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

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “I’m okay. I’m okay. I just… too fast.” She shook her head. “This is all happening too fast. I don’t want to think about HEX or Dad or fight or see… I don’t do blood and guts. I never wanted this kind of quest. I just wanted to make stuff with my friend.”

  “Yeah, I bet.” I gently prised her off me, and helped her to the stool. Rin took a seat, rocking back and forth as she began stimming by drumming her fingers, becoming quickly absorbed by the pattering of her hands in her lap.

  Once she was situated, I I turned my eagle eyes to the desk and shelves that stood near it, and picked out any odd-looking feature I could spot. My gaze snagged on a shiny copper container that looked kind of like a vacuum-sealed bread box with a hatch on it, complete with a small, spoked wheel to unlock and reseal it.

  Curious, I drifted over and twisted it open, then flinched back as warm red light spilled out through the crack. It beat against the skin of my fingertips like sunlight, but the feeling didn’t intensify or get uncomfortably hot. There was no alert from my HUD, either. I opened the hatch again, wider, and hmm’d when I saw what lay inside.

  It was a collection of rubies. Some of them were as big as a golf ball, but most of them were smaller than a dime. They were all rough-cut and unpolished. Each stone had a glowing heart the color of blood: a deep crimson light that pulsed when I pinched a stone between thumb and forefinger and lifted it up.

  Quest Updated: The Slayer of Taltos

  After breaking into the secret laboratory of Kanzo, the Slayer of Taltos, you have discovered a mysterious, magically active crystal. Volod Andrik needs to see this.

  Reward: 50 EXP, Mysterious Crystal [Quest Item].

  “Hey Hector, what did you just find?” Suri looked over sharply. “I got a quest update.”

  I held the crystal up for her to see. “This thing. Hey, Rin: do you know what kind of crystal this is?”

  Rin looked up, still mute and obviously distressed, but when she saw what I was holding, her eyes widened. She held out her hands, and when I gave her the stone, she held it up to the light.

  “I can’t identify it,” she whispered. “My Analyze ability doesn’t work on it.”

  “Some kind of mana crystal?” I was thinking back on what very little knowledge I had of magic. “There’s bluecrystal and greencrystal… could there be redcrystal?”

  Suri shook her head as she joined us. “Never heard of redcrystal mana.”

  “This doesn’t look like normal mana crystal. Too heavy.” Rin passed it from hand to hand. “I don’t know what it is. No wiki entry. It’s definitely magical.”

  “Our quest says we should bag it, tag it, and take it to the Volod.” Suri motioned to the notes on the desk. “Read anything interesting?”

  I looked down. “If you need someone to read anything, I’m not your guy.”

  “You can’t read?” Rin asked.

  “Technically, yes.” I held up a finger. “Functionally... we’d be down here for hours. I’m pretty dumb.”

  “Apparently, or you’d know that can fold the notes into your Inventory and get the menu to read them to you,” Suri replied. “Just hand them back to us so we can each rip a copy.”

  “Right. I keep forgetting that we’re virtual reality plague ghosts.” I gathered up the notes, and didn’t even have to stuff them in a pocket: my HUD flashed an alert as soon as I’d collected all the papers into a pile. Another 50 EXP, and a New Quest Item: [Kanzo’s Notes]. There was also another Quest Update, which told me that we’d now collected enough evidence to present it to the Volod.

  Suri’s nose wrinkled. “Plague ghosts?”

  “Well, yeah. Me and Rin both died of the HEX virus in our, uh, ‘previous lives’.” I motioned to her with my head. “Hence, plague ghosts.”

  Rin nodded.

  Suri tilted her head. “What’s HEX?”

  “How can you not know what HEX is?” Rin blurted.

  I discreetly elbowed her in the shoulder.

  Suri shrugged. “Whatever. Anyway, I want to get back to Andrik with these documents – they’re all the evidence we need. Hurry up and read.”

  Rin nodded. After a second or two, her eyes began to rapidly scan back and forth, reading text on a display I couldn’t see. Same with Suri. I stood there and let my HUD spoon-feed the information straight into my brain. Then I had it read me the entries. Most of them were developmental notes, written in a mixture of Common and Mercurion scripts. I couldn't decipher the Mercurion scripts, but the HUD narrator read me the others inside the privacy of my head. It even did it in Kanzo's voice.

  "Mart 2, 1655: Failure, again."

  "Temmuz 7, 1655: Failure. Body perfect, but did not wake. I'm going to have to scrap her and start over."

  "Junia 8, 1656: This body is not at all like the last one. Wise humans say that the definition of insanity is doing something wrong over and over again... well, this time, I'm sure she will be right, even if her form is unorthodox. I will take her to the Seid fount in Mount Racosul and raise her on my Wakening Day. I hope she wakes... I PRAY she wakes."

  "Junia 8, 1656: I did it! Sweet merciful ancestors, you have given me a child! All these years of scraping together and spending everything I could on mana. I bathed her in the vault at the heart of the volcano and she woke! She cannot breathe well yet but that does not matter. She lives! The cognition system with the linked crystals in suspension is so much more efficient than the orthodox pressurized seid methods. Already, she is unusually intelligent and quick-witted. Even better, she treats the memories in the Ruby Mana like her own memories! This old artist will finally have the proper vessel... someone who can pass along my work in its proper form and continue to instruct Rin. I can hardly believed my child is alive. I already have a name for her, but I dare not write it down."

  "Well, shit." After a minute or so, Suri clicked her tongue and crossed her arms, leaning against the edge of the desk with a faraway expression on her face. "He did it."

  Rin's expression crumpled as she read the same notes.

  "Wait: there's more." I skipped ahead, to where the writing became more erratic, and got the HUD to start narrating where I saw a lot of exclamation marks and caps. The entry read: "Julius 23, 1657: THEY TOOK HER! THOSE BASTARDS TOOK HER FROM ME! Phaedra, ancestors, what do I do now!?? I have to find her. At least she didn’t have the memory stone in place already - my worst nightmare."

  "Wow," I said. "Check out Julius 23rd. It's 1657, isn't it?"

  Rin ground the heels of her palms against her eyes. "Yes."

  I clicked my tongue. “Looks like you were dead on the money. Someone is blackmailing him. They kidnapped his daughter.”

  "Did you know he had a juchi down here?" Suri asked.

  Still covering her eyes, Rin shook her head.

  "Not for an entire year?"

  The Mercurion girl looked up sharply. "No! I didn't know, okay? I didn’t know he owned this lab. I wasn’t even here in 1655."

  “Hey, guys - cool it down a bit. We’ve got our evidence now. Let’s take these and the gem to the Volod,” I said. “Rin, do you want to come with?”

  “I-I can’t.” The girl hung her head. “If he meets me, do you really think he’ll let me go?”

  I winced. “Prooobably not.”

  “Please, just let me stay. I want to fulfill the current terms of my quest, and it wants me to investigate this place more deeply. Why don’t you come back to the shop tomorrow? I know you broke in here with good intentions, but… I just… I need some time alone. Here – let me send you a Friend Request. You can find me or message me whenever you need to. I’m a Mod – I mean, I should be a Mod – so I can’t block anyone.”

  A second later, my HUD chirped. I swiped the interface in.

  [Player Rin Lu has send you a Friend Request. Do you accept?]

  I accepted the request. Suri shot me a dark look, and I didn’t need to be a genius to know why. In pretty much every murder-mystery I’d ever played in a game, the murderer was the least-l
ikely person in the room. In nearly all circumstances, that person would be Rin: adorable, vulnerable, smart but loyal to her surrogate dad despite him being some kind of freaky mad scientist. I glanced around the room. We knew it was actually Kanzo who was murdering people, but we didn’t know if he had help or not. And if he did...

  Suri seemed to be reading my mind. She crossed her arms. “Rin, you should be advised that I’ve taken snapshots of everything in here. This lab is a key crime scene, and if you disturb it any further, you will incriminate yourself.”

  Rin cringed away from her. “I won’t do anything, I swear. I don’t even want them to know that I know it’s here. They’ll arrest me.”

  I nodded. “Be careful.”

  Suri and I left her in there, carefully shuffling through other papers on Kanzo’s desk. We headed back through the cellars to the workshop in companionable silence.

  “Weird question,” I said. “Do you have any past-life memories of being a cop?”

  “You’ve got a real hard-on for this past life stuff, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but seriously. I’m just saying you have a real police-y vibe about you.”

  She shrugged. “Why does it matter?”

  “Maybe I have a problem with overbearing authority figures,” I replied.

  “Hah.” Suri snorted. “Then you’re just gonna love the Volod. He can be a bit of a knob.”

  Night had fallen by the time we left the workshop and walked to the roadside stable. Suri unhitched Cutthroat and saddled up, while I searched anxiously for Karalti. I could sense her nearby, but... “Hey, girl, where are you? Are you alright?”

  “I’m right behind you,” Karalti replied.

  I swept my gaze over the darkened street, over the roofs, and then the stable. “Uhh... where?”

  There was a shuffle from the alley beside the stable building. My head turned at the sound, and even though I knew she was there, I couldn’t see anything - until suddenly, I could. Karalti had assumed dragonloaf form on the ground: legs bunched up underneath her, foreclaws tucked under her chest, her wings held close to her body. But it was like staring at an optical illusion. She seemed to phase in and out of the darkness. The parts of her obscured by shadow disappeared entirely.

  “Whoa.” I stumbled away from the stable as Karalti stood up tall, shaking out her leathery wings.

  “What’s that?” Suri called as she rode Cutthroat out into the street. “Oh. Wow.”

  Chapter 19

  Karalti had grown again. As she paced out soundlessly into the open, my eyes widened.

  The dragons of the Skyrdon had holographic hides that flexed under light – some kind of aerial camouflage that made them harder to spot while flying. Karalti’s scales were on a completely different level. The parts of her immersed in shadow simply vanished, as if they had turned invisible.

  From what I could see of her, I was guessing that she was now about thirty feet long, including her tail. Her head was now held up on a long, elegant neck. Her horns were longer and thinner, and crested around the back of her her skull like a fan - or a crown. Thick seams of opal glinted and shimmered between her scales. She was slimmer and smaller than the fully grown adult dragons I’d seen at the Eyrie, but Karalti now had the same regal bearing, the same graceful raptorine build as her elders. But even more so. Young as she was, there was an arresting presence to her that the other dragons hadn’t had. It was the charisma that her mother would have been able to manifest, had she been free.

  My heart rose into my throat, part pride, part confusion. I scrolled back through my notifications, and sure enough, there it was. She’d hit Level 5 somehow. My Princess Tidbit was already becoming a Queen.

  “Karalti...” I approached her, hands held up. She crooned as I came closer, bent her muzzle down, and touched the end of her snout to my palm.

  “I’m sorry I got mad,” she said. Her voice was still youthful, but no longer childish. It was deepening, having moved from adorable-but-sometimes-irritating shrillness to a silken soprano. She sounded like a thirteen-year old girl… fourteen at the most.

  “It’s okay, Tidbit,” I replied. I wasn’t actually sure if it was or not, but I’d vowed to myself to let Karalti grow into her own person… dragon. Dragon-person. She had to have some independence if she was to be free.

  “It’s not. I ran because I was embarrassed and scared.” She hung her head. “But after I took wing, I remembered your encouragement… and I remembered the promise I made to you.”

  “Promise?” I lay a hand on the side of her throat. The intense heat of her body radiated through my glove. Twin heartbeats thundered under my fingertips: one fast, the other slow.

  “I told you I’d become the strongest. And when I felt more grown up, I remembered, and I listened to what you said. I embraced the suck.”

  I grinned, and then the grin turned into a chuckle.

  The dragon crooned in her throat. “I went and hunted the monsters outside the city wall. I accepted that I’m not a baby any more. I have to grow.”

  I rubbed my hand down the length of her jaw, massaging the powerful, tense muscles that connected her head and neck. I couldn’t stop marveling at the difference a single level had made to her. “You’re… you’re beautiful.”

  Karalti arched her head and shoulders against me, like a marking cat. The old mischief was back in her eyes. “When I levelled, several of my Words spoke up in me. My Blood tells me that I’m ready to take my first Path. Can you help me?”

  “Of course.” My chest swelled with an odd feeling. Pride? Sorrow? I wasn’t sure. Barely a week ago, Karalti had been my little Tidbit. And now? It was weird to be sentimental over a virtual pet evolving like this – I knew this is what she was supposed to do – but I couldn’t help it. I had the feels. “Karalti... I’m so proud of-”

  “Hey, Hector. I don’t want to bust your bubble or anything, but Cutthroat’s getting a bit narky over here,” Suri called from across the street.

  I wasn’t sure what ‘narky’ meant, but given what I knew of Cutthroat, I could guess. I looked back to see Suri holding the hookwing’s head back as she pranced and snapped in frustration, dancing from one foot to the other. She tried to turn her head and bite Suri on the leg. The Berserker whapped her, and Cutthroat squawked in irritation. Her affection for Suri apparently only went so far.

  “Jeez. Guess the honeymoon’s over.” I rested a hand against the base of Karalti’s neck. “Are you still okay with me riding on your back?”

  “Yeah!” The dragon watched the hookwing’s antics with quiet, predatory amusement, the tip of her tail lashing in and out of visibility.

  “Then you.. uhh… you’re going to have to crouch down a little,” I said. “You got taller, remember?

  Karalti yarped a saurian laugh, then bent down and put her foreclaws on the ground. I tried to remember how Knight-Commander Arnaud and the others had mounted their dragons. They climbed up their wings, but Karalti’s wings still looked a bit delicate for me to do that.

  “You could use your Jump ability?” she suggested.

  “Oh. Right.” I tensed, and triggered Jump. I leaped up lightly onto her back, dropping into a crouch as I landed. “So, we’re going to see the Volod. You should be able to come into the palace with us. After that, it’s training time.”

  “As you wish. I’ve already eaten, but not enough to be earthbound,” she replied, starting off.

  “Do I want to know what you had for dinner?”

  “Nope. Probably not.”

  ***

  Vulkan Keep was a cave castle hewn from the tough, brittle, water-rich rock of Mount Racosul, the dead volcano that rose over Taltos. To get there, you had to leave Taltos from the Temple District and travel up Mount Racosul along a heavily guarded switchback road. The entry to the Keep’s gatehouse was across an arched bridge over a small chasm of dark, swift water. I didn’t know a huge amount about castles – pretty much everything I’d learned was from playing tabletop RPGs – but I
could tell that no one was breaking into Vulkan Keep without some serious firepower. The outermost barrier - the curtain wall - had small windows and plenty of murder holes and other defensive features. The battlements bristled with ballistae, slings, and spikes - a monolithic ‘fuck you’ to any would-be invaders. I wasn’t sure that even dragons would be of much use here, because the majority of the Keep was inside the mountain. It was no wonder Taltos had been able to hold its own against an entire empire without falling.

  We rode through the towering iron gates of the Keep with an escort, who left us once we reached the entry to the inner castle. Black and white marble floors swept us into the Great Hall, which was entrenched in the cave system interwoven with the palace. The Great Hall reminded me of a cathedral vault: Black and red Corvinus family banners hung from the walls and ceiling, which receded up into inky darkness far above. Sweeping red-carpeted stairs led up to a tall throne, currently unoccupied. All of the doors in here were big enough that Karalti could join us.

  She padded behind Suri and I as a servant led us through several hallways, rang a little bell, and then opened the hidden door. Andrik was sitting in an overstuffed scarlet armchair in front of a roaring fireplace, his boots propped in front of the fire. He was wearing his crown, a dark steel and ruby circlet. An eagle in a hood slept on a perch beside his left hand, its head tucked back against the top of its wing. Across the room were two other men. The High Forgemaster sprawled on a gilt golden chair that barely contained his bulk. Father Petko Matthias sat on a smaller wooden chair, smoking his pipe. He smiled when he saw Karalti.

  “Good grief.” Andrik unfolded his hands from his belly, sitting up straight in his chair. “For a moment, I thought you’d brought your hookwing into the Keep, but then I saw her wings. Suri, and... Hector, was it?”

  “Yeah. I mean... yes, Your Majesty.” I cleared my throat a little awkwardly. The firelight dancing off the gems in his circlet caught my eye, and I noticed that they glowed in a way that reminded me strongly of the gem burning a hole in my Inventory.