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

room. I flailed to bring the spear around as the door burst in, and one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen in my life charged inside. She was small and lithe, with pearly skin and a waist-length curtain of fine black braids. She was also dressed like a ninja cosplayer. Not exactly the burly Pacific Alliance genome soldier I’d been expecting.

“Now hang on just a goddamn second!” I brandished my weapon at her from the ground, stopping her in her tracks. “I don’t know who the fuck you are or what you’re doing here, but there’d better be a damn good explanation for why I’m tripping balls in some creepy-ass church in the middle of nowhere!”

 “Oh... OH! Right! You lost your memory again!” She smacked her forehead, her peppy voice ringing inside my head. It was like having a radio play right into my brain. “It’s okay! I’ll fix it!”

“Lost my memory? Wait—how the fuck are you talking to me?” My vision fritzed as the girl tried to circle around, a black haze briefly obscuring her features. The ground lurched, and a shock of adrenaline tightened my chest. “Where the hell’s my squad?”

“It’s okay! Just calm down, alright?” She held her hands up, fingers loose. No gun, and no sign of one. “Your squad’s not here, Hector.”

“What the hell’ve you done to them?!”

“Hector... it’s okay. My name’s Karalti,” the black-haired girl said, hanging back. She still had her hands up, trying to look small and innocent. “You’ve got really bad amnesia. I know you don’t remember me or anything else right now, but I can help you. Okay?”

“My name isn’t Hector! It’s... it’s... uhh... Daveed. Or David. I’m a Sergeant. 82nd Airborne CAB... uhh...” I reached up to the side of my head, feeling for a BCI adaptor. Brain-to-Interface was the only way she could be speaking inside my head—unless I was hallucinating that, too. “Don’t worry about it. You want to help me? Unplug me from the Dungeon Simulator 9000 or whatever the fuck this is, and take me to my men!”

“Your name’s not David! It’s Hector, and the Army was somewhere you served on Earth, a long time ago.” She looked pained, as if she was holding back some serious emotion: biting her lip, furrowing her brows. She had brilliant violet eyes, eyes so deep and soulful I felt like I’d drown in them. “Please, let me help you. I’m not a soldier. I’m a friend you can’t remember right now. Just... Take my hand. Please. It’ll be alright.”

She thrust out an open hand toward me. It was delicate, but her knuckles were calloused. I glanced at it suspiciously.

“Where are we?” I demanded.

“Lahati’s Tomb,” she replied sheepishly. “I came here to hide from Baldr. Urrgh... you probably don’t remember who he is, either.”

I tightened my grip on the spear. I had pins and needles spreading through my neck and chest, and my left arm was going numb. “Nope.”

“I dunno why you respawned here instead of at home.” Karalti scrubbed her other hand over the top of her head. “You bound your spawn point to Kalla Sahasi, I’m sure of it.”

Respawned? Like... in a game? I pulled my helmet off with one rubber chicken hand and stared at it in confusion. It wasn’t my UNAC-issue gear. The headset was black, for one thing, made of metal and leather and glass. It resembled the head of a stylized raven. There was no brain-to-computer-interface port, and as I looked down at it, another virtual tooltip jumped into my vision: [Raven Helm: Durability 12%].

Something inside my brain snapped. Augmented Reality alerts weren’t supposed to happen without a helmet. My vision swam for a moment, and the Raven Helm fell from numb fingers. Then I looked up at the girl in confusion.

“Is... my name really Hector?” I asked. “I don’t remember. I should. I should remember something like that.”

Karalti looked like she was trying not to cry. She bit her lip and reached for me with the fingers of her outstretched hand. “Please just touch me. You get your proper memories back when you touch me.”

“Alright. Okay.” Hesitantly, I shuffled forward, the Spear braced under my arm, and reached out to grasp her hand. “But if you even look at me funny, I’ll-”

Whatever I was about to say transformed into a scream of agony as what felt like a river of molten lava poured down between my ears, dissolving into the worst pain I’d ever experienced in my entire life. I was vaguely aware of nails clawing at my face—my own nails. There was screaming, male and female... and then my chest seized with dull throbbing pain and the black rolled me down a second time.

Chapter 3

I woke again: this time, to the deep, comforting sound of two thunderous hearts beating against my back.

“Shh... you’re okay.” Karalti shifted on the floor. She was laying like a resting lion on her belly, her tail curled around us, her wing covering me. “Just take it easy. You’re okay.”

Every muscle in my body ached—including my back. I’d never felt anything like it in Archemi before. The game removed most of the aches and pains of real life: bad backs and sore knees and tired eyes didn’t exist here. Karalti had been warming us long enough that the hard stone floor was not cold... but it was still stone, and the muscles of my back were screaming at me.

“Mmm... K-ralti?” My mouth felt like it was full of cotton wool. “Whu happened?”

“You’ve been very sick.” she replied, turning her muzzle in under her wing. The room beyond the shelter of her wing was lit with a dim blue glow, just enough light that I could see the slick lines of her head and horns in the gloom. “We’re in Lahati’s Tomb. You respawned here for some reason, but you were