by B C Woodruff
This hero, the man that had extinguished the fires of rebellion before they could spread into the Realms, was enjoying a cup of tea in his estate. Legions of admirers – followers, even –still made the pilgrimage well into the era of the Evening Empire, where the Council and the True Justice reigned no more. Those who tended to him, praised him, and adored him for who he was and what he did, believed his Auxiliary had simply shattered in the explosion of Umber in a heroic effort to save the Continuous Realms from another Long War.
As the source of its instincts, intellect, and loyalty to the Realms, Ceras-Prime had been rewarded in its stead.
By all accounts, the return of his Auxiliary after so many thousands of years should have shattered Ceras’ mind and body, and transformed the bulk of his home planet into pure energy.
But this time, the universe took no payment. It only watched. His tears were not enough to stave off the deafening screams that heralded Umber’s destruction.
His rage was not enough to absolve himself of the atrocity that he had been a part of. Even the release of death would be poor recompense for the wonders he had seen, and destroyed, on that peaceful, tranquil world.
The Master of Umber once promised him that if there was a war to be fought that they would win.
He was right.
A GIRL & HER GOLEM
“It’s this way?” the woman asked, placing a hand on her chin and looking at the terrain ahead. “I mean – you’re sure this is it?” She turned around, sending golden hair twisting over her shoulder. She wore a strange, form-fitting dress, also gold, that stood out in stark contrast with her dark skin and deep-blue eyes.
A steam whistle suddenly emerged from her companion’s right shoulder, joyously announcing their arrival to anyone within a good half-mile.
“What was that?”
“I do not know.” The man... the thing standing next to her was more metal than man these days. His body was a mangled melange of meat and machinery encased in poorly polished chrome plating, each contour marked by the dimples and dents of a thousand battles. Each implant might have told its own tale, from his steel-hooved feet to the trumpets that listened where ears might once have been. One eye, the left, was hidden behind a thin black cloth. Mirdova had been traveling with her companion for long enough to have taken the time to assess – or diagnose – what she believed to be the order in which he had been ‘upgraded’.
“I’m sure this is the way.” The whistling stopped and the noisemaker retreated to its hiding place below his right shoulder. “If we’re going to sneak into the compound, you’re going to have to shut that thing off.” She took the first step up a steep climb that edged the side of the Weathered Mountains.
“What if it’s keeping me alive?” He followed her, his colossal frame making less noise than before, but still enough to give a decent bearing to anyone who had heard the steam whistle.
“Can’t we switch over to you ‘brute-strength’ personality for a while? When you get all mopey I feel like I’m going to be sick.”
“It wouldn’t really help. If I don’t have someone to target, I might shut down again.”
She considered this for a time, moving up with some difficulty. Her leg was still pretty banged-up from the fall back in the Way- march. The Creature, called such because he has no memory of his name, had saved her more than a few times in their years together. He’d done so without any demands or desires.
He owed her, sure. Mirdova had been the one that had worked out the combination to his cold coffin.
“We wouldn’t want that.” She was a little sarcastic, but that slight paranoia was new. New like the Creature’s incipient personality. Sure, he had a temperament of sorts before... but ever since they entered the Waymarch, his determination was focused to a point. He knew where he had to be, even if he wasn’t certain what was waiting for them there. The cold coffin she’d discovered in the junklands was old by anyone’s standards. Hundreds, thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of years of debris concealed it below the layers of garbage and old-world waste. He was no help in discovering anything more about his origins, either.
They’d had fun, though. She smiled. “Say, Creat, you remember Dolataria?” He turned around and revealed his face, one of only a handful (yes, one of his hands too) of things that were still part of his old self. There had been some freezer-burn and when they first met his nose had to be removed in the Triste Slumward near where he had been unearthed.
“I do.” He nodded. “Do... Do you think we can do that again?” “I have never denied you before.” He reached for her. It was the right hand that brushed against her arm first. It was cold. Unpleasantly so. Then, the other reached down and up she went, left to rest on his shoulders.
“You’re sure this doesn’t bother you?” she asked, knowing the answer.
“No.”
“And that... uh... whistle-thing – it won’t pop up and throw me off your back, will it?” She felt him shrug. “That’s comforting. You tell me if anything feels off and I’ll jump down, ‘kay?”
“Sure.” He didn’t always sound so colloquial. When they first met, Creature had been nearly mute. He understood things but he had difficulty finding his own words. He could obey back then. He wanted to obey back then... She shook off that memory. “Dolataria was beautiful.” Creature said. “I really enjoyed living there. Do you ever... wish we had taken up the Commandant’s offer? He was quite taken by you. You could have had some kids and – oumf!” She gave him a kick in his muscled left side.
“Shut up already.” They were making much better time with Creature setting the pace. His legs rarely tired – though they did need to be oiled periodically. But the Weathered Mountains presented the type of terrain that you were meant to shake your fist at, much less actually take on seriously. All the same, up they went, following a worn footpath that slithered on the edge of life and the Mortual Chasm that ran the length of the mountain chain.
“The world’s zipper,” she thought out loud. “It was formed by the Ruu-shans in the Yolde Days.” Sometimes Creature knew things. But he didn’t know that he knew them. They just... flowed out when opportunities presented themselves. It was infuriating if you wanted specifics, but wonderful if you were prepared to be surprised by occasionally useful information.
“What happened?” Mirdova asked, leaning forward. She was dwarfed by her companion in the way a child might appear when standing next to a sizeable adult.
“There was a war. There is always a war. The enemy was advancing and the Ruu-shan Tzar refused to let his people fall to the hands of the Barb Ariens. He utilized the geoforming tech they used to attract deep water and thermal chutes for their power plants as a weapon.” His voice changed, taking on an unfamiliar accent. “‘It was as though the Earth itself was water. Flowing beneath our feet. I turned to my garrison and gasped as the seams in the concrete tore free and a gaping maw ripped wide open like a hungry jaw. As innumerable members of both armies fell into the abyss, others, like myself, were lifted into the sky on pillars the Tzar could not command. When I awoke, the ground was a touch warm and spouts of boiling water were soaking those who remained as the frigid temperature bit at our exposed flesh. I didn’t need to hear from the Union. We had lost against the power of Nature herself.’ That was the account of a soldier marching on the Ruu-shan capital.”
“Is that where we’re going, Creat?” “I’m not sure. I think so. It could be something else.” The Ruu-shans hadn’t been a major power in the Sifican Reach for at least two thousand years. They certainly hadn’t had geoforming technology when, history books say, they were finally overrun by the True Barbs. Their cities were devastated. Their numbers, literally decimated.
One in ten were taken from their major cities and slaughtered for every day the Last Tzar refused to surrender. Finally, after six days, the True Barbs’ leader, Zhin Kahn, turned to the people of the walled Ruu-shan capital and promised that they would be left alone if they brought him the head of
their beloved leader. It’s not hard to imagine what they did. After the Tzar’s personal guard fell defending him, the politicians that remained began to literally kill each other over the implied privilege of being the one to bring the old man’s head to their conquerors.
The offer was, of course, a lie. If they had taken the time to peer over the battlements, they might have seen the True Barbs ready to storm the fortress as soon as the gates opened, no matter who beheaded whom. But as generations have said since then, promises are the true casualties of war.
Mirdova might not have grown up in a golden age of civilization, but some stories just carry forward. Some stories cannot be killed. She had heard the stories of the Ruu-shans, but despite the tales of their staggering powers, time smoothed out their impact on history like sand over a statue. Next to the empire-shattering power of Magnus Sterling’s Aether Troops, simple geoforming weaponry seems almost laughable.
“How old are you?” she asked. “You have asked that every day for... almost ten years, Mirdova. I still don’t have an answer for you. I promise – you’ll be the second to know.”
She’d hoped that the memory he’d just reclaimed would offer additional personal information like it did when they were in Dolataria. But, again, that was her hope talking. Her instincts, as always, told her that this story – as vivid as it had been – was no more relevant than the hundreds of other snapshots he had recalled over the years.
“Get some rest,” he said to her, and while she fought her fatigue, Mirdova found herself ill-equipped to win – and after a few minutes of quiet she succumbed. Creature continued his walk, at a slightly reduced speed to keep her comfortable as she drifted into a deep dreamstate.
***
“Do you know what they’re doing to him?” Mirdova screamed at her father. “He’s probably in pain! I can’t believe you care so little about that poor man!” She was fourteen. She’d never been further out than the Seven Slumwards and the Junklands beyond.
He’d used their discovery of the cold coffin as leverage. He wanted out of the scrap heaps and the blistering heat. At first, it wasn’t about handing it over to the right people or the wrong people. It was about getting it working so that it could help them. But at their local technomancer’s garage, the old man learned that this freakish creation could fetch a pretty sum, and went to the one group of people who had the means to pay it. Sadly, that kind of wealth didn’t come from dealing fairly with every two-bit scrapmonger who walked through their gates.
She was tired and it had only been a few hours since her father, Merdoza, had sold the cold coffin’s contents to the Minor-Tzar, Emrick. He had offered to throw in the coffin itself as a show of good faith, but Emrick had already sent his men to haul it away.
She woke to shouting and found him already three bottles deep into the Nebre Slumward’s cheapest hooch.
“Get the hell out of here, you little bitch!” He took a swing at her. “As useful as your deadbeat brother and whore mother.” He wasn’t being figurative or colourful in his language. Her brother, Merk, had been beaten to death by Emrick’s men when he was caught stealing food a few years ago. Her mother, well, she made do any way she could. Mirdova loved her father despite all of this. He’d raised her. He had kept their hopes high and their lives meaningful for so long, but now, he had finally succumbed to their desperate situation and fallen into the depths of despair.
Her father would sober up. He’d apologize. Everything would return to the way it was before. Not great, sure, but they had each other...
Only... That’s not how things happened. Time went on by. Legends of the Steel Golem grew. He was described as a brute. A strong-armed demon. He was unstoppable – and so was Emrick.
Her father, on the other hand, found his reward for the man in the cold coffin to be sizeable enough that he never needed to stay sober again. And he had no intention of doing so.
So he continued to drink, and his anger exploded into violence. Mirdova could no longer see the kindness hiding under the mask of inebriation. She wondered Where did you go? but knew that she could not find him without eliminating his means of self-destruction.
One day while he was out she, went about the task of pouring out all his liquor until none remained. It took hours, and enough liquid had met the ground that it was soggy and mud-like. Its acrid odour lingered in the air and burned her eyes, ready to ignite the neighbourhood at the slightest spark.
When her still-drunk father discovered this, he naturally threw a fit. Merdoza dragged her out of their home and made a brisk walk towards the gates of the Minor-Tzar’s compound. Outside, he screamed and begged the guards for just one more bottle. He pleaded so pitifully, some who watched told Mirdova afterwards, that they saw a guard throw a bottle from the parapets down to him.
Mirdova left, content with a new job out in the Near Junklands and pleased at the prospect of returning to a man that resembled her father, if only a little worse for wear from withdrawal. She looked forward to it, even. So it came to pass that on a cloudy midmorning, Mirdova returned from an early scrap-haul to find the Slumward’s chief physician in their hut, smelling the bottle her father had drunk so gleefully. Shaking his head with regret. Asking if she’d had any, too. He had died just hours after their parting and, falling backwards into the muddy soil, had been swallowed up to his face.
There are vermin in the slums. Need any more be said? Later that same day, Mirdova found herself standing in front of the gates to Emrick’s walled estate, screaming at whomever was willing to lend an ear.
“You killed my father, you – you bastards!” By dusk she was behind the bars of a grimy basement cell, awaiting some awful fate. Probably in the Minor-Tzar’s harem, possibly at the end of a rope in the courtyard. Neither were futures that she would welcome.
Only... That’s not how things happened. The Creature, despite their time apart, recognized her from when he first awoke from his long sleep. He was quiet and seated in the cell across from her, as he always was when Emrick had no need for him. They started to speak and both sides, over the course of many hours, came to a realization. Their fates were being controlled by the same terrible man. So then and there, Mirdova and the Creature made a pact.
They would leave the estate and find a place where they were welcomed and life was good. They weren’t going to settle for less than paradise. They had had enough of the hell they were in now – Mirdova for what the place had done to her family, and the Creature for his stolen memories and brutal master. She promised there would be no more needless deaths. That she would take care of him.
At dawn, fires at their back, the two walked out of the estate as they would for years to come – Mirdova asleep in the arms of a metal avenger. The Minor-Tzar was dead, his men scattered to the winds.
There was little doubt that the Creature was a force to be reckoned with – and more importantly, that despite his appearance and dull-eyed deference to authority, he was human after all.
***
“It’s time to get up, Dova,” he said to her, and she yawningly obeyed, wiping the sleep from her eyes, feeling the coolness of the altitude gust through the blanket from their travel bag.
“Wh–” She stopped. “What did you call me?” “Do you like it? I just thought it would be nice to try something new.” He smiled.
“What’s going on?” She stepped up and as she rose, so did the contours of the ruins of a huge city surrounded by mountains. “An... Acropolis?”
“Actually, we used to call these things metropolises. I lived here for a while, long ago.” He stood next to her, feeling a throbbing in his head. “I don’t know what’s happening. But the memories are flooding back in. See that over there?” He pointed to a crippled skyscraper. “I used to work there. I had an office on the twenty-fifth storey and a laboratory that I ran in the sub-basement floor 10.” Mirdova looked at him, momentarily saddened. Every time he remembered something about his past he said the same thing. It never stayed. At least, not all of
it.
“You were a technomancer?” She laughed, pretending for both their sakes that she hadn’t heard threads of the same story when they were in other strange locales. “I find that very unlikely.”
“We didn’t have technomancers back then, but I don’t know what I was. Only... pieces of who I was. It’s like an outline without substance or context. It feels... good, though. I feel like we’re close to the paradise we’ve always wanted to find. If I’m wrong...
Well, I’d be okay if went back to Dolataria.” He reached out and squeezed her hand with his real one. “I’m sorry about...”
“I know.” She squeezed back and gave him a hug. “I don’t really know if I like these new personality traits, though.” She smirked. “I hope you can still kick some ass if we need you to.”
He smiled back. “Don’t you worry. Come on, there’s a way down somewhere near here.”
As they approached the edge, a dim surface flickered ahead of them.
“Stop!” She grabbed him. “That’s a WarField. You’ll be torn apart!” He turned to her around, let go of her hand, and stepped into the darkness.
Heart swelling and horror climbing up her spine, Mirdova watched him vanish. There was a pause. “Aren’t you coming?” His disembodied voice was hard to hear. “Huh?” she said, overcome with honest surprise and something dangerously close to elation.
He stepped back and tugged her through the buzzing, tingling membrane.
“No. Way.” The city ahead of them was still in ruins, but the field had obscured – and perhaps protected – something neither of them could have foreseen. It was huge. Taking up a clearing in the centre of the metropolis that was easily the size of the slumward she’d grown up in. It shined brightly against the dilapidated concrete.
“Can you fly that thing?” “I... I know I can.” He rubbed a patch of chrome on head. “The question is, where do we go?”
“Where can we go?” “Theoretically? Anywhere. It will replenish its batteries the moment we start up the reactor and get it airborne.”
