The Architect King

by Christopher Schmitz

“Claire? Claire is that you?” Bithia asked aloud. She was keenly aware that she would sound crazy if anyone saw her talking to herself. She didn’t care, she was the princess and heir to the throne, if she wanted to talk to herself, she bloody well could.

  The words reverberated in the emptiness inside her soul, but then she heard it again, followed by the tiny, faint words, “I am here.”

  ***

  Earth

  Wiltshire crouched as he examined the door to the opened vault. He whistled and rummaged a hand through a mane of hair that had just begun to gather a tinge of salt. His normal hubris had somewhat returned by the time they arrived at the scene of the crime. “Someone robbed this? They might deserve to keep whatever they took if they pulled it off.”

  Theera merely glared.

  The vault was perhaps the most impenetrable thing Wiltshire had ever seen. It looked like a freestanding room built with steel plating worthy of armor on a battleship and warded by security cameras and multiple door locks. The door was currently open for the detective’s benefit.

  “How in the world did they get in? This thing looks impenetrable.” He mainly jawed so he could stall and get a peek at all the wildly powerful totems stored away in the cultist’s depository. He spotted two of the pages from the Codex Gigas where they hung by clips. The one he wanted was further in the back and so he couldn’t get a great read on it, plus his Latin was rusty, but the closer one had an illuminatory drawing of a black-cloaked figure holding a blood-red ruby.

  Wiltshire caught a few lines of the text from the closest page. They labeled the monster as a demon named Suranvyn. He shuddered; he’d read about him before. The entity was a nasty creature, but not one Wiltshire would normally associate with cataclysmic activity or with the Scholomance and so he moved past it and tried to get a better angle to glean information from the page he desired.

  “I will show you how they accessed the vault. Follow.” Theera commanded as he closed the massive door behind them, much to the dismay of the detective. He brought Wiltshire to a bank of screens. They showed a CCTV recording of the heist.

  A triangular portal opened and a teenage boy leapt through; he was maybe college aged at most. The subject stole the cash and gold, throwing them back through the mystic opening before turning to leave. The screens cycled between the same heist but from multiple angles; mounted cameras on all four corners of the strong room had captured the entire act.

  “Here. Let me…” Wiltshire took control of the video system and slowed it down, watching the invader pause and grab the page as if it was an afterthought. “He’s just a kid,” Wiltshire remarked, switching the angle. “How is it that a kid somehow leapt through a dimensional gate to rob the rich and famous?” he mumbled. “It looks like he’s talking to someone.”

  The next feed played, showing the angle from the rear and he spotted a face through the geometric portal, a female face. Behind her, a partial word could be spotted painted on a wall: n Astrod. “I can get your page back,” he stated. “But I’ll need you to send me copies of this video. I have a couple hunches already.”

  “I will send it immediately,” Theera said.

  “Just be ready with my payment,” Wiltshire insisted.

  “It is already prepared,” he said. “I would not…”

  “Yeah, yeah. You wouldn’t lie, or whatever. Just make sure it’s done.” Wiltshire turned to see himself out.

  “Oh, and Mister Wiltshire?”

  He turned and glared at the undying thing that served Percival Wainsmith. Wiltshire gave him his attention.

  “Do take care. I would hate to see you suffer the same grisly fate that befell your partner, Atticus Sexton. Be cautious as you deal with the Scholomance. At least, exercise care until my master’s page is returned? Then you may feel free to act as recklessly as normal.”

  Wiltshire grumbled something unintelligible and turned to leave with a frown on his face. The fact that the Heptobscurantum had bad blood with the Solomonari was this jobs only redeeming grace, and right now he hated the Scholomance more. He exited the mansion still wearing his grimace and vowing internally to bring them both down… someday.

  Chapter 4

  The Prime

  Shjikara’s feet echoed in the halls as he meandered alone through the royal castle. He understood the irony of his free passage through the capital grounds and so a smirk tugged at his lips. None stopped him, and guards were stationed at regular posts.

  No one had reason to stop him. Shjikara was one of the most respected citizens of the realm, perhaps one rung below the royal family, those descended from the direct lineage of the Architect King. The High Priest of the Veritas had access to incalculable treasure, arcane artifacts, and immense political power.

  For a long time Shjikara had been at odds with General Zahaben and again with his son, Zabe. Their philosophy for how the Guardian Corps operated in tandem with the throne had always irked him. The Corps allowed too much separation between the crown and the religious sect, of which he was chief… Shjikara could not control them.

  Shjikara chuckled at the turnabout. He knew that deep down he had never actually valued the religious structure or tenants of faith. For him, the Veritas had always been a way to gain power and influence. Whenever his motives became evident to a peer, he used his connections and political sway to destroy him or her, just as he had used his position to prevent Shandra from advancing ranks for many years.

  Of course, He was not Shjikara. Not truly… not anymore. Just like Claire Jones had duality of mind, Shjikara had become infested with another’s soul: a powerful mind and will which easily overpowered that of the high priest after he had been transmuted to stone by a clandestine visit from Basilisk.

  The high priest walked through the throne room. Only dim illumination lit the place. He had been here before.

  Behind the tall seat of power towered two massive, stone doors. They stretched from floor to ceiling and the engraved, magic sigils they bore kept them sealed agaist intruders.

  He hissed as he read them. The words were carved in the Olde Primal Tongue and encircled the door-posts of the Chamber of Mysteries where the Tesseract and other ultra powerful artifacts were kept. It read Only ye who enter may be pure and of blood royale—or sealed beneath the power of the One, allegiant and loyal. Ye be warned.

  An ancient spell was woven into the words themselves and they made Shjikara’s skin crawl. The foreign skin already felt corpulent and gross, to Shjikara who was not Shjikara, but the priest’s body was a necessary part of the arrangement, and the only way for his dark presence to return.

  He looked down at his stone fist. Shjikara approved of the replacement he’d received. In his previous life, he had lost that hand to the edge of the Stone Glaive at the Battle of Nebraska.

  This man was not Shjikara, he had only stolen the man’s body and used it as a vessel, a mere vehicle. Spewed out through a crack in the Darque’s Bone Gate, the fractured soul lodged itself within the stony form of the high priest who did not know how to use the Rune of Return he clutched in his hand. Now, that form was home to the spirit of Nitthogr.

  And Nitthogr no longer served his own purpose; he’d given himself over to the service of Sh’logath. The Mighty Devourer would rise again, and Nitthogr would laugh as reality disintegrated into the eternal nothingness.

  He stared at the binding spell engraved upon the Chamber of Mysteries. It angered Nitthogr to look upon them. As one of the loyal members of the Royal family, Shjikara, the real Shjikara, would have had access to it but would have never seized the Tesseract because of his loyalties—even Shjikara, for all his secret ambition, would have never done such a deed.

  But Nitthogr was not Shjikara and he could not open the doors, even if he owned the man’s body. One could not fool such primal magic, and this magic was crafted by the Architect King.

  The sorcerer would make no mistakes this time. He would breach those doors to the Chamber of Mysteries, take hold of the Tesseract, and fling
wide the gates to release his mighty agod.

  ***

  Caivev sat in the uppermost section of the collapsed bell tower and stared through a targeting reticle, placing the dot onto the form of an errant vyrm rover. She’d tracked a small camp of them to this abandoned city of Sharonash which lay a day’s travel from Limbus. Sharonash was a vibrant community before the Syzygyc war; it was another victim of the great conflict between the realms which nearly pulled Sh’logath into existence.

  Beyond the wasted structures and husks of once-lived in dwellings, a veritable field of statues stood like a waiting army. Just beyond the reaches of Sharonash was the location where the Architect King had surrendered on behalf of the multi-verse and sold his life as a ransom to the Brothers of the Apocalypse in order to forestall the summoning of Sh’logath.

  She grinned as she watched the shadows of rovers sneak through the city. A newly christened dunnischktet, Caivev had gained veritable immortality and a dual nature. The vyrmic dunnischktet meant born of two.

  Previously, she led the Black, the lesser vyrm caste; it was the more numerous faction, but lacked the mutational abilities some tarkhūn possessed, aside from the occasional face-shifting shade.

  Caivev had become Nitthogr’s successor, beating out both Charsk and the late general Regorik for the job and she had very nearly unleashed Sh’logath of her own accord in the years since. But after allying with Basilisk, Nitthogr’s brother, she became the wife and Empress of all vyrm. Together, in only a short time, she and Basilisk had unified the race despite the cries of the tribal leaders within the Black. Only these rovers, the Seekers of Maetha, remained beyond the fold of Limbus’s imperial control.

  Caivev watched them in silence for a little while longer. Something had mobilized the Maethans. Finally, she steadied her rifle.

  Their sudden flurry of rover activity did not bother her; they had little power, and no known, unifying force amongst them except a creed that the Maetha, some kind of savior, would arise. They were not deemed a threat, but she had grown interested in them for sporting reasons.

  Maethans were fun to hunt, she thought.

  Caivev pulled the trigger and a sharp crack rang out. Her invisible, projectile bullet sent one of her prey sprawling with a shower of hot blood.

  She followed another in the scope as he tried to elude the sniper. Caivev pulled the trigger and put him down with a grin.

  And to think, both Skrom and Basilisk tried to keep me in Limbus, worried for my safety. This was her hobby; she found matters of vyrm court to be as boring as the Prime’s had been before she’d slid into a traitorous role, drawn by Nitthogr’s power and the simplicity of the Sh’logath cult’s nihilistic beliefs. Skrom had dutifully taken orders from his Empress and Basilisk, the great strategist, had quickly understood that arguing with her when her mind was set would prove one game he could never win.

  She zoomed in and watched her next prey. Caivev didn’t take the shot, but she took others as they scrambled for safety. She tried to split them up and was toying with them. Caivev put the scope on the forehead of one young vyrm who leaned out from his cover and called to another Maethan: a child who was too scared to flee. He looked up and spotted the glint of the scope in the moonlight and locked eyes on Caivev.

  The dunnischktet pressed her finger against the trigger, but before the weapon fired, something rumbled beneath her and the ground erupted in a spray of sand and baked clay tiles. Her perch collapsed in a heap that sent her sprawling across the open courtyard.

  Caivev tucked and rolled to cushion her fall, but her weapon had vanished somewhere amongst the scattered bricks and crumbled foundations. She’d barely scrambled to her feet when the carrion worm reared up and locked all eighty-six of its multi-sized, shiny eyes upon her. They burned dark and hungry, even in the black of night.

  The worm bellowed, flailing its antennae and flinging caustic enzymes from its mouth as it opened its disjointed jaws so that the swarm of larval crawlers could spew forth and seek its prey.

  Caivev whirled and fled. Her right leg gave out beneath her. Her ankle had taken a nasty sprain and simply wouldn’t work as intended.

  The flood of the insect-like creatures swarmed towards her, tittering like eager cicadas, eager for the taste of flesh. The creatures were no respecter of royalty or breeding and had developed a taste for vyrm flesh ever since being released into the plains of Neggath decades ago by Nitthogr as retribution against his brother for accepting the Architect King’s terms of surrender.

  Caivev stumbled further ahead, but it became clear that she could not out-pace the predators on her wounded leg. She bit her lip and tried anyway, keenly aware that they would soon sting her with their thousands of electrified feet and she would become food for the carrion queen.

  A figure leapt out from the alley, swinging a wooden staff to keep the worms at bay. The same Maethan that she’d nearly killed had come to her rescue.

  “This way! Hurry,” he insisted.

  Caivev flailed as she turned, but managed to keep up. Every few steps, he paused to beat back the horde. It thinned out the further he led her.

  “The crawlers do not venture too far beyond their mother’s range,” he said between heaving breaths.

  A few paces later, they ran into a bigger cluster of Seekers of Maetha. They locked eyes on Caivev and narrowed their gaze at her.

  Her heart sank momentarily, and she wondered if she would have been better off with the worms. She could hear their murmuring. “What should we do with her? She would make a prize indeed—we could barter her back to Basilisk…”

  Caivev’s rescuer put his hands up. “Brothers. Sisters,” he addressed them directly. “You all know that is not our way. We help those we can. We could not expect her to do anything but harm us—she does not know any other way. But that does not mean our calling is to take her path. We must remain true to the ways of Maetha.”

  They grumbled somewhat under his chastisement, but reluctantly agreed. In the near distance, the sound of the crawlers swelled.

  “We must leave,” the vyrm insisted. “Do you need further assistance? We can treat your wounds at our family’s camp if you require it.”

  Caivev shook her head. “No.” She’d hidden her speeder skiff amongst the statues near Sharonash’s outskirts. “I can manage from here.”

  The Seekers of Maetha turned without a sound and fled into the night. Lastly, the young vyrm she had almost murdered for fun nodded his head and flashed her a knowing look that communicated things that words were incapable of. He turned and disappeared into the night, leaving Caivev behind to wonder about what the rovers were really about.

  These vyrm are not at all what I have believed them to be. But her acknowledgment did not mean that she would stop hunting them. After all, she was still dunnischktet.

  ***

  “Where are you, Zabe?” the princess called out, stretching into the ether with her mind. She got no response, not even a whiff of him upon the psionic winds that blew through the multi-verse and she was one of the most talented psychics on record.

  Respan and Tay-lore had been searching for him as well, she knew, Bithia trusted him, but still yearned to know where he was, even if just so she could check in and make sure of his well-being. It irked her that Zabe had not contacted her since Zahaben’s murder and his rash departure. He’d simply disappeared.

  She tried to respect that he needed to cool off and collect his thoughts, but it had been almost two weeks since the event, and Bithia was his betrothed. Even if the nature of their relationship had cooled since the events within the Darque, Zabe still owed her some respect and some kind of courtesy call.

  Bithia caught herself and paused. She didn’t want to grow bitter towards Zabe and shoved any toxic self-talk out of her mind. She was sure he must have had a reason to abruptly leave—even if just so that he would not commit murder by taking an eye for an eye.

  Though the temperature outside had cooled, Bithia stood on the balcony over
looking Capital City, her royal home, as it spread out below her. Safeguarded by thick walls that surrounded it, they’d once thought them impenetrable. The vyrm had proven them wrong.

  The sun had begun setting on the second full day since Jackie’s departure. Her father was away on Earth, now. Her royal advisers and consultants were just that: consultants. They weren’t true friends.

  She’d spent much time with Pollando in these last couple days. As the head of The Mystic Order of the Veritas, he was their most capable psychic; although Bithia had proved on several previous occasions that her raw talents surpassed his, although Claire’s had never equaled his. She worked through several exercises and Bithia began to suspect that the mute monk had grown wise to her true identity and she considered letting him in on her true name. He would figure it out in a short time, she felt certain.

  Bithia sighed and watched a bird flit above the roof line. The loneliness she felt was crippling. She’d been unable, thus far, to establish firm communion with Claire—something she desperately desired, even if just to absolve herself of guilt. She’d only managed to secure a brief moment of contact which verified that she had not somehow obliterated Claire’s presence as she’d feared.

  After a few moments of centering herself, she tried to find that glimmer of Claire again, searching deep down inside her. Bithia didn’t really believe that she would locate anything and so she hadn’t put much effort into it.

  Surprised to get a faint reading, she felt Claire’s presence like a shadow. Bithia put her full attention into it only to have it slip away. Whenever Bithia tried to really find Claire, her presence dissipated like mist in the dawn. It seemed that the harder she tried the less effective she was.

  Bithia’s thoughts strayed back to Pollando. Before the incident with Akko Soggathoth, Claire had been training with him every day prior to the emergence of the trickster. She had honed some degree of rough, psychic talent. But when Bithia had shoved her personality out of the driver’s seat, it had been to exercise psionic control in order to save them. Vying for power in the sudden struggle may have given Claire the psychic equivalent of a pulled muscle. But it may have been much worse, too.