Warsinger

by James Osiris Baldwin

  The bile rose in my throat. I took a sip of champagne, but no matter how hard I tried, it didn't help.

  “You pulled up any memories on those names? Jacob and Nicolas?”

  I wracked my brains. They were definitely familiar real-Earth names, but I just couldn’t place them. “Give me some hints? Tell me anything you know about them – maybe it’ll jog my memory.”

  “Well, one of them was a big tall bastard,” Suri said. “Half-giant. He was always the one in charge of everything, really. The little guy we called Rat was always taking orders from him. The Giant used to call him Rat, so that’s where the nickname came from. We didn’t know it then, but after knowing Rin and seeing the weird corona she has, I know now they were Architects…”

  “That’s it!” I exclaimed, loudly enough that a few people glanced in our direction. I waved them off and set my glass down before dropping my voice again. “Fuck, now I remember. Rat as in Ratzinger, as in Jacob Ratzinger… Rin mentioned his name to me during a call a week or so ago. He’s a member of the OUROS programming team, which means… uh…”

  I trailed off, not sure how to explain to Suri what an Artificial Intelligence programmer was. The only way I could potentially describe them was as the Architects who had quite literally created this reality and everything in it. But even my emotionally immature ass figured that telling Suri that her torturers were some of the most powerful entities in her reality would not be good for her mental health.

  “Which means…?” She cocked her head.

  “They, uh, made the Words of Power that mages here use,” I said weakly. “Rin told me they created magical languages. She didn't know them personally, in case you're worried she's been holding out or something... she just knew OF them.”

  “Nah. I don't think Rin is in on any of this.” Suri shook her head, and a curl from her hastily pinned hair slipped over her cheek. “Anyway, it doesn't matter. I'm gonna hunt ‘em down, and do something to stop them before they hurt other people. They're just as bad as Baldr, Ororgael, whatever the fuck his name is. They’ve gotta pay.”

  “Yeah. They should.” Even as I agreed with her, I found my mind going back to the massive list of chores, quests, repairs, and expenses Myszno required. Guilt pricked at me. “No one hurt you this time, right?”

  “Nah. All words and bad memories.” She snorted, tucking a scarlet curl behind one of her dark ears. “First thing the guards said to me when I spawned back in my cell was ‘Welcome home, Princess’. Haven’t heard that one in a while.”

  “Princess? You?” I gestured across the room with my glass to where Queen Eevi had pinned Ignas beside a piano, boxing him in with a strategically placed daughter. “You see that over there? The girl watching Ignas with the shark eyes? THAT is a princess. Her mom probably started drilling her in how to snag a king as soon as she squirted her out of the royal cooter.”

  “Oh my god, Hector.” Suri rubbed her eyes.

  “Ooooh yeah, hey there daddy Ignas, what a big throne you have oooh ooooh yeah”.” I put on my weirdest nasally girl voice, even as the princess gave a fluttering little laugh at something Ignas said and conveniently thrust her chest up toward him. “Ooohh yeah baby, you wanna see these princess nips?”

  Suri coughed on her sandwich, and fumbled for a glass. She took a great big heaving draft of it.

  “Fuck you,” she gasped. “I'm going to go read my bloody journals and let you embarrass yourself here.”

  “Want to meet Rutha first? She's cool.” I motioned to her. She was sitting in her chair in a quiet corner of the room, talking to someone who had come with Rupert of Gilheim: a handsome young dude in elegant, close fitting black clothing and a very stylish hat. When I looked over at her, she caught my eye and smiled.

  “I will. I'm not ready yet.” Suri shook her head. “Once I’m out of this fucking dress and I’ve caught up on sleep, sure. I’ll ask her out for a girl’s night out, have a couple of drinks or something. I don’t know if she’ll be up for it, though. You know she's still sweet on you, right?”

  I winced. “Yeah. I wasn't sure I was reading her correctly, but... yeah. I don't know what to do.”

  “Easy. Be honest with her and me, and Karalti,” Suri replied. “Don't say you’re gonna do one thing but then go do another, and we're all good.”

  Some men would probably have found Suri to be too blunt for comfort, but not me. I reached for her hand, and when she gave it to me, I squeezed gently. “Do you have any idea how much I missed you?”

  “I missed you, too.” Suri leaned against me with a sigh, relaxing a little on her feet. “You and Karalti, Masha, Vash, Cutthroat…”

  The ability to see around the back of my own head meant that, even though my face was turned toward Suri in the moment I leaned up to kiss her, I could still see Rutha's expression of disappointment as she gazed at the pair of us, and then turned a flashing empty smile back to the man trying very hard to hold her attention.

  Chapter 15

  We took a carriage back to Vulkan Keep. Once the curtains were drawn, Suri started on the papers we'd looted from Al-Asad while I checked the status of Myszno and worried. Six days had passed, leaving us with only twenty-one until the harvest. Karhad was in a bad state. Food was down 5% already, the engineers had identified the problem with the water and were working on fixing it, but the sewerage situation was reaching crisis levels.

  In slightly better news, Istvan had executed my orders to the letter, and the NPC heroes had rolled in and were doing the quests they'd been assigned. Taethawn the Bleak and his Meewfolk riders had arrived early, and with most of my remaining gold burning a hole through their pockets, they were smashing the bandits that had occupied the freehold of Vyeshniki. A new, un-corrupt sheriff for Karhad was en route. Most interestingly, two player adventurers - a Level 15 Meewfolk Bard named Kylirra and a Level 19 Human Berserker creatively named 'Konan the Barbarian' - had picked up one of the open-call quests I'd asked Istvan to advertise. They were working together on 'Gather the Wayward Sons', a mission to locate some young noble children who had escaped the destruction of their manors, and bring them to Karhad. The other quests I’d assigned had been taken up by NPC heroes, and were sitting at between 2 and 30% completion. I could see the quest progress in my Heroes menu.

  Available Heroes:

  ● Istvan Arshak

  ● Lazar Skaliz

  ● Suri Ba’Hadir

  Recruited: 10

  Total Available: 5

  Unavailable:

  ● Zlazlo ul’Tiranozavir (Assigned to Quest: Swamp Thing – 10%)

  ● Taethawn the Bleak (Assigned to Quest: Bandits? In MY Granary? – 3%)

  ● Ur Robert Gehlan (Assigned to Quest: The Wolves of Fall – 15%)

  ● Commander Timofey Lostra (Assigned to Quest: Border Crossing – 20%)

  ● Count Lorenzo Soma (In absentia)

  ● Count Franz Zediwitz (Assigned to Quest: Border Crossing – 20%)

  ● Vash Dorha (Critically Injured; 37% HP)

  ● …

  I surfed from there to my own character sheet, and realized I still had Combat Ability points to distribute. I was about 800 points from Level 24. I'd hit Level 23 by killing some mobs in the forest north of the castle before the Myszno flashmob had rolled up at the gate, but had been so stressed and freaked out about Suri I'd forgotten to actually level up. Duh.

  Suri was still reading, scowling at the journal she was paging through, so I left her to it and got to work. Since hitting Level 22, I'd gone from unlocking new combat abilities at each new level to every other, so there was nothing new to choose from. That was just fine with me. I had points to invest in my current catalogue of abilities, and it gave me some time to consider my build strategy going forward.

  One thing the war against the Demon had taught me about Archemi was that this system, like tabletop RPGs I'd played, rewarded min-maxing more than generalized character builds. Every character class had some kind of stat specialization. Berserkers like
Suri worked best when they min-maxed Strength and Stamina. Rin's Magical Engineer class emphasized Intelligence, and probably Dexterity. Karalti's specialized Draconic Path, the Path of Alacrity, was weighted almost entirely toward Dexterity. In theory, the strategic value of my Advanced Path, Dark Dragoon, was also founded on Dex… except it wasn’t, really.

  I now had four main factors contributing to my build: The Mark of Matir abilities, the Trial of Marantha/Dragonrider abilities, my Nasaku Half-Blood status, and my actual Advanced Path abilities. Combined, they made me reasonably strong, reasonably fast, reasonably good at crowd-control, pretty decent at close combat, and capable of commanding a relatively small army without losing my mind. I had some innate magic-like abilities with fairly narrow applications, which was unusual in a world where magic was a physical resource that had to be purchased and expended like gasoline. But that was it, really. I wasn't exceptionally good at any one thing. Having an especially awesome dragon kind of made up for it, as long as Karalti and I were together. But if we weren't, I lost any advantages of that specialization.

  My highest stat was Will – 97. Will was head and shoulders over my other stats, but it wasn’t exceptional for my level. When I checked Suri’s character sheet, I could see that she was the same level as me, but her Strength score was already into the triple digits. Part of the issue for me was that my Path, my dragon riding, and my role as Lord of Myszno all needed a certain level of Strength, Stamina, and Dexterity to be useful, but they also needed the mental stats for things like resisting fear, reacting to dangerous situations in the air, powering Mark of Matir abilities, and using skills like Leadership, Persuasion, Perception, and statesmanship.

  What it all meant, really, was that I finally had to bring all the parts of 'me' together into the best build Dark Dragoon allowed for. The dragon-based combat abilities were fairly self-evident. Karalti and I were both high-damage mobile DPS when we worked together in the air. As a team, we were headed toward becoming ridiculously powerful. But Lucien had almost killed me with one badly executed strike when he was Level 35... higher than me, but not THAT much higher. At level 28 to 30, I would be strong enough to beat his ass, but I needed to start actively specializing in something: one or two stats, a set of interconnecting combat and arcane abilities, and non-combat skills that complemented those abilities and brought all the powers I had into play.

  For now, though, all I had was points. I put them into Black Lotus, bringing that ability up to Level III, and Shattering Darkness. S.D wasn’t an ability I’d used a lot so far, but after hearing about Baldr’s plans for Artana, I had a feeling that there’d be a lot of armored enemies in my future.

  “Ugh. These journals are all bullshit,” Suri groaned across from me, folding one of them into her Inventory and slumping back in her seat. “I never knew the Rat was such a whinge-bucket. There's nothing in that one that's gonna help us find them.”

  “What was he writing about?” I shook out of brooding for a moment, peering through the translucent menu screen at her.

  “Mostly whining about being 'trapped' in Archemi,” Suri sighed. “Try'na think of ways to get out of here and back to 'Los Angeles', wherever that is.”

  “L.A. is where I used to live. Imagine a smoky dump of about twelve million people living on top of one another, with no money, no time, and weird tastes in fashion, and your mental picture is probably accurate.” I refocused on my screen, frowning at it. “Hey, what do you think the best way to train Willpower is?”

  “Willpower? Uhh...” Suri trailed off. “I dunno. Playing chess?”

  “That's more Int, I think.”

  “Willpower is all about resisting stuff, right?” Suri shrugged. “You probably train it through resisting temptation, defeat, stuff like that.”

  “Resisting temptation, huh?” I scratched the stubble on my jaw. “Guess I'm starting up No-Nut November.”

  “Well, yeah. Like, say you get depressed and really just want to get shitfaced. If you resist that and go do something productive instead, you'd probably level Willpower. I'm not much help there, though. It's my lowest stat.”

  “I bet Ignas has Willpower out the ass.” I tried inducing feelings of determination to level my Willpower, but no friendly red 'stat increase' arrow appeared. Worth a shot.

  Suri nodded. “Ebisa might know more about Willpower. Or Vash. I’d ask them about it.”

  I nodded, and filed that away. “Alright, well, I know one thing that raises my Will. Give me one of those journals. I'll help with the reading, because I sure as hell need willpower to do that.”

  “Try a couple of scrolls, first. The Rat’s handwriting looks like a chicken walked through a pot of ink and onto some vellum.” Several scrolls appeared in Suri's hand, and she passed them over to me.

  I gingerly unrolled one of them and immediately began to struggle with it, while our carriage rumbled through the ornate city gates and started on the long switchback road up to Vulkan Keep.

  “Let’s see here. ‘Jeez, I don't know what has got onto... into... Nick,’” I sounded out slowly. “He's... bottom? No, 'gotten'. He's gotten really fucked up since the Grade... Great Server Crash. He keeps talking about all the stuff we should be doing but isn't doing anything to help. I'm so tired after trying to... keep trying and falling to find ways to access the Penalties-”

  “Panel,” Suri corrected, not looking up. “He keeps talking about some Admin Panel in these ramblings of his. You know what that is?”

  “Yeah. It's the menu that gives the Architects their powers over the world,” I replied. “Remember the big blackout that let you escape Al-Asad?”

  “Sure do.”

  “All of the Architects lost their access to the Admin Panel after that event. Without the panel, they’re just regular Starborn, same as us. Looks like Jacob was trying to hack into it, get his administration powers back.” I kept trying to read the parchment the old-fashioned way, but after a couple more minutes, the old squirrel brain kicked in. My eyes and mind started wandering, and my knees started jittering up and down. After misreading 'succeeded' as 'zucchini', I cried uncle, put the letter into my Inventory, and had Navigail read the rest of it to me.

  “Jeez, I don't know what's got into Nick. He's gotten really fucked up since the Great Server Crash. He keeps talking about all the stuff we should be doing to escape but isn't doing anything to help. I'm so tired after trying and trying and failing to find ways to access the Panel, but none of the backend routes are there any more. It fucking sucks. I just want to get out of here and log out and see if one of the Shards will take me in.

  The prison idea was great when we were just playing around, but now I'm stuck here it feels more like a horror movie than a hentai. I'm so done. We're almost finished the teleporter, but it's hard with an actual fucking SUPERSOLDIER boxing us in out there. I don't know what the hell Nick was thinking when he imported her into the game. Sure, the 'break a princess to be our slave' RP thing was great and everything, but now she's able to level herself and is basically a fucking virus in the database-”

  My eyes widened.

  “-and she's got an axe with our names on it. They weren’t supposed to be self-aware, for fuck’s sakes! If she finds the Morning Stars and they work out what she is, we're screwed. Nic is going ahead to Dalim to kill them all. I won't be going with him. I'm going somewhere else. All I wanted was to act out some hentai. I didn't sign up for this serial killer shit.”

  I came out of the listening trance to see Suri staring at me. “Hector, what's wrong? You stopped breathing and blinking and went real still. I know you're like, part-vampire and all, but it's kind of freaking me out.”

  “You need to read this.” I pulled the page out and handed it to her.

  Suri took it, unrolled it, and began to scan it. As she reached the end of the entry, her face drained of color. By the time she finished it, the muscles in her jaws were quivering. She threw it on the floor of the carriage and pressed a hand to her face.

 
; “Hey, Suri...” I leaned in.

  “Don't touch me for a sec.” Her voice was tight, controlled. I watched her breathe, watched as her cheeks and eyes turned red. But she didn't cry. When she looked back up at me, her one uncovered eye blazed in her face, as bright as molten gold.

  “Reading that letter just gave me a quest.” She forced her hand down, clipping every word off with cold precision. “First one I've gotten in a while, actually. I need to go to Dalim and stop these mongrels from killing the Morning Stars.”

  “Who are the Morning Stars?” I asked.

  Suri lifted her chin, eyes scanning something I couldn’t see. “New Quest: The Morning Stars. After reading a journal entry written by Jacob, one of the Wardens of Al-Asad, you have learned that they have fled to Dalim to destroy a faction known as the Morning Stars. Depending on who you ask, the Stars are either violent terrorists or revolutionary heroes. Their mission? To bring down the ruling Khememmu Dynasty, abolish the Caste system, and reinstate the ancient Fireblooded Ha’Shazir Dynasty to the throne. Go to Dalim with all haste, make contact with the Morning Stars, and either aid them – or hinder them – in their mission to change the course of Dakhdir’s bloody history.”

  I thought back to all the quests we had to do in Myszno, and swallowed nervously. “Is there a time limit on it?”

  “No.” The afternoon light cut Suri's face into hard, angular shadows. “Just a recommendation. Says the best time to contact them is within the next seven days.”