The Architect King

by Christopher Schmitz

  “Speak to them? Their words are poison! You must execute them immediately,” Charsk insisted. “If word gets out that you entertained them, you might well risk a civil war…”

  The emperor’s claws flashed out, and he cut Charsk’s jugular in one smooth motion. “I do not seek your permission,” Basilisk stated.

  Grabbing his throat, the vyrm priest coughed and spluttered once, and then collapsed to the tiled floor of the royal chamber with surprise frozen on his face.

  “Idrakka?” Basilisk called.

  The door opened and one of the tarkhūn stationed outside his door entered. Normally, Caivev would have bristled at Idrakka’s presence, but not this time. Idrakka the frostmancer had once betrayed her for his secret allegiance to Basilisk, but now was the time when such devotion became convenient.

  “My lord?” Idrakka asked. His eyes met Caivev’s and silently pleaded for a chance to demonstrate his loyalty to her as well as her husband.

  Until now, she had avoided him. At best, she’d tolerated the tarkhūn who could summon intense cold and kept him off of her personal retinue when possible. She’d always favored the fiercely loyal Skrom who she knew would gladly die for her.

  Basilisk bobbed his head towards the body. “Charsk has had an accident. For the time being, no one must know.”

  Idrakka nodded. “I’ll see to it at once. Only the carrion birds shall know.”

  Caivev conjured a mental picture of the ice-lord freezing and shattering the corpse before scattering the busted pieces for the vermin and carrion-wings to devour.

  Basilisk wiped the blood from his talons and then gripped his wife’s hand again. Together they departed for the dungeons.

  ***

  Earth

  Jacob Sisyphus exited the black town car and instructed the driver to keep it running. The old building, once owned by Bruce Cannon, was a mess. Huge sections of wall, floor, and roof were torn away. Sisyphus knew why; he had been there when they’d extracted Walther and his equipment. He touched his side momentarily, remembering the broken ribs and old injuries he’d sustained at Nebraska shortly before moving the equipment to a safer location.

  The pro wrestler remembered the way down. He walked through the dilapidated remains of industrial equipment and a massive, decommissioned turbine housing. With the power deactivated, the hidden stairwell could not be accessed by throwing a switch, so the wizard used the power of his kophesh. The turbine shuddered as Sisyphus grabbed it with his mind and pushed it aside with concentrated effort. Enough of the stairs revealed itself that he could pass by.

  At the bottom of the psuedoscience lab, Sisyphus found the place exactly as he expected it. He rummaged through the shelves and overturned, mostly empty bins. He looked for any kind of data or spare parts for the destroyed teleportation contraption that the rogue vyrm had destroyed in his German penthouse suite.

  Caivev and the Heptobscurantum cleaners had done a thorough job of eliminating any trace of the old lab’s purpose, he realized. Sisyphus frowned. He had already secured a new corps of prospects to take over Pietro Walther’s work. They could not, however, recreate it all from scratch.

  Though they had most of the strange doctor’s work and notes, the researchers didn’t understand key pieces of it. They needed to see it in action or study existing pieces of the contraption that had not been annihilated by the scaly invaders. They were missing critical components.

  Sisyphus meandered through the underground construction and entered the research pod. He found a couple desks littered with stacks of paper and other discarded items that were nonessential to the project. The wizard grinned when he spotted a desk decorated with pro wrestling paraphernalia. Sisyphus picked up an action figure bearing his likeness. He posed it a few different ways and then set it off to the side, leaving it behind as a small monument to Dr. Pietro Walther.

  Wandering to the next desk over, Sisyphus found Cerci Heiderscheidt’s workstation. Not nearly as well adorned as Walther’s, she had only a simple post card to adorn it. A framed picture of the old Astrodome in Texas and a team photo of the players lay on the desk. He picked up a picture frame. By the looks of it, it seemed recently disturbed.

  Sisyphus examined the piece. The photo was of a little girl in an Astro’s cap sitting in the seats with someone who looked like her father; she looked to be about five years old. The ticket stubs, from a 1999 game, were behind the glass making a kind of shadowbox.

  Doing the mental math, he guessed at the little girl’s age and surmised the identities of the girl and her father. Sisyphus knew from Walther that Heiderscheidt was something of a genius in applied metaphysics. Although the old scientist hadn’t really understood where she had disappeared to or why, he did know that she was orphaned at a young age and had very few ties to any people or places.

  Sisyphus also knew that the old stadium had sat empty since the nineteen ninety-nine season. An old sports stadium made a perfect hiding place. He smashed the frame and slid the ticket stubs into his pocket.

  He grinned and headed for the stairs. The wizard had already planned his next move.

  Chapter 17

  The Prime

  “Do it now,” Nitthogr demanded as he playfully toed through the shattered remains of the Architect King. He made sure to grind to dust any piece larger than half his fist.

  Gita frowned and turned the dial on the box. Her master cut her across the arm with a shard of the broken statue and then used the jagged piece to flick the blood against the portal’s activator.

  Nitthogr had already selected settings that would direct the destination to the Eternal Sky, a dimension with an overly optimistic name. The irony drew a smile upon the Herald’s lips. He dug a taloned grip into Gita’s shoulder with his non-petrified hand.

  Together they went to the portal and planeswalked to the other realm.

  Awaiting them on the other side, an army of the Black stood arrayed and waiting for their arrival. A well-muscled, but lithe vyrm with piercing eyes stood at the helm of the gathering.

  Nitthogr raised his arms and beckoned them to a roaring cheer. They complied, and the cacophony shook the trees surrounding the forest glade where they’d met. Flocks of a kind of bird Gita had never seen before leapt into the sky.

  “The Awakening is at hand!” the sorcerer shouted, eliciting more cheers.

  Gita stood behind the monster, stoic. She’d already cried out all of her tears and her hopes had fully evaporated. Even this ceremony did not move her as the leader of this faction of vyrm approached his master. She had seen this same thing happen already to the other four leaders of the vyrm tribes.

  Nitthogr made his claim, screaming it to the sky, defying the Architect King and challenging him to send a hero to stop him. “I am Sh’logath incarnate! None can stand before the power of the vyrm. I am Herald. I am the Beast of the Apocalypse—and I demand your fealty.”

  The wave of reptilian invaders bowed in unison. Their tribal chief sank to his knees before the dread lord’s acolyte.

  Nitthogr melted further into his Sh’logathian form. Arms split into tendrils and he became a writhing mass of fleshy terror. Amid the tentacles, an ebon proboscis raised high overhead and crashed down, stabbing into the chief’s skull like a nail piercing a grape.

  The crowd gasped, but remained steadfast. Their chief writhed against the pain and Nitthogr’s appendages held him firm as he injected something dark deep within the tribal leader.

  Slowly, the vyrm’s eyes turned jet black, as if he’d been injected with ink. Finally, he blinked his obsidian eyes and Nitthogr removed the claw from the wound.

  The tentacle monster reformed into the sorcerer’s shape. “You are now filled with my spirit,” he hissed. “You will know my will and my thoughts at all times.” He turned to address the gathered army. “Prepare for war, my loyal children! You will know when the time has come to launch the attack.” He took Gita by the arm and headed back for the portal.

  “It will come much sooner than a
ny dare to think.”

  ***

  Still Lost

  Bithia wandered through the forest for a while longer, becoming so hopelessly lost that despair set in deeper yet. She plopped down and wailed, giving a deep, snotty cry.

  Although she’d gone as bravely as possible into the Darque, she’d felt confident in her abilities then—she knew her powers. This… this was different. Bithia was out of her depth and had never really been in this sort of position before. She had no powers, no resources, nowhere to go and no hope to keep her going. Claire had, though… she’d continued on and kept us alive after our first fusion. Maybe she’s really the stronger one?

  Bithia was desperate to have Claire’s presence again. Through her tears, she noticed a glint of moonlight reflecting off something in the soil. A shiny piece of metal had been half buried in the sod ahead of her; some kind of windswept trash must have brought it to that spot ages ago.

  She reached for it and cleaned it as best as she could with her spit and a sleeve. Bithia stared into her dim reflection and wiped her tears away. She dragged her fingers through her hair as best as she could, a natural and feminine response to seeing her bedraggled visage.

  In her mind, Bithia called out for Claire, even knowing she’d lost the ability and the right to do so. Finally, hearing no response, Bithia turned away—but she wasn’t in the forest anymore.

  Bithia recognized the place where she found herself: it was her apartment in the Prime. It was decorated just as it had been before Claire had ever come on the scene and Bithia felt as much herself as she ever had.

  She sensed others in the room with her with a kind of shadow-memory of her powers. Bithia turned and located the minds that she’d felt. Thirty-two children occupied the room with her.

  “So many kids,” she said. They were well behaved, as much as youngsters could manage to be, that is.

  As Bithia looked closer, one of the children felt distinctly nonhuman. One nearby child, a little girl, shied away from another child: a young boy who pestered her. When the boy turned, Bithia noticed the scales. He was vyrm.

  The princess swallowed, and she saw the symbolism in her vision. Each of the children represented one of the dimensions of the Tesseract which she governed and protected—but she was responsible for all of them as daughter of the Architect King.

  A sense of darkness crept into the room like a chill wind: a distinctly astral kind of dread that Bithia had felt before. One of the children screamed when something banged on the door and demanded entry.

  Bithia’s senses had returned, and she felt the full terror of him. Nitthogr was on the other side of the door and he felt stronger than he ever had before.

  “You will let me in!” he shrieked from the outside. “Let me in so I may devour the children.”

  The kids screamed and clung to her legs, pressing in against her for safety. The closest child who had scrambled to her for protection was the scaley boy. He buried his face into her hip as if it could hide him.

  More pounding. Boots echoed in the hall beyond as so many of the enemy’s shock troopers stomped towards the door that it shook the floor.

  Bithia was trapped. There was nothing more she could do, but she knew that she had to protect the children by whatever means possible. She glanced back to the mirror and announced, “I can sense you there, Claire Jones. I have only a scrap of my abilities right now—and I’m sure you must have allowed me access to them. That means you’ve got to be close.”

  There was no response. Bithia waddled over towards the mirror as best as she could with the children in tow. It did not provide a reflection.

  “Come on Claire. I know you’re in there—I may have lost my powers, but I can sense that you’re still in there. I can’t initiate contact because you blocked my powers last time.”

  The door cracked loudly as the banging intensified. Someone smashed it with a battering ram. Children screamed, and the door splintered. Vyrm strode into the apartment on Nitthogr’s heels.

  Bithia pleaded with the mirror. “We’ve got to stop fighting and work together.” She swallowed hard and admitted to her reflection, “You are the stronger one, Claire… and I need you.”

  Claire appeared in the mirror and time seemed to stop. The vyrm froze—even Nitthogr became time locked.

  From the other side of the mirror she asked, “Do you really need me?”

  Bithia nodded, bleary eyed.

  Claire looked at her other self with a pained look on her face. “I… I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget that I’m supposed to be calm and collected and some grand example of royalty… and then I just smash it all. I guess I’m not you. I’m no princess.”

  Bithia nodded enthusiastically. “But that is why you are strong! You are different, Claire. We complement each other. We need each other like two halves of a whole.”

  Claire shook her head. “No. That’s not quite it. We are both our own wholes… but we are so much more than that when we are together.” She looked Bithia up and down and then looked at the children. “I… I’m sorry I tried to hurt you. I thought I was taking away the thing that you valued most, your abilities. I can see now that you value these more.”

  Bithia agreed and then ventured, “What can we do now? Where do we go from here?”

  “I’ve had lots of time to think,” Claire admitted. “Do you remember the last time we spoke like this?”

  “It was in a school,” Bithia said. “We fused until we were hit with the vyrm’s psychic poison.”

  Claire nodded. “We fused. We were like one, then, but still in both our bodies. That poison’s effects has haunted us this whole time, even though it was long ago purged. Now we share one body, one soul and two minds…” she reached inside her chest with a hand and pulled a glowing orb out from where her heart would have been if she was flesh and blood.

  Bithia raised her eyebrows. Psionic merger was an advanced psychic skill. Claire had truly grown in that very silence which had made Bithia more fragile.

  The brilliant orb blazed with chaotic ripples of illumination as it passed beyond the glass of the mirror; it pulsed as their heartbeats synced. Claire’s hand pushed through and she offered up the orb.

  “If you accept it,” Claire said, “there is no more Claire or Bithia. We are Claire and Bithia… we are one, and we are so much more.” She looked into Bithia’s eyes. “We stop fighting because there is no more you and I. There is only us.”

  Bithia took the orb and pressed it into her breast. The glowing ball melted through her and when the princess opened her eyes again, the two were merged. They had become something new.

  Time resumed in that moment and Nitthogr held his ground as the vyrm warriors surrounded them. The sorcerer locked eyes with Claire and walked a cautious circle around the children like a wary predator facing down a lioness who guarded her cubs.

  “Something has changed inside you,” Nitthogr hissed.

  “You have no idea,” she said, reaching out a hand of warning. “Leave now—return to the void of Nihil or I will destroy you.”

  Something glinted in Nitthogr’s eyes. The dark light in them was both devious and deadly—but they also recognized that this prey was more well guarded than anticipated.

  “Surrender a single child and we will leave,” he bartered.

  She looked down at the terrified children and her eyes locked on the vyrm one.

  “Yes,” Nitthogr said. “Leave us with that one and we shall depart.” His voice dripped with evil.

  The princess glared at him with her fiery gaze. “No.” She reached out with her mind before the enemy could react and she melted them all with a blaze of psychic fury. Nitthogr and his vyrm boiled down to their base elements and bubbled like toxic soup in wax-like puddles.

  Her children clung to her, praising her and thanking her for protecting them.

  The vyrm child looked up at her. He said, “You’re finally here. We’ve been waiting for you for so long.”

  Looking at him, the chi
ld evaporated like mist with the rest of the vision and the princess found herself in the forest. She stood with renewed vigor and saw what looked like a straight line breaking through the trees.

  “That has got to be man-made,” she mused and walked towards it. After arriving on the long, straight trail she recognized it as an ATV path. The trail markers, written in English, indicated it was a state trail—that meant she was on Earth, and in the United States.

  She started walking, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before she would be able to find her way out, and then, hopefully call for help.

  Chapter 18

  Earth

  “You’re sure this is the place?” Shandra asked, looking through the scanner. She and the others sat across a vacant parking lot inside a rental vehicle while they surveyed the old stadium.

  Wiltshire held up the security system photo of their targets and compared it to the decades-old signage. “I am.”

  “You said you’d buy supper if you were wrong,” Sam said. “But what if you’re right?”

  “I’m not wrong,” Wiltshire insisted and handed Sam the photo. n Astrod. It fit perfectly against the colorful letters spelling Houston Astrodome.

  “The background,” Sam said, “it looks like maybe a loading dock or something?”

  “Exactly my thoughts,” Wiltshire said. He retrieved the duffel bag from their rental car and slung it over his shoulder.

  They stalked around the perimeter for a short while, looking for any indicators of forced entry or easy access. The doors they’d checked proved mostly secure. One access in the rear-most, secluded part of the stadium boasted a shiny chain and a new padlock.

  “They’re in this part,” Wiltshire said matter-of-factly.

  “How do you know?” asked Shandra who turned on the scanner to check for signals.

  “The chain is new. Probably locked it from the outside. Remember, they’ve got a teleportation rig. Once they’re inside, they could lock it and never bother with another door again.”