Kingdom Come: Ch 20

It was like this the entire day. Encounter after encounter, mob after mob. Every mudhole seemed to contain something dangerous, poisonous, hungry, or any combination of the three. They all had shit EXP and either no loot or low-grade loot, so there wasn’t even that to look forward to. My only consolation was herbs, because the Endlar had herbs for days.

I was able to quickly gather everything I needed to sweet talk Lazar the Medic, plus extra. Green Moss was literally everywhere. I was able to collect everything from common herbs, like Holy Basil, to exotic things I hadn’t seen before. Acid mushrooms, Hallucinogenic Mushrooms, Mandrake, and all kinds of monster blood. God. So much monster blood.

Stingcrabs were one of the most common mobs, giving next to no EXP while costing us heavily in time and potions. Then there were Gastina plants, which KO’d you and THEN flung spikes of death at your helpless body while other things came to eat your delicious sweetmeats. And pretty much everything here wanted those. The dinosaurs, the bugs, the plants...

“Bears. In a swamp.” Still covered in my own blood, I held my spear above the waterline as I waded through chest-deep steaming water. The sun was starting to set.

“Yup,” Karalti said.

“Swamp bears.”

“Yuuup.”

“Those damn things were on crack AND steroids! Who the fuck puts roided out crack-bears in a swamp?” I angrily pimp-slapped a leech that was oozing toward me through the water, backhanding it to land somewhere with a splash. “Sadists, that’s who. This is some Florida-level bullshit right here.”

“We’re lucky we haven’t run into a Rex.” Suri PM’d me, even though she was only just behind. “Allosaurus are bad enough, but there’s nothing we have that could take a T-rex. We get them near oases in Dakhdir... they like to eat carrion. Unless you happen to be trucking a ballista, about the only thing anyone can do when they show up is run.”

“If they’re desert critters, they won’t be- FUCK!.” Something wrapped around my leg, and I stabbed at it and jumped away on reflex. Nothing came of it, and I resumed wading. Tentacle or weed? Who knew? 

“Yeah. This is more like Spinosaurus country, innit? Or what are those water-dinos. Name begins with ‘B’.”

“Baryonyx.” Rin clung to Hopper as the automaton paddled like a dog beside Karalti’s left leg.

“That’s the one. Barry-onyx.”

“No, it’s Baryonyx.”

“That’s what I said, numbnuts.”

It was getting colder and creepier. As we padded through the thinning trees, I noticed several things. The trees weren’t just thinning - they were dying. The water was drying up, turning more and more to mud. There weren’t any animals or monsters around, and the earthy, organic smell of the swamp had almost vanished. When we were about three hundred feet from the marker, it abruptly disappeared on the minimap, opening up into a field bounded by a large shaded circle.

“Looks like we have to search for clues.” I was uneasy as I vaulted down from Karalti’s back, and even more so when I landed on the earth and it crunched under my boots. The area smelled like an ice rink... like dirty ice and old rubber. “Something’s fucky.”

“Yeah.” Rin followed after me, sliding from Hopper’s back. “Everything’s dead. Maybe we could see something from the air?”

I looked up at Karalti. She nodded, and paced ahead with her wings mantled until she reached a bare patch of dried-out bog where she could take off. Suri lit a torch while we waited. The circle of yellow light illuminated ghostly white trees, flying beetles, shallow dead water, and a gravel-strewn ridge up ahead.

“Weird.”  I looked around uneasily. “It’s like the forest is dying.”

“Yeah.” Suri had her sword out, the point of the huge blade resting on the ground, the torch in her other hand. “Rin, you were saying there were devices that pulled mana from the land, right? Could be what we’re looking at.”

The Mercurion bobbed her head. “An Ix’tamo could do this. They refine the mana in the land and kill everything off… but they don’t usually do it this fast. Not unless there’s a lot of them.” 

“Hector! I see dead people up on the ridge!” Karalti’s voice broke through just then. 

“Hang on: Karalti found something.” I sniffed, but couldn’t smell anyone or anything decomposing. “Undead or dead-dead? And how many?”

“About twenty, and they’re dead-dead. They’re lying down.”

“Rotters?” Suri asked.

I shook my head. “She doesn’t think so. I’d be careful anyway.”

Slowly and carefully, we headed upward, climbing the narrow gravel path through groves of leafless, shriveled trees. The stench of death hung in the air.

“Wait.” Rin held up small silver hands. “I’m sorry… I can’t do this. I’ll watch the path with Lovelace and Hopper.”

“Sure thing. Can’t fault the devs for their attention to accuracy,” I muttered, tying a cloth around my neck and pulling it up partway over my helmet. “It smells like ass up here.”

“Yeah. Zombies.” Suri carried the torch ahead, drawing an axe with her other hand. She flipped it around. “You two stay behind me.”

I hesitated. “If you die-”

“You’re my DPS. If you die, Karalti’ll lose her shit and I’ll be a tank without a crowd controller. Whatever lurches up out of the muck, I can soak it.”

“... Right.” Reluctantly, I fell in behind her and flanked out, peering out into the gloom.

It was frigid now, our breath frosting in clouds of vapor, and the terrain was no longer entirely flat. As we crested the ridge, the smell hit us full force, along with the sound. Carrion beetles were congregating here, rubbing their wings together in a raspy chorus as they crawled over a ring of corpses laid out in a circle on the ground. Karalti was right: these guys were very dead, each one laid out with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Time to play ‘Jellyfish on the Beach’,” I said. “I’ve got a reach weapon. I’ll poke one and see what happens.”

“Game of the Year.” Suri held the torch up as I advanced.

Unsure of what to expect, I crept forward and stretched out with the Spear to tap the nearest corpse. Nothing happened. I came in closer, and jabbed the tip of the blade into an arm. The body lay there, unmoving. 

“I think we’re clear.” I let out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding, then went in for a closer look. There were close to twenty corpses, all of them soldiers, and they’d been dead for an extended period of time. The Vlachian warriors had Cossack hairstyles: shaven heads with a forelock or a side-part, beards and moustaches. Other men had  clay-covered dreadlocks like Zlazlo’s. Their rotted clothing and armor had been removed and left in a pile at the edge of the clearing.

“Rotters, for sure.” I crouched down. The man nearest me was a mess: blackened hands, old stab wounds, torn guts, faces stripped of flesh... and most notably, broken bones. Lots of them. Every one of these soldiers’ faces had been pulverized: noses smashed, eyes ruptured, cheekbones caved back into their skulls. I turned to look at the center of the cirle. There was a stack of stones there. On top of the small cairn was a crude wreath of grass and twigs, the only plant matter in the immediate area.

“These must have been zombies,” I said, frowning. “Baru are combat monks. Remember what Istvan said about Vash Dorha?”

“That he punched things to death.” Suri pulled up beside me, her boots crunching on the gravel. “You think he did this?”

“Yeah. Burna is the God of the Dead. I think this is Vash’s handiwork... he gave these men a respectful burial.”

Suri eyed the naked corpses, then the pile of clothes. “Uhhh, okay. I admit I have some questions.” 

“It’s a sky burial. He gave these men last rites.” The words tripped out of my mouth almost of their own accord. Somehow, I just knew. “There’s not enough soil in Tungaant to bury the dead, so they’re given rites and left out for the animals. Carrion insects are sacred to Burna. The monks have these tamed flies about the size of basketballs, and they-”

“Okay, thanks. That’ll do.” Suri coughed. “The smell’s bad enough. I don’t need the imagery.”

It was strange. As I knelt there, watching the beetles swarm the corpses, I didn’t feel the least bit of revulsion. Three months ago, I would have. It was the stuff of horror movies, right? But now... no. I knew why the Baru had done this. It was the cycling of the dead back into the living world. The fallen carried on in the insects who pollinated the crops, whose larvae could clean and purify wounds, and who's iridescent shells were used to make jewelry, dyes, and currency. “Sure, sorry.”

“So Vash was alive for this fight, at least,” Suri remarked. “But why is it so bloody cold?”

I stood back up and rubbed my jaw, frowning. “The Ix’tamo, maybe? We need to find a trail. My hunch is to follow the cold. Maybe they found something here.”

“It’s warmer to the north and east,” Suri said. “South-west?”

“Let’s do it.”

With Karalti keeping watch overhead, Suri, Cutthroat, Rin and I advanced slowly and cautiously through the increasingly eerie forest. After leaving the sky burial site, there was no animal life to be seen. Not even insects lived in this part of the swamp. There was no sloshing or gurgling of water, no wind... no anything, until we crunched our way across flattened, icy reeds and found ourselves at the shore of a frozen lake.

A serrated crescent framed the still edge of the water, leading back into a cave so dark that even my eyesight couldn’t penetrate it. The moonlight gleamed through leafless trees onto solid ice. At least fifty bodies littered the frozen surface, lying where they had fallen. There was a small island at the center, where a spear-like device hummed, glowed and spat sparks out across the ground. The air hummed and crawled across my skin, and the smell of ozone was almost suffocating. There was a dead Allosaurus at the edge of the lake.

“That’s an Ix’tamo!” Excited, Rin pointed at the device in the lake. “See! I told you that’s how the Demon was getting his mana!”

“Sure looks like it.” Suri rubbed at her face. “And it’s busted. My HUD says I’m at risk of mana poisoning.”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t, but I could definitely sense something was wrong. “Suri, retreat to the edge of the radiation zone and let me, Rin and Karalti go out there. I’m not getting an alert yet.”

“My HP is dropping fast. Be careful.” Suri beat a hasty retreat on Cutthroat.

Karalti’s wingbeats grew louder as she circled down, touching ground with a rolling boom. She folded her wings smartly against her flanks, flicking them as she took in the scene ahead. “Woah. What’s that thing?”

“Nothing good. How are you at walking on ice?”

Karalti chirped in her throat, cocking her head one way, then the other. “I dunno. I might be too heavy. I could polymorph, but...”

“No, no polymorphing. You haven’t gotten the hang of fighting in human form yet, but you’re a big badass like this. Let’s go see this dead dino here.”

The three of us edged toward the fallen Allosaurus. It was a big specimen, and it showed signs of Stranging. Its skin was studded with crystalline eruptions, and it had an elongated, twisted look about it that was unsettling. Its jaw was broken and yawned to one side. One of its eyes had been pushed back into its skull, the flesh and bone folded around the point of impact.

“Did… Vash do this?” Holding her nose, Rin crouched down to look at the injury.

“Maybe.” Punching dinosaurs to death? I was starting to see why Istvan liked the guy. “Karalti, see how you go out on the lake.”

Karalti bobbed her head, padding forward to the waterline. She delicately placed a three-toed foot onto the surface and put her weight on it. The ice groaned, then squealed just before a there was a dull crack, and a long fissure appeared across the frozen surface.

“Nope.” Flattening her horns, Karalti carefully stepped away. Through the fissure, I could see that the water was frozen all the way to the bottom… but it was crumbly. 

I sighed. “Bleh. Guess it’s on me and Rin. Go protect Suri and Cutthroat, will you? I don’t want them being ambushed by whoever is coming back for this Ix’tamo.”

“Be careful.” Tail lashing, Karalti slunk back through the bone-white trees. When she accidentally bumped into one, it snapped like wet chipboard and toppled in a cloud of dust.

Rin pulled up alongside me on her automaton. “How are you at walking on ice?”

“Like a cross between a pig and a cockroach. ” I carefully picked my way out onto the ice. My armored foot immediately began to slide forward. But then I remembered – I had better gear for this. I went into my inventory and selected Boots of the Winding Path, the Tuun-made boots with the big-ass cleats on the soles. They appeared on my feet like magic.

“Yeah, you icy bitch! Feel my traction!” I threw my hands in the air, and crunched my way forward like a large monster invading a Japanese city. “Mwahahahahaaa!”

“Uhh… right.” Shaking her head, Rin followed me out. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just mad with power.”

The diamond-shaped obelisk was driven into the bleached, lifeless earth like a knife blade. It was made of obsidian, metal and crystal, welded together in a seamless symmetrical design concealing a core of brightly glowing mana. The light pulsed erratically, because the crystal face of the machine had been smashed in by a single, powerful blow. There were crystal ‘veins’ through the Ix’tamo, and the broken channels were leaking through the shattered depression in the center, casting a glow across the bodies laid out on the surface of the lake. 

Like the others we’d found, the fallen men and women had clearly been zombies not very long ago. Like the other’s we’d found, they were heavily decomposed, with crude weapons in their hands, piecemeal armor and tattered clothing. There were so many and the fight had been so desperate that Vash hadn’t given rites to any of them. The number of corpses was relative to the proximity of the Ix’tamo - the closer we got, the more bodies there were.

“It’s like they were trying to defend this.” Curious, I made a fist and gently rested my knuckles over the depression in the crystal. It was almost an exact match. “Holy shit… he broke this with his fist.”

“You think he might be alive after all?” Rin had her mask down and her spellglove activated. 

“I don’t know? I’d assume that if have a quest, then he’s more likely to be alive than not.” I watched my health bar cautiously, holding my breath against the gas pouring from the Ix’tamo. “I don’t know if there’s RNG involved. Do you know if there is, or…?”

“A little, though I’m not supposed to tell players anything about how the game works.” Rin poured over the broken Ix’tamo and examined it with her hands, utilizing some Craft skill I could only guess at. “But, I guess we’re stuck here now… so, yes. It’s not a certain thing, because NPCs are largely autonomous. They’re digitized human datasets… so they act like people, which means they can do dumb stuff that gets them killed. But the radiant AI will always try to guide them toward player objectives when possible. In the end, though… there’s some chaos at work.”

I was about to reply, but accidentally drew in a deep breath. My eyes teared up and my throat went dry and rough, just as an alert appeared:

[Warning! You are being poisoned by Mana!]

“Crap. Mana.” I coughed the last word.

“You should go find Suri. This will take me awhile to fix, but I can make it work.” Rin was in her element now, furiously applying some kind of putty to the cracks on the obelisk.

“Don’t make it work,” I said. “We don’t want it working. Just turn it off.”

“You don’t understand. If I can make it functional, I’ve got some ideas for how we could repurpose it.” She shook her head, focused on what she was doing. “Leave me alone for a bit - I know what I’m talking about.”

“Sure. I believe you.” I beat a hasty retreat to my own area of expertise: fucking around. “Okay… If I was a hardass kung-fu master-slash-monk of the God of Death, where would I go?”

The cave loomed at the other end of the frozen lake. I sighed. 

I left Leaky Doom Island and trudged across the ice toward the cave, apprehension mounting with every step. A strange smell wafted to my nose, a chemical battery acid smell. The ice was cracked and hazed, ground to powder in places… and just inside, revealed by torchlight, was the body of a man dressed like a Tuun warrior in leather and fur.  He’d fallen face down, sprawled across the ground. The boots he wore were a more modern version of the ones I currently had on, heavy leather and sharp metal cleats. His hands were sheathed in full-sleeve cold iron gauntlets, like the ones I’d given to Karalti. The rest of him was obscured by a thick, suffocating layer of slime.

“Fuck.” I broke into a jog and knelt down beside him, trying to roll the man over. When I touched the slime, I got a small static shock through my gloves. The stuff clung to my hand, stretching like taffy. Taffy with the tensile strength of steel cable. I had to cut it off. “Ugh. Nasty.”

With some effort, I managed to roll the body over and get a look at him. This man wasn’t Tuun, and he was bald. That immediately told me that this dead monk was not our man. Hair was a big deal in Tuungant, and the way it was braided and styled could tell you a lot about a person: their profession, their marital status, whether or not they’d ever killed a person. I wasn’t entirely sure how Baru wore their hair, but I knew monks didn’t shave: except for the day they took their vows as acolytes. An experienced Baru of Vash’s experience would never cut his hair. This guy was as bald as a billiard ball… he had to have taken his vows recently.

With one wary eye on the cave, I patched through to the others. “Vash was definitely here. I found one of the Vlachian disciples who went with him - dead. It looks like something else might’ve been here, and I’d say there’s about a 300% chance our monk and whatever monster finally got the better of him is in this cave.”

“Suri copy. ETA on the Ixa’whatsit?”

“Give me another five minutes!” Rin said. 

“Roger that, I’ll join Hector at the cave entry,” Suri replied crisply.

“Uhh… Rin copy? I’m just sealing the broken filter now, and then it should be safe to transport. Will Karalti be able to pick it up?”

“Assuming it’s less than five hundred pounds, sure.” I stood up and ran an inventory while the girls packed their way around the lake. I had ten healing potions, a few antidotes for different classes of poison, a few potions to cure each of the four families of disease. "I'm setting up a camp so we can respawn as close to the fight as possible. Whatever is in there took out the guy who king-hit a three ton dinosaur. I'm thinking we might be going up against one of those slime worms."

Suri and Cutthroat came into view, with Karalti flying ahead of them. the dragon backwinged and hovered, kicking up dry ice like dust, then wheeled around to land on solid ground just in front of the cave mouth. She darted her head to sniff around while I set up our temporary spawn point: a small camp, which appeared as a translucent hologram while I found a place to put it, then manifested into bedrolls, a firepit, and a basket once placed. Suri slid from Cutthroat’s back as she approached. Her Corona was flashing warningly from the mana in the air, but her health seemed to be stable. 

“Here,” I said. “See if you can set this as a spawn point.”

Suri grimaced, but complied. After twenty seconds or so, she shook her head. “Says ‘Error: Invalid Character Request’.”

“Shit.” When I set it, I didn’t get an error. “Sorry. Thought it was worth a try.”

“It’s always worth trying.” Slowly, Suri's gaze drifted to the fallen Baru. "So, was the slime the same narcotic as the stuff that took out those allos?"

"You know, I'm not sure." I took my still-slimy knife blade and touched it to my cheek. There was no torpor alert. "Nope. No reaction. Just feels kind of wet. It zapped me when I first touched it."

“Static from the ice.” Suri scuffed her foot on it. “It’s almost like it’s dry.”

“Yeah. Dry water. Who’d have thought?”

"That slime doesn't smell the same to me." Karalti rumbled in her chest, leaning in to sniff, then lick my face. "Kind of tasty, actually. Like... eel?"

“Eel?” There were all kinds of eels that could make our lives hell. Electric eels, poison eels, choking slime eels. “Okay. Well... you all ready to have a bad time?”

Suri swung her sword off her back and around with one hand. The edge of it hit the ice with a metallic clang, the blow hard enough to send hairline cracks through the clear surface. “I’m always up for some giant-slaying.”

“Yeah! Boss fight!” Karalti tossed her head with a throaty barking cry, which Cutthroat echoed, hissing and snapping and weaving her neck.

“Guys! Wait!” Rin squeaked as Hopper ran toward us, Lovelace gecko-crawling over the ice behind her. “I fixed it! What are we doing now?”