The Architect King

by Christopher Schmitz

  Shjikara turned the pieces of head back and forth, examining each side thoroughly. He finally stood and shook his head. “There’s nothing here.”

  Tay-lore cocked his head and continued cycling through the device on the aura reader. “Interesting,” he said in his monotone voice. “There is a strong darque-dimension aura coming from your fist. The stone one,” Tay-lore stated.

  Zabe scowled at him. This was not the time for discovery! “I don’t care how he was able to reverse the stone-form,” Zabe decried. “What matters is that he found a way… and then Jenner murdered my father!”

  “He’s not your father!” Jenner argued looking very serious. “You don’t think I know what it’s like to lose my father, Zabe? Huh? Do you? My father was taken from me by those psycho cultists—Nitthogr’s minions from Earth, and we still haven’t done a damned thing to get him back!”

  Shjikara narrowed his eyes. “I do think that sounds like a motive,” he said to Zabe.

  Zabe flexed his fists. His blood boiled and feral instinct demanded that he shape-shift, extend his claws, and slay the soldier. He grumbled beneath his voice and thought of Gita, another of his orphan soldiers. She and Jenner had a special kind of bond—one their mutual friends claimed had turned romantic, even if Jenner shot her on their most recent missions, putting her in the hospital.

  The equation stopped adding up. It made no sense except when Zabe assumed the outcome was that Jenner was the spy.

  Wulftone recognized the look on his cousin’s face and shouted for the guards to take Jenner away before Zabe snapped and did something rash.

  “Do you think I hadn’t considered this?” Jenner yelled as they dragged him off. “I knew the risks! I willingly bet my life that he was a shade and not Zahaben—think about it! Wulftone—you believe me, don’t you? You’ve got to believe me…”

  Jenner’s voice trailed off with the distance, leaving behind only an empty, blood-stained room.

  Wulftone looked at the body. The split face was so familiar, yet so irreparably damaged. His uncle had practically raised him as Zabe’s surrogate brother, groomed him to be one of his prized soldiers—one of the three sons of the great General Zahaben.

  They’d lost Zurrah years ago, only to recently find and then lose him again beyond the multi-verse, trapped in the Darque dimension. They’d lost Zahaben during Nitthogr’s assault of the Prime dimension, only to have him returned… and then murdered.

  Wulftone looked at his cousin and tried to rest a comforting hand upon his shoulder. Zabe would not meet his gaze. Their family had experienced such pain and loss in service of duty to the throne.

  Shjikara broke the silence. “We have… not always gotten along, Zabe… you and I,” he admitted. “But this thing… this travesty… I will see to it that justice is done.”

  Zabe wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. He didn’t say a word but only set his jaw. He turned and stormed out of the room in silence.

  Wulftone watched him go, noted the look on his cousin’s face and empathized with Zabe’s need to be alone at this very moment. Only Wulftone, with his advanced senses, noticed Zabe shift into a massive, half-wolf lycan form as the Captain of the Guard leapt over the castle wall and then stormed off towards the distant wilderness.

  ***

  Manhattan

  Vikrum Wiltshire removed the belt he wore and set it at the table of the security kiosk with a clunk. Several different ammo pouches, each containing alternate types of bullets, balanced the weight around his hips when Wiltshire wore it. Next, he unholstered the nine millimeter at his shoulder and turned it over.

  The security officer wore a bored look as he filled out the paper slip to check in Wiltshire’s belongings. He waived the private detective through with barely a second glance.

  Wiltshire had been here before on a number of occasions, both in his days as a police detective and also in his subsequent time as an agent of the Red Order. Knights of the Red Order were part of a secret, underground society: those who understood there was more to the world than Earth’s citizens understood. The world was plain, demure, and ordinary if you only looked at the surface. Vikrum Wiltshire knew better; he had peeled back the thin veil of normalcy and seen things that cannot be unlearned. Cursed with knowledge, he joined the Order, which used its connections and resources to remove dangerous, arcane artifacts from the world.

  He sniffed as he turned the corner and kept his head down. The arcane detective had many contacts in the New York City Crime Lab, but not all of them remained positive. Wiltshire’s past hadn’t exactly been spotless, and now that he’d flamed out of the Red Order, he’d burned bridges on both sides of him.

  His life had become something of a train wreck as of late.

  “Hey Wiltshire,” a voice called.

  Wiltshire turned. The voice had been warm enough to get his attention without a feeling of dread in his gut, although he felt disappointed that his incognito tactics hadn’t gone as well as planned. “Hey Jimmy,” he responded.

  He liked officer Jimmy Cain well enough. The kid seemed bright and positive, the kind who probably made a friend out of every classmate at the academy.

  “How are you doing?” Wiltshire kept his voice low as he walked, nearly hugging the wall of the corridor to keep from crossing any extra person’s paths and attracting their attention.

  “I’m good,” Jimmy took the hint and lowered his volume to a more personal level. “I heard you lost your partner a little while back. I’m sorry… did you ever find any leads?”

  Wiltshire shook his head. Gloom clouded his face.

  “I’m sorry,” Jimmy walked alongside the older P.I., headed in the same direction: the basement labs. “Atticus was a great man. He was always so nice to me when I was first starting out on the force.”

  Wiltshire bobbed his head. “He really was.” He noticed the sample bag in his hand; Wiltshire couldn’t tell what was inside, except that it was organic. “You going to see Becky, too?”

  Jimmy nodded. “I need the four-one-one on this. A fresh case the boys are working on.”

  “What is it?” Wiltshire didn’t hide his disgust.

  Jimmy shrugged with a laugh. “Heck if I know. How about you?”

  Wiltshire held up his item, a glass vial with a slip of paper the size of a pinky finger. “Nothing super special—definitely not a body part,” he lied. He wasn’t entirely sure.

  The younger cop gave him a sly look. Jimmy knew just enough of Wiltshire’s story to be intrigued by him and his work, but not enough to be terrified.

  Wiltshire wished deep down that Jimmy had been terrified. It was safer not knowing about what went bump in the night, but Wiltshire also knew that he needed every resource and contact he could get—especially now. “Just a piece of ancient paper,” the detective said.

  They entered the lead forensic investigator’s office together and Becky looked at them both with a bright smile. She always lit up a room, even when surrounded by the grotesque and macabre. An observation window behind her revealed two corpses that laid opened up for examination. A couple physicians conducted autopsies on them in the background.

  Jimmy tossed her the pouch, and she caught it with a wet slap. It didn’t seem to interest her all that much, but her eyes lit up when she saw Wiltshire. “Hello, honey. You always bring me the most interesting projects,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. She pressed an intercom button and sent Jimmy’s package off to one of her teammates for analysis.

  The young cop, still fresh-faced and inexperienced, stood in the background and watched.

  “It’s a scrap of paper,” Wiltshire said, “from an old book I found.”

  “Is it though?” she asked skeptically. Becky examined it thoroughly; the mystery had her full attention. She pointed with her blue, gloved finger. “See the way it frays differently than paper? Its vellum, right?”

  Wiltshire nodded with a grin. She was good. “But vellum made of what?”

  Becky bit her lower lip as if se
ductively. She was in the thralls of the mystery, now. She spilled the sample onto an examination table and began readying it for testing.

  “What’s vellum?” Jimmy asked sheepishly.

  Wiltshire kept his voice low and let Becky work. “A kind of paper made from animal skin. Ancient books were often made of it because it outlasted parchment.”

  The beat cop nodded as Becky subjected the sample to a number of tests.

  Becky looked up. Anxiety spread across her face. “Vikrum?” she asked.

  He looked at her, but already knew it was bad. People only used his first name when news was bad—everyone except Atticus, that is.

  A knowing look passed between them and both swallowed dry throats in silence.

  “What? what did I miss?” Jimmy asked.

  “It’s not animal skin… it’s human,” Wiltshire said. “I just wanted to confirm my suspicion.”

  Jimmy blanched, but kept a neutral face. “And you think it’s related to Atticus’s murder?”

  Wiltshire nodded slightly. “It’s from an ancient book, but I think there’s a connection. I’m also not positive Atticus is dead.” He turned to Becky. “Can you run the DNA? Get me whatever information you can? Get creative if you have to.”

  She nodded.

  Jimmy ventured a question. “That can’t be light reading. What book is it?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  ***

  The Prime

  “I haven’t seen Zabe in days,” Claire sighed.

  Jackie, her best friend in the whole multi-verse, sat across from her at the table in her royal apartment in the citadel. She cocked an eyebrow at the untouched cup of coffee in front of Claire’s hands. As happy as Jackie was with her announcement of her recent engagement to Wulftone, Claire seemed equally dour.

  “I’m sure he’ll be back soon. I’ve gotten to know him fairly well through the Guardian Corps, and I’ve only seen him like this once before—that time the Heptobscurantum cultists planned to sacrifice you and summon Sh’logath.”

  “Yeah, the Battle of Nebraska,” Claire remarked. “Losing people you love will drive you to rash actions.”

  “Zabe is probably just cooling down and putting some distance between himself and Jenner so he doesn’t kill the guy,” Jackie remarked. She mumbled, “Poor Gita. She gets out of the hospital soon, too; this is going to wreck her. I don’t think anyone has told her.”

  “I don’t know,” Claire said. “Something about this feels different from mourning.”

  Jackie chomped on a donut. A local chef, with Tay-lore’s help, had learned to cook them just how the Earth-girl liked. She washed her bite down with coffee and mentioned, “Yeah, something has been wrong with him for weeks now, ever since you three came back from being trapped in the Darque, you two and Tahnak. He’s seemed… off?”

  Claire turned the warm mug before her, rotating it in a nervous circle as she contemplated telling her about it. Finally, she settled on agreeing with her friend. “Yes. Very off.”

  Jackie watched the mug spin. “Well, we’re friends, right? Friends help each other. Let’s go and get him and do our best to fix whatever is bugging him.”

  With lips and chest tightening, Claire said, “It’s not that easy.” She knew Zabe’s melancholy existed before Zahaben’s revival and murder—it was all connected to what she did, what Bithia did, in the Darque. “I can’t even find him.”

  Jackie raised her brows. “I suppose he’s one of the few with detailed knowledge of planeswalking, but surely Tay-lore or Respan could help find him. We tracked down Akko Soggathoth multiple times—if he couldn’t hide, surely Zabe can be found? Besides, aren’t you two, like, psychically bonded or something? Just ping him, or probe him, or whatever you magic-brain people call it.”

  Claire bit her lip and shook her head. “He is not in his lycan form so Respan’s scanners cannot locate him, and our connection… well, he knows me as well as I know him. That means he knows how to hide from me if he wants to be left alone.”

  Jackie said nothing. She didn’t want to pry into her friends’ cooling relationship, but as she thought about it, things began clicking into place. Everything suddenly made sense. “When did you become Bithia again?”

  The princess couldn’t hide her surprise. “How did you know?”

  “We’ve been friends since, basically, forever,” Jackie said, “I would have guessed, eventually. But it was really the coffee. Claire was a fiend for it… is a fiend,” she corrected. “I guess you two really are different in your own ways, even if you two are the same.” Jackie frowned, knowing her words wouldn’t make any sense except to people who knew of the two personalities and souls living within the single body.

  Bithia nodded measuredly. “I shall attempt to maintain appearances.” She sipped the black coffee and shuddered as the taste disagreed with her. “We can not let others know—the kingdom is still fragile since the Nitthogr war and Basilisk might not be as benevolent as he is trying to appear. Besides, the vyrm are not our only enemies.”

  Jackie bobbed her head and made a mouth zipping motion. “Who else knows?”

  “Our circle is small. Sam Jones, er, my father, knows. You. Perhaps Wulftone, if Zabe told him. I will speak with him later to ensure he is in the loop.”

  “And of course Zabe.”

  Bitha acknowledged her as correct.

  “Wow. It really is important,” Jackie noted. “Zabe is going through with the wedding still, even if you are Bithia and not Claire?”

  Bithia’s face saddened at the comment, but she agreed. “He did love me once, and he loves Claire as well. We lead a complicated life, not made any easier with our duties to the throne.”

  A moment of silence passed between them and Jackie broke it. “Is Claire really gone? Will she come back?”

  “I—I hope so. I never meant to push Claire out. I just…” Bithia trailed off. Pain and guilt riddled her face. “It’s more like she has gone dormant… I think. I hope.”

  Jackie leaned forward and gave Bithia the opportunity to vent. “What happened?”

  Bithia confessed her overwhelming need to help while they were trapped in the alien dimension and how exerting her power paralleled the sudden disappearance of Claire’s presence. She spilled her guts about growing insecure while riding shotgun in her doppelganger’s body and admitted that it may have been her fault… attempts at helping might have caused more harm than good.

  “I feel so guilty…” Bithia finally trailed off, choosing not to mention how burned out she felt without Claire’s mind in the driver’s seat. Deep down, she felt like an empty shell. “I’m not worthy to be the daughter and heir of the Architect King.”

  Jackie sat in silence with her fractured friend. She didn’t have any words that she thought could help, and so she remained quiet.

  Bithia stared into the cup of black and took another sip of the bitter coffee and let it wash over her senses. In the back of her mind she felt a glimmer, faint and fleeting, of Claire’s mind. When she reached out for it, though, she found nothing. This was all my fault… I didn’t want this, did I?

  The rogue thought kept niggling at her: maybe she had done this on purpose. Maybe she had sealed Claire away because of jealousy and spite. Bithia had to admit the truth, that human hearts were jealous and deceitful at their core. Only by constant vigilance and self-examination could they be kept in check.

  She pushed her coffee away and committed herself to being better—trying harder.

  I may not be a worthy daughter of the Architect King, but I am a princess, nonetheless. I’d better start acting like it.

  Chapter 2

  Tay-lore cocked his animatronic head quizzically and watched the footage again on the monitor. Respan sat next to him in the lab as they reviewed the murderous video from a few days ago.

  The old scientist sniffed. His laboratory still smelled like cleaning solvent where the floors had been scrubbed of blood.

  “I d
on’t understand why his fist glowed,” Respan noted, reviewing the data again. “On the darquescanner, Shjikara’s stone fist is definitely glowing with some kind of reading. Hypothesis?”

  Tay-lore speculated. “Perhaps there is an item inside his fist… an item crafted of darquematter—some kind of hierophanticus?”

  Respan twisted his mouth. “Shjikara said that was not the case when I asked. He has no cause to lie to us. And if it was something like that, how could it undo the stone curse? We haven’t even been able to use the stone glaive’s magic to reverse the stoneform.”

  The android pulled up the data for reference. “The glaive does not register an aura on the darquescanner. They seem unrelated.”

  Respan nodded and stared at the columns of data which threatened to make him go cross-eyed. He silently wished he could try a few additional tests with the mystic weapon now that they had some additional data to develop some tests with, but Zabe had taken the blade with him when he’d disappeared. Nobody had heard from him since he left to cool down.

  Tay-lore pointed to a cell on the spreadsheet which showed a range of variables on the mystic energy spectrums which Respan’s sensors operated. “This range reveals a discrepancy.”

  Respan looked at him inquisitively. “How so?”

  Tay-lore pulled up the readings from Zahaben’s murder and pointed. “The sensor readings are outside the resonance range of all known darquematter.”

  The scientist said nothing, but he squinted and stared at the screen. He rummaged his hands through his hair as a silent indicator of agreement. “But it somehow registered on the scanner… whatever the scanner is picking up, it is emitting a powerful signature that is similar to darquematter.”

  Tay-lore nodded and completed his thoughts, “But it is not darquematter. Speculate?”

  Respan furrowed his brow. “Maybe the Veritas emit a kind of aura when engaging in arcane arts or in their mystic disciplines? Perhaps Shjikara’s fist is just where we first detected it.”