Warsinger James Baldwin (read this if TXT) 📖

cracks in the lumpy mass, which gurgled and rumbled like the stomach of a green recruit after his first meal at the One Dollar Chinese Food shack outside JBLM.

“Okay, Tidbit. Are you ready for the worst experience of your entire life?” I braced like a sprinter, the Spear held low in one hand. “There’s so much liquid fertilizer backed up in this bitch that it could run for President AND the Senate in all thirty states and three provinces. It is going to be The Worst. Capital T, capital Worst.”

“Ugh. Just get it over with.” Karalti clamped her hands over her nose, drew a deep breath, and nodded.

“Today’s monologue has been brought to you by Three-Day-Old Leftover Tacos.” I steeled myself and dashed forward, lashing out with one final blow of Shattering Darkness.

The congealed mass squealed as it froze solid, and I had barely changed course when the barrier exploded out into the tunnel and blasted a month's worth of raw sewage into the unsuspecting canal. Karalti and I fled the room ahead of a billowing cloud of noxious gas that pushed us out the door like a giant sulfurous hand. We stumbled to the next entrance in the cistern and ran down the stairs. It was comparatively unstinky down here, cool and dusty. About halfway down, we stopped and gratefully gulped lungfuls of fresh air, then continued down the winding narrow stairs. They fed out into a dry, barrel-shaped tunnel. There was no sewage here, no rats, and no moss or fungi. Grates were set along the dusty walls. They all looked surprisingly new, and as I pulled up to one of them and held the torch up, I saw why.

“New steel.” I tapped one with a nail. The metal was still shiny. “And are these... runes?”

“Yup.” Karalti looked at them, weaving her head like a curious eagle. “Words of Power... they're almost the same as the ones I use for my Circle of Protection.”

“They keep undead out?”

“Not just undead. Everything. But they don't work anymore. There's no mana in them.” Karalti pressed forward, strumming the bars as she passed by. “The note said it the entry they wanted was the third grate from the end of the tunnel... oh.”

“Oh what?” As I joined her where she'd stopped, the torchlight swept over the shrunken, dried-out husk of the last looter. “Ohhh.”

He - or she - had crumpled to the ground like a wet paper bag, the life sucked out of him by the shades. There was a sword and a broken [Guardian Drone] nearby. They hadn't broken the bluesteel bars - they'd used a mallet and chisel to break into the wall, carving a narrow tunnel into the shaft beyond.

“I guess they disturbed the Tomb Guardian's drone units, and they activated the mothership,” I said, toeing the broken artifact. “Do you think those words of power are old?”

“I don't think so? They look like the kind human mages would use.” Karalti poked her head into the tunnel, then slid in with a little 'hup' of effort. She kicked her legs at me. “Push me in!”

I caught her feet, and helped to slide her into the shaft, then unequipped my armor and did the same thing. We commando crawled in, the tunnel sloping down. On the mini-map, I could see that we were now right underneath the University... and more specifically, right under the University's cathedral. After a few more minutes, we dropped out of the shaft into a huge, echoing chamber... and as we lit up a second torch, deja-vu slapped me upside the face so hard my eyes widened.

In the great circular chamber were a ring of dragon-sized biers. It was an almost perfect mirror of the chamber I had stumbled into in Taltos, the one under the grand old Cathedral of the Maker in the center of town. However, there was one notable difference. When I pulled up in front of one of the biers and cast the torch around, I saw it was empty.

“Oh my gods…”She passed by me in a daze, going to her knees in front of the black stone platform. She swept her hands over the dusty plaque, clearing it off. “ Tanrilar tarafindan. The Haven of the Eggs. Hector... this is...”

“A burial chamber from the Aesari Wars period, yeah.” Just like the collective tomb in Taltos, this place had the quiet, hallow hush of a church. It was hard to believe the sewers raged under the streets around it, but no matter how hard I strained to hear it, there were no sounds of water to be found. There was nothing but a thick, heavy silence.

“There were children buried here, Hector,” Karalti whispered, her voice trembling. “This was the tomb of the hatchlings killed when... when... “

“When what?” I knelt beside her, looping an arm around her narrow shoulders.

“When the Aesari massacred them. It... it says... that the Solonkratsu here shook off the geas binding them with the help of the demigoddess... wait, that can't be right.” Karalti sniffed, bending down until her nose almost touched the stone. “The Demigoddess Taltas, the royal daughter of Khors?”

“Taltas? Like... Taltos?” I blinked. I knew that the capital of Vlachia was named for the theoretical demi-god son of Khors, one of the Nine and the patron deity of the country. “You sure that says 'daughter'?”

“Yup. And the word they use, ‘kralis’, is only used to describe queen daughters in Solunkraati,” Karalti said, nodding. “It's not used for boys, ever.”

“Huh. Guess they're gonna have to make some changes to that big statue in the middle of the market plaza.” I scratched my jaw, looking around. “There's a tomb just like this under Taltos. There should be chambers for humans here, too.”

“I hope not.” Karalti stood, swaying uneasily.

We poked around the great tomb, and sure enough, there were radial flights of stairs that led to smaller catacombs. Some of them contained the graves of the beings called Tulaq - slender winged creatures that were equal parts greyhound,