Spear of Destiny Sneak Peek: Ch 1, Part 1, Rough Draft

Spear of Destiny picks up exactly where Warsinger left off. Please forgive any clunky dialogue, my lack of formatting or any errors. I'm very interested in your first impressions: whether or not it looks to be a satisfying start to the next book.

I didn't have to turn my head to see my nemesis in all of his towering dickheaded glory. In fact, both of us could have stood back to back facing away from each other and still glared at each other with shameless loathing. The self-styled Emperor of Archemi was a dragon rider, like me. We had the same sets of mutations: wraparound vision as sharp as an eagle's, enhanced reflexes. The ability to withstand extremes of temperature. There, the resemblance ended. 

Baldr Hyland was a huge man, made even larger by his fancy silvered armor and the royal blue cloak that stirred in the heat haze that shimmered around us. He looked like a paladin, some kind of righteous holy warrior, but his expression was one of pitiless contempt.

"Here we go." I sighed, dropped my hand from my dragon's wrist, and dropped back down to our arena: the enormous prone expanse of Withering Rose. The great machine lay face-down in the desert sands, steam still pouring through the cracks of her armor. "One minute, I'm celebrating my victorious rediscovery of part of Archemi's history, and the next, I'm looking at six feet of gaping asshole."

"Bet you've seen a lot of those in your time," Baldr drawled.

"I kick ass, I don't lick ass." I turned to face him, and as I did, I opened a telepathic link to my stunned, frightened dragon. "Karalti. Get out of here."

"No!" Karalti sucked in a deep throatful of air, swelling her neck, and gaped her jaws wide. "This man... he's..."

"He's going to kill me, and neither of us can stop him. Go home. NOW."

Karalti hissed, mantling her wings and flaring her horned crest around her face. "I'm not leaving you! This man... there's something wrong with him!"

"Aww, well would you look at that. Puttin' her back up like a lil' kitty." Baldr flashed a lop-sided, toothy grin that didn't reach his pale eyes. "She's a good lookin' gal for her level. But you know, it's a real shame she ain't pale and pretty like her momma. That's how it is always is though, right? You find a critter with great stats, but the colors are always wrong. Still: I'm pretty sure we can breed it out of her line."

A fierce spike of rage surged up through my body. "GO! NOW!"

Karalti flinched at the force of will behind each word. Baldr laughed, thinking he'd insulted her, then froze with a small frown as the dragon's body warped into a dark nimbus and then vanished.

"Now that's interesting." Baldr spoke in a different voice, and my spine crawled. Like magic, the man's deep Kentucky drawl was gone, replaced by a cool neutral tone that was wholly unlike his own. "Her mother never gained that spell. You probably don't know this, but the dragons of the Eyrie have to rely on artifacts to teleport."

"It's got to be real crowded in that head of yours." I shifted into a fighting stance, one hand wrapped close to the blade of the Spear of Nine Spheres, the other resting loose on the end of the haft.  "Two people sharing half a brain. Do you go by Baldr or Ororgael now? Orbal? Baldo?"

"'Your Majesty' works. Capital 'M'. I can hear the difference." The big man cocked his right hand by the pommel of the broadsword sheathed on his hip. "You know I know where she teleported to, right? I got an admin overlay right now. Shows her coordinates and every little thing about her."

He's lying. An inner voice - hard, dark, quiet - whispered from deep inside me. He didn't know she could teleport.

"Anyone can find Karhad on a map." My voice was level from behind my helmet, calm as still water. The tension - the fear - churned in my chest. "But I've got it on good authority the Admin Panel is inaccessible to you and the other Devs on the server."

"Let's see here..." Baldr trailed off, briefly sucking on one of his teeth. "Dray-go-zine Hector, Level 25 Dark Dragoon, whatever that is... 3728 EXP to next level, only 69 Strength? Jeez, you're falling behind on those stats, ain'tcha?"

A thrill of fresh fear pushed through my focus. The motherfucker could see my character stats. He could see my fucking sheet. "Wow, super. I guess you know everything. Except maybe how I kicked your ass in Cham Garai, AND Taltos, AND Myszno."

"Hmm." The man's voice shifted again, from Baldr to Ororgael. "I know exactly how you pulled those things off. Because I let you."

"This is getting more pathetic by the second." I shifted a foot, tensing in preperation to charge. "Put up or shut up."

Baldr sneered, and drew his sword. The weapon he pulled from the sheathe was not a steel blade: it was made of glass, and as soon as he drew it, the blade burst into incandescent white flames with a shock of power that nearly forced me back a step. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood up.

Welp.

"You won because I let you," he repeated, slashing the sword down. As he did, the flames inverted into a negative image of themselves, the brilliant white turning an eerie black that seemed to suck light into itself. "This sword is the Godslayer. It is the second-best weapon in the game by default - but now it IS the best, because I've bent the forces of the Void to my will. And because I've done THAT, I can finally wipe you off the map and out of my world for good."

While he ranted on, I discreetly equipped the last magical item given to me by my friend, Rin: the Heart of Memory, an item that would record - and store - my memories before I died. Despite its size, it went into the Jewelry slot. I felt it manifest under the breastplate of my armor, throbbing with a slow pulse. "Right. And why, exactly, would you want to do that? Because I've got just as much right to be here as you."

"No, no no." Baldr grinned in a way that was entirely unlike him; a twisted, desperate expression unsuited to his handsome face. "No, you're not. YOU are a mistake. Your Seed Code is hanging right here in front of me. Your viral, corrupt piece-of-shit code. You're not supposed to be here, Hector. You're not supposed to exist. You're a virus crafted and executed by THEM, and like THEM, you're fucking up MY world."

"And, uh, who's THEM?" I watched him warily. Two other Admins I'd recently fought had bought Admin-Only 'Kill All' swords to a fight, weapons capable of destroying players. I wasn't sure if the Godslayer could do that, but it looked awfully... Void-y.

"The Drachan, dumbass. THEY are the Drachan, or rather, WERE the Drachan before they became what they are now." Baldr's Southern accent bled back in briefly, before it was stamped down again by Ororgael's greater will. It was creepy to watch two people struggle for supremacy in one person's body... creepy in the way that made you stare in horrified fascination at a parasite burrowed under someone's skin. 

"Right, so let me get this straight," I said, pulling for time. Time for Karalti to hide, for Suri to prepare... something. "You're about to try and perma-kill me, an actual human, because you're afraid of some made-up alien space dragons? And you think I'm doing their bidding because I have a weird character code. Is that it?"

"You really don't understand what they are, do you?" Baldr's voice turned low and urgent as he took a step toward me. "You should know what the AI is doing to us by now. If you don't... then why did you agree to help Steven?"

Steven - as in, my overly manipulative, unfortunately intelligent brother Steven. "Help him with what? Dude, I had about an hour's warning before Steve suckered me into being here. We hadn't spoken in like, five years before he offered me a chance to perma-load into Archemi. I was dying from HEX. All I wanted to do was to stop drowning on my own fluids and play a fun fantasy game, okay? Treasure, dungeons, my own personal dragon. That's it. That's all I came here for. I barely spoke to Steve for five years because of how he used to treat me. I didn't agree to shit."

"He... manipulated you into being here?" Baldr's brows furrowed, but it was really Ororgael who was staring at me: the developer formerly known as Michael Pratt, my brother's coworker. 

"Apparently." I frowned back, confused by what I was seeing. Not just the bodysnatching thing. A new expression crossed Baldr's features, an expression I'd never have expected from the Big Bad Evil Guy.

Pity.