sharp *tang* of their feet as they stamped the ground.

  Karalti’s fire splashed the newcomer and sent it tilting away with a crown of flames, while the other backed off. The Mercurion! I searched around wildly, and saw him jump from a pipe to a windowsill to a roof and then vanish behind a chimney. Furious, I chugged a Brightlace potion, recovering 75 HP, and started running.

  Another shadow figure, the one I hadn’t seen, peeled away from behind a pillar and tackled me to the ground. I hit hard, brought down by the desperate bear hug of what felt like a stack of bricks. I cursed as we wrestled there in the dark. My attacker crawled away, shielding their face with their hands, and rolled onto their back as I clambered to my feet and leveled the Spear at them.

  It was a girl. Another Mercurion.

  “Please,” she said. Her voice was high and breathy, her eyes wide with terror. “W-wait, please. Don’t kill me!”

  Nostrils flaring, I took a step away from her. This Mercurion was, in a word, adorable. Big eyes, an open, expressive face, a bob of translucent glassy hair, an up-tilted nose and a slim, girlish body. Like all of her race, she was unearthly. She was also flagged as a player character, with a strange-looking HUD ring: her blue corona had a gold ring around the edge.

  She put her shaking hands up in the universal gesture of surrender, and didn’t try to rise off the ground.

  “Get up.” Breathing hard, I took another step back. The Mark of Matir sent spikes of ice through my blood, charged with power just waiting to be released. “And call those death machines off my dragon, or I’ll kill you.”

  Slowly, the girl picked herself up. “T-Their names are L-Lovelace and Hopper. Not ‘D-Death Machines’.”

  “You don’t say.” I reached up, twisted the bolt buried in my arm, and pulled it out. With the combat rush pounding through my body, it didn’t hurt as much as it should have. Even so, the pain replenished some Adrenaline Points. I threw the bloody bolt at her feet, and she flinched back, covering her face.

  When she cowered, I hesitated - but not for more than a second. This girl screamed ‘honeypot’, from her ankle-length scarf to her cute little short-shorts and her wide-topped boots. She had spell gloves on both hands, which meant she could do magic.

  “That man you just let go? I caught him murdering an NPC.”
I whirled my spear around into a combat position and stomped a foot down to center myself. The maneuver recharged some more AP, and distracted her from my dragon. Karalti was slowly flanking the girl. She vanished into the shadows, while the pair of automatons skittered back and forth uneasily hanging back to either side of me. “And YOU just stopped me from bringing him to justice.”

  The Mercurion girl shook her hands, and when she spoke, her voice was shaky with fear. “Please... he’s not like this. He’s an artist, a Master A-A-Artificer. He-he-he wouldn’t n-normally do this! I-I...”

  “Call. Your. Fucking. Robots. Off.” I wasn’t buying the ‘panicky little kid’ act.

  The girl’s hands shook as she held them out, and gestured. The mana in her gloves flared, and the two artifacts obediently scuttled around to their mistress. They fell in to either side of her.

  As I tracked their movements, I saw a small flash on the ground where I’d just about dropped the male Mercurion: a pendant with a broken chain.

  “Hold steady,” I ordered Karalti. “Stay hidden. And if she tries to cast anything, blast her.”

  “Oki.”

  “He’s going to murder other people now. You know that, right?” I said aloud, moving slowly toward the necklace. “He’s already killed three others. Don’t you care about those NPCs?”

  “Of course I care!” The girl shook her head, her hair flying out. “I’m trying to say that Kanzo wouldn’t normally do this. He w-wouldn’t-”

  “Except that he would. He did. I literally caught him skinning a man in his actual goddamned office.” I gestured angrily in the direction of the hospital.