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

by James Osiris Baldwin

  I dropped out of the end of the drain into knee-deep, slowly moving water. It wasn’t a sewer channel, because it was clean. The tunnel looked quite a lot like an old mine shaft, with stone supports holding up a gently curved ceiling. Water ran and dripped everywhere, slowing me as I waded forward. I was wary of monsters... this seemed like the perfect place to hide everything from fish-men to slimes and giant maggots.

  When I reached a dry tunnel, I clambered out, shook myself like a dog, then started to run. I was a hot panting mess by the time I broke out into a circular chamber stacked from floor to ceiling with old bones. This had to be the ossuary.

  “Okay. I’m here. Kind of.” I checked the map - Rin wasn’t far away now. “I’m heading up on your position.”

  “Alright - we’re almost at the meeting site. I’m glad this meeting is going ahead for your sake... but I’m sad it’s going ahead. Kanzo is desperate to get his juchi bastard back.”

  “Don’t call her that to her face, or this whole thing is a bust.” I ground my teeth, hurrying through the halls of bones, and peered around a corner to see torches gleaming barely a hundred feet away. The flickering light they cast bounced off a vaulted ceiling overhead, like an underground church. I moved my head from side to side, focusing my eyes, and zoomed them in to see Rin idling by Kanzo’s taller, tenser form. When she spotted my light, she waved to me.

  I only advanced when I was reasonably sure this wasn’t some kind of ambush. As my circle of light joined theirs, I got a good look at the Slayer of Taltos for the first time since almost killing him. Compared to how he’d been during our tussle near the orphanage, he was a mess. His clothing was torn and patched, and his silver mask had a giant crack running through it. Whatever magic allowed Mercurions to see through them without eye holes apparently still worked, because his face tracked me as I approached.

  “Long time no see, Mister Slayer.” I swallowed down the dark impulse to leap on the man and throttle him. “Nice bombs. I really enjoyed getting blown up, arrested, and forced into being here today. How’s the murder business going?”

  “Spare me your snide lecture, sang’hi. I’m not proud of what I’ve done.” Kanzo drew himself up arrogantly. “I did what I had to do for my daughter’s sake.”

  “Like bombing Main Square back into the stone age?” I asked. “You know that the Volod and Voivode weren’t there, right? Or are you just killing any human in your path right now?”

  Kanzo’s hands clenched into tight fists. He took a step forward, light rippling in an uneven wave across the surface of his mask. “You self-righteous-!”

  “Hector, Kanzo, please.” Rin put herself between us, facing Kanzo. “Call a truce for now at least, okay?”

  I put my hands up. “Sure. I’m a big boy. I just want Kanzo here to know that the only reason I’m not tearing his dick off and choking him with it is because the Volod is holding the most important people in the world to me hostage, and it’s all thanks to his uncontrollable urge to breed.”

  Kanzo rattled something off in the clicking-and-snapping language of the Mercurions, only to be sharply rebuked by Rin. Whatever she said got him to back down, but he continued to radiate fury, like a grumpy little sun.

  That was enough poking the bear for today. I sized them both up, leaning on my spear. “How did you two manage to find each other so quickly? Seems like you weren’t telling me and Suri something important, Rin?”

  Rin flushed a vivid, deep blue. “I... I was going to, before we got blown up and arrested. When I escaped the workshop, I went into the Cellars. I... umm... I ran into some monsters, and I died. I’m not very good at fighting, especially just by myself. When I respawned, I woke up in Kanzo’s camp. I think it shocked him almost as much as it shocked me. Well, it happened this time, too.”

  “Andrik is almost as much of an animal as this King of Cats,” Kanzo muttered. “Beating my poor little Rin to death.”

  “You feel alright now?” I asked her, brows furrowing.

  “Yeah. I don’t really remember the whole ‘being beaten to death with a spear’ thing very well. But because of this, I decided to multiclass into a Mage Path...” She trailed off, spotting something behind me.

  I turned my head slightly to adjust my blind spot. Directly behind me, two torches were bobbing up and down in the darkness. One torchbearer was tall and broad-shouldered. one was painfully skinny. My keen vision picked up the shadows of at least five Meewfolk who split into the shadows in the doorway, moving on silent, padded feet.

  The arrogance left Kanzo’s body: his shoulders loosened, his fingers uncurled. He came up beside me, enmity forgotten. “Ebisa! Ebisa, is that you!?”

  I grimaced at the raw pain in his voice, keeping an eye on the quest timer. I had just under fifteen minutes left before I had to be out of here and back on the way to the castle. I took the ruby and clenched it in my fist.

  “I need to speak to the King first,” I said quietly. “I’m on a time limit.”

  “I haven’t seen my child in over three months!” Kanzo hissed back.

  Rin turned on her Craftmaster. “Be quiet!”

  Kanzo flinched like he’d been slapped. “Rin-?”

  “I don’t want to hear it.” Rin turned her nose up at him and, to my surprise, reached out and clutched my arm as the King of Cats and his lieutenant drew near. They were both cloaked and hooded. Ignas was wearing a bandit bandana across his lower face. Ebisa had broken with the red theme today. She was dressed head to toe in black leather, with a matte-gray fox mask that was nearly invisible in the darkness of the underground.

  “Well, look who it is.” Ebisa was entirely inscrutable except for the acid tone of her voice. “Dragozin. ‘Father’. And you... you must be Rin. I’ve heard all about you, though I never had the chance to meet you.”

  “I’m pleased to finally meet you, too.” Rin put her hands together, palm to palm, and bowed gracefully from the waist. “And I’m sorry we were never introduced... or I would have spoken earlier.”

  Ebisa crossed her arms. “Of course you weren’t. That would have meant Kanzo would have had to admit his abject failure as a craftsman, and no self-respecting narcissist could ever bring himself to do that.”

  Kanzo advanced a step, reaching out to her. “Ebisa… how can you say such a thing about me? I’ve been worried to death since you were-”

  “Kidnapped?” Ebisa turned her attention back to Kanzo. “Only in your wildest fantasies of persecution. This man has been more of a father to me than you ever will be. This is Ignas Corvinus, the true king of Vlachia, and I am working for him.”

  Kanzo pushed his own mask up with a trembling hand. His beautiful face was wide with shock and pain. “Working? You work for this… this sang’hi?”

  “Yes. And by extension, so do you.” Ebisa drew herself up, looking down at him.

  “You used me?” Kanzo’s voice shook as he took a step forward. “You made me kill those humans?”

  “Yes.” Ebisa moved back away from him. “Because when I escaped that accursed containment tank and your laboratory, I ended up in Cat Alley. And there, I tried to find my way by contacting other juchi, other bastards. And you know what happened? They were so disgusted that they tried to murder me. The other bastards thought I was an abomination!”

  “You’re not an abomination! You’re my miracle!”

  “Yours?” Her whipcord body tensed. “Is that why you locked me away in a vat?”

  “You weren’t going to be contained for long! It was a temporary measure until-”

  “Months.” Ebisa reached back and pulled a dagger from her belt. “I was in that vat for months.”

  “Because you weren’t breathing properly on your own!” He retorted. “How can you blame me for creating you, nurturing you, teaching you? I gave you everything I could!”

  “You created me as a plaything to gratify your own vanity, and you expect me to be grateful?”

  Kanzo regarded his ‘daughter’ bleakly. “Every Mercurion al
ive was created for one single purpose, Ebisa - cannon fodder. That’s all our taboos are for: they ensure that the same body-plans are made over and over again. Short-lived, uncreative, inflexible cannon fodder for a war that has been raging two centuries. But you? You are something new, something better. You can live longer, be cleverer and have a memory better than any Mercurion in known history. You don’t have to be… an…”

  “Assassin?”

  “No! You have the potential to be the greatest artificer this world has ever known.”

  “And maybe that’s not what I want to do,” Ebisa replied. Every word landed like a whip crack. “Maybe I like working for Ignas. Maybe I care more about politics and community and the welfare of Vlachia’s people than I do about tinkering. Maybe I enjoy my chosen Advanced Path. Did that ever occur to you?”

  He sighed. “And here I thought I’d created an improved design… a person capable of learning all I have to pass on. But you’re bitter, twisted, like every juchi I’ve ever observed. I have failed.”

  Before I could interrupt, Rin swelled up like an angry kitten, stalked over to Kanzo, and slapped him so hard that his head snapped to the side and he stumbled.

  “Look, I’m sorry to interrupt the family reunion, but I have something really important and time-sensitive to give His Majesty.” I said. “Sire, your brother has demanded to see you. He gave me this, and told me it has the coordinates for a meeting so that he can expose you as being someone other than his brother. Which seems kind of dumb to me - unless he plans to lure you into a fatal trap. Point being, if you don’t go there at the appointed time, he’s going to execute me and Suri, send my dragon back to Ilia to become a broodmare, and declare a pogrom on the Mercurions and Meewfolk. We have to act - there’s no more time to sneak around in the shadows. And if you can prove your identity, I’m sure you’re going to have the support of at least Janos Lanz and the new Forgemaster.”

  I held out the ruby. Ignas and Ebisa looked at each other.

  “How unfortunate. He is not here in person.” the man said. He removed his half-mask, and my heart sunk. This guy looked like Ignas, walked like Ignas... but he wasn’t quite Ignas.

  “Christoph is His Majesty’s doppelganger,” Ebisa said, with a shrug. “While I hate to pull aside the curtain of deception so soon, you surely didn’t expect that the real Ignas Corvinus would attend a meeting that was as potentially dangerous as this one?”

  “I...” I looked back at Rin, who had her hands to her mouth.

  “Fortunately, you have recourse, Dragozin. Give it here.” Ebisa held out a hand. “I can read it.”

  “No.” Kanzo ran forward, trying to intercept us. “No, if there is some fell magic in that stone, it could infect you-”

  “Then let it infect me. It is my decision to make, not yours.” Ebisa snatched the stone off my palm, removing her mask with her other hand. When she bared her alien face, Rin gasped. Ebisa sneered knowingly.

  “No no no! I’m sorry!” Rin squeaked. “I just... the composition of your features... they took me by surprise-”

  “Believe me, kitten, I am less surprised by your reaction than you are by my face.” Ebisa reached up and plucked out one of her gemstone eyes - the inner right. She palmed the bigger ruby and inserted the new one. It was too small to fill the socket, but it flared to life as she spoke. “Bahn, Odam, Vorhis.”

  The stone’s light flared, and Ebisa’s hands dropped to her sides. She went very still, like a doll… and like a doll, she had no eyelids and didn’t blink.

  “Tell us where Andrik is going to meet Ignas,” I urged her, moving in closer. “Because I’ll go with you to wring that asshole’s neck.”

  “Well, I would, but there’s a problem.” Ebisa grimaced, and reached up to remove Andrik’s ruby. “He has not recorded a challenge. This stone is blank.”

  Chapter 41

  "What do you mean, it's blank?" I stared at Ebisa in disbelief.

  "Empty. As in, there's no recording." She frowned, pursing her lips. "Clever little weasel."

  I wasn't sure if I was going to scream or explode. Some childish part of me railed that this wasn’t fair, that the bad guys weren’t allowed to be this smart, this manipulative. That they had to play by the rules. I’d heard from someone here before only a couple of days before - Rin, sobbing that Kanzo had gone and acted on his own, beyond the norms she expected would contain him. I’d been working on that basis, too.

  “Ebisa, can you and Fake Ignas here make recordings onto those stones?” My voice came out hard and cold.

  “Certainly,” Ebisa said.

  “Then record a message. A challenge, from Ignas to Andrik. And I’ll take it back.” I flexed my shoulders and cracked my knuckles. “Ignas doesn’t even have to attend personally. We set Andrik up. And then we kill him.”

  A sly smile spread over Ebisa’s lips. “I like the way you think, Dragozin. I know the perfect spot, too - the Imperial Crypt under the Church of the Maker, in the center of town. Ignas always said that if he were to choose one place to face his brother-”

  “No!” Kanzo stomped his foot, fists balled by his sides.

  There was a pregnant pause.

  “No? What do you mean, ‘no’?” I turned to face Kanzo. “We’re doing this. If he’d left Karalti out of it, I’d be perfectly fine with staying out of politics and letting him go his happy little way. But that fucker is holding my dragon hostage. My dragon. I’ve got thirty minutes to do something about it.”

  “Ebisa, I made you to be a scientist!” Kanzo was aghast. “A crafter! Not some… some human prince’s assassin!”

  “As you so graciously noted before, I am very bitter and very twisted.” Ebisa’s rough voice oozed sarcasm. “But by the look on Rin’s pretty face, she’s about ready to join me as an honorary juchi.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way, Ebisa! You are my daughter! My miracle!” Kanzo replied hotly.

  Ebisa’s features froze. “And you are nothing. Leave us.”

  “No! I will not let you go through with this nonsense after everything I did for you!” Kanzo stormed toward us. “Give me that stone!”

  Ebisa teleported as Kanzo lunged at her, zipping to one side in a flicker of shadow. He blundered into one of the pillars supporting the vaulted ceiling.

  “You are no longer necessary, Kanzo.” Ebisa drew a second dagger from behind her back. This one was a very finely-made weapon, with a thin blue glow humming around the edge of the blade. “Leave, before I remove you.”

  Kanzo looked between us, nostrils flaring – but wherever he turned, he saw only hostile stares. Even Rin was glaring at him, though she looked to be on the verge of tears.

  “Rin, please,” he begged. “You cannot let them do this. You cannot be a part of this!”

  Rin clasped one of her own wrists, kneading it anxiously. “You know… you never asked me.”

  “What?” Kanzo did a double-take. “Ask you what?”

  Her piercing blue gaze flicked down. “How I felt about this. How I suffered. What I felt when I found your lab… or how I feel now that I’ve met Ebisa and seen her pain. You never asked me what I wanted, or thought about whether this would hurt me… and I don’t understand why you made Ebisa if you knew what other Mercurions would do to her. You knew, or you wouldn’t have hidden her away. Now she has to live with what you did, and you...”

  “You are Starborn and perfectly formed, Rin, but you are not of my creation,” he replied. “Rin, you must understand, I lost everything when I left Zaunt, I-”

  “What about her? Did you ever ask Ebisa how she felt?” Rin motioned to Ebisa. “Did you ever ask her what she wanted?”

  Ebisa snorted.

  Kanzo glanced at her. “It wasn’t the right time. When she was older-”

  “Get out.” Rin pointed at the door, still staring between her feet. “I never want to see you again.”

  The elder Mercurion hunched back. And then, without a word, he turned and fled.

  “Are you sur
e that’s a good idea?” I said. “That guy has killed a lot of people.”

  “The blood he spilled stains my hands.” Ebisa’s husky voice was oddly subdued. “He was merely the tool I used for the executions. Now, come – we must record that stone, and then you must return to the Volod. And I will give you something else, too.”

  Ebisa sheathed the enchanted dagger she had been holding, and offered it to me.

  “This?” I took it hesitantly, and had a look at its stats:

  Ravenstar Dagger

  Magical Weapon

  Slot: One-handed

  Item Quality: Excellent

  Damage: 36-45

  Durability: 100%

  Weight: 1 lb

  Special: +30% chance to cause Bleeding; +2% chance to instantly kill any human/demi-human opponent.

  An engraved dagger belonging to the House of Corvinus, believed to have been forged by Taltos, the demigod son of Khors.

  “This is Ignas’ heirloom dagger,” she said. “His gift to me when he made me his lieutenant. Present it at court with the stone, and Andrik will have no choice but to answer his brother’s summons. Make sure you have witnesses.

  “Will Ignas show?” I glanced at Christoph, who shrugged sheepishly.

  “I think he will, yes,” Ebisa said, rolling the empty stone in her palm. “Assuming Andrik accepts. If he does, Ignas is an honorable man, and what happened at Kobayaz and in the plaza today broke his heart. He knows this has been a long time coming.”

  ***

  I arrived at Vulkan Keep with five minutes left on the clock. It touched 4:59 as I raced Cutthroat in through the gates, blasted past the guards, and rode her up the staircase that fed into the dragon-sized doors of the grand hall.

  “Halt! You canno-!” The guards leapt in front of us, crossing their halberds over the threshold. Cutthroat blasted through them like a cannonball.

  “OH YEAHHHH!” I shouted on the way past.

  Andrik was holding court for the day: he lounged in his throne at the back of the room, listening to a Minister reading off a long parchment scroll. There was an entire crowd of people assembled inside the vaulted throne room, and every one of them turned to stare and gape as the Giant Velociraptor Express came roaring into the building. Andrik stood up from the throne in shock. The Kingsguard encircled him warily. We pulled up just behind the minister, who yipped a girly scream as he stumbled out of the way of the steaming, snorting hookwing.