Warsinger James Baldwin (read this if TXT) 📖

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.

I winced. Karalti winced. Cutthroat might even have winced, a bit. The bandit coughed a gout of blood, then sagged onto the claw and expired.

[New Badge: Who needs enemies when you have... you?]

[You defeated Dakhari Deserter!]

[You defeated Bashar Desert Bandits!]

[You gain 320 EXP!]

[Karalti gains 320 EXP!]

“Holy fucking Christ on a cracker.” I slapped my thighs, sighed, and stood. “All I wanted were some goddamn directions.”

“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 wasn’t working, Cutthroat 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 crest dropped, her horns flattening against her skull. “Maybe not. I’m sorry… are we going to make it to Al-Asad in time?”

“We have to. But I don’t know.” 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. “Wait… there is one 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 raided all the bags on the way over to my intended victim, picking up 30 Lira, the currency of Dakhdir, bullets, crossbow bolts, gunpowder, and the ornately decorated [Flintlock Pistol] that the Bandit Leader had waved at us. My boots crunched on the dry earth as I came to a stop in front of the guy who had just gacked himself.

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

“About to try and put the 'romance' back into 'necromancy.'“ I pulled off one of my gloves, baring the inky black Mark of Matir, and slid on the spellglove gifted to me in Vlachia. I fitted a tiny sealed capsule of [Greencrystal Mana] into the back of the glove, snapped it closed, and glanced up as a holographic alert appeared.

[You have gained Magic Points! Current MP: 50/150]

This was my first time trying magic of any kind. Other mages I’d seen in Archemi used magical incantations and gestures of their hands when casting spells. I didn’t usually play mages and waving my arms around felt dumb, so I settled for glaring at the corpse and holding my hand out over it. As I focused on him, I felt a hard, cold power build in my chest. My hyperactive mind briefly settled into stillness. Karalti's wing cast the body into shadow, a distorted black outline trembling on the red sand. As I stared at it, I could feel it looking back at me.

“Suund'karon! Karalt', Binah!” I uttered the command words of the only spell I could use - Shadow of the Sun, the necromantic rite I'd gained when I'd almost been transformed into a vampiric thrall.

The light around us darkened, and the air chilled. In the middle of the desert, my breath began to frost. The green mana pulsed through the glove, wisping out into the air as tendrils of dark energy, as wispy and fine as spider silk. They wrapped around the corpse, and his shadow shuddered, sucking into and dissolving in the pool of Dark mana. Slowly, it came together in a vaguely humanoid form and stood up, shadow matter billowing off into the wind.

[You have earned a badge: Reduce, Reuse, Reanimate]

[You have gained a thrall: Shadow Rogue (Level 5)]

“Now we’re talking.” A small smile curled my lips. I brought up the HUD and queried 'Thralls', and immediately got taken to a sub-menu. As with Archemi's War Combat system, the Shadow's stats were simplified:

Common Shadow Rogue

Unit Rank: 0 (Level 5, Common)

Type: Incorporeal Undead

HP: 150/150

Speed: 110 (Extremely Fast)

Melee Attack: 20

Melee Defense: 4

Abilities: Life Drain, Incorporeal, Sneak Attack (x3 damage)

EXP: 300 (+200 to next level)

[Do you want to name your thrall?]

I couldn’t think of a name, so I shrugged and looked back to it. “Hey – what was your name in life?”

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

“Okay, Lahvan. I'll give you a name because you're my first shadow, but I'm not going to lie. Given what you said to my little Tidbit before, you're highly disposable.” I narrowed my eyes, not daring to look away from it. “Do you know the way to Al-Asad?”

Lahvan lifted one tenebrous hand, pointing toward the open desert. When he spoke, it was a hissing, slithering sound, like dead leaves skittering over dry pavement. “Al-Asad Prison lies at the heart of a fortress called Bakhat Khasssiiiir.”

“Can you can guide us there?”

“Yesss.” The shadow seemed almost meek. “But be warned. No one has ever broken in. Not even a dragon queen. Al-Asad is impregnable.”

“Well the four of us are about to go and pregnate the hell out of it.” I re-equipped my helmet and my armored gauntlet, used the Spear to climb to my feet, and sighed. “Suri and I have a royal audience in the capital of Vlachia in the morning, and she’s been waiting too long for us to find her.”

Chapter 2

Myszno, Vlachia: Five Days Earlier

“Suri didn't know where Al-Asad was. And if she did, she never told me. But if what