Warsinger

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “Get that Overseer!” I snarled.

  Lahvan wasn't strong enough to take it out, but obediently charged in anyway. The Golem generated a translucent, prismatic shield around itself as the Shade engulfed it, and soon the two were wrestling - shadow twining around the shield as the golem repeatedly shocked Lahvan with bolts of brilliant electricity. As it did, the Turks all turned around as one unit, aimed their muskets at them both, and opened fire. The rounds shredded Lahvan, but passed through him and struck the orb’s living construct core. It burned out in a sputtering shower of sparks, deactivating just as the shadow let out a sigh and collapsed, his HP spent. The Turks froze in position, some of them in the middle of loading balls into the ends of their muskets.

  [You defeated Mechanical Turks! You gain 325 EXP! Karalti gains 325 EXP! Suri gains 325 EXP!]

  [You lost Common Shadow Rogue Lahvan.]

  “Hahahahah, yeah! Eat it!” When I turned back, Karalti looked pleased, but Suri looked… uncomfortable.

  “Hector…” Suri said. “Was that what I thought it was?”

  “Uhh. A shadow?” I rubbed my head through the Raven Helmet.

  “Did you summon that?” she asked. “Summon as in ‘Necromancy’?”

  “Yeah. I kinda did.”

  “And you just sent him to his death?”

  “Technically, it was already dead. The guy I pulled it from was also a dick.” I jerked my head down the hallway. “That gunfire’s probably attracting some curious baby sandworms right now, so maybe we can go before we're crushed to death? Pretty please?”

  “Sure.” Suri sounded dubious. “Let's go.”

  Suri and I both took muskets and several Phantasmal rounds with us. We followed a row of dim torches past open empty cells, until we reached the Warden's Quarters. Suri and I took positions by the door. She indicated for the mages to stand back, and mimicked a spell by wiggling her fingers. They nodded and took position.

  Suri gently slid a large key into the lock. She tested it, joggling it back and forth, then began to count down with her fingers. Five, four, three, two... one.

  I nodded. Suri turned the key, pushed the handle down, and opened the door just enough to kick it in.

  “Down on the floor! On your knees! Now!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, sighting down the musket barrel as we all piled in after her into a filthy, disorganized mess of a room. Tables groaned under messy stacks of books, some open, some even just thrown on the ground. Empty dishes, tankards, cast-off sacks and waxed wrappers lay everywhere, massed up in loose piles around piles of artificing scrap and crafting materials of all kinds. There were rows of urine-filled jars, some with lids, some not. The smell in this close, stuffy little suite of rooms was almost as bad as the corpse-filled corridor.

  And like the corridor, it was silent. The dead, leaden silence of an abandoned house.

  “You've got to be fuckin' kidding me.” Suri's face flushed with heat as she dropped the barrel and began frantically searching the room, as brutal and thorough as a prison guard pulling apart a jail cell. We spread out, searching under the tables, in the closet, in all the other human-sized spaces. All we found was rotting food, soiled bedding, and a weird device that looked like a small Tesla coil with three pylons. The pylons were set at equidistance inside of a frazzled magic circle in one of the only clear spaces in the suite of rooms, and the burned plastic-and-wet earth smell of mana hung thickly on the air.

  “Guess we know what Path one of or both of them were.” I held my breath, trying to choke out the gym locker smell. “Yeesh. They clearly forgot to build a bathroom here.”

  Suri paced around the edge of the circle like a caged lion. “They were in here for a couple weeks, building this piece of shit, and then blew the corridors knowing it’d attract the sandworms. Those motherfuckers.”

  “Can we work out where they went?” I gestured to the device, then to the shelves and tables.

  “How the fuck would I know?” Suri snapped back. She whirled around and stalked to the bookshelves, then pulled one of them over like it weighed nothing. She began frantically tapping the exposed walls to search for hollow panels or secret doors. “I don’t even know if I could pick them out on the street. Half the time, it was so dark in the Dregs that I could barely bloody see them. The rest of the time, they were jamming pokers or other shit into me, and I was screaming my fucking lungs out-”

  “Hey, hey. It’s okay,” I said, trying to soothe her. “We'll find them, one way or the other. If anyone can do it, it's us.”

  “Those motherfuckers!” Suri put a boot to one of the chairs and kicked it full-force across the room. It smashed the far wall and shattered, sending wood shrapnel skittering across the circle. “Those absolute CUNTS!”

  Karalti and I hung back, collecting notes and journals as Suri stopped looking for them and began to trash everything within reach: glasses, books, and finally, the table underneath. She slammed both fists onto it as she sagged into a chair, put her face against her forearms, and began to shake. That was when I went to her and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “We'll find them, somehow,” I said. “But you need to pull yourself together long enough to get home. We got people to get to safety.”

  “I know. I know.” Suri's voice was raw with barely controlled fury. “But we aren't gonna find them, Hector. You know it, I know it. They're fuckin' gone. And they… those little piss-ants sent the guards to my cell to just start up like business as usual, you know. They had months to think about what they're fuckin' doin' down here, and they... they were gonna just...”

  “We'll find them. But you need to get on your two feet and we have to bail out of here.” I clapped her back, hard enough for her to feel it through her blackened metal shell.

  “Suri.” Karalti looked up over, an open book resting in one hands. “I don’t know if it’s any help, but I’ve got some names here. It looks like one of them was writing a lot.”

  “Hit me.” Suri closed her eyes, straining to regain control.

  “Jacob is the guy that did the writing,” Karalti said, scanning the page. “And the other guy he’s writing about is Nicolas. He doesn’t seem to like him much.”

  “Jacob and Nicolas?” Why were those names so familiar?

  “Get everything you can.” Suri climbed to her feet, and the three of us began shoveling papers into our packs. That lasted maybe ten seconds before the ground began to shake. The ground jolted from side to side; the torches guttered, swaying as the tunnel roof groaned overhead.

  The sandworms were here.

  Chapter 10

  A rush of primal fear lanced through my gut. Every Californian knew that sensation of the earth about to rise up under their feet, split apart, or liquefy. The rumbling built, and built, until the few bookshelves we hadn't turned over began to sway back and forth.

  “It's the fucking Sandworm Queen.” I began to backpedal for the door. “Run!”

  No one needed telling twice. We scrambled out of the door and bolted past the fallen Turks, the piled corpses, and down the blasted hallway. I heard a wall explode in behind us, scattering chunks of stone and sending clouds of dust up into the air.

  We burst back into the field hospital to find pandemonium: the healthy were gathering what injured they could, carrying or dragging them as the ground bucked fitfully beneath our feet.

  “Here!” Suri hauled up one unconscious man, and threw him unceremoniously over the back of Cutthroat's saddle. “Hector, Karalti - take Cutthroat and get out of here! Don't worry about me; I'll catch up!”

  “Suri-” I started, even as Karalti grabbed my forearm and began to drag me toward Cutthroat.

  “No! Don't you dare argue with me about this.” Suri bared her teeth, hauling one patient up into a fireman's carry over her shoulder. She squatted down so one of the other prisoners could slump another body over her other arm. “If Karalti dies, we're fucked! Get her and Cutthroat out of here!”

  She had a point there. I sprung onto Cutthr
oat's back and dug my feet into the stirrups, caught Karalti's hand as I urged Cutthroat into a sprint, and swung her up onto the saddle as we fled.

  Cutthroat wailed, trying to turn her head back toward Suri until a huge chunk of stone dislodged from the ceiling and nearly smashed into us. It spooked her so bad that she practically bolted back toward the surface. We ran through the junction and swung a hard left up the wagon entry tunnel. Al-Asad crumbled behind and around us. As soon as we hit the straight upward climb I whipped Cutthroat to a full sprint: head down, spine and tail held stiffly out behind her. I looked back for Suri, but couldn't see her in the chaos - and then we burst out into the fresh desert air, clawing through a crowd of agitated rebels, prisoners, and captured guards.

  “Where is she?” Karalti searched the crowd.

  “I don't know.” I wheeled Cutthroat around, reaching back to make sure our injured passenger was still loaded on properly. The dinosaur snapped at people who got too close, clearing a fifteen-foot circle of space with her claws and tail. When the crowd got the hint, she reared up and barked. “Cu-CAW! Cu-Caw!”

  “Uhhhhuuu.” Karalti groaned, clenching my thigh with one small hand. “I don't know if she's gonna make it.”

  “She will.” I kept Cutthroat on a short rein, waiting and hoping.

  Men and women were shouting over one another, pressing towards the curtain wall and the single small exit out into the desert. There was a gritty crunch from deep within the tunnel, and then the walls simply sloughed off and collapsed, the tunnel folding down behind it.

  “We can't leave her in there if she dies!” Karalti squeaked. “Her spawnpoint is in the Dregs, and the Dregs are underwater now!”

  An awful chill passed through me. Karalti was right. Suri's cell was now full of tons of stone and water. If she died and respawned there, she'd continuously wake up and die, wake up and die. It was the exact same scenario that had turned Ororgael from a bitter-but-otherwise-ordinary guy into an authoritarian mongrel who considered himself to be the rightful god-king of Archemi.

  “She's not dead,” I insisted. “She's in our party... if she died, I'd get a notification or something.”

  But as the minutes passed, even I began to feel uncertain.

  In the swirling cloud of dust, I saw a glimpse of red. There was a heavy clanking that could be heard over the deep crunch of shattering stone deep within the collapsing labyrinth - faintly at first, then louder as Suri mounted the ramp. She was almost seven feet tall in her black horned armor, carrying the limp forms of the two prisoners she had rescued over her shoulders.

  Around Karalti and I, every one of the Fireblooded and a good number of the other prisoners went to their knees.

  “Sultira!”

  “Sachara malik'i!”

  The Dakhari began calling out as she came to a stop, as confused as we were. She looked to me. I shrugged.

  “Righty-o then.” Suri carefully slid one of the swooning men down into the crook of her arm, and lowered him to the ground. She said something harsh in Dakhari to them all and made a shooing motion. People rushed forward to take the injured, and then ran with them down toward the gate as more ominous sounds ground out underneath our feet.

  “You ready to go, lover boy?” Suri said.

  Before I could reply, there was an ear-splitting crack from deep below our feet. The ground lurched, and the gatehouse folded inward like a house of cards. The prisoners and rebels reacted before we did - they ran, sprinting toward the gatehouse and the exit.

  “Karalti!” I vaulted off Cutthroat's back.

  “Okay!” The smaller woman was off just behind me. She unequipped her armor and flung her arms wide. Her small frame blurred into a shimmering mass of color.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” The ground was starting to tip. I equipped Cutthroat's muzzle and harness. They appeared on her body like a bondage outfit. She squawked in protest. “Get ready to swing up and fly!”

  “There's no time for the harness!” Karalti ducked down, spreading a wing. Suri scrambled inexpertly up the slick leathery surface. I Jumped from the ground to Karalti’s shoulder, hooked a foot under the saddle grips, and flopped down on my belly to help the woman climb.

  Cutthroat honked in confusion, turning this way and that as the stone beneath us began to split and rupture.

  “Cutthroat!” Suri screamed her name as I hauled her up to the saddle. “Stay!”

  Karalti bellowed, and as soon as we were all on her back, she surged into the air, driving up a storm of dust and broken rubble. “Hold on, everyone!”

  “Grab the straps and saddle grips!” I shouted back. “Don’t let go!”

  Suri flattened herself as best she could, yelping when Karalti pivoted in the air and thundered down, reaching for Cutthroat with her long hind feet. The hookwing cried out piteously as the stone liquified to sand beneath her claws, and she abruptly sunk to her knees - only to be pulled free like a cork as Karalti snatched her up like an eagle grabbing a fish out of a lake. The drag caused Karalti’s whole body to shudder.

  Karalti beat her wings frantically, striving to climb into the air as the biggest monster I’d ever seen surged up from the earth toward us. Five fleshy lobes peeled back from a fang-lined tunnel that could comfortably fit a subway train. The [Sandworm Queen] had three black skulls next to her name. My eyes widened. She was Level One-fucking-Hundred.

  “We're going to Taltos!” I roared. “Don't let go!”

  Tentacles reached for us from below, but my dragon was faster. Suri and I had barely braced ourselves when she folded into nothingness and vanished.

  Chapter 11

  We hung in a motionless, bone-chilling black void. I couldn't feel the other players, the saddle, or sense Karalti's mind. Fear began to gnaw at my guts as the nothingness dragged on and on... but then, I felt a rush, like the sensation of rising up through cold water, and we burst out into the middle of a raging thunderstorm.

  Karalti roared as the wind sheared under her wings and sent her careening to the side. She was a strong flier, but the air around Vulkan Keep, the Volod's castle, was so rough that she almost went tumbling over. Suri screamed with real terror as she lurched into a steep dive, pulling her wings close in an attempt to streamline her body and minimize resistance.

  “Hold on!” I yelled back to her, bent over the front of the saddle. “We have to get out of the shear!”

  “Don't worry! We'll make it!” Karalti's mental voice was tight with strain as we plummeted through the metal-gray clouds and broke out into the rain. Lightning flashed by us, splitting the sky with the burned-plastic stench of ozone.

  I knew from experience that the lighter an aircraft was, the worse the turbulence. As large flying things went, Karalti was pretty light: her innate magic reduced her terrestrial weight by three quarters while flying, meaning she weighed a bit over two and a half tons on the ground but less than one when she was in the air. Her body jerked up and down and side to side as we streaked toward the parade ground at Vulkan Keep. I could see it already - the huge plaza attached to the Volod's skyport was blazing with lights, marking the way for incoming airships. As soon as I sighted it, Karalti read the image from my mind and angled in that direction.

  The rain slashed us as Karalti broke through the worst of the rough air, fighting not to be tipped over into a roll. She groaned as she curved her back and snapped her wings out. Gravity slammed us down against the saddle, gradually letting up as the dragon leveled into a shallower, slower dive. I shrugged it off, but Suri wasn’t doing so well. She wasn’t big on wide open spaces, and her Strength and Stamina didn’t do anything against the power of g-forces. I saw her slump dizzily, her hands loosening.

  “Suri!” I pushed up and ran, balancing on the heaving surface of Karalti's back, and threw myself down to snatch her wrist before she went flying over Karalti’s shoulder. “Stay awake!”

  “Urrrgh.” Suri was fighting it, struggling to stay conscious. I held on for dear life as Karalti lurched to one side - the si
de weighed down by Cutthroat.

  “I'm not sure I can land properly!” Karalti said shakily. “Hector, I'm down to seven percent stamina-!”

  “You can do it!” I snarled, bracing myself on the pitching platform, and hauled back with all my strength. Suri’s Stamina was coming into play now: she shook her head, snorting like a bull, and clawed toward me. When she was on, I flopped down over her back, dug hands and feet under any straps I could find, and hung on.

  Steam billowed from Karalti's boiling-hot scales as she swung her heavy lower body forward, threw her wings back and beat them hard. Not only did she have to land while exhausted, she had to touch down on one foot so as not to crush Cutthroat against the paving stones. For a second, it seemed like she'd be able to pull it off - but then a gust of wind slapped her from the side as her claws made contact, knocking her foot out from under her and tripping her. The dragon bellowed. With her second heart pumping, she was still only half a ton, but in her effort not to crush us all, she twisted awkwardly onto her keel. The ground shook, and I felt something in her chest snap with a dull wet crack of bone separating from cartilage as she slid to a stop on her belly, heaving for breath.

  “Fuck! Karalti!” I forgot everyone and everything else in that moment. I pushed up off Suri, vaulted down, and ran to Karalti's head. She was still breathing, and her pulse was strong. I felt along her neck as she groaned, down to her wingshoulder. She was too large and I was too gentle to find anything wrong at first - but when I shoved, she snarled and reared her head.

  “Urrrghhh... I hurt.” Karalti's mental voice was groggy. “Is everyone okay?”

  I looked back. Cutthroat was running for us, calling for Suri. Suri was sitting up on Karalti’s back, having a discreet panic attack. “Yeah. Everyone made it except you. What's hurting? Can you move your wing?”