The Architect King

by Christopher Schmitz

  Jeerzha pressed in again and Basilisk looked down into the mirror finish of his breastplate and locked eyes with Jeerzha’s reflection. The vyrm stopped, startled by meeting the amber eyes of his deadly enemy. The opening was enough that Basilisk plunged his blade into the enemy’s belly. As he pulled it free, he locked eyes with the stunned Jeerzha.

  The mutineers’ leader gasped and his skin petrified, encasing him in his final moments of shock and pain.

  Basilisk’s tarkhūn and other faithful soldiers mopped up the rest of the mob with barely a casualty and the emperor ended his use of the terrible gaze. He strode over and found Chartarra next to Klewdahar and Gerjha, guarding them with a blunt sword that should have been melted for scrap rather than pressed into service.

  “So we meet again, Chartarra.” His eyes lingered on the scars across the vyrm’s neck and chest—wounds which were supposed to have been fatal.

  Chartarra bowed. “Lord Basilisk,” he greeted without any hint of a grudge. “It appears you’ve just freed up several homes for occupancy. May we make an inquiry?”

  Basilisk noted Caivev’s approach from the rear. He turned to the prophet and the leader of the rovers. “Welcome to Limbus.”

  ***

  The Prime

  Nitthogr’s face slid to one side as if the bone structure below had lost integrity. His troops stood around the parapets that ringed the wall of the royal castle. A hovering holo-broadcaster captured his likeness and sent it out to all receivers—into the homes and communicators of all those living in the Prime.

  He hissed, “You all know who I am.” He raised the petrified hand to the camera, “I came to you as Shjikara Stonefist, but I have assumed my true name: Nitthogr, Herald and Acolyte of Sh’logath.”

  Nitthogr made a spectacle of brandishing the scepter of the Veritas and placing the darque crown upon his head. He whirled and clubbed the closest half dozen stone figures still frozen within the statue garden of the royal court. “As his growing incarnation, I am ushering in a new age of Sh’logath. The Prime is His,” he hissed, nodding to Gita.

  Tears streamed down her face and her cheeks burned crimson as she tried to refuse his order. The sorcerer’s voice dripped with villainy as she shook her head. “Do it or your sister dies.”

  With a whimper, Gita turned the knob all the way on the mystic box she had been saddled with.

  Nitthogr put a hand to his brow and spoke to all his loyal Black wherever they were scattered across the multi-verse. “Now is the time, my chosen ones. Come to me… enter the Prime with all hatred and force. Eviscerate its people and give to them the gift of death.”

  He grinned as if punch-drunk and then dropped the crown. He had no more need of it. Everywhere that there was a portal, vyrm poured into the realm, bringing with their weapons and bloodlust for the pleasure of Sh’logath.”

  The camera followed Nitthogr as he strode through the corridor and entered the throne room where his impostor princess sat upon the throne. “I feel your fear, residents of the Prime. It nourishes me, sustains me. I can sense the slaughter beginning even now and I feed upon it.” His voice warbled and shifted, hearkening something even more wicked that lived within him.

  He approached the throne and the shade, still in Claire’s form; she bowed low to him. “The Prime is yours, my lord and king.”

  Nitthogr grinned and passed by her, ripping the throne from its moorings and flinging it across the room. His eyes clouded black. Nitthogr’s body began to roil and bubble as the tentacles emerged once more, writhing black and menacing. His voice lowered a full octave and dripped with evil. He was more Sh’logath than anything else, now.

  “I consume your spiritual essences at the point of death. They invigorate me. Welcome to my new era of darkness… and this realm is a mere appetizer. I shall graze over it one morsel at a time rather than consume it wholesale.” He turned to address the remote audience. “This existing quite agrees with me, and I take pleasure in the act of devouring each of you.”

  His demeanor changed, and he reverted back to the form of the sorcerer; the birthing had not yet fully completed, even if the pangs had begun. Nitthogr snarled at Gita. “Enough time has passed. Close the gates.”

  She cranked the dial back all the way to the other side, sealing the dimensional portals once again and locking out any who hoped to use them. Gita choked back her sobs. With blood-thirsty vyrm pouring in through every gate, she knew that there was no chance that any of her friends could have sneaked in with so short of a window.

  Nitthogr stood in front of the massive doors of the Chamber of Mysteries. With his back to the camera he declared, “I am Nitthogr, Herald and Acolyte of Sh’logath, and I will have my prize!”

  Chapter 21

  Earth

  Wiltshire tromped through the house and slipped out of sight. He didn’t even pause to check out the progress on the dimensional rift generator.

  “You girls keep working on that machine,” Sam said. “I’ll see if I can figure out whatever our friend needs.” He foraged deeper into the mansion looking for Wiltshire. “Hey!” he called, “Where are you at?”

  “Up here,” Wiltshire called down the stairs.

  Sam hurried up the steps and found him in one of the rooms. Wiltshire stood in front of the wooden stand where he’d grabbed Jecima’s keys only a couple hours earlier. Sam found him in the old professor’s “work room.” His active projects were the ones left in this room, either relics in need of research or stacks of papers in need of sorting.

  “There it is,” Wiltshire said, waving a hand towards the draped mirror. “The Venus Oculus.”

  “The what?”

  Wiltshire shook his head, dispelling any notion that the archaeologist should know it. “It’s a magic mirror… the very one that Sisyphus is looking for.”

  Sam stepped towards it curiously. “What does it do?”

  “It can grant one limitless wish to a mortal once every one hundred years,” Wiltshire explained as Sam picked up a manila folder leaning against the artifact’s base.

  Sam leafed through its contents and laid the loose pages out on a table. They were mostly photocopies of older manuscripts and they bore Miles’ distinct scrawl in the margins. He scrunched his forehead as he read the ancient works; they were mostly accounts of the mirror’s usage. Many passages had text underlined, highlighted, or marked with an asterisk.

  Before he could translate the writings, a triangular shaped rift split the air nearby. Wiltshire and Sam both turned to confront the monster on the other side.

  The detective fired a trio of shots through the opening. Shouts came from the floor below them while Sisyphus flashed a defensive ward up to block the bullets.

  “Open it wider,” Sisyphus snapped to his new science crew. “I don’t want you idiots to cut me off at the knees.”

  The portal widened and Sisyphus jumped through it.

  Sam snatched a nearby hat rack and charged at the big man. Sisyphus smashed through the furniture and clubbed the archaeologist with an elbow. Sam went down with a bloody nose as Wiltshire dropped the mag out of his gun and ejected the round in the barrel.

  Slamming in a new magazine and racking the slide, Wiltshire took aim again. He fired off another flurry of rounds. They busted through his arcane defenses and the flat nosed slugs slammed into his flesh. Thwap, thwap, thwap! As they hit, one of the amulets hanging around Sisyphus’s neck glowed brilliantly.

  Sisyphus roared, understanding that the bullets had been each inscribed with mystic runes to break through his arcane shield. Luckily, one of the stolen darquematter shards provided additional defense and slowed the bullets on impact. Still, they left a trio of ugly welts that stung and bled like he’d been shot close-range with a barrage of paintballs.

  The wrestler snarled and flung his hands out, trying to catch his enemy with a blast of eldritch fire.

  Wiltshire ducked and rolled.

  Sisyphus pulled off when the detective cut in front of the mirror—he c
ouldn’t risk damaging it.

  Sam scrambled to his feet and tried to tackle Sisyphus from behind. The wizard was too strong. He grabbed Sam and threw him over the banister railing; Sam howled as he tumbled over the edge and clattered down the stairs.

  Sisyphus turned back to Wiltshire even as he heard the shouts from the women below; he heard footsteps as they rushed to help. Wiltshire fired another set of bullets into the big wizard; the arrow-head shaped amulet in the necklace cluster glowed again as it absorbed the bullet’s kinetic energy. Sisyphus charged towards Wiltshire and they locked into a grapple, knocking the detective’s gun to the floor.

  As strong as Wiltshire was, the roid and sorcery fueled professional wrestler easily overpowered him. “My gun,” Wiltshire yelled, pressing through the grapple.Claire and Cerci had rushed up the steps to render aid. “He must not get the mirror or he could become more powerful than Nitthogr! As soon as I snatch his amulet, shoot him!”

  Wiltshire surged forward with all his might while his enemy steered his head another direction. Wiltshire blindly grasped and yanked a necklace free.

  Claire aimed and fired until the gun ran out of bullets.

  Sisyphus stood straight with pain, but he remained alive. He looked down and saw that Wiltshire had ripped free the wrong amulet. The detective clutched the baked tile rune that Sisyphus had taken from bwbych the boggart. He snapped a quick jab forward and busted the rune in Wiltshire’s hands.

  Wiltshire looked up, suddenly confused and worried, and then he blinked out of existence with a puff of smoke and a flash of light. Its freed magic ensnared him and shot him off to the Feylands before he could even think.

  Sisyphus grabbed his kophesh by the handle and harnessed its telekinetic abilities. From across the room he flung the sheet aside and exposed the Venus Oculus.

  “At last,” he cackled and with a flick of the wrist, commanded the magic device to move across the room and follow him. He grabbed the mirror by its frame and turned towards the triangular rift. Terrified faces of curious scientists looked on from Germany.

  Suddenly Sisyphus fell to his knees. He dropped his weapon and clutched his head, reeling in horror. Jacob Sisyphus was only twelve years old and nursed a black eye and bloody nose as his father yelled obscenities at him. He could smell the beer on his father’s breath again. The child broke down tearfully, trying to protect himself from another punch to the face.

  “No… no… get out of my head,” Sisyphus yelled, keenly aware that he’d been flung into a dream state. He peered through the fog, barely able to see past it and locate the woman who had summoned this hated memory. She exposed him to total recall of his abuse and weakness in the face of an abuser’s strength. “No! Stop it! I won’t let you…”

  Sisyphus charged towards her but lost her in the mists of visions. Every memory, every bad thought, all his life’s self talk crashed into him over and over in what felt like eternity—he was under Claire’s microscope and injected with weakness and impotence.

  Clutching his skull, Sisyphus finally struggled to his feet and threw himself through the fiery gateway. On the other side he screamed. “Close it. Close it… shut it down!”

  The rift snapped shut, leaving only Sam, Claire, and Cerci in the mansion. All was suddenly quiet. Sam finally shambled up the steps, nursing his cracked ribs. He found the girls examining the mirror.

  “Where’s Wiltshire?”

  Claire shook her head sadly and her father scowled.

  Sam insisted, “Sisyphus can not get that mirror. I’m still researching Jecima’s notes, but it’s some kind of magic… I guess Jecima had become quite the collector after his first meeting with you and Zabe.”

  Claire hugged her arms to herself. “Wiltshire said we can’t let him get it or he’ll become just as bad as Nitthogr. I barely stopped Sisyphus this time, but he’ll be prepared next time.”

  Sam picked up the mystic, ancient kophesh and gave it to Claire.

  “No place is safe,” Cerci insisted. “He’s already gotten his machine working and we’re still waiting on the data from the others. It’s the only thing we still need.”

  Sam and Claire nodded slowly. She said, “They’d better hurry. I have a terrible feeling that we are running out of time.”

  ***

  The group of five crept up in the dark and double checked the address against the one provided them by Cerci. The German streets had filled with shadow as Jenner, Shandra, Jackie, Zurrah, and Wulftone stalked through them.

  “This is it,” Jackie whispered, checking the clock. It was nearly three o’clock in the morning, German time and they’d made as quick a trip as possible. She and Wulftone each wore their Guardian Corps armor. It went everywhere with them—even on their honeymoon. She peered around the corner and through the glass front of the locked building. “I see three armed guards stationed in the lobby.” She squinted, “Lapel pins… I see the seven-pointed star of the Hepobscurantum?”

  Shandra, wearing her Veritas armor and wielding her hammer, whistled from near a discreet, locked service door on the side of the building. She tapped the hammer against the doorknob and it busted off. She tried to open it, but the lock still held firm. “Nevermind,” she said sheepishly. “I thought I had a solution.”

  Wulftone approached and grew into his hulking lycan form. He dug his talons into the steel door and ripped it off its hinges before tossing it into the shrubs.

  “That works, too,” Shandra whispered.

  “Follow me and pray that this didn’t trigger a silent alarm,” Jackie said. “Everyone stick close to the Earth-girl just in case… and let’s hurry.”

  She clutched her laser rifle and slipped inside. After turning a sharp corner she found the west elevator lobby. It required a key fob to call a carrier. She headed through the door and up the stairs. Leaning over the rail, she looked up and at the dizzying heights they’d need to climb. “Good thing I lost all that weight,” she sighed and started pumping her legs. “I better get me a whole box of donuts after this.”

  Wulftone whispered after her, “Can I get some of those, too?”

  “Get your own,” she teased. “Now pipe down. These stairwells tend to echo.”

  They climbed seemingly endless levels of steps until they found the upper most level. Flush and slick with sweat, they tried the door. It, too, was locked.

  Jackie stepped back and Wulftone pried the door open, tearing out part of the steel framed threshold with it. The barrier twisted free. An alarm blared and trouble lights came on in the stairwell. It pulsed through the hallway before them.

  “Time to get busy,” Jackie yelled, charging ahead.

  Her comrades trailed after her. They hustled through the corridors and pushed their way into a research pod where a bunch of confused scientists shouted angry words at them with thick German accents. Wulftone and Zurrah, both in lycan forms, splayed their claws and roared at them. The men and women in lab coats panicked and fled.

  Outside of the room, a larger chamber spread out where the Heptobscurantum’s portal generator had been reconstructed. “We should expect trouble any minute, now,” Shandra said as they hurriedly searched the research stations

  “There,” Jackie pointed to a desk adorned with stacks of notes and decorated with professional wrestling memorabilia. She hurried to it, slid into the seat, and opened the laptop. A password screen popped up, and she typed in Tombstone Piledriver.

  The computer granted her access. “This is it,” Jackie said. I got it!”

  Voices exploded in the lobby, past the main room. The scientists escaped as the security team entered. Shandra grabbed Zurrah. “Let’s go kid—we’ve got to keep them busy.”

  The lycan nodded as Shandra hefted her weapon and they rushed off to battle.

  Jackie plugged in a USB drive that Cerci had given her earlier. It ran a simple, automated program that uplinked Walther’s laptop to Cerci’s.

  A few seconds later, Jackie’s phone rang. She answered it.

  C
erci offered no greeting or useless chit-chat. “I got the data we needed. Destroy Walther’s laptop. We can’t allow the Heptobscurantum, or anyone else, to have access to this kind of stuff.”

  Jackie severed the line, pocketed her phone, and then snapped her pulse rifle to her shoulder. She blasted the computer into useless debris and the laser fire melted the hard drives to slag.

  Wulftone looked up, “Alright, Jenner, let’s go find this Sisyphus guy and beat some answers out of him—he might know where your father…” He looked around but couldn’t locate the young soldier. “Dang it, Jenner!”

  He grabbed Jackie and rushed towards the lobby. Shandra and Zurrah guarded the door where a pile of bodies had fallen to form a partial blockade. Shandra saw the others coming. “Jenner went that way,” she thumbed down the hall.

  Jackie grimaced at the carnage near the elevators. “You’d think the Hepobscurantum would run out of minions at some point, right?”

  In response, the elevator dinged down the hall and black-clad special-ops types poured into the hallway. “You just had to say something, didn’t you?” Zurrah growled as Wulftone and Jackie rushed past the door in pursuit of Jenner.

  The new soldiers proved to be a whole class above the others and raised their riot shields. They shouted commands to each other and worked the hall to get close enough to try to deal some actual damage against the lab’s intruders. One of the mercenaries barked, “These ones are different from the last. No scales… but we’ll show them no mercy!”

  Wulftone looked over his shoulder and watched Shandra and Zurrah maintain their defensive position. “Well, that explains why they have all these soldiers at the ready—some rogue vyrm faction already hit them, for some reason. Caivev must be on the outs with Seven.”

  Jackie and her husband found the panic-room door. Jenner had already used his blaster pistol to burn through the locking mechanism and forced it open. They rushed forward and into a macabre sort of study where Sisyphus performed arcane rituals required by dark arts.