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

hospital.” Istvan joined Karalti, and helped her lift me up to my feet.

“Do you have any of your potions?” Karalti asked.

“I... no. We used them all in the... you know, the thing.” My head was fuzzy. The shoulder where the assassin had stabbed me was completely numb. It was the same shoulder that had the blacked-out glitched piece carved out of it. “Doesn’t even hurt, to be honest.”

“Holy shit.” Suri had been poking around the room instead of crowding the space around me. She stood up from beside the bed with the owl mask I’d knocked from the assassin’s face. “This guy was a fuckin’ White Owl.”

“Whuzzat?” I slurred.

“The White Owls are the best assassins’ guild in Dakhdir,” she said grimly. “They’re mad expensive, but if you want someone dead, they’ll get the job done. And this…”

She gingerly picked up the sword.

“An abomination.” Istvan shuddered.

“Right?” Suri frowned, turning it over to look down the length of the blade. “Oh, it’s got an I.D tag. Uhh… ‘Nethershard Sword TEMP – Admin Spawn only?’”

“What the fuck?” I reeled a little. “That’s… that’s definitely not fair.”

“No, it definitely isn’t. It’s got a timer on it, too.” Suri frowned. “Item description doesn’t say anything, but it apparently expires in five hours.”

“It must have been Baldr,” Istvan said, steering me toward the door. “There’s no one in Dakhdir who wants to kill Hector or Karalti, surely.”

I wasn’t losing any more HP, but at 22 points, blue-balled and sleep deprived, I was beginning to feel pretty gnarly. “Yeah. Must be. Ignas is going to be pissed.”

“Not least because the White Owls are Dakhari,” Suri said. She was following us ahead of the guards. “Did this guy say anything?”

“Just one word. Sounded like… Hoo-attack.”

“Hua'takh,” she corrected. “Weird.”

“What does it mean?” Istvan asked.

“‘Pretender’.” Suri got around us and opened the doors ahead as we clattered down the stairs. “Not the usual battle cry of your average assassin.”

Chapter 32

Twenty minutes later, I was recovering in the hospital on the bed beside Vash’s. Masha was gingerly palpitating the enlarged black void on my shoulder. The triangular patch of dead pixels had been an unchanging bit of weirdness since my first week in Archemi, the place where a piece of wood had glitched through my shoulder. Now it looked more like a starburst, and was about the size of an apple. The surface of it was solid, but not in the same way as skin. It wasn’t metallic, either. It literally didn’t feel like anything, but you couldn’t push your fingers through it and wiggle them out the other side.

“Well, I must admit I am stumped,” she said, delicately probing it with a needle. “My first thought was that it was necrotized flesh, like the stuff we scraped off your lovely Baru friend, but it doesn’t appear to be flesh at all. It is like part of your body has become something else entirely. Do you feel that?”

“Nope.” I looked down to see she’d sunk about a quarter inch of needle into it. “Not a damn thing.”

“You must be careful. Whatever it is, it acts somewhat like a cancer.” She drew the needle out and examined the end for blood. There was none.

Cancer. Now there was an un-fun word I never expected to encounter in a videogame. “Do you know what a ‘Corruption’ status is? Status, debuff… not actually sure what it is.”

“I have some notion,” Vash said from behind us. “And I’ll tell you, if you do me a favor.”

We looked over. He was sitting up by himself, and was pale, rumpled, but less sweaty and definitely less sick. The stump of his shoulder was bound up in bandages, clean and uninfected. His fever had broken, and he was back to 60% maximum HP. Given he was the highest-level NPC here other than Masha, that put him about even with me in terms of HP and Stats.

“Hit me,” I said.

His eyes tracked down to my shoulder. “My lovely Masterhealer, this is a rather sensitive subject. It is yasak, taboo knowledge. Would you be so kind as to leave us to speak?”

Masha looked down, quickly touched her fingers to her forehead and lips, and then stood. “Of course, Brother. Did you know this rogue never told me he was a favorite of the Black God? If I’d known, I might not have charged him to apprentice to me.”

“Me?” I pointed at my chin.

“Yes, you. Obviously not Brother Dorha.” Masha’s characteristic peevishness returned. “I will be back in when you are done. Try not to fall on anything sharp.”

Vash waited until Masha closed the door. He sat cross-legged, his remaining hand resting in his lap. With the bandages across his chest and the blanket over his knees, he almost looked like an actual monk. Kind of.

“You can do my favor while we talk,” he said. “Get on the bed and sit behind me. I need you to play hairdresser. I’d do it myself, but even I am not dexterous enough to manage this great big mop with one hand. Istvan has many talents, but the patient art of braiding is not one of them.”

His hair had definitely taken a beating these last several weeks. All Tuun men, self included, used their hair to indicate their social status. Having it shaved on the sides, then styled into braids or cornrows worn past the belt was pretty typical for warriors. Miners and laborers wore it shorter; farmers tended to wear it loose and pulled back. For a Baru like Vash, part of their vows included never cutting their hair, which was a living memorial to the work they did for the Tuun community.

“What are all these different kinds of beads for?” I asked. Being Tuun, I’d had the cultural knowledge of how to create hairstyles like these uploaded during creation. Just as well, because I’d kept short military cuts for my entire life and wouldn’t have known where to start IRL.

He grunted. “The bone beads and rings were given to me by the