ArcOnline: Trial By Fire Ch 1

Riding an angry, hungry dinosaur is hard at the best of times. Riding an angry, hungry dinosaur through a crowded city port with a stuffy nose and a baby dragon kicking you in the kidney? Welcome to the glamorous life of a virtual reality videogame adventurer.

“Karalti! Can you not!?” I hissed down toward the struggling bundle that wriggled inside my cloak, struggling to control my mount as she snapped and lunged at passersby. 

“Karalti see!” The wyrmling scrabbled with her feet again, thrusting her glistening black opal nose out from underneath the cloak. “Ahh! Smells good!”

“Karalti!” Fighting not to sneeze, I reined in Cutthroat with one hand, and shoved Karalti’s snout back under the cloth. She squawked with indignation.

“Nuuuu! Hector!” Her telepathic voice whined inside my head. “Karalti see!”

“Karalti keeps her snoot out of sight before the bad men come and take her away.” I thought back, trying to sniff back the mucus that was threatening to run out my itching nose. My cold wasn’t too serious, but it had me on edge. About a week ago, I’d died from the flu IRL.

“The bad men aren’t here,” she grumped back.

“You don’t know that, and neither do I. Please, stay hidden.”

“Oki.”

Pax Karalti lasted all of five seconds before the snout poked out again, nostrils working. “Smells sooo good-!”

“Stop it!” I immediately regretted growling aloud, because the itch in my nose built to a sudden sneeze – and Cutthroat lost her goddamned mind. 

The hookwing roared and spun her body to the right, and rammed us into a stand loaded with ice and teetering piles of fresh fish.

“What are- MY FISH!” The vendor sprung up as the stand collapsed. “My godsforsaken FISH!”

Cutthroat bellowed down at him. Cursing as only an ex-soldier could, I hauled on her reins and got her back under control. Only for a moment. The fishmonger ran out in front of my hookwing, screaming obscenities, and I barely even had time to wince before she lowered her head like an angry bull and charged him down.

Cutthroat was a hookwing: a feathered raptorine dinosaur with great big scythe claws instead of wings, hence the name. She was eight feet tall at the shoulder, about twenty feet long, with tattered plumage as black as pitch, blazing golden eyes, and a temperament that could only be described as ‘nuclear’. Each one of the hooks her species was named for - the fused digits of her hands - were wickedly sharp scythe-like claws as long as a bastard sword’s blade, and she raised them to strike. 

The vendor screamed. I screamed. Karalti screamed because it was funny. Cutthroat roared as she knocked the man to the side and darted her head towards his gut, and the only thing that saved his life then was the fact that this two-ton killing machine was muzzled. Instead of eviscerating him, she nipped his shirt through the face-cage, picked him up, and threw him. I didn’t even see where he landed – Cutthroat was off down the road, boiling with dinosaurian road rage, and I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop her.

“Sorry! I’m really sorry!” I called back over my shoulder. 

“Funny spinning! Karalti see!” Karalti’s entire head popped out through the gap in my cloak this time.

My HUD flashed an alert. [You have lost -250 Reputation in Bryos. Current Reputation -125: Troublemaker. Law enforcement has been alerted.] 

Great. Now we’d really screwed the pooch.

Cutthroat charged all the way down the main boulevard beside the docks, scattering people out of the way. I hauled on her reins, but it wasn’t until the rings were about to tear out of her nostrils that she finally stopped, sneezing with irritation. Karalti giggled the entire time for no reason I could discern. And she kept trying to stick her fucking head out.

I took several deep breaths, fighting down the twin urges to yell at her and plead with her, and marched Cutthroat down the dirty road. “Karalti - I know it smells great here, but you need to stay under the cloak. We now have T-minus ten minutes before the fucking Mata Argis arrive.”

“Oopsie.” Karalti said soberly.

“Yeah. Big oopsie.”

The skyport in the city of Bryos was the largest city in Ilia, bigger even than the capital, Liren. It was a filthy sprawl of markets, docks, taverns, inns, whorehouses and warehouses. Sailors, beggars and merchants vied for space. The magical engines of flying ships from all around the world hummed, roared and surged at the ends of the wharfs; the air was full of the smells of fish, frying food, dinosaur poop, mana, and machine grease. Behind the racket, the thunderous sound of Archemi’s harsh ocean could be heard below us, the sound of waves the size of mountains washing up against even taller cliffs. If it weren’t for the HUD - my Head’s Up Display - the HP rings that flashed into view when I focused on people, and the way that certain objects were framed by light and labeled, I’d have completely forgotten that Archemi was actually a videogame.

My hope was that Bryos was big enough that we could vanish before the Mata Argis showed up. They were the reason that I was still only Level 9, and Karalti was Level 1. Every time I’d attempted a sidequest, visited a merchant, or made any trouble after escaping the Eyrie of Saint Grigori, Ilia’s finest appeared out of thin air. Each time we’d fought them, they’d gotten harder. The last group, in some podunk Ilian village I couldn’t even remember the name of, had been ten levels higher level than me. We’d had to run.

“Not even little peek?” Karalti asked, as we cut down an alley toward the docks.

“Not even little peek.”

“Ooookaaayyy.” Karalti wheezed a long-suffering sigh, and withdrew back into the cloak, leaving only the tip of her nose and her nostrils outside. “Karalti smell?”

“Karalti can smell. But keep your head covered.”

“Eeep!” She made a happy chirp, nose working overtime. “Smells good! Like fishies!”

I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t help but smile.

The last three days had been… eventful. Since fleeing the Skyrdon with Karalti, we been relentlessly hounded. The ‘Bad Men’ chasing us were considered to be heroes by many of the people here. The Mata Argis were the secret police who kept the Warden’s peace. They wanted to kill me and drag Karalti back to the Skyrdon, the dragon knights who enforced the Warden’s military and religious rule of Ilia. As a result, we had been making do by hunting and brewing potions, killing monsters, and dispatching mercenaries and bandits. The potions I’d been able to sell for a silver here, a silver there, but without the ability to do much in the way of quests, levelling had been slow. Entering Bryos was a huge risk, and the only reason we were in the city at all was because it was the only way to escape the reach of Ilia for good. I intended to get on a skyship for my fictional homeland, Tuungant, and leave this stinking shitheap of a country behind.

Gold rolled and clinked inside my pack as we turned a corner and lit on the inn I was supposed to be looking for. The Whistling Clam - yes, really - was a large ramshackle inn with three stories and two balconies, the kind people fell over dramatically during bar fights. The entire building was painted sky blue, the color flaking off in patches from the damp filthy wood beneath. Anxiously, I walked Cutthroat over to a noticeboard highlighted by my HUD. A blinking blue arrow hung over the flight schedule for Tungaant.

Glancing back down the street, I reached out to it and ripped a copy into my Inventory, turned Cutthroat around, and nudged her to walk back down the alley beside the inn as I read it.

“Let’s see…” I muttered aloud, reining Cutthroat to a stop. “Oh man, we are so frickin’ lucky.”

“Huh?” Karalti’s nose lifted up the edge of my cloak.

“There’s a flight boarding in thirty minutes. Long trip with about ten port stops… but still.” I said, folding the timetable back into my Quest Items. “And the fee listed on the wiki checks out. All we have to do is stay down and stay frosty, and we’re out of this pigpen.”

“I’m hungry,” Karalti said, her tone dreamy with longing.

“You’re always hungry, little tidbit.”

“Can we find something to eat?” Karalti pressed in against my back, shivering and hot.

Ever since hatching, Karalti had been ravenous. She hadn’t grown much in size since she’d hatched, but I’d noticed that the closer she got to Level 2, the flakier and duller her scales had looked and the more she’d wanted to eat. And damn, the girl could eat.

“There should be a stable around here somewhere,” I replied. “I can smell it. Come on, Cutthroat. Move your ass.”

Cutthroat stopped trying to scratch her muzzle off and began to pad forward, tail lashing.

Most riding animals in Archemi were meat-eaters, and stables provided them with offal, spoiled hides, rodents and probably the odd murdered townsman in ‘hospitality troughs’ outside inns and public houses. The troughs and stalls reeked terribly, but hookwings were scavengers capable of stomaching even the most rotten meat. I’d learned this when Cutthroat returned to camp one night chewing on a body she’d dug out of a bog. She’d been fine. I, on the other hand, would never be fine again.

I basically let Cutthroat guide us to the nearest stable, which was on the other side of the Whistling Clam in a small courtyard facing Hell’s Walk, the street dividing the buildings from the docks. She surged eagerly toward the stalls and the trough of sun-ripened, fly-blown pig guts inside. Surprisingly, there were no other hookwings in there already. No stablehand, either.

I kept an eye out behind us, and finally opened my cloak up. “Okay, Karalti. Go grab something to eat.”

“Yay! Food’s the best! Yay!” Karalti kicked off my leg, flapping like a bat. One wing hit me in the jaw, snapping my head back. Once the spots faded, I dropped down to the ground with a sigh, catching Cutthroat by the reins. While she foamed at the mouth, I unequipped her [Iron Muzzle] and folded it into my inventory. “Don’t eat too much, tidbit. You have to be ready to fly.”

“Oki!” The little queen dragon landed gracefully on the edge of the trough and began to chow down like her life depended on it. 

I was worried that I was doing something wrong with her. According to her character menu, dragons gained size by levelling. Karalti was still the size of a small dog, with feet and hands too big for her scrawny neck and wedge-shaped head. When she’d hatched, her gleaming black skin had rippled under light with colored fire, like opal. Flashes of blue, orange, green, gold and red glowed between every dark scale. Now, her skin was dull and flaky looking.

While my saurian buddies pigged out, I went to the outside of the stable and kept watch over the strangely empty yard. From here, I could see out the gate and onto the street with perfect clarity. I kept an ear out for strange noises or conversations, and restlessly bought up Karalti’s Path information.

==Dragon Character Information==

Leveling Your Mount

Your NPC mount has her own EXP pool that is independent from your own. Like you, she levels by gaining experience by learning and practicing her skills. Unlike you, your dragon only gains two kinds of EXP: Combat EXP and a special type of EXP called Lexica.

Combat EXP is gained by going on adventures, fighting enemies, and completing quests. When your dragon completes a quest with you, the two of you each receive an 100% EXP from the quest. Any EXP you gain from winning combat is split. If you fight and kill a monster but your dragon doesn’t help, only you gain that EXP. If the two of you kill it together, you each earn 50% of the total EXP from that monster.

Lexica

Lexica is a form of EXP unique to dragons that allows them to comprehend the Words of Power written into their bloodstream. As your dragon gains more Lexica, they can learn spells and unique abilities in addition to their Path and Advanced Path. All dragons are born with the ability Gift of the Blood, which allows them to begin interpreting and manifesting Words of Power without needing to use any special tools or extra mana. At Level 2, they have enough Lexica to manifest their most important Words: their breath weapon.

Lexica EXP is gained as your dragon matures. Between Level 2 and Level 31 (when she is fully mature), she will gain a total of 30 Lexica points that can be spent on spells or unique abilities. This is enough to select 5-10 possible spells/abilities. You cannot change these abilities, so choose wisely!

Most spells require 3 Lexica points to acquire, but some spells/abilities require 6 points.

Dragons are immune to mana toxicity and do not need any tools to control or contain mana when performing magic. However, the tradeoff is that the dragon’s abilities have a long cooldown period, and casting too many in a row while airborne may cause the dragon to faint while flying, as each spell depletes their bloodstream. They are also restricted to the spells and abilities determined by the type of dragon they are. For example, white or platinum dragons cannot learn the abilities possessed by a red dragon.

Your dragon is a Queen dragon, which means that the Words of Power in her blood are unique to her, and the combination of abilities and spells available to her are not shared by any other dragon in Archemi. Her skill trees and the advanced paths available to her reflect this.

My dyslexic ass was still no good at reading, so I had the HUD telepathically narrate the page to me for the millionth time while the noise of the street filtered in. Even with the mental chatter, could hear and distinguish every conversation going on outside and on the balconies of The Whistling Clam. That was because I was now literally a mutant. I had passed the Trial of Marantha, the mutations given to aspiring dragon knights so that they could withstand all of the challenges that riding and fighting on a dragon presented. G-forces, extreme temperatures, vertigo, and perhaps most importantly, mana poisoning.

“...What do you mean you saw him with Kella?!”

“...Clams and cockles! Fresh clams, six for six!”

“...I don’t know. That hulk looks like it couldn’t make it ower me gods’ damn bathtub, let alone the Sea of Blades...”

“... girls at that place got the pox. Last time I went there, woke up three days later with blisters down there...”

And a different voice: more cultured, out of place. “...Yes, foreign. He’s quite distinctive, with long hair like in the drawing... yes, he has it tied back, like a savage. You saw him? Where did he... is that so?”

My eyes snapped open.

“Karalti,” I said aloud, turning to stalk back inside the stable. “Go hide in the rafters.”

The little dragon chirped and cocked her crested head, a fillet of meat still dangling from her jaws. She regarded me with innocent violet-white eyes, radiating confusion.

I pulled the Spear of Nine Spheres off Cutthroat’s saddle and spun it around until the long, glaive-like blade pointed down. “The Mata Argis are here.”

Karalti hissed, and then sprung into the air. At Level 1, her wings were still long enough and strong enough to carry her short distances, even when weighed down with food.

I went to the edge of the stable, the head of the Spear held low to the ground. The weapon wasn’t much to look at: a seven-foot long, dark metal polearm with faint engravings softened and dulled by age. The head of the glaive was a full-tang, curved metal blade. I’d scrubbed the tarnish off the weapon, but even after a month of use, the weapon, an ancient magical relic, still looked like a broken antique:

Ruined Spear (Spear of Nine Spheres)

Soul-Bound Weapon

Slot: Two-handed

Item Class: Relic

Item Quality: Ruined

Damage: 25-55 Slashing or Piercing

Durability: 27% (-6 damage)

Weight: 1 lb

Special: +2 Dexterity, Soul Bound, +50 HP, +2 Defense

A weapon reputed to be the Spear of Nine Spheres. To repair it, you will need to find a Mastersmith capable of reforging Lazula (bluesteel) magical artifacts.

"Time for me and you to do what we do best, my girl.” I adjusted my grip on the Spear. “Break shit and kill things.”