Warsinger James Baldwin (read this if TXT) 📖

“Yeah. Like… now.” Karalti lifted her crest of horns, but then seemed to think of something and flattened them tight against her skull with alarm. They eased up as she looked down at me, suddenly apprehensive.

“What?”

“I don't know, but...” She trailed off, considering her words. “Well... you know I'm getting older. And you know it's almost time for my first heat?”

The thought brought color and heat to my face, despite the cold wind. “So?”

“It's possible that you're feeling irritable because… you know.” She looked as embarrassed as any apex predator could. “I mean, we share all kinds of feelings with each other. I hurt a bit when you’re injured, you got an achy chest when I was in pain. Well, since I reached Level 10, sometimes I feel hot and cold, and then like I can't sit still, and then I get up to move and feel grumpy and tired and hungry. And THEN I try and sleep, but I can’t sleep, because I get, uh, ‘feelings’ and have to take care of them. Maybe you're picking up on me?”

“Uhhn.” Now she mentioned it, I had been moodier than usual. I was usually a bright and cheerful ray of sunshine, but I couldn’t deny that there had been a recent uptick in irritable horniness, nighttime brooding, and constant snacking. “Maybe. But mostly it’s that my girlfriend is ungrateful and her fucking temper is out of control. That's all that's bothering me right now.”

“Well... okay.” Karalti heaved a rumbling sigh, put her head down, and lapsed into skeptical silence.

Getting her a space in the hangar wasn’t too hard. The Royal Engineers were more than happy to have a sacred dragon nest in one of their empty ship bays, and dragged out stacks of canvas tarpaulins so that Karalti and I had something to sleep on other than raw stone. She settled down into the makeshift bed, carefully avoiding putting pressure on her chest, and laid her chin on the floor. Her muzzle tracked me as I uncoiled my bedroll, kicking it with more force than it really needed.

“Even if nothing's making you irritable, you know Suri is gonna be upset for a while, right?” she asked. “Upset as in, ‘not rational’. I mean, she just got out of the Bad Place.”

I scowled down at the bedroll. “I know, but she doesn't need to take it out on me.”

“Just give her some time. I think you’ll both be okay.” Karalti nudged her snout toward me. “I’m really happy you’re sleeping with me tonight, though. We should do that more often.”

I flushed, and cleared my throat. “I won't be sleeping for a while, yet.”

“You should. You’re tired and grumpy in the day time now, remember?”

“Yeah, but everyone else is awake in the day. And I have to follow up on the quest Matir gave me.”

Karalti curved one trembling wing high enough that I could slip underneath. “Then come and cuddle with me for a while before you go out to do worky things. I sleep.”

As I ducked under her wing, I felt like laughing and crying and making squealy noises about how adorable she was, all at the same time. Maybe she was right, and I was hormonal. When I slid down to sit on the floor against the arch of her belly, she dropped the heavy black membranes around me like a leather curtain. “You could move your bedroll under here, you know.”

“I will.” I soaked up the heat of her body through my back, and for the first time in several days, took a moment to relax. But only a moment. Restlessly, I opened my quests window, and reviewed the sub-quest I’d gotten after confirming The Second Drachan War.

New Sub-Quest: Know Thy Enemy

Now that you have accepted the challenge of confronting Archemi's oldest and most powerful enemies, where do you start? The library, of course. You can’t fight what you don’t understand, so your first step to victory is to gather as much information as possible on the Drachan, the Rostori, the history of the races of Archemi, and the wars that they fought when the Drachan invaded the world.

You must unlock A-Grade or higher information on the Drachan War, the Drachan [Extraterrestrial Species], and the Warsingers to complete this quest. You will gain bonus EXP for collecting A-grade knowledge on the following subjects:

●       Humans and Elves in Archemi (+100)

●       The Meewfolk Empire (+250)

●       The History of the Shalid (+100)

●       The Mercurions (+50)

●       The Aesari (+300)

●       The Nine (+300)

●       The History of Tungaant (+350)

●       The Dragon Gates (+150)

●       The History of Myszno (+200)

Seek information from archives, dungeons, knowledgeable NPCs, museums, universities, and other places of knowledge. The more information you have, the better your strategy will be - and in the process of researching Archemi's history, you may open up special quests that will further your cause.

Rewards: 2400 EXP, stat increases, race-specific quests, bonus skill points, bonus languages.

It was pretty much my worst nightmare, in quest form: go to a library full of paper-and-ink books and painstakingly research obscure worldbuilding subjects. No search engines, no screen reader, no five-minute VidTube summary version.

“You know, Rutha said something weird during her testimony,” I remarked to Karalti. “She said that Baldr wants to kill the Drachan too. That that’s his end game.”

“Kill them? But he made a deal with them, didn't he? He keeps sending Void creatures after us, and he runs his stupid cult...”

“You know, now that I think about it, the cult thing actually supports that theory,” I replied. “Do you remember when we got ambushed in Taltos and we caught that one guy? The cultist that gacked himself by slashing his neck open on your claw?”

“Yeah. That was pretty weird.”

“He was saying something about being free of the Caul of Souls, and going on to live forever.” I let the