Warsinger James Baldwin (read this if TXT) 📖

of defending the province of Myszno from a horde of undead. Some of it was from... reading. If you'd asked me six months ago if I, Hector Park, would ever pick up an actual book on castles and read it from cover to cover, I would have laughed my dyslexic ass off. But each time I battled my brain weasels and successfully read a word, a sentence, a page, my Intelligence stat climbed and my ability to understand the contents improved. Characters didn’t just level up physically in this game. Slowly but surely, I was getting smarter.

“Okay. Curtain wall, gatehouse, crenulations, machicolations - that's how you pronounce that, right?” I asked Karalti. “Also, don't you think Khasir sounds like a kind of cheese?”

“Yeah, machicolations: that's how I heard Istvan say it. And... what about cheese? That was kind of random.”

“Sorry, had a squirrel moment. Let's see: oh, man. You see that big sloped wall-ramp-looking thing?” I pointed at the steeply bricked hill surrounding the keep. “I know what that is now. That's called a talus!”

“Talus sounds like a bull dragon's name. I’d totally have a boyfriend named Talus.”

Just the suggestion of Karalti having a boyfriend made the corner of my eye twitch. “Yeah, it does. And look - there's a moat around the base of that talus. That's an open cistern, I think.”

“Do they drink from there, or poop in there?”

“I dunno. Probably both.”

“Ugh. Humans are so gross.”

I checked off other points mentally: battlements, arrow-slits - this place had a lot of those - bastions, where the cannons were mounted. As we got closer, it became apparent that as intimidating as it was, the place was actually pretty run down. There was grass growing in the seams between bricks.

[You have completed Quest: The Lion of the Desert]

[You gain 150 Exp! +1 Skill EXP (Research), C-Grade Knowledge (Bakhat Khasir)]

“Woo, six and a half minutes!” I pumped a fist. “Who’s good? I’m good.”

Karalti rumbled underneath me, a sound I felt through my legs instead of hearing with my ears. “So how do we break in? It looks pretty secure to me.”

That was a very good question. “I know it will involve what will probably be the worst swim of our lives, but I'm going to guess... the cistern?”

As I said that, there was a deep, rumbling THUMP from deep underground. And then nearly of a quarter of this huge, almost unassailable structure sheared off like a collapsing sand castle, a cloud of dust blooming into the air as one side of the keep bounced down the disintegrating talus and collided with the water below.

“Umm.” I blinked rapidly as the carnage unfolded. “Are you... seeing this?”

“Uh-huh.” The dragon pulled up to hover, watching in mute disbelief as the entire north-western flank just simply caved in, sucked down into a sinkhole that expanded until it reached the edge of the cistern. Water exploded into the newly formed cavern, and for a stunned moment, I thought that I had somehow caused this. But then, there was another THUMP followed by an ear-drum-rattling, tooth-shaking monstrous screech from the bowels of the earth. Cutthroat, hanging from her harness underneath Karalti's chest, began to kick and squeal and lash her head.

“Well, that explains the timer.” All the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. “Holy shit, Karalti. Whatever that thing is, Cutthroat is scared of it. And she ain't scared of shit.”

“I know. I don't think I can land.” Karalti's telepathic voice was unusually nervous. “The ground could give way under my weight.”

“You can, Tidbit. Just Polymorph as soon as you touch dirt.”

“Okay. But I only have one more of those spells for today... if I put my human suit on and take it off an hour later, that's all I can do for the next 24 hours.”

“Roger that. If you can't get into Vulkan Keep, I'll sleep outside with you.”

“Promise?”she asked coyly.

“Pinky claw promise. Now let's clear the ground.”

The dragon angled her body out of the thermal current and into colder air. We began to gain speed: the cue for me to assume The Position. Sweat poured down my face and into my collar as I bent my knees, backed my butt up into the air and got my head down. Diving with your head above your feet was a fast way to pass out and fall out of the sky in the gloriously realistic VR fantasy world of Archemi Online: The Land of Merciless Physics.

Troops were dashing around madly, so preoccupied with earthworks that they didn't notice the incoming dragon until it was too late. Karalti flared her wings and barreled out of the dive, drawing a deep breath. “PHWHOOOOOOORRRR!”

A thin line of blazing, white liquid fire tore from Karalti's long throat, striking a couple of scurrying soldiers with enough force to send them flying. Others yelled and pointed, scattering as Karalti backwinged and dropped the last ten feet to the stone. She stalked forward, hissing and weaving her neck, white fire drooling from her jaws. The troops - only five or six men - were more sensible than the bandits. They scattered and ran for their lives.

Karalti shifted back down into her human form: nude, for a moment, before she equipped her combat gear. As she did, the rope and leather strap harness we'd rigged so that she could carry Cutthroat slumped to the ground, and dropped the dinosaur to her feet. She croaked, drawing her limbs in and hunching down into a puffy ball of feathers.

“Come on, girl.” I crouched down next to the anxious dinosaur. “Show us where Suri is.”

At the sound of Suri's name, Cutthroat's dead yellow eyes kindled with life. After staring at me blankly for a couple seconds, she lumbered to her feet and shook herself out. Then, she pawed at her iron muzzle with the stubby finger nub on her wrists and looked at me pointedly.

“Sure. Just try not to eat anyone we like, okay?” I unequipped it, and once it was off, she straightened up.