Warsinger - Chapter One

If you've ever seen Achmed the Dead Terrorist, you know EXACTLY what the Bandit Leader sounds like.
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The Bashir Desert, Dakhdir

We were almost at the end of the Stone Forest when the bandits finally decided to make their move.

“God fucking dammit,” I muttered to Cutthroat. Hauling on her reins, I drew the dinosaur to a reluctant, prancing halt. Four shadows slipped out across the sand from behind and around us - big shadows, animals with riders. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Skreeeek!” The big black hookwing replied, snapping her jaws petulantly.

“I know, right?” I put away the [Bronto Jerky] I’d been gnawing for the last half hour and unequipped her iron muzzle. It vanished from her face and into the depths of my Inventory. “Well, girl, how do you feel about murdering some bandits?”

Cutthroat inflated her throat with a hiss and weaved her head, flexing the sword-like single claw on each hand. She was always down for murder.

I could feel them moving around us, mutated senses picking up the scuffle of feet on sand and stone, the click of wood and the sound of a flintlock hammer being cocked back. We hadn’t gone more than fifty feet when a dozen smaller, slimmer hookwings materialized from the walls of the narrow canyon road, stepping out from behind the coral-like formations of red stone that had earned the Stone Forest its name. The dinosaurs and their riders were dressed to blend in with the desert. Faded orange cloth draped over their saddles and armor distorted and disguised them. Dun colored scarves were wound around their heads, leaving only their eyes visible between layers of fabric. The mounted bandits pointed pistols and crossbows at the three of us. There were sounds from above. I turned my head just enough to look up there – another six waited on the lip of the canyon, sighting down the barrels of smoothbore rifles.

“Do not move!” The [Bandit Leader] was at the front of the cavalry line. He was a big man, but he had a voice like a squeaky wheel, high-pitched and melodramatic. “We have poison on these bolts! My men will drop you and the girl and leave your bodies for the scorpions if you try to flee!”

“Snnrk. Huh?” Karalti, who had been snoring against my shoulder, jolted upright. Bleary-eyed, she wiped the drool from the corner of her mouth and peered at the throng of bandits. Her telepathic voice was thick with sleep. “Whoa. Who are these guys?”

“A huge waste of our time.”  I shrugged, and switched from communicating telepathically to speaking aloud. “Okay. Sure thing, boss.”

The point they’d picked to waylay us was odd. The canyon narrowed toward the end of the road, just big enough to allow a pair of wagons through into the endless dunes of the Bashar Desert. We were only about a hundred feet from freedom. This suggested one of two things: either the bandits knew something about this spot I didn’t, or they were really, really dumb.

“Do as we say, and no one gets hurt.” The [Bandit Leader] motioned with his crossbow. “Both of you, get down off the bird.”

I held up my hands. “Look, dude: how about I give you guys something for your time and we go our separate ways? I’ve got less than eight hours to break my girlfriend out of prison before we have to meet with the King of Vlachia- “

"SILENCE!" The [Bandit Leader]'s voice jerked up an octave. I winced. It was like nails down a blackboard. "Get off the hookwing! Or die!"

"Dude, seriously. Look at me. I'm Level fucking 23. Do I LOOK like the kind of guy your Level 10 NPC ass wants to shake down?" I gestured to the impassive black visor of my helmet. "I mean, come on. Didn't your teachers in Bandit School ever tell you to ever avoid lone travelers who dress all in one color?"

He squeezed the trigger until it clicked. “Get! Off! The bird!”

“Okay, alright already... Jeez.” I heaved a long-suffering sigh. patted Karalti’s thigh and slid down to the ground, landing lightly on my feet. “Come on, Tidbit.”

The girl yawned, stretched, and slithered down to join me, and every one of the bandits immediately stood to attention. Karalti was petite and gorgeous: a lithe ribbon of muscle, with long, straight blue-black hair that poured to her hips like a curtain of ebony silk. Her skin was pale and pearly, marbled with subtle color. Her brilliant violet eyes were as elegant as the sweep of an ink brush on paper. She was dressed simply: a pair of loose cotton pants, a leather halter top, a loose scarf wound around her shoulders. As soon as her slim bare feet touched the sand, a darker and more menacing energy rose from the highwaymen.

“Nice spear,” one of the Bandits remarked.

“Nice woman,” the man next to him had very pale, very cold blue eyes set against a band of dark skin. He slowly looked Karalti up and down. Several other bandits chuckled.

“SIIIILENCE!” the leader snapped back at his men. He turned to us with a look that was almost as piercing as his voice. “The Spear. Your gold. The reins to that beast. Hand them over.”

“We don’t have any gold.” I shrugged. “We left it at home. You know, in case of bandits.”

The [Bandit Leader] regarded us flatly.

“Seriously. No gold.” I dropped my pack to the ground. “Search it, if you want. You can have the spear and the hookwing, though. And hey – I don’t suppose you know if we’re on the right road for Al-Asad, do you? You know, the prison?”

The Bandit Leader’s eyes narrowed. “Shut up and hand over your goods.”

Worth a try. I pulled the Spear from its quick-release bandoleer, spun it over my fingers like a baton, and held it out. When the bandits finally got a good look at it, a couple of them gasped. The Spear of Nine Spheres was a bona-fide magical artifact. The finely engraved and sturdy bluesteel haft swept out into a curved glaive-like blade at the end. Two large gemstones were set into the base of the blade: a ruby that throbbed like a living heart, and a black stone as cold and empty as the freezing desert night.

“Here you go. Enjoy.” I handed this priceless weapon to the stunned [Bandit Leader] with a flourish.

The man hastily fumbled his pistol back into its sheath and snatched the Spear from me, clutching it in both hands. He looked down at it, scowled, then narrowed his eyes at us. I could almost hear the gears turning in his head. “You are armed and armored, riding through the desert with a weapon fit for the Sultir, and yet you stand down easily. Why? Are you a craven?”

There were nods, and a murmur of assent around the ring of bandits.

“Not usually. But there’s, what? Sixteen of you?” I remarked. “Not great odds.”

The man took the bait. He cocked his head and sniffed. “Twenty. You will never see the others.”

Right, twenty bandits. I did some quick math in my head, triangulated the tiny human noises I heard echoing around the canyon, then nodded to myself. 

“I sure hope not.” I cheerfully slapped the drooling, growling hookwing on the shoulder. “Now, listen closely: this bad girl’s name is Cutthroat. She’s a destrier hookwing, champion bloodlines, bred to be the perfect killing machine for generations, blah blah blah. She’s probably worth about two thousand gold coins to the right buyer. You with me so far?”

“Uhh… of course!” The Bandit Leader numbly accepted the reins as his gang watched us nervously from the sidelines. He looked over at one of his comrades. The bandit shrugged, as if to say ‘I don’t even fucking know, dude’.

“She’s also unpredictable, vicious, and somehow both too smart and too stupid for her own good,” I continued. “So, off you go now, right?”

The Captain sniffed, jerked his shoulders, and puffed himself up like peacock. Holding the Spear like a shield, he jerked his chin toward Karalti. “No. You, girl. You’re coming with us too.”

Karalti batted her eyelashes, pointed at her nose, and chirped curiously.

I clicked my tongue. “Come on, man, you don’t try and poach another dude’s girl like that. That’s a violation of the Bro Code, Section 1, Column A.”

“SIIIIILEEEENCE!” The man’s voice was up in the falsetto range now. He clumsily pointed my own Spear at me, jabbing it toward my gut. “Girl! Do you want me to kill this coward? Come here to me, or I’ll gut him like a fish!”

Exasperated, I rolled my eyes over to Karalti. “What do you have to say to that? Feel like joining them?”

Karalti beamed at the men, then unselfconsciously began to strip. “Sure! I can handle twenty guys!”

Face, meet palm. “Tidbit. Phrasing.”

Karalti pulled her top off with a flourish and flung her shirt and scarf aside. The captain’s eyes widened. A murmur went up among the bandits. The guys who had been half-hidden overhead leaned down to gawk. All of them gaped with the awestruck expressions of men who had glimpsed the Holy Grail.

Then Karalti unequipped her pants, and all hell broke loose.

Black scales swirled up in a storm of hot mana, coiling around the place where I and Cutthroat stood. Just like that, the canyon was plunged into darkness as Karalti’s huge, narrow wings spread out and stroked the air, driving a storm of sand into the faces of the bandits now collectively shitting themselves in terror. Most of them fled. Others went to their knees, screaming for mercy. The Captain was the only one brave enough – or stupid enough – to shrug off his fear and attack. He let out a high-pitched shriek, dropped Cutthroat’s reins, and rushed the dragon with my Spear.

“I warned you, man.” I held out a hand. The Spear vanished from his grip and appeared in mine. “Dudes wearing one color are bad news.”

He stumbled to a confused stop, staring at his empty hands, then looking up to see Karalti’s jaws gaping over him. “AIIIIIEEEE-”

She snapped him up by the torso with wet crunch of teeth driving through bone. He managed one muffled scream before the dragon flung her head and threw him like a bowling ball into the fleeing men, took a step forward, and roared. Karalti’s voice shook the cliffs, raining rocks and sand and bodies down. Several formerly hidden bandits crashed to the dirt.

“I’m sorry! She has this problem where she compulsively takes her clothes off!” I yelled after the retreating cavalry. “How can I make it up to you? Do you guys like ice-cream?”

After ‘Suri’, ‘ice-cream’ was Cutthroat’s favorite word. The hookwing’s pupils constricted to pin-points of excitement before she threw back her head, bellowed, then charged off at full speed after the fleeing bandits. Without a rider, the huge hookwing was faster than her smaller, panicking cousins. She leaped onto the back of the slowest one, dragging the honking dinosaur to the ground with her jaws and hind claws. She plunged her sword-like claws into the rider from either side, killing him instantly. The rider in front aimed his crossbow at her head, but as the fallen hookwing crashed into his, the bow jerked back and he shot himself under his own jaw.

“She slices! She dices! She comes with her own set of steak knives!” I sang out, using my core ability, Jump, to leap forty feet straight up into the air. At the apex of the jump, I vanished into coils of black mist, reappearing on top of the cliff edge and scattering bandits in all directions. “Order now, and you’ll get this FREE Spear of Nine Spheres shoved right up your ass!”

The NPCs drew swords and charged in to fight, skidding to a halt as the Spear of Nine Spheres came alive, bursting into black, cold rippling foxfire that painlessly engulfed the blade, the haft, and my arm.

“Sorcery!” One of them screamed. “He’s a witch!”

I slammed the blade of the Spear into the ground, discharging an explosion of black, thorny vines of energy into the mob. They lashed out at all six bandits, knocking three of them down, ensnaring one, and killing one outright. Shouts of horror rang out as ice crawled up their limbs, freezing them in place. The dark mana swirling around the polearm turned a deep red as I whirled it around and cut them down, one after the other. They fell to the ground shriveled, their life energy sucked out of them. These Bandits were Level 10, with no magical defenses, no resistances, and only about 500 HP. They didn’t stand a chance.

[You have killed Dakhari Deserter! You gain 16 EXP!]

[You have killed Dakhari Deserter! You gain 16 EXP!]

"PHWHOOOOOOORRRR!" The canyon below lit up with brilliant white light as Karalti unleashed her breath weapon.

“How’s it going down there?” I asked her, pausing to survey the carnage I’d just wrought. “Don’t cook Cutthroat.”

“I won’t! She’s fine!” Karalti chirped back. “She’s behind me, eating one of the dead guys!”

“I really should be disturbed by this.” I looked over, judged the distance between the cliff and the ground. It was only about fifty feet. ‘Only’. You know… about four stories high. “I don’t know when it became normal to hear you eating someone’s dead body, but here we are.”

“I’m a responsible carnivore. Gotta recycle all that tasty human meat.”

“Do you have to sort them into separate containers first?” I danced back about ten feet, and sprinted for the edge of the cliff. Four weeks ago, this kind of jump would have felt – and been – insane. It still kind of was. When I reached the lip of stone, I sprung up and flipped over, pivoting to land neatly on Karalti's rump. No sooner had I touched down than I dematerialized, reappearing beside her leg to drop to the ground. Skills, passive abilities, and active combat abilities all working in sync had turned me into an acrobatic killing machine.

“Phew.” Karalti puffed a small cloud of acrid steam through her nose and sat back, surveying her handiwork. “Well, that wasn’t too bad.”

“Yeah, but I haven’t got a combat end notification yet, so someone’s still alive.” I bounced up to my feet and shook myself out. It was a mess. Karalti’s sticky Ghost Fire clung to the cliffsides and the sand, boiling them to black liquid slag. The narrowest part of the canyon looked like a slaughterhouse, strewn with dead Bandits and charred hookwings. “Hey! Any of you boys still kicking?”

Karalti turned her head, sniffing. Then she growled, and motioned with her snout to one of the hookwing corpses. “He’s under there. I just smelled him pee.”

“You know, I think that’s the first time that feature of this game has ever been useful for something.” I sauntered over, and sure enough, one of the men was lying there, pretending to be dead. It would have worked if his scarf hadn’t come off. His pulse was jumping in his neck, as noticeable to my quasi-undead self as a small bird would have been to a cat. “Time out, my dude. I know you’re awake.” 

The Bandit swallowed, and hesitantly looked up at me. I recognized him, then. His eyes were a strange, blazing icy blue, strongly contrasted with his coppery Dakhari skin.

“Oh, it’s you. The one that was threatening my scaly lady friend over there.” I crouched down in front of him, and unequipped my helmet. The Raven’s Helm vanished from my head and back into my inventory, baring my face for the first time since this whole debacle had begun. The Bandit recoiled. “I don’t suppose you know the way to Al-Asad? Someone who’s very important to me is stuck there, and we really need to get on our way so we can bail her out.”

“Wh-what… what are you?” His voice was a thin, dry croak.

I grinned a metal-fanged smile, and the bandit turned the color of milk. “Where do you want to start? The dragonrider mutations, the vampire halfblood stuff, or the whole ‘Herald of the God of Darkness’ thing?”

The man’s mouth worked in horror. Before I could react, he shot up with a shrill, piercing scream, stumbling away into a terrified sprint.

“Hey! Wait a second! I was just kidding around! Please just tell me where- oh.” I cut off short as the bandit tripped, stumbled, and then sprawled over the headless carcass of a hookwing. His arms windmilled, but he couldn’t catch himself in time – and he landed, bug-eyed, right on top of the dinosaur’s scythe-like claw and impaled himself through the chest.

I winced. Karalti winced. Cutthroat might even have winced, a bit. The bandit coughed a gout of blood, then sagged onto the claw and expired.

[New Badge: Who needs enemies when you have... you?]

[You defeated Dakhari Deserter!]

[You defeated Bashar Desert Bandits!]

[You gained 320 EXP!]

[Karalti gains 320 EXP!]

“Holy fucking christ on a cracker.” I slapped my thighs, sighed, and stood. “All I wanted were some goddamn directions."

“Hey, don’t worry! Cutthroat can lead us there.” Karalti chirped aloud and cocked her head. “She’s done a great job so far!”

“Yeah. But now it’s her turn to nap.” I gestured at the sole surviving hookwing. Now that she had sated her bloodlust and wasn’t working, Cutthroat had promptly curled up into a hookloaf, tucked her head under her chest, and was snoozing rhythmically. “Have you ever tried to wake her when she’s asleep? Because you can’t.”

“Well, maybe you can’t, but I can!” Karalti’s tail lashed, knocking down rocks from the sides of the cliff. She turned her neck, drew a deep breath, and bellowed loudly enough to pop my eardrums and ruffle the coal-black feathers of Cutthroat’s back. The dinosaur gave a wheezy little sigh and continued to saw logs.

“Oh.” Karalti’s crest dropped, her horns flattening against her skull. “Maybe not. I’m sorry… are we going to make it to Al-Asad in time?”

“We have to. But I don’t know.” I ran a hand over my hair and sighed. But as I watched the twitching corpse of the last bandit, a thought occurred to me. “Wait… there is one way we can do this.”

“Uh-oh.” Karalti chuckled, mind to mind.

Some of the older, deader bandits were turning to dust, their bodies pixelating, then vanishing to leave a sack of loot behind. I raided all the bags on the way over to my intended victim, picking up 30 Lira, the currency of Dakhdir, bullets, crossbow bolts, gunpowder, and the ornately decorated [Flintlock Pistol] that the Bandit Leader had waved at us. My boots crunched on the dry earth as I came to a stop in front of the guy who had just gacked himself. 

“What’re you gonna do?” Karalti watched me like a curious bird, cocking her head from side to side.

“About to try and put the 'romance' back into 'necromancy.'” I pulled off one of my gloves, baring the inky black Mark of Matir, and slid on the spellglove gifted to me in Vlachia. I fitted a tiny sealed capsule of [Greencrystal Mana] into the back of the glove, snapped it closed, and glanced up as a holographic alert appeared.

[You have gained Magic Points! Current MP: 50/150]

This was my first time trying magic of any kind. Other mages I’d seen in Archemi used magical incantations and gestures of their hands when casting spells. I didn’t usually play mages and waving my arms around felt dumb, so I settled for glaring at the corpse and holding my hand out over it. As I focused on him, I felt a hard, cold power build in my chest. My hyperactive mind briefly settled into stillness. Karalti's wing cast the body into shadow, a distorted black outline trembling on the red sand. As I stared at it, I could feel it looking back at me.

"Suund'karon! Karalt', Binah!" I uttered the command words of the only spell I could use - Shadow of the Sun, the necromantic rite I'd gained when I'd almost been transformed into a vampiric thrall.

The light around us darkened, and the air chilled. In the middle of the desert, my breath began to frost. The green mana pulsed through the glove, wisping out into the air as tendrils of dark energy, as wispy and fine as spider silk. They wrapped around the corpse, and his shadow shuddered, sucking into and dissolving in the pool of Dark mana. Slowly, it came together in a vaguely humanoid form and stood up, shadow matter billowing off into the wind.

[You have earned a badge: Reduce, Reuse, Reanimate]

[You have gained a thrall: Shadow Rogue (Level 5)]

“Now we’re talking.” A small smile curled my lips. I bought up the HUD and queried 'Thralls', and immediately got taken to a sub-menu. As with Archemi's War Combat system, the Shadow's stats were simplified:

Common Shadow Rogue

Unit Rank: 0 (Level 5, Common)

Type: Incorporeal Undead

HP: 150/150

Speed: 110 (Extremely Fast)

Melee Attack: 20

Melee Defense: 4

Abilities: Life Drain, Incorporeal, Sneak Attack (x3 damage)

EXP: 300 (+200 to next level)

[Do you want to name your thrall?]

I couldn’t think of a name, so I shrugged and looked back to it. "Hey – what was your name in life?”

The shadow writhed at the sound of my voice, and when it spoke, its voice crawled up my spine like the touch of a cold finger. “Lahvan.”

“Okay, Lahvan. I'll give you a name because you're my first shadow, but I'm not going to lie. Given what you said to my little Tidbit before, you're highly disposable." I narrowed my eyes, not daring to look away from it. "Do you know the way to Al-Asad?"

Lahvan lifted one tenebrous hand, pointing toward the open desert. When he spoke, it was a hissing, slithering sound, like dead leaves skittering over dry pavement. "Al-Asad Prison lies at the heart of a fortress called Bakhat Khasssiiiir.”

“Can you can guide us there?”

“Yesss.” The shadow seemed almost meek. “But be warned. No one has ever broken in. Not even a dragon queen. Al-Asad is impregnable.”

“Well the four of us are about to go and pregnate the hell out of it.” I re-equipped my helmet and my armored gauntlet, used the Spear to climb to my feet, and sighed. “Suri and I have a royal audience in the capital of Vlachia in the morning, and she’s been waiting too long for us to find her.”