Spear of Destiny by James Baldwin (little bear else holmelund minarik .TXT) 📕

my erstwhile creators made it this way by design, out of some sense of malice? Well... that is quite another story, isn’t it?”

Chapter 55

Karalti returned with a pair of antelope. We took a single fatty haunch of meat for ourselves, roasting it on the hot stones with salt and spices until it was tender and smoky, dripping with juices. I went to bed with a full belly and the cold wind whistling over the hood of my bedroll, still thinking about what Vash had said.

If Jacob’s attitude was typical of Ryuko’s developers, then they really hadn’t anticipated people like Vash evolving out of their AI and its subroutines and databases. They’d really just believed it was just a hyper-realistic virtual reality sim, the next logical step forward in immersive entertainment. But what if Michael and Steve had known otherwise? Ororgael seemed to know that human data was capable of personhood—he just didn’t care.

But what had my brother known about Archemi? About OUROS? About Squalor? Corruption? NPCs like Tsunda, and players like Violetta?

And what had he known about me?

Sleep came restlessly, punctured by fleeting dreams of war. I started out walking alongside a tank, keeping lookout as it rumbled through a decimated Indonesian town. A second dream overlaid it, playing simultaneously. I was jumping out of a plane over Buenos Aries, half a world away from the Crescent Front. It was the conflict between the scenes that woke me up.

“Urrgh.” I slid out into a cloak of semi-darkness. Karalti’s scent hit me like a splash of water to the face. She was curled around my bedroll, her wing resting over me. The canopy of membrane trapped the perfume in the warm cave formed by her body. My skin tingled, my fingertips hummed, and my nerves lit up like a Christmas tree as I breathed in deep, hungry gulps of air. She smelled incredible. Powerful. Desirable.

It was that magical time again. Karalti was officially in her second heat.

My dragon stirred as I pushed out from under her wing, yawning and stretching. Vash was already awake, dismantling the firepit. If the cloud of pheromones was affecting him, he wasn’t showing it.

“So, what’s the plan after we get home?” I asked him. “If you need to take some leave, just say the word.”

“No. Leave from my duties is the opposite of what I need right now.” Vash shook his head, brows furrowed. His eyes were red and swollen. The battered earring he’d recovered from Temu had been added into one of his braids. I doubted he’d gotten any sleep.

“What do you want to do, then?” I rubbed the edge of Karalti’s wing, sticking close to her.

“For my own sanity, I must immerse myself in the joyful act of living for a while, which for me, means going to Karhad and assisting with the healing of the sick. I will be one of the healers your quest requires.” Vash kicked dirt and ashes over the warm cooking stones. “I also have a proposal for you. It will require Suri’s consent.”

“Go on.”

“I wish to take Jacob out of his cell and down to the city to assist us in treating the victims of thornlung plague,” Vash said. “If he is capable of reforming himself, he will only do so if he is exposed to empathy.”

I frowned. “Rin suggested the same thing.”

“Rin is wiser than her youth would suggest,” Vash replied. “Compassion is the only possible path for him, unless you wish to end up with another Tsunda.”

“Another Tsunda?”

“Tsunda was mad before she this being, this ‘Squalor’ infected her mind.” Vash finished up by laying the slate tablets over the cold fire, dusting his hands off. “Jacob currently sits on the fine edge between transformation and insanity. Loneliness is toxic to the human mind, Dragozin. What if this entity, this demon, begins to whisper in his ears? Tempting him, offering him power, enabling him with magic we cannot control or understand?”

I grimaced. “I get it, alright? No need to preach. I’ll get in touch with Suri sometime today.”

Vash tilted his head. “You do not believe it will work.”

“No. Not really. And even if rehabbing him does work, I don’t know if he deserves it.”

The baru studied me for a few moments. “What is it about him that especially repels you?”

“Is ‘everything’ an answer? Even if he was acting in innocence like he claims, the guy gives me the creeps.” I shrugged.

“You okay?” A lush wave of scent billowed past me as Karalti’s neck snaked, and she gently nuzzled my neck and head with the tip of her snout. Vash sniffed, hawked, then paused. He sniffed again, frowning up at Karalti and I realized something. His nose had been stuffy from the cold and from crying. He hadn’t smelled her until now.

“Interesting.” He cleared his throat and turned away. “I think you should commune with Suri as soon as possible. Now, maybe, while I go and take care of the morning libations.”

His remark was innocent enough, but I felt something dark and dangerously competitive press against the back of my eyes. I reached up to cradle the end of Karalti’s muzzle in my arms, squeezing gently. “Let me see if Suri’s awake. She usually sleeps in.”

“Indeed. Excuse me.” Vash shouldered his pack, then set off at a quick walk. Upwind of us.

“Hector?”  Karalti made a low trilling around in her throat, rearing her head to look down at me. “Are you… are you jealous of Vash?”

“Jealous? No.” I jerked my shoulders back, fighting the urge to stare daggers at him as he left. “Just don’t want him or any of my other friends getting funny ideas about you this time of the month. Queen dragon pheromones are a hell of a drug.”

Karalti’s eyes hooded, and she smacked her jaws with satisfaction, laying her head back down and