Science and Sorcery Box Set

by Ryan Tang

  The massive blade plunged again and again. It was an utter slaughter.

  "Wait! Wait! I'm innocent!"

  "No! I'm just here! I was just here!"

  "No! Please! Surrender! I surrender!"

  "I was just here for the food! Please!"

  A few finally realized that they had to fight, but none of them had the aim of Bringer. Most of them didn't even know about ranged weapons.

  "I surrender!"

  There was another clang, and then she roared from her cockpit.

  "Did you see that? It was a fake surrender! A fake surrender! He surrendered then attacked me!"

  "Where is the Heretic? Who is canceling my bond! Surrender him at once!"

  "I don't know! I don't know who it is!"

  "Please stop! I'm the Heretic! I surrender!"

  The blade skewered the deep voice who spoke, and it seemed like he must have been telling the truth. Moments later, the Eternium on the Surgeon's Paragon warmed and splashed. The heat rippled across the room so furiously that Lonely instinctively jerked backward to see what was happening.

  The Surgeon had a school of fish swarming around her cockpit. The metal in her arms and legs splashed and gushed. The Eternium droplets soared through the air. The Heretic had told the truth. As soon as he died, the bond between the Surgeon and her fish had re-formed. She had access to Liquid State Eternium again.

  "Okay! He's dead! He's dead!"

  "Please! Let us go! Look! Your Paragon is fine again! You have your bond!"

  "I'm just a guest! I swear! I'm not a traitor!"

  "I didn't know!"

  "They made me do it!"

  "Please! I was just here to eat! You've known me for years!"

  None of the pleas had any effect. Every one of the cringing Lords by the hangar doors wailed and died. Their screams echoed through Lonely's ears as he continued forcing his way through the slurry of human remains.

  When she finally finished, the Surgeon called down at him, her voice twisted with hatred.

  "You! Freak! This is your fault, you know. This is what the House battles means. This is what happened after you broke the balance. The blood's on your hands. You ruined my fun Ransom battles."

  Lonely ignored her and kept walking.

  He reminded herself that if it hadn't been for the House battles, he'd be dead.

  Then he stumbled over a stray piece of guts and fell face-first into someone's gored heart. The blood splattered all over his face. He cursed and tried to push himself back to his feet, but he promptly slipped on what looked like a stray pool of water. He'd remembered learning that in class once. That people's bodies were mostly water. It was such a random fact to remember right now.

  He pushed himself off of a spongy face, and then slipped again.

  He gave up and started crawling. The Surgeon continued shouting down accusations. The words rang in his ears, but they weren't the most important thing.

  He had to get to his sister. He pushed the door open. By then, his whole body was warm with blood. He must have looked like a complete monster.

  But Gallant recognized him at once. Tears were running uncontrollably down her face.

  "Hey, Big Bro. We did something bad. And there's something wrong with my arms."

  ____

  There was a pregnant woman in the far corner who Lonely instantly identified as Reader. She was sobbing over a corpse someone who'd been drawn and quartered. Lonely couldn't make out the face, but he recognized the white and black hair. It must have been her husband Gale.

  Why would anyone do that?

  Beside her, a woman in an orange and red dress was stroking a long snake, cooing comforting words in its ears. It was All Range and one of her massive Familiar's heads. This one looked like it'd spawned only moments earlier.

  Other than Gallant herself, everyone else in the room was dead. Pure Force lay on the floor with a bullet through her head. The rest of the assassins were arranged in a loose pile around her. The ones who'd been closest to Gallant had been eviscerated completely. There was nothing left of them but outlines of blood left in loose humanlike shapes.

  Gallant's hands had transformed again. It was the same strange bulbous shape he'd seen during their first battle against The Tooth Man. That time, the strange not-Eternium jelly had flickered in and out of existence.

  This time, the jelly hadn't just remained. It'd congealed and hardened around his little sister's hands. When he poked at them, short tendrils spurted out and wiggled.

  They wrapped around his arms and face, gently tickling him.

  He hurried forward and took his little sister's strange transformed hands into his.

  "I don't know what happened. My Intuition doesn't know either. It leaned forth, and then this happened."

  He blinked.

  It leaned forward?

  What was "it?" He had no idea what she was talking about.

  "What do you mean?"

  He blinked as a memory scratched the back of his mind. She'd murmured something about Intuition too during the fight against The Tooth Man.

  "Intuition. Don't you have one? I thought you said everyone had one. Does your Intuition lean forward too?"

  "What?"

  "Remember? I asked you. I said I had a voice in my head. And you made fun of me and said it was thoughts."

  Lonely just gaped at her. It took him a while to remember. That'd been right after she moved into Brightwalls. It was one of the first real conversations they'd had. He'd forgotten all about it.

  "You mean there's a voice in your head?"

  Gallant just gaped at him.

  "Yes! I told you! And you made fun of me because you said it was thoughts."

  Despite the tears trickling uncontrollably down her face, her pout was so childish and familiar that Lonely couldn't help but smile.

  He poked at the hands again. Now the firm jelly was loosening again. He could see parts of it dripping down, landing in a strange puddle on the floor. When he poked at the puddle, it splashed and slowly dissolved.

  "What happened?"

  This talk of Intuition and a voice in her head sounded utterly bizarre. Maybe if she'd described things from the start, he would understand what was happening back then. He couldn't quite remember what she'd said. Lonely cursed himself and signed. He should have asked for more details. He should have paid more attention.

  "Well, everyone was attacking us. They said that they were here to get the Surgeon, but they were mad because she went to practice. So what they did was they said they'd start killing us."

  Gallant pointed at the body.

  "They killed her husband! They killed her just to look tough! And then they would have killed me too!"

  His sister pointed at Pure Force.

  "I shot her, and they all got scared. Nobody knows about guns. So a bunch of them ran, but then a few of them kept going. They said there was a Heretic too. Then the snake disappeared, and Reader couldn't fight. They all came in with a bunch of swords. I knew I didn't have a choice. I told Intuition to lean forward, just like what happened in school."

  He frowned.

  "What happened in school?"

  She shifted again, and once more, Lonely chuckled softly. He still felt like a big brother despite the circumstances. He guessed it would always be like that. This time, she looked bashful and embarrassed.

  "I was going to tell you, but you were excited about this alliance, so I didn't want to bother you."

  She made a face.

  "I should have told you about my hand, and then not told you about the alliance."

  Then she shook her head, and the tears flew from her eyes.

  "But if I did that, then they would have killed everyone here."

  She sighed.

  "I didn't want to kill them. I just wanted them to go away. But they wouldn't go away, and they would have killed us. Why didn't they just go away? Why did they kill her husband! Why did Intuition have to lean forward! It didn't want to lean forward! It hurt
s us too!"

  Lonely was just about to ask more about her Intuition when the Surgeon and The Tall Tale had made it back into the room. The Tall Tale screamed when she saw her sister.

  "Oh my god! No! Gale! What happened!"

  The Surgeon just glowered.

  "How dare they. How dare they attack a member of my collection."

  She walked over to Pure Force's body. She spat on the burly woman's face then kicked her around.

  "I told you not to come here. I told you never to show your face near me again."

  She cackled.

  "Now look what's happened to you. You should have just joined my collection. It's what happens when you don't know your place."

  Lonely felt Gallant shudder in his hands. His sister whispered.

  "She's just like The Tooth Man."

  Lonely sighed. She was. The affect was different, but the two of them were the same deep down.

  He didn't see why it had to be like that. But Lonely himself was sort of like The Tooth Man now too. He was always trying to scare people so they'd bow down to him. He was even using The Tooth Man's machine.

  Gallant shifted.

  "This is stupid."

  Her jellyfish bobbled back and forth.

  "Adrienne says it's stupid too, and so does Intuition. All three of us think it's stupid."

  "Yeah. It is stupid."

  The Surgeon raged as she paced around her quarters.

  "House battles. House battles. This is all the fault of the House battles. How dare they do this?"

  She'd start yelling at him again soon. Lonely gathered Gallant in his arms and helped pull her to her feet. More and more of the jelly was dripping to the floor, staining the Surgeon's elegant carpet.

  "Let's go home. We can figure out what's up with your hands – and up with your Intuition – when we get back to Brightwalls."

  He still didn't know what she was talking about, but he wanted to spend time figuring it out. They couldn't do that here.

  Gallant nodded.

  "Yeah."

  They pushed their way back through the hallway of blood. The two of them winced with every step, and soon Gallant began crying again.

  "I didn't want to do it. I didn't! I really didn't!"

  They stumbled past the man Lonely had killed. He was the only complete body in the tunnel. His tiny leech Familiar had been blown to bits.

  "Yeah. I didn't want to either, actually. I really didn't want to."

  He brushed a hand over her face.

  "Here. I'll guide you. You don't need to look at this."

  They pushed forward together. Gallant's tears were warm against his hand.

  "We should just leave. We should just leave the Constellation."

  That was sounding better and better, truth be told. Before, the Ransom battles would have killed him. But now, it sounded like they were all going to die from these House battles. The Surgeon's words echoed in his ears, but he shook them off like they were annoying insects. This wasn't his fault.

  He'd done what he had to do to survive. It was Bringer and Pure Force who'd done this. And the Surgeon herself. They'd all surrendered. Some of them were her innocent guests. He wondered if the Namers would get involved, but he suspected that they wouldn't. They'd allowed people to declare a stealth House war. Why wouldn't they allow things to go further?

  "We should just take Brightwalls and leave."

  "You can't just leave the Constellation. The Namers will come after you."

  Lonely grimaced. The Namers said you weren't allowed to leave because you might betray the Conquest, but now, Lonely thought it just sounded like more inane crap. The Nobles really weren't the freest and greatest, not even close to it. Bringer had been right about the Namers. They were enemies, not just to Lonely and his plain-faced mentor, but to all Lords.

  Lonely shook his head and kept going.

  Bringer's way just led to more blood. He couldn't kill the Namers.

  His sister stopped for a long time. She was fighting between saying two different things. He thought about rushing her, but she never liked that. They'd have time to talk when they got back home. He just kept guiding her back through the corpses, back to their Paragons in the hangar. The Surgeon's blade had created great craters in the Eternium floor, craters that were filled with blood and bones.

  "The Namers said..."

  Then she stopped and shook her head.

  "How would they track us?"

  He smiled. Only Gallant would think about a question like that. It seemed obvious to everyone, but Gallant's way of thinking had always been strange. Perhaps it was because of this weird voice in her head. This Intuition that talked to her and turned her hands to jelly. He'd never heard of anything like it.

  "They'll notice if Brightwalls is gone."

  "So, we could escape in a Paragon?"

  "Well, yes, but then we'd starve."

  It took a lot of Eternium to support a farm.

  Every word was like a slight dagger through his heart. Gallant sounded so hopeful, and it truly would make things much better if they could escape the Constellation.

  As Gallant would say, the Constellation was stupid. He'd had two Sinsworn, and he'd had over ten thousand Sinsworn, but no matter how strong or weak you were, the Constellation was still stupid. Even people like the Surgeon, who'd been strong their whole lives, thought the Constellation was stupid. They just didn't realize it.

  But there was no way they could leave the Constellation. There was no way they could escape the Namers.

  "What if I could sneak Brightwalls away?"

  "What are you talking about? Do you mean the Vapor Eternium?"

  She stopped for a moment, and then shook her head.

  "No. I don't think that would work. They'd see me moving the cloud still."

  Then she shook her head.

  "And besides. Intuition says it's dangerous to move that much."

  But then she smiled.

  "I have another way. There's something else I didn't tell you. I should have told you. But there's another way. There's a way we can escape and build a new Brightwalls. It's safe and easy. They'll never see it coming. Only I can do it. The Namers say it isn't okay, but they won't know. We'll be okay. Trust me."

  Gallant sounded so confident that Lonely dared to hope.

  "Let's talk about it when we get home."

  He pushed open the hangar. Like the others, their machines had been tattered and torn because of the Surgeon's rampage, but that wasn't a problem with Gallant's gifts. She could heal her Paragon even after it'd been formed.

  He took his hands off her eyes.

  "Alright. Let's get..."

  He trailed off when he saw the swarm of blinking lights. They were far too brightly colored to be stars.

  "Oh, gods. Oh, no."

  He pulled out his tablet again and re-read Bringer's message.

  "Ah. Well, that's bad for you, but good for the Conquest. Sorry for what will happen. Trust me when I say you would have been a key piece under my original plans. If Clear (the Heretic) is there, let her know I'm sorry too. But I don't need to beat the Namers if I can bring everyone together."

  Lonely and Gallant weren't going anywhere. They couldn't leave the Constellation. They couldn't even leave the Surgeon's Castlecraft.

  Gallant pushed her face against the window.

  "Hey Big Bro. Why are there so many Paragons outside?"

  CHAPTER 15: THE WAR CRIMINAL

  Legions upon legions of Sinsworn stepped out of red portals that had suddenly opened up in space. Lonely's lip curled. There were only a few Lords with such an ability. Historically, it'd been a weak ability, but it made sense for House battles. Transporting a massive swarm of allies made no sense when you didn't have any allies.

  There were more Sinsworn than Lonely would have imagined possible. Just how many people had Bringer contacted? He must have had someone else bringing them together. It might have been Pure Force. As powerful as Bringer was, his lack o
f a reputation meant that he needed a better-known spokesperson.

  And there had to be something else Lonely was missing. The Lords happily would have claimed the Surgeon's Castlecraft and Sinsworn, but nobody would have wanted to act alone. There had to be some pretext.

  Countless Paragons soared into existence alongside the Sinsworn drones. The numbers and colors were dizzying. The lesser-known Lords soon fell into their own formations ahead of the Sinsworn.

  Lonely cursed.

  He knew every single Lord at the head of each column.

  There were seven in total, each commanding rows of what looked to be at least 1000 Sinsworn and Paragons. Each of them proudly waved their banners back and forth. The massive show of force was enough to cow anyone into surrender.

  Lonely stared again at Bringer's message. What had his former mentor said or done? Simply accusing the Surgeon of disliking House battles wouldn't have been enough, not to assemble so many reputable Lords.

  Elder Three Staff led the first column. His younger brother was the stronger of the two, but even if they weren't a single House, Elder would have ranked in the Constellation's top ten. His blue and green machine was distinguished by a strange triangular head that swept absurdly high into the air, adding ten feet to his machine's height. In its hands were the signature three staffs wielded by his House - a massive pole in his right hand and two short ones balanced between the fingers of his left.

  There was no sign of his brother, but the other assembled Lords were nearly as frightening. There were two other Lords from among the Constellation's ten highest-ranked fighters.

  The Dead End's Familiar was the massive whale, and his Paragon was appropriately large. The massive black machine stood head and shoulders above every Paragon around it. As Lonely looked closer, he saw a slight shadow shift back and forth - the whale Familiar. The entire machine served as a tank for it to swim through. In exchange, the creature granted the entire Paragon's Eternium unholy strength. Like The Tooth Man, Dead End relied solely on raw power.

  Gallant hissed when she saw who the next Lord was. The Stranger's Familiar was a jellyfish, just like Gallant's. But unlike his sister, the Stranger's Aspect was Cruelty. The Stranger's partner inflicted unbearable torment through its poison. Unlike Gallant's jellyfish Paragon, the Stranger's machine was humanoid – sky blue and white with a proud crested head and hands that clutched a two-handed glaive. Eight vicious tendrils flared from his Paragon's back. A single touch from the twisting strands was enough to melt Eternium.