Warsinger by James Baldwin (most important books of all time txt) 📕

the ropy slime-mold stuff was drying up. There was no life here, not even algae.

And for a third, the light ahead glinted off dull iron armor: the crouched figure of a man trying to stay hidden by the flared base of a pillar about thirty feet away. He had his head tucked down into the deepest shadows and his hand resting by his side, a sword lying on the ground just below his fingertips.

“Charlie’s waiting for us straight ahead.” I held a hand up, and Karalti halted. “Hang back and keep the light on me.”

I gripped the Spear and activated one of my passive abilities, Mantle of Darkness. The Mark of Matir flared cold on the back of my hand, and a whispering, hissing sound slithered through the air around me. It felt like putting away an energy shot. I dropped to a low, quick cross step, and stuck to the shadows until I was in position. But when I lunged out, weapon ready to strike, the ambusher didn’t leap up or cringe back. He didn’t move at all. He – I was pretty sure the corpse was male – looked like he’d been down here for a hundred years, leathery dry skin clinging to the bones of his face, which was frozen in a grimace of agony. He was frozen on his knees in a spreading pool of black frost. The hand near the sword had been reaching for it - the other hand still clutched his chest.

“That ain't good.” I pushed the end of my spear against the man's head, checking for rigor mortis. His neck was stiff, but not the heavy, wooden stiffness of the typically-dead. His body was as light and brittle as dry grass, and when I applied a little more pressure, the end of the Spear punched right through his skin and scattered it into flaky ash.

“Oooh.” Karalti groaned as she wandered forward, sensing that something was off. “That guy smells like bad magic.”

“He sure does.” The man's armor was piecemeal, light on metal and heavy on old scarred leather. “He doesn’t look like an engineer or a priest. Looks more like a bandit.”

“Yeah. I don’t think whatever stopped the sewers is natural.” Karalti's lips peeled back over her sharp, dragon-like teeth, and she scented the air through her nose and mouth. “He was really scared, too. Like he was running for a while before he got caught.”

“Anything else you can smell?”

“Cold, ice. Some other kind of nasty smell.” Karalti swept her hair back, then bent at the waist and snuffled around. “You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of Lahvan.”

Lahvan, the shadow I’d animated in Dakhdir. “You think shades did this?”

“That frost isn’t normal.” She pointed at the snowflake-like patterns of frost still sizzling on the ground. “And he had his life drained. You remember those wraiths we fought at Prezyemi?”

“Pretty sure I’ll always remember those.”

“Yeah, they did the same thing.” Her nose twitched as she looked forward into the tunnel. “Be careful.”

We continued down the corridor, and it wasn't long until we found another corpse, this one lying on the ground. We couldn't see him - only a swarming heap of rats, squeaking and squealing as they ripped at the carcass. Only the sight of an outflung hand and a fallen pickaxe told us what lay beneath the writhing mass of fur and naked tails. The next corpse wasn't much better, but the third and fourth was out of rat-reach and we got a good look at them.

Dead Guy Number Three was definitely one of the priests. The Forgebrothers of Khors shaved their heads and wore distinctive sky-blue robes trimmed in red, with sleeves and hems designed to be tied back and tucked into gauntlets and under sashes when required. He was bent double over a rusted saber planted in his chest, and he was pretty damn ripe – no signs of having had the life sucked out of him. Number Four, however, was neither an engineer or a priest. Like the first man we’d found, he was a scrappy, dirty-looking guy in piecemeal armor that looked like it had been looted from three different battlefields. Also like that man, he was sucked dry and had frozen the way he’d fallen. His hands clutched the air in front of him, as if he’d been run through by an invisible weapon. There was no entry or exit wound, other than the coating of dark frost on either side of his breastplate.

“It’s gotta be undead. Some kind of ghost or wraith.” I pulled out the pistol we’d looted from the Bandit Leader, and loaded a Phantasmal Round into it. “Drop one of those torches and take this. I’m pretty sure the Spear can hit incorporeal undead now.”

Karalti set one of the torches down, then came to me – and before I could react, she stood up on tiptoes, placed her lips against mine, and breathed in deeply. I felt something tug, the sensation of data being uploaded or downloaded from my mind, and unconsciously pulled her in close as the rush peaked and then passed.

“Sorry.” Her eyes flickered open, dark and distant. “I didn’t know how to use a pistol, but I know now.”

“If you can… uhh… download that kind of stuff from me, you should take the martial arts while you’re at it.” Despite the awful surrounds – the death, the squeaking and ripping – I found I couldn’t let her go. Even in human form, Karalti’s body was hotter than a normal human’s, and I had the mad urge to keep her exactly where she was.

“I might have already,” she replied coyly, looking up at me through her lashes. “But the hand to hand stuff is a bit more complicated than aiming along a sight and compensating for recoil. I still have to train it… my muscles don’t know how it works, even if my brain does.”

I blinked, then laughed. Then coughed, as the corpse reek pushed through the