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

face, complete with piercing jeweled eyes. He looked like a paladin out of legend, a hero to inspire awe and terror. Like most other things about him, it was a steaming pile of horseshit.

[Warning. The Void draws near.]

[You are immune to Corruptionn nn nn nn-]

“Jeez...” I let go of my dragon’s wrist and dropped back down to our arena: the enormous expanse of Withering Rose’s back. The great machine kneeled on hands and knees in the desert sands, steam still pouring through the cracks of her armor. “Look, Baldr or Oral-Gel or whatever you’re calling yourself now: if you’re about to do some crazy villain speech, could we find some shade before you get into it? I don’t know about you, but I’m boiling my ass off in this armor.”

“Steven Park’s kid brother,” Baldr’s deep Appalachian drawl was gone, replaced by a cool neutral tenor from somewhere in the far north of the UNAC. Canada, maybe, or Minnesota. Ororgael’s voice. “He always said you were witty, with a sharp sense of humor. I see he was wrong about that too.”

“In his defense, Steve didn’t know me real well.” My skin crawled as I turned to face him. Intellectually, I knew that something had possessed Baldr back in Cham Garai all those months ago, but actually seeing it was creepy as hell. The way he spoke, the way Ororgael used Baldr’s face, the way he stood... it was all wrong. Like something out of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

I opened a telepathic link to my stunned, frightened dragon. “Karalti. Get out of here.”

“No!” Karalti sucked in a deep throatful of air, neck swelling. “I won’t leave you!”

“He’s going to kill me, and neither of us are jacked enough to stop him. Go back to Myszno and hide somewhere. Not the castle—somewhere else.”

“I see my Queen is in good health, all limbs intact.” Ororgael pushed the visor of his helmet up so I could see his face. Hard cut, handsome... pitiless. The Trial of Marantha, the mutations that had turned us both into dragonriders, had sucked the melanin out of Baldr’s skin. The admin’s borrowed avatar was as pale and heartless as a Roman sculpture, a lock of white, feathery hair flickering in the gusts of searing desert wind.

“Hey! Asshole! I have a name!” Karalti’s crest of horns flared out in a fan around her skull. She pulled her lips back over her teeth, a low, menacing growl rumbling up from her chest.

“Cute.” Ororgael snorted. “But she’s small. My silver bull, Hyperion, is not. That’ll be a problem come egg-laying time.”

A fierce spike of rage surged up through my body. “Whatever he’ll do to you is worse than what he’ll do to me. Go! NOW!”

Karalti flinched visibly at my command. Ororgael chuckled, thinking he’d riled her, then froze with a small frown as the dragon abruptly warped into a dark nimbus before vanishing.

“She can teleport?” He cocked his head in a way Baldr never would have.

“It’s gotta be real crowded in there with two people sharing half a brain,” I remarked, ignoring his question. “Do you go by Baldr or Ororgael now? Orbal? Baldo?”

“Ororgael is fine. ‘Your Majesty’ is better. Capital M—I can tell the difference.” He let out a sharp, bitter laugh. “Baldr’s gone, Park. I use his name for the sake of convenience, and because Hyland is a decent name for an emperor. I didn’t see the need for a surname when I was playtesting.”

“I... what?” My skin crawled as I shifted into a defensive stance. “Baldr’s dead?”

“Oh, he’s not dead. Though, I suppose he’s not really alive, either. I held onto his data in case I needed it,” Ororgael said absently. “He was a fairly talented FPS gamer. The military training is useful, too. I’ve mined some bits and pieces out of him, left others.”

“Dude... what? He’s trapped? Inside his own body?” I wasn’t sure why it was important to me, but it was. “You’re keeping him like... what? Like a slave or something?”

“No. More like a toy that I pull apart and put back together. Every human is just a big wet database, after all.” He shrugged. “You’re upset by this? After what he did to you?”

It was my turn to sneer. “Baldr was a back-stabbing asshole, but he didn’t deserve this.”

Ororgael’s lips played in a small, confused smile. “There are so many bigger things to worry about, Park—and besides, the player’s not exactly anything to write home about. Real name, Brandon Marshey. Poor white trash from a fly-over town in Kentucky. He was just starting to make money as a streamer before he got addicted to pills and blew it all away. The only reason he joined the army is because the courts ordered him to. There, he spent the rest of his short, miserable life as a mechanized grunt. No awards, no accolades, no heroic battlefield achievements. The only time he ever felt like he mattered was when he was gaming. We don’t need that kind of pathetic data cluttering up the AI’s learning cycles, Hector. Trust me. He’s better off this way.”

The rage that had ignited when Ororgael had creeped on Karalti was now at a constant rolling boil. “Dude, fucking... that’s a person you’re talking about! What kind of fucking headcase are you?”

“The only one who really knows what is happening to Archemi. But as I thought, you have no knowledge and no interest in knowing, so you’re stalling for time.” The big man cocked his right hand near the pommel of the broadsword sheathed on his hip. “You know why I’m here.”

“Sure I do,” I said. “Prices are as follows: handjob only, fifty bucks. If you want me to slap you in the face while I do it, that’s an extra twenty.”

The curious light drained from Ororgael’s eyes, leaving them flat and hard.

“Sorry about