He heard Litzenreich giving his commands to the dwarfs, and after a while the spider returned. In each metal claw it held a glowing instrument; there was a hammer and a saw, a chisel and a knife, a pair of pincers and a turnscrew, and two contraptions he did not recognize. They glowed with heat, but with far more than that. At the very epicentre of each device was a point of absolute blackness, a total darkness which seemed to absorb all light within its immediate vicinity.
They planned to open him up with this equipment. No, not him — the bronze armour.
But he was the bronze armour…
He gazed with terror as the spider was lowered even closer towards him, and its metal arms began to move, each of them bearing an implement which was directed at the armour in which he was held captive. They started to work their way into his metal, his flesh, peeling back the bronze, flaying away his skin.
He had believed he was in pain earlier, but that had been as nothing in comparison to what he now experienced. He was overwhelmed with absolute agony, the refined essence of torment. All he could do was squeeze his eyes shut, so that he did not have to witness his own living autopsy But even with his eyes closed and flooded with tears of poison, he could not dim the brilliance of the mechanical insect ripping its way into his body.
For the first time in ages, he managed to utter a sound, a cry of infinite torture.
And he heard a distant voice say: “He’s dead, boss.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
He was free of the suit. More: he was free of his body…
He felt himself rising up.
But who was he?
What was he? He was more than a body, because that was the part of himself which he had left behind. His essence floated away from his physical form. He had no eyes but he could see. And what he saw was himself, the human shape within the armour.
He seemed to be hovering at ceiling height, and the metal spider should have obscured his vision, yet his eyeless gaze could focus through the device.
A few pieces of bronze had been torn away to reveal the flesh beneath — his flesh. Or what had been his flesh…
What lay below was but a corpse, a lifeless corpse. It was still almost entirely covered with armour, but he could see through the bronze, see the emaciated body beneath.
It was covered with a web of red; the arteries were clearly visible through the translucent skin.
A shield of metal encircled the figure, behind which the four dwarfs and the one human sheltered. The human was clad in silver armour; the dwarfs wore helmets and mailed gauntlets.
It was the dwarfs who operated the levers which controlled the spider’s claws, manipulating the implements they held. They could only observe what they were doing indirectly, by looking into a series of mirrors that topped the metal barrier.
The glowing contraptions with the hearts of darkness continued removing the bronze from the figure.
But the figure was dead. He was dead. He felt no pain, not anymore. He felt nothing, because he no longer had any physical senses.
Instead, his senses were far more than merely physical. He was not restricted to what his human body could perceive.
His body was dead, but he was not. He was more than his body, so much more.
His essence survived, and that was the infinitely greater part of him. It was the part that had existed before he was born, then been trapped at birth — just as his physical body had been trapped by the bronze armour.
Now his body was free, although it was too late: his liberation had finally killed his mortal embodiment.
But it had also freed his soul.
He gazed down at what had been an element of him for so long, the flesh and bones in which he had inhabited the material world. He had abandoned his body without regret, as easily as he had once cast off unwanted clothes.
There was no longer any connection between his temporary human form and his true substance.
He moved on up, higher, passing easily through the arched ceiling, higher, through the solid rock, higher, through the buildings above, higher, through the roofs and attics and rafters and tiles, higher, then out into the air, higher.
Middenheim lay below, a city hewn from the very mountainside. It was like a toy fortress. Roads and villages, rivers and forests, all were laid out like a living map.
Far below, he could see hundreds, thousands of tiny points of movement. They were people, as he had once been.
And, as he had once been, they were of no consequence.
With the escape from his body, his memories had also been released. He remembered. He remembered Wolf.
It was Wolf who had first spoken of Middenheim; and he recalled it was a dwarf who had taught him to fight with an axe, from whom he had learned some of their ancient language.
And he remembered Krysten. That was why he had pursued the malevolent armies which had destroyed the mine and annihilated almost everyone within; he had been searching for the girl.
From his vantage point, with all his restored and heightened senses, he could have effortlessly located Krysten — if she were still alive.
What of it? He had memories of the girl, but they were not his memories, not anymore. He had other memories, true memories of the spirit world.
And that was where he belonged now.
Finally free from his earthly bonds, he continued to ascend, rising faster and faster.
He watched the landscape recede below, saw the whole of the Empire far beneath. He could even identify the desolate site of the village where he had spent most of his human life. But it was of no significance, not now.
He saw Kislev, its northern frontier marked by the unnatural hybrid colours where the Chaos Wastes began.
The Sea of Claws, the Middle Sea, the Great Western Ocean, the Southern Sea, the blue that bordered the green and brown of the Old World on three sides, he saw it all, all and more, including the lands which did not appear on any map, or which had been inaccurately measured or located by cartographers who relied only on the legends of travellers.
Higher, higher, over the most distant of distant lands, over fabled continents, over islands that had never been named, had never been discovered, over unknown seas and lost oceans.
They were as nothing. The whole world, that lowly sphere, it was a grain of sand.
He arose beyond the planet and its two specks of dust, the tiny moons which revolved about it. Further than the sun, itself nothing more than a spark of flame.
Further, faster, higher, deeper, past more insignificant points of light, more suns, infinitesimally small, infinite in number.
Into the heart of the universe — and then beyond, beyond all distance, beyond all time, until a billion stars became as one, then faded and vanished.
He was alone in the absolute void, lost in an eternity of solitude.
Without any reference in the ultimate darkness, he allowed himself to float forever, adrift in the endless spectral cosmos.
But he discovered there could be no total nothingness. Beyond forever, further than the infinite, he found himself remorselessly drawn towards his own kind, to his true genesis.
To the ocean of minds, the sea of souls…
A glint of light, coming closer, closer, growing, expanding, resolving into individual stars. Another galaxy, a universe of the dead.
Except they were not stars, not incandescent infernos. They were spirits, the true essences of existence.
Here they dwelled, beings without being.
He had been here previously, he recalled; many times, times without number.
His periods of imprisonment within a material body were as nothing compared to the duration of his inhabitation of a dimension without matter, perpetuity without limit.
Yet this was not a place of peace, of rest. Peace and stasis were impossible. That could only mean entropy and absolute decay, the total absence of anything — of everything.
And there could be no ultimate vacuum. Beyond nothing, there was always more.
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br /> Like the physical life where he had been entrapped, here was conflict and conflagration. Some spirits were easily overwhelmed and annihilated, others formed alliances to combat their enemies, and in doing so they created those enemies.
The firmament seethed and bubbled, was forever restless. There were winners and losers, almost as if non-existence were a reflection of the tangible world where life held so many spirits as hostage.
Like sought out like, and became absorbed into a greater whole, powerful and opposing forces of singular determination. Each of these was totally antagonistic to every other such grouping.
He did not belong within any of the greater entities, yet he was not totally independent, not anymore. Only with unity came strength to defeat the negative forces.
He found himself being drawn towards one of the smaller essential forms. Feeling the warmth of attraction as he grew nearer the power, he sped towards the true heart of his desire. Then stopped!
And suddenly he was moving backwards, being pulled away against his will, torn from his true destiny. He fought and struggled, but to no avail. Slowly at first, remorselessly, he was dragged across the infinite, back the way he had come.
His speed increased, accelerating ever faster; and in the blink of an eyeless eye, the omneity which had been his fulfilment had vanished.
He was torn away with far more urgency, across the desolate interstices of the dimensional matrix.
There was speed without distance, without temporal restriction, without illumination.
Until — there was light. The flickering stars rushed towards him, engulfing him, impelling onwards with ever greater speed.
Finally, he noticed that he was focused directly on one star, one world. Then he realized the awful truth which he had been trying to avoid…
It was the world where he had lived so recently.
He had been gone for aeons, an infinity even in cosmic terms, a time during which galaxies had expired, been born again.
He remembered, remembered it all. His life, his death. And everything in between.
Trapped inside the suit of bronze armour, that was how he had suffered his death.
Suffered…
Material life meant suffering. From birth to death, there was only pain and agony.
He remembered. There would be but a few years of life — a mere moment as such matters were measured on the true scale -and yet its endurance would seem eternal.
He remembered. Born in a village amidst a forest, growing up, learning to use a bow as his first weapon. Then the raid on the village. He had departed earlier and thus escaped death, but Evane remained. When he returned, everything had been destroyed by the goblins. He found his first love, or most of her:
the invaders had stolen the head from her corpse.
He remembered, remembered.
Down he sped, hauled back by the invisible lifeline that he wished he could sever, but which he could not resist.
Back, back, away from the liberty of the ethereal, back into the prison of flesh.
And like all the newborn, he screamed both in defiance and defeat at his birth.
CHAPTER NINE
KONRAD SCREAMED.
“Ah!” said a voice.
He opened his eyes, and he knew instantly that there was something wrong with his vision. He could see, but everything seemed to have changed slightly, although he was not sure how.
A figure was leaning over him. It was Litzenreich; he saw him clearly.
“I was about to proclaim the experiment a success, although alas the subject died,” said Litzenreich. “It seems I shall have to modify my conclusion.”
They were still in the room where the dwarfs had begun to remove the bronze armour. With great effort, Konrad glanced down — the first movement he had been able to make for so long, he realized. The armour was gone but when he saw himself, he gasped.
It hardly seemed his own body; it was so emaciated, little more than a skeleton covered with skin. Or was that skin? His entire torso and limbs were so red it appeared that his flesh was raw, that his skin had been peeled away with the armour. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words would come; his lips were frozen.
“You are in great pain,” said Litzenreich. “Or you would be had I not administered an assuaging infusion when I saw that you still lived. Do not try to speak or move. There will be plenty of time for that. Your body must renew itself, and you must recover your strength. That will be the time for talk.”
Konrad was aware of the dwarfs moving about in the darkened room, dismantling their equipment, and he could hear the sounds of metal being dismembered. Above, he saw the spider device whose claws had removed the bronze carapace.
A few brief minutes could have passed, that was all, yet he seemed to have been gone from this earth for all eternity.
But time was relative. It could be expanded and compressed, twisted and distorted. During his infinite journey, an aeon had been but a second here in the world of men.
He was back once again in his body — although, he supposed, that body had not been his while he was trapped within the armour. Already, his metaphysical experience was beginning to seem like a dream. This was reality; what had happened while he was unconscious was nothing but the delusions of his tortured mind seeking release from the torment of his body.
Unconscious? Or had he really died for a few seconds? Had his heart stopped — and then begun to beat once more?
He tried to concentrate, to fix in his mind what he could remember of his epic supernatural journey. He needed to discuss it all later, when he found someone able to interpret his memories.
He was certain, however, that the most recent memory would not fade. He had apparently been recalling his early life. Yet his memories had been confused, not totally accurate. It seemed as though he had parents, parents he had known…
He wished that he had concentrated more upon that memory, because it was further back than he had ever been able to recall. If he could remember, it would give him a vital clue to his enigmatic past.
Then he realized that it was not his own past he had recalled, but someone else’s. Even at an age when Konrad had no parents, this other person did have them. That early life bore many similarities to the one he had imagined, such as the way the village had been attacked and destroyed. Except, it seemed, it was a nearby village that had been wiped out. Also, it was goblins who had been responsible for the atrocity, not a horde of mutated beastmen.
And it had not been Elyssa who had died, but someone called Evane.
The name was firmly lodged in his mind. He had never heard it before, so who had she been? Why did she seem so important in his memory? Or someone else’s memory…
“I will take good care of you,” continued Litzenreich. “After all the trouble I have gone to, it would be a pity to lose you now.”
He ran his fingers through his long beard, nodding in triumph. Despite the grey in his untamed beard and hair, he was probably only about forty years old. Litzenreich was a wizard, Konrad knew. Only a magician could have freed him from his prison of armour. Indeed, only a magician could have defeated the bronze warrior.
Now Konrad was in his domain, a subterranean lair carved out of the mountain, far below the inhabited parts of Middenheim. What did Litzenreich want with him? There would be a price to pay for his liberty. The magician would expect a reward for what he had accomplished. Even if Konrad were wealthy, he realized that was not the kind of recompense which would be expected. The rewards demanded by spellcasters were more than mere coin.
He had escaped from Kastring only to be captured by the bronze panoply. Had he again exchanged one kind of imprisonment for another? All that could be certain was that for the moment he was totally helpless, either because of his weakened body or because of the potion which Litzenreich had given him, or perhaps from a combination of both.
“First,” said Litzenreich, “I must get you away from my experimental chamber.” He summoned two of the dwarf
s. “Take him to the last room in the eastern corridor, and be very careful.”
“Whatever you say, boss,” said Varsung.
He and the other dwarf lifted Konrad onto a wheeled table and pushed him out through the doorway, along a series of low narrow passages. Litzenreich walked ahead, finally unlocking a door at the end of the lowest and narrowest of tunnels. Varsung went inside and lit the lantern which hung from the bare rock of the small chamber. Konrad was wheeled through and lowered onto the straw mattress on the floor.
“Fetch Gertraut and Rita,” Litzenreich ordered, and the other dwarf retreated. “Light a fire,” he added, and Varsung moved towards the fireplace and began to do so.
“It is cold in here,” said the wizard, “and you must remain uncovered. That is the only way your wounds will heal. You will require constant attention. Someone will be with you all the time, and they will call me if you require my assistance.”
The young women entered the room. They were both slim and fair-haired, and they studied Konrad as Litzenreich spoke to them. He had lowered his voice, and Konrad did not hear what was said. The magician glanced at Konrad briefly, then left the room. Varsung nodded to Konrad, made the ancient dwarf “good fortune” sign with his thumb, and followed Litzenreich out of the door. The door was bolted on the outside.
Konrad may have returned to his own body, but he was as helpless as a newborn baby — and he was treated as such. He could do nothing for himself, and so Gertraut and Rita did it all.
The time passed, very slowly. Deep underground, he had no way of measuring the hours or the days. All that changed was who sat with him. He would hear the heavy bolts being drawn back, then the door would open, and the two girls would exchange places. If ever one of them required help, they summoned it by means of a rope which rang a bell along the passage.
They fed him, cleaned him, gave him the various potions to help relieve the pain. Strangely, as his skin re-formed over his tender flesh, the torment increased. It was as though his skin were a new cage, as the bronze armour had been, except it was too tight for his body.
[Konrad 02] - Shadowbreed Page 11
