Minas grappled with Nitthogr on the arcane sphere. He was grossly over-matched, and the dunnischktet threw him around the room.
Pollando yelled to Claire, completely forsaking his vows. “Claire, get to the portal,” he reached into Gita’s mind and foresaw the enemy’s plan. “The box! The box has shut down the portals!”
Perribelle launched herself towards Gita and knocked the arcane box out of her hands. It skittered across the floor and into Pollando’s hands. He cranked the dial as Perribelle shrieked. Nitthogr tore Perribelle apart and Druen finally fell as the vyrm overwhelmed him with massive numbers.
Bithia howled as a blaster fired and split open Pollando. The psychic’s hot blood splattered across her face and upon the ground, activating the portal.
Before she planeswalked to a different realm, Bithia watched helplessly as a vyrm shade took her face. The creature’s brows and chin reset as her skin smoothed to take a mirror-like visage.
As the cold bolt of energy lanced her body and flung her through the multi-verse, Bithia gasped with shock. Nitthogr smashed the statue of the Architect King. She saw the look of terror on Gita’s face as the regal figure collapsed in busted heaps.
Bitha winked out of existence and the vyrm howled. They tore the defiant Druen’s arms from his body and ripped Minas to shreds.
Nitthogr ground the statue to dust beneath his heels and then snatched the box from the ground. He turned the dial and closed all gates between the dimensions. “Now, nobody in this realm is capable of stopping us… of stopping me! I am the physical incarnation of Sh’logath!” The halls had filled with bloodthirsty vyrm; they cheered at the announcement.
He placed the gate box back into Gita’s hands. “Do not lose this again or I’ll extract a toll from your sister. I’ll take one piece at a time until you learn to take your role in this seriously.”
Gita nodded soberly and wiped her tears away. Her hopes were as dashed as the broken form of the Architect King, and she could only obey.
Chapter 15
Earth
After his peers spent an entire frustrating hour of trying to activate the portal, Vikrum Wiltshire finally stood from the pew he’d waited in. He knew he had to let his new companions at least attempt activating it by every means possible, but he’d grown impatient.
“Can we go now?” The detective asked bluntly.
“The portal’s still not working,” Sam said.
“That’s been painfully obvious,” Wiltshire said. “And I don’t think it’s going to spark up anytime soon. I’m sure that, given what we know from Tay-lore, something in your dimension has drastically changed…”
“Which is why we must get back.” Sam’s eyes burned with worry.
“Which is why we should go. We cannot use this gate. You’re a scientist, Doctor Jones. Use your head. I know you want to rescue your daughter, but you can’t get there from here.” Wiltshire spoke firmly, but not rudely.
Shandra put a hand on Sam’s arm. “He’s right. We’re wasting time here that could be better spent trying to find Zabe.”
“We haven’t been able to find him from the Prime and we had all the resources possible at our disposal, there. Tay-lore was working on it,” Sam argued.
“You didn’t have me,” Wiltshire stated. “I don’t mean to sound cocky, but remember that I was Tay-lore’s plan. Tay-lore sent me after Zabe and you were the first stop—I found a lead within minutes of my assignment.”
Shandra nodded. “You have a plan for where to go next?”
He shrugged. “The key is the brother, Zurrah. I was already searching for him when I stumbled onto you.”
Sam took a deep breath and acknowledged the hard truth: this portal was no good to them… Wiltshire’s alternate plan was the next best thing. They had to find another way to help the princess, and right now this was the only option they could move forward with. Sam bobbed his head and sighed. “Yeah. I’ve never actually met the kid and don’t know much about him except that he was taken hostage as a child and locked away by the sorcerer Nitthogr. Zabe doesn’t talk much about it, so I only have hearsay from my daughter.”
Shandra corroborated the data for him. “They said he hasn’t aged and was trapped in a time-stasis chamber in Central America. Trenzlr called the place the Lost Temple.” She realized he wouldn’t know who Trenzlr was. “He is a vyrm we are friendly with—so was Tay-lore.”
Wiltshire didn’t know what the vyrm were, but it wasn’t an imperative detail at the moment. “So let’s lay out what we know. Zabe hasn’t seen Zurrah in years and he’s basically just a teenager. He’s got a partner who looked to be a cute young woman, and he’s got access to a teleportation machine. His last known whereabouts were Central America.”
“Chiriqui, to be precise,” said Sam.
“Great.” Wiltshire raked his fingers through his hair. “A war torn country with no direct access from America except by U.S. Diplomats.”
Shandra suggested, “We could sneak in from a neighboring country?”
Wiltshire shook his head. “What else do we know? I mean, we don’t expect to actually find Zurrah there. We’re just gathering clues right now. We will leave it on the table, but let’s exhaust local options first.”
“The portal!” Sam exclaimed. Both of the others looked at him. “We know the vyrm have used it because of their alliances with the Heptobscurantum.”
Shandra corrected him, “Caivev owned that alliance and her relationship with the Seven seems tenuous, now. We can’t contact her anyway, so I don’t think it’s…”
“That’s not it,” Sam said. “The machine is powered by blood. And it’s huge—not easily portable.”
Wiltshire nodded. “That’s logical if it’s an arcane device.”
“I was once hooked up to one of them,” Sam said. “The earliest version.”
“There’s more than one?” Wiltshire asked.
Sam shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you, I only know it was in some underground, top secret R and D lab in a warehouse district outside of Detroit.”
Wiltshire stroked his chin. “That’s just a couple hour flight,” he mused. “We’re not gonna get a closer clue, I think.” He took the keys from his pocket. “I’ve got a private flight already chartered. Cost me an arm and a leg, but Michigan is on the way back. It can’t cost me much extra. Let’s go—we can keep brainstorming on the way.”
***
Lost
The first thing Bithia noticed was the smell. Something putrid decayed nearby; it fouled the air with a wet, filthy odor like stagnant water. She wrinkled her nose and guessed that something large had gotten trapped in the mire and died.
Bithia looked around for clues and found herself in a swamp. Brackish water surrounded most sides of her location. Bald cypress and towering tupelo hemmed in the edges of her little island where shawls of Spanish moss screened in the portal site like a burial shroud. Something about the bayou gave her a chill as she stood on the engraved stone outcropping. Clusters of sticks and bones bundled together hung from tree branches along with other voodoo trinkets. They lay next to black candles that had burnt down to their wicks where they surrounded the location.
The princess bit back her worry and crept away from the portal. The sun would go down soon and she did not want to be trapped in this swamp with whoever used this place for his or her evil ceremonies. She shuddered at the thought and remembered that the portal locations were often revered as places of power because of their natural magics; power attracted the worst sort of person just as often as it called to good ones—sometimes more often.
A small trail led her away from the isolated area and her heart caught in her throat. Bithia had no idea where she was. It could have been any of thirty two planes of existence, and of those dimensions she could have been anywhere within them. Panic rose within her and drove her heart rate even higher.
She moved down the trail with more urgency than ever. Bithia had to find something, someone—and not whoever had b
een conjuring dark spells nearby. The small footpath opened up into a broader trail a few hundred meters down the way and Bithia sucked in a breath of relief. She followed the new trail and kept walking.
As Bithia moved, her anxiety rose with each new footstep. The sun crawled towards the horizon and eventually went down. Bithia quickened her pace. She still hadn’t spotted another living soul and could barely hear anything over sounds of her roaring pulse as it echoed in her own ears.
Something made a sound behind her. A twig snapped, and she froze. She heard it again followed by a splashing noise. A jolt of fear shot through her and she bolted ahead, paused, and listened. The sounds had either stopped or whatever had been behind her, real or imaginary, fell further away and into the dsitance. She turned to resume her journey and realized that she’d somehow left the trail when she’d sprinted blindly.
Bithia turned a circle and tried to backtrack, to no avail. Finally, she sank to her knees and began to weep. She was hopelessly lost and in the dark.
Where are you, Zabe… where are you Claire?
***
The Prime
Beneath the green-ringed moon, Gita still clutched the gate box. She looked up at the sky. New waves of terror gripped her heart by the hour.
An eerie, murky ring of color encircled the moon like the corona of an eclipse. Tendrils of the fell hue crawled towards the lunar body as if they had reached around its edge and grappled it, holding it in place. Her eyes returned to the contraption in her hands. She was both powerful and powerless to stop the thing.
Gita went inside the monastery, sickened by the night sky and her involvement in shutting down the portal gates. In the hallways she heard the sounds of vyrm rejoicing, celebrating the coming day of Sh’logath—the great Awakening.
She walked deeper inside to get away from the voices. The open door to the sacristy revealed the disturbing sight of Nitthogr. He’d become more tentacle and blackened, other-worldly flesh than anything else. She might not have recognized him had it not been for the crown upon his head as he communed with his loyal minions across the multi-verse. One errant limb remained capped by his stone fist and another tendril wrapped around the petrified body of Shara, her kid sister.
Gita felt sickened by the sight and so she delved deeper into the monastery, eventually finding her way into the secret warrens and the caves of Vangandra. She walked until she could not hear or smell any vyrm, and then she wandered some more, until darkness and silence swallowed her.
Arriving at a dead end, she could go no further, at least not without knowing how to access the hidden tunnels connecting the caves to the royal keep.
“Gita?”
She jumped and searched for the sound. Nobody was there, but she felt certain that she’d heard her name spoken as plain as day. She looked down and saw the shattered, crumbled stone where Nitthogr had destroyed the Architect King.
Gita sank to her knees and wept over the wreckage.
“Gita… what are you going to do?” But this time the words were hers. “The vyrm have put a stranglehold on the Prime. They’ve infiltrated the castle and put an impostor on the throne.”
She looked down again at the box and felt tempted to smash it to a million pieces. “Don’t do that Gita. Your sister’s life depends on it.” She wasn’t sure if the words belonged to her, or another. She knew she couldn’t do it, but she also knew she had to do something. As long as the gates were shut, no help could arrive and Claire was trapped wherever she’d been flung off to.
***
Earth
Zabe stood adjacent to two homeless men. He raised his hands to the fire that glowed within the steel garbage barrel. Traffic noises from the bridge overhead intermittently drowned out the crackle of the fire and the burning trash bothered Zabe’s nose with pungent odors. Smells were different in this part of the world, he’d noticed, but homelessness was a universal problem.
The two vagrants could have been from any country. They’d recognized Zabe as one of their own and welcomed him immediately with the kind of generosity marked by men who’d rarely experienced it. Zabe gladly received it; it was not the first time he’d flown under the radar by acting as a transient. It helped him remain incognito; polite civilization rarely dared to look poverty in the face.
Night had drawn on and the temperatures dropped. Since stamping out the Ukranian hive, he’d cut a straight line for Germany on foot, but the trip would take him several days. Zabe rubbed his hands and held them to the flames again. Soon, he could return home in triumph.
As he watched the yellow tongues lick the air, Zabe felt his consciousness fade; a vision overtook him.
He saw only blackness and a flicker of light, barely in focus. A chanting, pleasant voice called from the light—a song Zabe knew as the Lament of J’v-Ellah. Most children born since the Syzygc Wars knew the song that described the sacrifice of the Architect King.
Like a mantra, those words rolled over and over as the flames began to come into focus.
Serpent, dragon, wizard-beast
flung wide the gates to hon’r void,
The Prime’s caught daughter, most beloved;
captors of the princess toyed,
Her blood to free agod Sh’logath;
salvation all his ransom brings,
Turned to stone at Sharonash,
Lord J’v-Ellah, th’Architect King.
Within the fire, explosions became clearer and clearer. Mud and debris flew as lasers bit the air and steel clashed against steel. Zabe knew he was not on Earth, at least this vision was not from Earth.
“I’m in the war,” he realized, surveying the pitched battle around him. The Syzygyc War.
A sudden quiet fell over the chaos and Zabe walked through the darkness that formed as the flames dissipated. In the center of it he found a statue that he’d seen once before in Limbus: the Architect King.
The statue’s hands were opened, just as they’d been after Claire had claimed the Stone Glaive, his mythic sword which Zabe now wore across his back, attached to a baldric sheath and wrapped like a bedroll. He reached over his back to check that it was still there; he felt the familiar weight of it. When he returned his gaze, the Architect King was looking at him.
“Zabe, son of Zahaben,” he said.
“You… you can talk?”
“Of course I can talk. No power can confine or destroy the Architect King.”
Zabe said, “But you are stone… a statue.”
“Do you think that stones can not talk… even if I will it?”
Zabe bit his tongue. He bowed, instead, embarrassed by his lack of faith. “I am honored that you would speak with me.”
“There are things you must know, child of the Prime, in order that you will not lose heart.” He looked at Zabe. “You are on a mission of revenge and you have called it justice.”
Zabe’s heart wavered. He knew the Architect King was right, and he felt the sting of his king’s words that struck far more sharply than his anger against Jenner.
The statue surprised him. “I am giving you secret knowledge so that you will know a thing is true when it comes to pass. You must not give up your current quest, but understand that the mission will succeed: a son will have his vengeance—but it will not be you. Your vengeance is false. Your father made his final sacrifice long ago.”
Mists around them transformed into the walls of the Prime’s royal castle and Zabe vividly relived the memory. Zahaben gave him the bracelet emblazoned with the family crest: the lupine symbol of Vangandra. Then, he ran into the hall and drew off the attackers so that his son could fulfill their family’s oath and protect the throne. Behind him, Zabe heard the report of blasters; they had the sharp crack of a kill setting and not the softer blat of a stun blast.
Zabe realized that his hope had been false: it was something engineered to twist him and distract from his true calling. As the walls transformed back into fog and that haze dissipated, Zabe realized he was in the Caves of Vangandra, wher
e he had taken Claire for refuge with his grandfather Shardai.
He did a double take, Nitthogr was already there, standing over the corpses of the Veritas leaders and cackling madly as he cowed a cohort of vyrm soldiers behind him. The Architect King was there, too, frozen in his form; the vyrm warriors had all turned and bowed to the statue. Though the Architect King was no longer animated, he still spoke directly into Zabe’s mind.
“The Spirit of the Architect King will always exist. It has always and will always lead the men and women of the tesseract. Once you and my daughter are joined, you must help fight for my people. All of my people, until my chosen one is declared. It will require the strength of two in order to succeed—the new king I have chosen for the children of the Prime has this dual nature: someone who can be what is required to lead.”
Nitthogr could not see Zabe, but he clearly locked eyes upon the statue and he brandished a long scepter, an ornate piece Zabe knew intimately. Shjikara owned it: the scepter of the High Priest’s authority. The vile sorcerer stepped towards the figure and brandished the club.
“No!” Zabe screamed, trying to insert himself between Nitthogr and the Architect King. He was one step too late.
Nitthogr wielded the scepter like a club. It struck and shattered the Architect King with brute force; the famous statue exploded in a cloud of shrapnel. A jagged chunk glanced off of Zabe’s head and he sank to the floor over the pile of debris. The sorcerer laughed and departed as Zabe ran his fingers through the sharp, broken pieces; tears ran down his face as he sifted through the wreckage of the petrified king.
“It’s only a dream. It’s only a dream,” he kept repeating.
The vision faded when one of the homeless men at his fire grabbed him and shook him from the reverie. Zabe met his eyes and realized the man had been talking to him.
“Vous saignez… vous saignez.” He pointed excitedly and Zabe touched the hot, wet spot forming on his forehead. His haggard companion stated in halting English. “You are bleeding.”
The Architect King Page 19
