Warsinger: Chapter One, Version 2

After working a bit further into WS, I decided to rewrite the first chapter - the original just wasn't working for me. So here it is, completely unedited, filler text and all. This is how it starts - once I hit the 25K word mark, I'll go back, edit, and add in the game meta.

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The Bashar Desert, Dakhdir.

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

“Finally. About time,” I muttered to Cutthroat. Hauling on her reins, I drew the coal black dinosaur to a reluctant, prancing halt. Four shadows slipped out across the sand from behind and around us - big shadows, animals with riders. “How long have these guys been following us now? Half an hour?”

“Hisssssss.” Cutthroat inflated her throat and weaved her head, flexing the sword-like single claw on each hand.

“My thoughts exactly.” I sighed. “You’re a great listener, girl. You know that?”

“Sssss.”

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 hammer being cocked back. 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 to distort and disguise them. Dun colored scarves wound around their heads, leaving only their eyes visible between layers of fabric. The bandits pointed well-oiled 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 above, sighting down the barrels of smoothbore rifles.

“Do not move.” The [Bandit Leader] had a high-pitched voice, almost squeaky. Old man squeaky, though – not girlish. “We have poison on these bolts, and we 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?”

“Bandits.” I shrugged, and switched back to speaking aloud. “Okay. Sure thing, boss.”

The point they’d picked to waylay us didn’t make any sense to me. 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. 

“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 just keep going. I’m out here on a rescue mission, so- “

“Silence! Get down, or die!”

I winced. “Are you sure? Because you’re a level 10 Bandit, and I’m a Level 23 player character-”

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

“Why not just carry a sign over your head that reads ‘Free EXP!’” 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 lips like a curtain of ebony silk. Her skin was pale and pearly, marbled with subtle color. Her dark violet eyes were like the elegant sweep of an ink brush on paper. She was dressed lightly and 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. Even with their faces covered, their roaming eyes turned dark and hungry.

“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.

“SILENCE!” the leader snapped back at his men, his voice now shriller than before. He turned back to us with a piercing look. “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?”

“Al-Asad?” The Bandit Leader’s eyes narrowed. His men flanked us anxiously as he hung his crossbow on his belt and held out his hand. “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 saw it properly, a couple of them gasped. The Spear of Nine Spheres was a bona-fide magical artifact. A finely engraved 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.” I handed this priceless weapon to the stunned [Bandit Leader] without hesitation.

The man snatched the Spear greedily, clutching it in both hands. He gave me a quizzical look. I could almost hear the gears turning in his head. “Why do you stand down so easily? You are armed and armored at this time of night. You clearly know how to use this weapon. 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.”

So, twenty bandits. I did some quick math in my head, then nodded to myself. 

“I sure hope not.” I cheerfully slapped Cutthroat 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 rolled my eyes. “Pssshht. Oh, come on, bro - you don’t ever try and take another man’s girl like that. That’s a violation of the Bro Code, Section 1, Column A.”

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

I sucked on one of my teeth and glanced at Karalti. “What do you have to say to that? Feel like submitting to this asshole?”

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 the shirt and scarf aside. The captain’s eyes turned into the size of dinner plates. A murmur went up among the bandits. The guys overhead leaned down to gawk with the awestruck expressions of men who had glimpsed the Holy Grail, until she unequipped her pants and all hell broke loose.

Black scales swirled into view, 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 their pants in terror. Several turned to flee. 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 held out a hand. The Spear vanished from his hands and appeared in mine. He stumbled to a stop, looking up to see Karalti’s jaws gaping over him. 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. The formerly hidden bandits crashed to the dirt.

“I’m sorry! She has this problem where she compulsively takes her clothes off!” I shouted down the road at them. “How can I make it up to you? Do you guys like icecream?”

‘Icecream’ was Cutthroat’s attack command. It was her favorite word in the whole wide world. Her 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. Her forearms unfolded like the arms of a preying mantis, each forelimb one single, sharp, swordlike claw. She plunged those into the rider from either side. The rider in front aimed his crossbow, 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 fifteen 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!”

“Uhhh… Kind of?” 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 have killed Dakhari Deserter!]

[Congratulations! You are Level 23!]

"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 that you or someone else I love is eating someone’s dead body, but here we are.”

“Hey, we’re carnivores. And humans are made out of meat. It’s not like they’re using it anymore.”

“Guess not.” I rolled spread my arms, then rolled over the side of the cliff.

Four weeks ago, this kind of jump would have felt – and been – insane. It still kind of was. Between my skills – Acrobatics, Aerobatics – passive abilities, Dexterity, and experience, I was able to catch the cliff partway down, slide, and bounce off to land neatly on the ground.

“Okay. I haven’t got a combat end notification, so someone’s still alive.” I bounced up to my feet and shook myself out. The canyon was a mess. Karalti’s sticky Ghost Fire clung to the cliffsides and the sand, turning them to black liquid slag. The narrowest part of the canyon looked like a slaughterhouse, strewn with dead Bandits and charred hookwings. “Hello! 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 the Pee Meter 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. “Time out, my dude. I know you’re listening.” 

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 kinda-sorta 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 started. The Bandit recoiled from what he saw. “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 Black God’ thing?”

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

“Hey! Wait a second! I just want to- “ 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.

“Ooh.” I winced. Karalti winced. Cutthroat might even have winced, a bit. 

The bandit coughed blood, then sagged down onto the claw and expired.

[Highway Robber killed himself!]

[New Achievement: Who needs enemies when you have… you?]

[Congratulations! You have defeated Highway Bandits!]

“Goddammit.” I slapped my thighs, sighed, and stood. “All I wanted were some directions. Is that too much to ask?”

“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 other hungers, she 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 crests dropped, her horns flattening against her skull. “Maybe not.”

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. “You know… there is a 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 ignored them, heading for the one who had just croaked. My boots crunched on the dry earth as I came to a stop, frowning down at him.

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

“Magic.” I'd never done magic before. Other mages I’d seen in Archemi used spellgloves, magical incantations, and gestures of their hands. I didn’t need a glove and waving my arms around felt dumb, so I settled for glaring at the corpse. 

As I focused on him, I felt a hard, cold power build in me. My hyperactive mind briefly settled into stillness. Under the cover of Karalti's wing, I could see the man's shadow trembling on the sand. And somehow, I felt it looking back at me.

"<<TK WoP.>> The words spilled from my lips almost of their own accord.

The shadow shuddered. And then, move. It slid soundlessly back into its old body. The light around us darkened, and the air chilled. In the middle of the desert, my breath began to frost as the body at my feet seethed with clouds of dark energy, as wispy and fine as spider silk. Slowly, it came together in a vaguely humanoid form and rose into the air, hanging in front of me. It was very fine. Almost fragile. My first summoned shadow.

“Now we’re talking.” A small smile curled my lips. “What’s your name?”

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

“Okay, Lahvan. You know the way to Al-Asad or not?” I narrowed my eyes, not daring to look away from it.

Lahvan’s shadow slowly pointed toward the end of the road. “Yes. Al-Asad… liessss in the heart of Bakhat Khasir.”

“Think you can guide us there?”

“Yessss.” The shadow seemed almost meek. It wasn’t a very strong one. “But be warned. Al-Asad is impenetrable. No one has ever broken in. Not even a dragon.”

“Don’t worry, my fine ectoplasmic friend.” I covered up the fangs, re-equipped my helmet, used the Spear to help me up to my feet. “Anyway, it’ll be dawn soon, and somehow, I think you’ll like the sun even less than I do. So lead the way, grasshopper: We’ve got a girl to save.”