Spear of Destiny by James Baldwin (room on the broom read aloud txt) 📗

“Jeez.” Even after listening to the part where it said that the fungus couldn’t infect humans, I had the urge to scrub at my face and wash my hands. “You know, sometimes, I run across shit in Archemi that makes me wonder what the hell Ryuko was thinking. We’ve had three major pandemics this century, and that’s not even counting HEX. My grandma refused to leave the house without a facemask in her purse. Why the hell did the Devs put something like this in a videogame? Games are supposed to be fun, not traumatizing.”

“I dunno,” Karalti replied, swooping to avoid a waving curtain of fungal strands. “Maybe the Architects didn’t plan for it? I mean, they’re just people, right? Maybe they didn’t make it, and it just... happened?”

“I don’t know if that’s how videogames work, Tidbit.” The walls of the tunnel up ahead narrowed and became bumpier, and I frowned as my eyes snagged on an oddly familiar shape. As we got closer, I saw a long skeletal neck, gaping jaws, and short, stubby horns poking out through the layers of silk: a dragon’s skull and vertebrae, half meshed into the wall. Karalti shuddered beneath me—then yelped aloud. It was all the warning I got. She tipped sharply to the right, almost throwing me off the saddle.

“Oof!” I coughed, slamming down against her back. I clung to Karalti like a baby bat as she desperately winged forward and to the left. “What the-!?”

“Hold on!” The dragon’s voice was as close to a terrified shout as I’d ever heard it.

Oh boy, was I gonna. Then something moved in the corner of my eye. I whipped my head around just as a long, fleshy stem burst out of the wall like a hook shot, exploding toward my dragon’s wings. The stem pulsed with blue light, swiping at Karalti’s thin wing membranes before sagging back against the wall. Then there was another one, and another... and it was all I could do to hold on as my dragon dodged, pulling her wings in to drop, roll, then surge forward as the trap came to life around us. One of the hooks skidded over her wing membrane, catching on the edge. Another shot at me, threatening to catch in my armor and pull me off her back. I kicked at the tough, spongy stems with a boot, breaking them off and sending the clawed ends tumbling away.

“Did it get me? I don’t want to get sick!” Karalti dived as the roof bulged in above us, then exploded in a cloud of spores. Without thinking, I held my breath and screwed my eyes closed, flattening down against her back.

“You’re fine! But whatever you do, don’t stop!” I frantically looked over to her wing, making certain she hadn’t taken any cuts from the hooks. “I’ve played The Last of Us! I know how this goes!”

Karalti belched an oily stream of flames as another cloud of spores ejected from the wall in front of us. They ignited in a puff of sparks, but there was another, and another. More darts shot out at us, skimming over and hooking on the scales of the dragon’s neck. She jerked as they hauled back with surprising strength, pulling out from the walls with long, trailing white roots that crawled with blue embers. I clambered over the bucking saddle, ripping the claws out and throwing them overboard.

The exit was in sight: a dark cave entrance feeding into what looked like a larger cavern. Dim blue light spilled out from it—light that got dimmer as the fungus threw sticky strands across the opening, sealing it off. Karalti had blasted four spore clouds—she had two breath weapon charges left, one of which she spent to incinerate the rapidly forming web that was trying to close off our escape. The fungus shriveled back from the heat, and we blew past as more darts sprang out and fell away, unable to catch on Karalti’s body from behind.

The cavern we flew into was lit by immense columns of bright blue crystal that hummed like exposed wires. They jutted from the ceiling and walls, practically forcing Karalti to go to ground. She landed heavily, wings sagging.

“Wow...” she panted. “That’s... that’s a lot of mana.”

“Holy fucksticks. This has got to be worth a fortune,” I whispered. The radiation from the crystals beat down on my armor like small suns, but the crystals weren’t damaged or liquified, so there was no Mana Poisoning alert. “How many tons of bluecrystal mana do you think this is?”

“I dunno.” Karalti looked back at me, her horns lifting into an upright fan of alarm. “You’re not thinking about taking any, are you?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely,” I said. “There’s enough mana here to power Withering Rose.”

“This the tomb of my ancestress!” My dragon flattened her crests against her skull, hissing in her throat. “I’m not graverobbing my grandma, you ass.”

I winced. “Ah... yeah. Sorry. Didn’t think.”

Karalti neatly flipped her wings so they rested properly against her flanks, and gave an irritable grunt. “Ugh. I dunno about you, but I’m just about done with this place. How much further do we have to go?”

“No idea.” I focused my eyes on the other end of the chamber. Under the jutting forest of crystals was a dragon-sized crawlspace. It looked like someone had busted through the wall. Rubble and broken crystals lay scattered around it, sunken into the dirt and covered in dust. Gouge marks left by claws were visible on the walls. The room beyond glowed brightly. “Given that Myszno was one great big dragon city, we might have to fly all the way to the Endlar at this rate.”

“Ugh. Don’t say that. I remember Istvan saying there were ruins under the swamp.” Karalti flipped her wings along her sides and pushed herself to her feet. Her stamina was looking better—but her hunger