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

by James Osiris Baldwin

  Suri bowed from the neck. “Your Majesty. We have learned the identity of the killer and obtained evidence of his identity.”

  “Really?” Toth shifted up and leaned forward.

  “Who is it?” Andrik sat up straighter. “I heard there was a battle at the orphanage... and that you did not arrive in time to stop him. You have not bought me a head, so I assume he lives.”

  Suri and I looked at each other. She began to step forward, but I blurted it out first. “His name is Kanzo. He is a Master Artificer and-”

  “Mercurion.” Andrik’s dark eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. “Kanzo is the artisan we commission our mana-powered carriages from. And you’re certain that he is the murderer?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. And I would like to emphasize that he is acting alone. But the situation isn’t as simple as a single depraved killer running wild.” I watched the Volod uncertainly. As his ringed hands clenched the arms of the throne, I remembered that this man had ultimate power over what happened to us in Vlachia. It felt like staring down a lion. “He is being blackmailed into committing the murders.”

  “An assassin is an assassin,” Father Matthias said heavily.

  “I would hear the circumstances anyway.” Andrik waved him down. “But first, the evidence. How can you prove what you have discovered?”

  I took the honeybee necklace and gem from my Inventory. Suri procured the papers. She handed them to me, and I passed them to the Volod, who barely even looked at the necklace or papers - just the gem.

  “Where did you find this?” His voice was suddenly very tight and very formal.

  I glanced at Suri again. I had no idea how to handle pissed off kings, and clearly, neither did she. By the way he was swelling up, I really didn’t want to tell him about Rin. She’d be stretched over a rack before the night was through.

  “He dropped them all when he escaped the orphanage,” I lied. “I got a few blows in before he escaped out the window, and cut the bag he was wearing.”

  [Bluff failed!]

  “Do not lie to me, Tuun. I am not a stupid man.” Andrik looked up at me piercingly. “Speak the truth. This is your last chance.”

  “He was keeping a secret laboratory that he hid from everyone he knew,” Suri said, butting in. “He was trying to create a new Mercurion child by himself.”

  “That is an extreme perversion by the rules of their society.” Father Matthias spoke up again. “And that is what I assume is being used to blackmail him?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “There is no way he could have gotten this gem.” Andrik stood, a slim silhouette in front of the fire, and held the stone up to the light. “And yet... somehow he has.”

  I crossed my arms. “What is it, Your Majesty?”

  “This is a Corvinus Ruby,” Andrik said. “A gem exclusively collected by my House. It is an extraordinarily rare form of mana crystal. There is only one known cache of it in the world.”

  “In Vlachia?”

  “No. In Dakhdir.” Andrik gave Suri a little nod. “A mine with a secret location that only those of the House Blood know. The House of Corvinus learned this secret when my ancestor Izemir the Splendid went on crusade to Dakhdir. These gems helped him become the first of our House to rule Vlachia.”

  “Other than being rare, does it have any magical purpose?” Suri asked.

  “Yes. Corvinus Rubies have a single, unique property that is unheard of in other forms of crystal mana.” Andrik touched the gems in his crown. “They can store memories and knowledge. If you know how to access those memories, they can be replayed forever. It is how we earned our House motto: ‘What the Raven learns, he shall never forget’.”

  “That explains why Kanzo would want them,” I said, looking over at Karalti. She had been utterly silent since arriving in the room, resting back on the base of her tail. “To give his creation the capacity for memory and recollection.”

  Suri nodded. “Or to store his own memories. He’s a Master Craftsman. He’d want to transmit everything he knows to his successor.”

  “It is absolutely forbidden for commoners to possess one of these stones.” Andrik paced, smoldering with rage. “This disrespect to the Crown... only a non-human is capable of such insolence. I should burn the Silverskins’ hive to the ground.”

  “This man was acting in secret, Your Majesty,” I said quickly. “His own people would have killed him if they’d known what he was doing. This was his crime alone.”

  “Khors’ breath... I know my own people better than you do, Tuun, and I’ve punished my subjects for less than what you just said.” The Volod snapped back.

  Karalti’s eyes narrowed, and her head came forward, neck rippling like a snake’s. I lay a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

  Toth cleared his throat, glancing at the dragon. “Your Majesty…”

  “Your Serene Highness, the Herald of Matir means no offense,” Matthias said smoothly. He was refilling his pipe, and did not look up at either of us as he spoke. “It is the nature of the Black God to contest and challenge, in order to provoke us to our height of intelligence and reason.”

  Andrik grunted, but the words seemed to calm him down. His pacing slowed.

  Distraction was probably the best tactic right now, so I nodded and moved on. “Where could Kanzo have gotten a collection of these rubies, your Majesty?”

  “Were this stone cut and polished, I’d have said that this Keep is the only possible location it could have come from,” Andrik replied testily. “But it is uncut. Therefore, the only place it could come from is the workshop where these gems are processed. The Royal Jeweler is a human Artificer by name of Stefin Milosevic. These stones must be carefully worked by a specialist because of their mana content.”

  “Then we know who we need to see.” Suri nodded curtly. “We’ll speak to him straight away.”

  Andrik shook his head. “Not alone, you won’t.”

  Some system messages and two quest notifications popped up - one that I was expecting, and one I was not.

  [You have earned 100 EXP!]

  [You have gained 200 silver Rubles!]

  [Congratulations! You are Level 11! You have 2 unassigned ability points and 6 unassigned skill points!]

  Quest Update: The Slayer of Taltos

  After returning with your evidence to the Volod, he has identified the gemstone you found as a Corvinus Ruby: a rare, magically-charged gemstone hoarded by the ruling dynasty of Vlachia. Your next stop - Stefin Milosevic, the Royal Jeweler, whose workshop is in the Market District. You must question him.

  Reward: 75 EXP, 50 gold Olbia.

  Special: You must remain within range of Volod Andrik Corvinus III.

  Quest Updated: Restore the Spear of Nine Spheres

  Learn about the Ravensblood Ruby, Herald. Discover its location and properties.

  The second one made me swallow nervously. There was no reward, no conditions, no details... nothing. Just those two lines. It wasn’t part of the viral questline seeded by Ororgael. There was only one being in Archemi who could assign a quest and usually referred to me as ‘Herald’. Ye Olde God of Darkness himself, Matir.

  “I will summon my escort and ready my mounts,” the King said stiffly. “We will ride to Stefin’s. I will have words with him.”

  “Your Majesty? Is that wise?” Matthias stood. So did Toth.

  “I have decreed it. Our meeting is at an end.” Andrik slashed a hand. He stared at Suri, then at me. “You will be accompanying me, adventurers. And the dragon. My jeweler will not dare tell a lie in her presence, even if he dared to tell one in mine.”

  Chapter 20

  It was nearing ten P.M when we left Vulkan Keep. Suri and I rode with the Volod and his Kingsguard on destrier hookwings, war mounts with the same large, solid builds as Cutthroat. Andrik had shed his finery for a flame-scorched suit of armor and a fine, heavy cloak with a deep hood, which he kept pulled up as we traveled. Suri and I rode at the back of the procession, partially so that th
ey could lead us to the right place, partially so that Cutthroat didn’t maul anyone, and partially so that we could speak privately.

  “This stinks,” Suri muttered. “The whole damn thing stinks. There is no way we’re coming out ahead on this quest.”

  “What makes you think that?” I said.

  She pressed her lips together, and instead of speaking, she P.M’d me. “Andrik. Who else?”

  “Yeah. He’s awful twitchy.” I also grimaced. “Thinking about backing out?”

  “Not a chance.”

  I snorted. “How’d you get involved in this mess, anyway?”

  Suri looked down at the back of Cutthroat’s head, scowling.

  “Listen,” she said. “I’m not going to talk about my past. Not to you, not to anybody. If you’re not happy about it, too bad. I don’t owe you shit.”

  I thought about that for a couple of minutes, gazing out over the sea of lights shining up from the city below.

  Before HEX, while I was out on tour on the Crescent Front, I’d fought beside, rode beside, and cared for men and women who’ve been through Hell. Their trauma had eaten through them like toxic waste, and I counted myself beyond lucky to have come away from the Total War without crippling injuries or bad PTSD. Something about my psychological makeup and the experiences I went through had spared me. Suri may not have been so fortunate, so it was time to man up and eat some crow.

  “You’re right,” I replied. “And I’m sorry. I’m not going to lie, though. You’re frustrating the hell out of me, because I want to get to know you well enough that we can work together moving forward. That’s all I want, okay?”

  Suri didn’t reply. In profile, her long neck was proud, her face painfully beautiful, but her gaze had a far-off, bleak quality I was all too familiar with. It was the thousand-yard stare of someone who’d seen too much, done too much, but survived.

  “I’ll tell you one thing.” Suri next spoke as we were passing through the North Gate and back into Taltos proper. “I’m here for protection, too.”

  “Roger that.” I closed the P.M. and said nothing else. We’d built some kind of fragile trust, and I wasn’t keen on breaking it just because I was curious.

  “Whoa.” Karalti’s thoughts intruded into my own. “Bouncy Lady is intense, huh?”

  I snorted softly. “I didn’t know you were listening.”

  “Of course I’m listening. I can’t help it. Your Words wiggle around when you’re think-talking to your friends. I hear them in your body all the time.”

  Friends, huh? I could see Suri clearly in my peripheral vision. She didn’t know I could watch her so clearly from the corner of my eye, and so I watched as she sighed and slumped in the saddle. She looked tired. Determined, focused, but tired. And troubled. Very troubled.

  “Now that you’re big enough to give me a proper answer, I want to ask you something,” I said to Karalti. “What do you get out of this? Out of being with me?”

  The dragon cocked her head from side to side while she wrestled with the question, just as she’d done as a hatchling.

  “Lots of things,” she replied after a short time. “You’ve always been there, encouraging me and caring for me. You were the first thing I saw, so your Words were written in with my own… and now we will grow together.”

  “Doesn’t it bug you to carry this hairless monkey around on your back all the time?”

  “No.” Karalti reared her head back and snapped her teeth – the draconic equivalent of a ‘no’ headshake. “Neither dragons or humans are meant to be alone. That is why we form bonds of mind and blood together. As long as I’m with you, neither of us will ever be lonely… and that’s how it should be.”

  I was taken aback – and no lie, her words made me blush. A small nagging voice in the back of my mind told me that Karalti was an NPC, an algorithm and a personality made up from a base set of two thousand different people. That same voice told me that she couldn’t really love me, and she was telling me what I wanted to hear. I told that voice to shut the fuck up.

  “That’s about the best answer I could have asked for,” I said, patting my dragon on the shoulder. No way was I going to get misty-eyed while we were in the company of the Volod – or Suri, for that matter. “Speaking of growing, I guess we need to assign your points... and maybe start thinking about your Path. We’ve got fifteen minutes or so before we reach our target. You willing to tell me what you know about Words?”

  We were walking through the city proper. Karalti reached up with a clawed finger to scratch her chin. “Words make up everything in the world. There’s many kinds... They all wiggle inside of everything. They come together to make new Words all the time. When you get lots of them Wording together, they might make a Human, or a Solonkratsu, or the city or the sky.”

  I chuckled, and Suri turned to look over at us before she resumed brooding. “You’re describing code, Tidbit. Or DNA. Names for the proteins that build life.”

  “Yeah! The way Words work is like language... but even language is made up of Words,” she said. “Capital W-words, not just little w-words.”

  “Right. And there’s... 758 different Words?”

  “Nope. There’s lots more than that. But some of them are brighter and wiggle harder than others.” She swept her muzzle around in a half-circle, eyes gleaming brightly in the darkness. “And I think maybe some can be seen by humans, some by Meewfolk, some by Mercurions, and some by dragons.”

  In all honestly, I’d figured that Archemi’s magic system probably sucked – mostly because of the resource limitations imposed on the core magic classes, Mage and Artificer. But even if a Mage had limited mana and their mana could possibly kill them, they had some pretty epic flexibility when it came to designing and implementing spells. I’d already picked up one Word myself - ‘Ori’. Any time I’d heard someone use a variation of a Light-based spell, they always used ‘Ori’ in the incantation. The system probably meant that Mages and Artificers could become intense magic specialists of any kind, and there were probably Advanced Paths that facilitated them. “That’s actually pretty nifty. So... next question.”

  “Yeah?”

  “What spells do YOU want to learn?” I asked. “And of the three Paths... which one do you like the most?”

  “I can’t decide,” Karalti replied. “I want them all. You looked at my sheet yet?”

  I interpreted that as the game telling me that I - the Starborn P.C. - was meant to make that decision about my mount. “Not yet. I’ll check.”

  Karalti had 10 Lexica points now, more than enough to assign her a good range of spells. We now also had quite a list to choose from. Her spells were drawn from the Darkness element and the Life sub-element. I queried those first to learn more about what they meant, in terms of magic:

  Elements

  There are nine elements in Archemi: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Gravity, Time, Darkness, Aether, and Light. They are divided into three groups: The Physical Elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water), the Abstract Elements (Gravity, Time, Darkness, Light) and Aether, which is the Primordial Element.

  Aether is the foundation of all the other elements, the Prime Word which permeates existence and coagulates into Mana. It is unable to be worked by humans in its pure form, as most Aetheric Words of Power can only be inferred, not observed. The exception to this are the Ten Universal Words derived from Aether. These ten Words are the keys to all magic.

  Words of Power are used to manipulate and combine the other eight Physical and Abstract elements to magical effects. For example, if you speak the Words for ‘Strong Wind’ (Air), ‘Control’ (Universal) and ‘Levitation’ (Gravity) and channel those words into mana, the mana will react to your Will, transmute, and you cast the Fly spell.

  The Physical Elements deal with material phenomena, and knowledge of the Physical Elements is very important for Artificers and Alchemists, as well as those who hope to become Conjurers or Elemental Specialists (Aquamancers, Pyromancers, etc). The Physical Elements are �
��paired’ in opposition to each other: Earth and Air are a pair; Fire and Water are a pair.

  The Abstract Elements are subtler, dealing with unseen or immaterial forces that nevertheless exert a powerful influence on the world. They are important for all practitioners of magic, but especially for Thaumaturges, Spirit Knights, Paladins, Baru, and other similar classes. The Abstract elements function in complementary pairs: Darkness and Light; Time and Gravity. Unlike Physical Elemental pairs, which clash, Abstract Elemental pairings support and energize each other to the point where they are functionally inseparable.

  Every element has sub-elements within its auspice. You must research more to understand the potential of each element.

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose as I slogged my way through the info dump. I was sure there was another reason the Devs decided on this particular system - to weed out stupid people who wanted to become mages. Sadly, I understood why. There really was nothing worse than an idiot who thought he was the smartest kid in the sandbox min-maxing himself into infinity and then doing dumbshit things with spells he had no idea how to handle.

  I decided to check out Life first, because Karalti had that elemental subtype, but Life wasn’t listed on the Elements Archemipedia page. To my surprise, querying ‘Life’ redirected me to the Darkness wiki entry:

  Darkness (Element)

  Darkness is the element of potential in the absence of light: potential for harm, potential for life, potential for danger, power, growth, and decay. Along with its complementary pairing, the Light element, it is the element most strongly associated with living creatures.

  Darkness can be functionally divided into four sub-elements: Death, Life, Knowledge, and Shadow.

  Death magic relates to all matters related to death and dying: kill effects, life drains, spells that inflict potentially fatal damage to living things, and the control of spirits.