Kingdom Come: Ch 24

It took the better part of the night to reach Korona. The sun was just coming up over the horizon when we sighted the Prezyemi Line from the air. That was made easier by the fact a good part of it was on fire.

“Oh jeez.” I winced at the sounds of artillery pounding the wall to the west of Korona. Magical barriers sprung to life over the archers and riflemen who fired down at the seething black mass surging toward them below. “Ohhh boy.”

“Do we go?” Karalti labored with the weight of the Ix’tamo and Vash on her back, while I hung onto her forearm like a pirate on the mast of his ship - or a stripper on a pole, depending on your angle. Her maximum carry weight in the air was now something like six hundred pounds, but anything over three hundred inflicted a movement penalty.

“Hell no. We need to drop off the dumb stupid rock and our sullen passenger first.” I closed my eyes, then opened them wide to zoom in on the battle happening to our left. “Should probably hurry, though. This looks like the real deal.”

Bells were clanging all over Korona as warships and griffin knights surged westward. We circled, watching below as Suri and Rin crossed to the gate at the base of the wall. Only once they were inside did we circle the skydock and come in to land. Controllers on the ground galvanized into action when they saw us, waving flags and hustling people out of the way as we did a wing around, giving the people below a good view of what - and who - we were carrying. That maneuver was the end of my dragon’s endurance. Struggling for air, she evened out into a glide, straightened up as she came down, then flared her wings just before touching down to a stumbling trot.

“Oof.” She shuddered with effort, wings drooping, panting heavily as her stamina ring flashed. “That was close.”

“Yeah, but you made it because you’re a fucking boss.” I unlocked my white-knuckled hands from around her arm and jumped shakily to the ground, shaking out the adrenaline, and turned to see a mob of soldiers charging toward us. They clamored as Vash vaulted from Karalti’s back to the ground, cheering as the monk threw up his arms and ran toward them. But it only took the edge off the barely suppressed panic echoing around the fort - spearheaded by the fact that the General and Field Commander were nowhere to be seen.

“Those fuckers had better be at the front line.” Furious, I raided my pack for stamina potions, uncorked them, and held them up for Karalti. She bought her head low and tipped it back, jaws open so that I could pour them down her gullet. By the time they were finished working, I heard the screams of ‘control your fucking bird!’ and saw the cloud of mayhem that usually preceded Cutthroat’s arrival, just before the hulking black hookwing drifted a corner around the gate to the docks and sprinted toward us.

“You! Take this!” Suri snapped at a passing dockhand as she jumped off Cutthroat. She pulled her reins around and handed them to the startled man, who eyed her, then the foaming, wild-eyed hookwing. “Get her somewhere dark! Like a stall, a stable. No sunlight, no light. She’ll die. Okay?”

“I... uh... the hookwings are all corralled outside,” he stuttered. “The only stables we have are for the horses-”

“Then put her where the horses are! Just get her a stall! A secure one!” Suri snarled. Cutthroat champed her jaws, head darting from side to side as she came up behind Suri’s shoulder to back her up.

“Yes ma’am! I mean, my lady!” The man awkwardly saluted, and tried to tug Cutthroat away from Suri. As she realized when was happening, her crest feathers fell. She turned her head and squawked in disbelief as the man hauled ineffectually at her reins. 

“Go on, you big fluffy cunt! You can’t go out in the sun! I’ll come get you when you’re not a goddamned vampire!” Suri waved her off sternly. 

The hookwing’s dead yellow eyes got big and sad. She dropped her muzzled head, and placidly slouched off with the nervous soldier, not even pausing to snarl at someone who bumped into her tail.

“She’s gotten smarter,” I remarked. “She can understand human speech now?”

“I dunno.” Suri scratched her head. “I dunno if she understands the words, or if she just reads my face or voice or somethin’. Seems like it though.”

“Sure does.” I nodded. “Hope you’re ready to bring her a big bouquet of severed arms when you get back, though. She’s going to be pissed when she realizes you’re killing things without her.”

“Yeah, I was thinkin’ that.” Suri jerked her head at the Ix’tamo. “Need a hand gettin’ that bloody thing down?”

“Sure do.” I looked to Karalti. She flashed Suri a double-fanged sneer, but knelt down gratefully for us to get the heavy crystal thing off her back. Rin joined us just as we got it to the ground, and ran across, flapping her hands, as we tried to figure out how to stand it up.

“No no no no no! Don’t mess with it!” She pushed me away from it, and waved Suri off as well. “Leave me here with this! Soma and Istvan are with their men on the Western Wall! Go there and help - I’ll take care of the Ix’tamo and make sure it’s stabilized!”

“Roger that.” I cupped my hands to my mouth. “Vash! Hey! Asshole!”

“What do you want, dog?” He shouted back cheerfully.

“Want a ride to the fight?” I called. “Or you gonna stay here so these guys can suck your cock all day?”

He then clapped one man on the shoulder before turning and springing off the ground. He flashed into invisibility, then seemed to fall out of thin air into a crouch right in front of me, standing almost nose to nose. I took a step back as he spat to the side and looked past me to Karalti.

“Lady? Shall we go?” he said.

“With Hector,” she replied primly.

The monk sighed dramatically. “If we must.”

Before he could go around me, I blocked him and met his eyes. “Can we talk about this problem you have with me? Because Istvan and Soma are already making this whole war effort hard enough without you climbing my ass for trying to save my friends.”

Vash’s scarred mouth twisted down in about three different directions as he scowled. When he spoke, it was in Tuun. “Must I lay it out for you simply, like you are a child? Okay. You took a sacred oath in vain, and that is a very bad thing to do. Bad enough that it stains you like a disease, along with the other signs of corruption you bear.”

“Other signs of corruption?” I frowned, confused. “But I-”

Vash took a step forward, getting right up in my face. “You-” he pointed. “-lie so readily and so easily to yourself that you do not even know who you really are. It has left you pitted and rusted, like bad metal. And thus you took a sacred oath in vain AND betrayed that oath when it was convenient for you, immortal.”

“Wait.” I held my hands up. “Immortal? You... you know I’m-?”

“Starborn? Yes. I also know this: you and your friends do not truly die. Had you kept your word, they would have suffered briefly, then woken up somewhere.” Vash never raised his voice, but now that I’d met his gaze, I found I couldn’t tear my eyes away. “You lied to yourself, told yourself there was no other way, that you are not smart enough to think through the dilemma. So you broke the oath to spare yourself the burden of your growth, and to ward off the brief suffering of their passing. That is the truth of it. But you are here now, in this world. You are Tuun.”

“But I-”

“The Moon Pact is important to our people. The Tuun were the first humans in Archemi to understand the power and burden of magic, the knowledge that words have power to unite or separate, to form or dissolve. To speak untruth is to fray the bonds of trust between people. Thus you spread your corruption to all of us, like a sick person coughing in a crowded room.”

I recoiled from him, from the intensity I saw in his eyes. “Okay, I fucked up. But if Suri dies, her suffering won’t be brief. The Architects singled her out to be tortured here, and I’d do anything to stop that from happening to her again.”

The monk then did something I would never have expected of an NPC in any game I’d ever played. His piercing stare and menacing scowl wavered. He scratched his chin, looking over toward Suri. She was hanging back, waiting for us to finish speaking.

“There is some truth in that,” he admitted. “The woman is a walking mass of scars, some so deep it is a miracle that she is sane. What she has seen, I can only guess at. It has left her callused and opaque. But still - you are a vector, Dragozin, and your word is meaningless to me until you atone. Sane men must pursue reality at all costs. But for now, it’s time to kill zombies, yes?”

“Uhh... okay?” Just like that, Vash’s intensity snapped like an elastic band, releasing me. I looked up to Karalti, who chirruped and shrugged her wings. She bent forward, but Vash didn’t climb her. His form blurred, and he teleported onto her back in a crouch, grinning cheesily. I motioned Suri to join us, and she ran in to catch my hand and pull herself up. 

With her stamina refilled, unburdened and rested, Karalti was able to take off into the air at her full adult speed, shooting past the warship and the quazi on her way to where smoke rose in thick black clouds. Only once were we away from the waterfalls did we hear the true volume of the battle: the boom of mortars and cannons, the sharper rapport of rifles, the screams of men. 

At a glance from the air, the battle was not going well. The wall was a formidable defense - as static fortifications went - but the Western Wall didn’t command the same kind of awesome strategic position that Korona and the Central Wall did. Ten-foot walls faced a thirty-foot ridge that dropped sharply into a muddy no-man’s land. The sodden earth was buckled and treacherous, trenches zig-zagging behind wooden spikes and reams of barbed wire. That mess was only about 400 yards long. It ended in a stacked ring of felled trees, their sharpened crowns pointing toward the south - a crude abatis made to stop siege engines and other large things.

The problem was that the waves assaulting the Prezyemi Line wasn’t made up of large things. There were no siege engines on the Demon’s side: just thousands upon thousands of civilian corpses hurtling themselves across the battlefield. They sprinted through the relentless pounding of grapeshot and canister fire from the cannons lined up along the wall. For every zombie that fell, another three seemed to trample over it. Legless bodies dragged themselves by their arms, filling the trenches, forming bridges over the barbed wire, and permitting their fellows to climb them and continue toward their goal: the wall. They crawled up like lizards as terrified soldiers shot at them with guns and bows, or plunged pikes up and down like butter churns, trying to shove them away. People poured buckets of oil through machicolations and hacked off dead hands with axes as they reached up over the parapets. But there was a growing problem. Every zombie that fell added to the burning, moaning ramp that was building against the base of the fortification - a hill of bodies that made the climb easier for each wave that reached the wall.

“There!” Vash pointed toward one of the bastions, where Istvan stood among his men, alternating between firing and barking orders at the archers and artillery surrounding him. A knot of mages held a protective magical shield over them all, sheltering them from the mortar fire that rained down from above. They were doing everything they could to stop the zombies in No Man’s Land.

“Karalti, get as low as you can.” I ordered her without thinking. “We have to watch out for those shells.”

“Okay! Vash, get ready to jump!” The dragon dropped a wingtip and swooped down.

Just then, I got a short quest alert. [Quest Update: Objective - take out the Demon’s artillery before the siege train arrives.]

“Fuck, I just got assigned a quest objective,” Suri yelled so I could hear her, leaning in.

“Me too!” I called back. “Was yours about taking out artillery?”

“No - it’s for protecting Istvan on the wall! Drop me off!

Karalti’s twin hearts pounded with mingled excitement and nerves beneath us as she dove under the next round of mortar fire. I could see above, and felt her referencing my vision to help avoid the explosions and shrapnel. When the men on the wall saw us, there was pointing and shouting drowned out by cannon fire. Two sergeants hustled men from the walkway as Karalti came in to land on the edge of the parapets. She bowed down, and when the troops saw who we were carrying, a roar went up and down the line.

“Ah hahah, my boys! Guess who’s back!?” Vash jumped up over Karalti’s head to land on the ground and roll up, light on his feet. “This fuckin’ guy!”

As I helped unbuckle Suri, I saw Istvan break through the thinning crowd and tackle Vash in a hug. The wiry monk caught him on reflex, then laughed and pounded the other man on the back.

[Quest Updated: Unto Death. 270 Exp, +150 Renown (House Bolza), -75 Renown (House Soma)]

“Praise the Forge! You found him!” Istvan called to us joyfully. “The filthy old wolf’s back from the dead!”

“Not that old or dead, Usoya.” Vash let him free, leaving his hand resting on Istvan’s upper arm. “Come on, man - let’s go see how hard I can go kick a zombie in the cooter!”

For the first time since we’d met him, Istvan looked happy. “You still have a way with words, my friend! Come on, Fireblood! We need your strong arm! Dragozin - go attack the artillery! We have no idea what’s behind that curtain of smoke!”

I clasped Suri’s hand to let her down. She leaned in to kiss me, and I kissed her back, long and lingering.

“Fight hard,” she said in PM.

I smiled when she moved back, squeezing her forearm. “You too.”

Suri dropped to the rampart. Karalti turned and dove off the wall like a swallow, her roar of challenge echoing across the field. The sight of her seemed to have a galvanizing effect on those below. Looking behind, I saw archers aiming around her. Karalti adjusted her position without thinking, and the arc sailed below us as we shot out over No-Man’s land and into the heart of the assault.