The Architect King

by Christopher Schmitz

  A table on the far side of the room sat opposite an open door; it held glass alembic vials and alchemy reagents at the ready for potion brewing. A collection of apothecary tools and texts had been stacked neatly. Jenner’s body flew through the air suddenly and smashed the table, shattering glass in every direction and throwing the loose pages into the air like leaves in a gust.

  Sisyphus’s distinct voice howled from within the room. “You think you can challenge me in my home… where I am most powerful?”

  A weak voice croaked from within, “Run, Jenner…”

  Wulftone and Jackie sprinted past their fallen comrade while he growled and tried to right himself. The werewolf launched himself over a fixed gurney and attacked. Wulftone’s eyes widened when he realized the man strapped to the table was Professor Jarfig—Jenner’s father.

  Sisyphus snatched Wulftone by the throat and looked into his eyes. Blood dripped down the wizard’s chin. He practically radiated power as he held the lycan against his will and smashed him against the wall. With his free hand, Sisyphus held up a wall of pure force and deflected the shots from both Jenner and Jackie as they opened fire at him.

  The wrestler snarled as he stared into Wulftone’s face. “You come in here and attack me? None of you can harm me—not here—not so close to my prize! Not even that little girl who stole my kophesh!” Sisyphus hurled Wulftone towards the sheet of glass that stretched from floor to ceiling: the penthouse window.

  Wulftone crashed into it, but the industrial strength material did not break. It cracked and splintered like a smashed windshield, but didn’t yield against the force of impact. The high-strength, laminated pane could stop anything short of a sustained spray of bullets.

  The lycan heard a thud, like a bird hitting glass behind him and he looked behind. Someone had clawed all the way up the side of the skyscraper and slapped a blinking wad of plastic explosives against the window where they’d stuck with LEDs blinking their warning.

  Wulftone leapt forward, darting past the wizard, and shielding Jarfig. The room erupted a split second later and covered the room in glass shrapnel and fire. From outside, Zabe leapt into the room with a snarl and pounced upon Sisyphus in his lycan form.

  Sisyphus was a big man and barely managed to hold his own against the massive lycan. Wulftone whirled and shook his thick hide, dislodging whatever glass shards had pierced his skin. He leapt into the fray and aided his cousin. They hacked and slashed, but Sisyphus somehow mustered the power to repel them. He’d barely moved from the central spot in the room.

  The wizard blasted Zabe and Wulftone with fiery eldritch bursts. They flung the rebels to the far side and smashed them against the wall. Jenner and Jackie fired laser blasts against Sisyphus but they simply deflected off him. Errant energy bolts splashed harmlessly against the floor and ceiling as one of the strange stones around Sisyphus’s neck flashed with brilliant color.

  Wulftone was simply glad that Sisyphus didn’t have his kophesh any longer. He might’ve simply thrown them all out the busted window if he’d had access to telekinetic abilities. He crawled to his feet and looked at Zabe. “I’ve never seen him so powerful before!” And then he cocked his head at him. “Welcome back, by the way. Glad to see your timing hasn’t improved.”

  Zabe flashed him a grin and yanked the Stone Glaive free from his baldric. “That may be true, but I’ve never seen something capable of resisting this weapon.” He roared leaping back into combat. He hacked and slashed, while the wizard deflected blow after blow with a shield and blade he drew out of thin air; he’d composed them of fire and pure eldritch energy.

  With only a simple glare at the doorway, he flung back Jenner and Jackie. He snorted like a bull and ripped the entire wall free, collapsing it around them and entrenching them within rubble and debris.

  Screams came down the hall as more and more soldiers came at their rear guard, threatening to overwhelm the defenders. They suddenly stopped and Wulftone’s heart sank at the implications.

  Zabe sniffed, catching a whiff of a familiar scent. He turned and looked past the rubble and their fallen friends. “Claire?”

  Sisyphus seized the opportunity and smashed the lycan with his energy shield, knocking Zabe prone. Wulftone jumped to his defense, keeping the wizard from immediately dispatching him. “How is he so strong?” Wulftone spat.

  Claire walked across the rubble and into view, kophesh in hand. Her eyes burned white, and she glared at the enemy.

  “Not again,” Sisyphus snarled. “Not here in my seat of power—not even you can get to me here.”

  A magic, psychic energy rippled in the air between them. The hair on the lycan’s hides tingled as if taken with static energy.

  Zabe looked up and noticed the intravenous tubes connecting Sisyphus to a supply of harvested blood from Jarfig. Another tube created a direct lead to the restrained victim giving the wizard a constant supply. He pulled the Stone Glaive to his side and used it to cut the line between Jarfig and Sisyphus.

  The Wizard looked down at Zabe. For the first time since the assault began, panic took the big man. “What have you done?”

  With a connection of flesh to flesh through the line of primal blood, the magic of the Glaive took hold. The cut line filled with stone and transformed the blood. It petrified and turned gray and solid as it raced up both sides of the catheter.

  Sisyphus screamed and yanked the IVs free from his body before the Arichitect King’s power transmuted him. Wulftone had already leapt into action and yanked the tubes out of Jarfig’s arm. While he was close, he snapped the man’s restraints and pulled him to freedom, rushing towards the safety offered by Claire.

  Zabe also leapt clear as his fiance held aloft the kophesh and hurled all the debris at the howling wizard, uncovering her friends and burying her enemy in rubble. For good measure, she ripped the other two walls free of their moorings and smashed them together, clapping Jacob Sisyphus between them.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” Zabe said, embracing her, but uncertain what to call her. When he’d last seen her, only Bithia remained—and this move was unlike the sort of thing she would do. He looked into her eyes and saw that she was different. “Claire?”

  She nodded. “We are Claire. I’ll explain later.” Claire hugged him tightly once more, “It’s a long story. But we’ve got to get out of here. I already knocked out and wiped the minds of the Heptobscurantum’s science corps.”

  Helping Jenner and Jackie to their feet, Jenner threw his weapon away; the power source had already depleted. The boy embraced his father who swayed on his feet, barely able to stand between the muscle atrophy and the low blood supply.

  “We’ve got a gate of our own waiting for us—it’s how I got here.” None of them questioned Claire; they hurried back towards the main chamber where she had come from.

  Shandra and Zurrah fell in with the rest. Minor scrapes and bruises indicated that the battle had been fierce before Claire arrived to aid them; unconscious soldiers lay strewn about, lives also saved by the psychic. Zurrah walked in lockstep with his brother. “Zabe? It is good to see you.”

  “Likewise,” Zabe said. They’d both been trained by the same warriors and knew better than to stand around and talk shop in the middle of battle. As soon as they’d cleared the hall, all three elevators dinged and belched out more troops. Further behind, they heard Sisyphus roar again as he freed himself from the rubble; he may have been separated from the Primal energies, but he was still a powerful sorcerer.

  Half of the mercenaries chased them through the corridor and the others split off, going the other direction. Wulftone slammed the doors behind them to block the mercenaries and wrapped a steel chair leg around the knobs to prevent them from following.

  As soon as they got to the room where their escape portal waited for them, the far wall crumbled as Sisyphus opened a new path. He strode through the hole, dusty, bruised, and with trickles of blood streaming down his face. “You will all regret that! Each of you Primes will be
hooked up to supply me with raw energy—the rest of you will be killed,” he hissed with snake-like vigor.

  The security team busted in behind him with guns blazing.

  Jarfig and his rescuers ducked behind tables and whatever else they could find to provide cover. They tried to work their way closer to the waiting portal. Right behind it the wizard’s portal generating equipment had been stationed.

  Sisyphus howled for his men to stop. “Cease fire—cease fire! I can’t risk you destroying my machine!” They’d already drawn a bead on their targets and attacked like sharks with blood in the water. Ignoring Sisyphus, they took shots anyway, aiming carefully.

  Weaponless, Jenner tried to dash to safety and slid to a stop near the portal. On the other side, Cerci screamed as stray shots came through and bullets fired halfway across the world bit the walls and floor of a house in Duluth, Minnesota.

  “Father, come on! We have to run for it.” Jenner darted out from behind his cover and made a line for the portal.

  A nearby guard led his target and pulled the trigger with deadly precision, aiming for Jenner’s heart. At the last moment, Professor Jarfig launched himself at his son and took a bullet to the chest, protecting him.

  Sisyphus screamed with rage. He hurled a blast of pure force and snapped the necks of his own security team as he growled with animalistic fury. The source of all his amplified power laid dying in a pool of his own blood and he did not truly know if any other blood except that of his own Prime would give him the same potency.

  Claire shouted through the portal leading to Duluth. “Cerci, I need to know how to operate the other rift generator. I need a portal from here to the Prime and I need it now!”

  “Where to, in the Prime?” Cerci shouted.

  “I don’t care… anywhere—but it has to be the Prime.”

  Cerci stammered, “You need to… you just have to… watch out!” She hurled herself through the portal and somersaulted to a stop. She kept her head down and crept towards the German contraption’s controls. “Cover me!”

  More guards came in and Jackie peppered them with blaster fire. Jenner sat on the floor, holding his father. Jarfig’s chest heaved as he struggled to draw successive breaths. Blood leaked everywhere from his wounds.

  “No! No, father, I can’t lose you—I’ve done so much to save you from that monster,” he sobbed, holding Jarfig’s head. The light began going out behind his eyes as soon as the rift opened to a dark and starless night filled with foreign constellations.

  The three werewolves continued to harass the wizard when he suddenly stiffened as if he’d been struck by a jolt of electricity. He groaned and levitated slightly as Claire stood, kophesh in hand. She seized him with telekinetic force. Her eyes blazed and frosted milky white.

  Cerci spread wider the area of the second portal.

  Jarfig convulsed once and then fell limp. Jenner wailed, his cries matched the wind coming from the Prime’s sky as it whipped through the new energy gate and chilled the room.

  Jackie pushed ahead and blasted the remaining guards. She secured the room with the help of Wulftone and Zurrah who took up points on either side of the space in case more intruders arrived. Zabe stood adjacent to Claire and guarded her with his life.

  Claire asked, “Do you feel that, Sisyphus? That’s a spectacular and specific kind of pain coursing through you. I’m not causing it—I’m only holding you still. What you’re enduring happens only in the Prime and when the death of one of its own occurs while a dimensional variant is present. His or her soul is slammed into a foreign body. It is a very rare occurrence—something I once endured.”

  Sisyphus grunted through the shock and the pain. He blinked back the sudden thoughts that began rambling through his mind—Jarfig’s thoughts and emotions clouded his brain. “I’m… not… in the… Prime,” he growled through clenched teeth.

  “As long as that portal is open, the metaphysical rules of the Prime exist here,” Claire said. She released the wizard, and he curled up on the floor, too weak and distracted by the battle inside his mind to even stand.

  “No! get outta my head…”

  His voice seemed to shift, and he spoke more like Jarfig. “I told you that not all strength is physical…” The big man turned his face to Jenner. “S-son? You did it. You freed me!”

  Jenner scrambled over to him and hugged the doppelganger who had become his father, only in a much sturdier frame.

  The wrestler shook his head. “Nnnnneerrgh! No! I must not… rrrrrr.” He stiffened and convulsed with a seizure as the wills contended with each other over and over again.

  Claire’s eyes went white, and she reached out with her psychic abilities. She breathed heavily for a few long moments, and then her eyes returned to normal. Jarfig, the new Jarfig, opened his eyes with a flutter and they locked on to Jenner. He returned the big hug.

  “What did you do?” Shandra asked.

  “I recently learned a great many new psychic tricks as a result of my own struggles. I locked Sisyphus away deep inside, someplace where he’ll never be able to bother the Professor again.”

  Shandra nodded. She’d not taken any studies with Pollando, but she’d understood what they might entail. “Let’s get out of here,” she said as more gunfire erupted beyond Jackie and the lycans.

  A group of bewildered, homeless vagrants emerged from a nearby room and scrambled over the rubble. Bloody catheter tubes dragged behind them where the homeless victims who powered the rift machine had torn themselves free.

  Claire and the others dove through the gateway and back into their home base in Minnesota. Cerci snatched the roller-ball controls and spun their triangular door on its access so that it faced the front of the Heptobscurantum’s machine. As the opening shifted, she caught sight of new research drawn on the walls of the lab; Walther’s distinct scrawls identified what he had been working on: whole other planes of existence outside of the Tesseract! She didn’t have time to identify what looked more like a rune with numbers attached to it than a scientific equation. German voices belonging to international Heptobscurantum cultists echoed as they pushed their way inside. They would arrive in seconds.

  “They can’t keep that machine,” Claire said. “It’s far too dangerous!”

  Jackie leveled her pulse rifle at the glass bulb containing the wundrefluvium and pulled the trigger. The machine exploded into flaming pieces, obliterating any chance of rebuilding it.

  Cerci hit the kill switch and severed their link to Germany before the flames could reach them.

  Chapter 22

  Dawn had only just begun to break and Sam walked through the halls of the Duluth estate. The frost of the morning had just begun to burn off the autumn air with the sun’s first rays giving Sam a subtle boost of optimism.

  The wooden floors creaked slightly beneath his weight and he noticed the little accoutrements and decorative flourishes all around the place. In the eerie quiet of the cold, Minnesota morning, things focused into crystal clarity for Sam.

  “This house needs a name. The Miles Mansion?” Sam spoke aloud to himself.

  He hit the brew button on the coffee pot and shivered slightly. The house’s heat hadn’t been turned on yet since temperatures hadn’t yet dipped below freezing, but that didn’t mean it was warm. He knew folks from southern climes would balk at what northerners considered acceptable levels of cold inside a home. Sam yawned and untucked his shirt from the pajama bottoms he’d swiped from one of the many dressers on the property.

  The crisp, autumn air rolled off of the nearby Lake Superior and rustled the orange and ochre leaves beyond the large windows. Gentle snores came from many of the rooms attached to the hallway. They had all been so tired upon the return from Germany that nobody had even bothered shutting doors. People had fallen into beds and couches wherever they could find them.

  Sam poured a cup of coffee and looked up to see one very tired and bleary eyed Shandra approaching. He took a sip as she yawned and said, “The Miles Ma
nsion sounds stupid.”

  He chuckled and spluttered in his coffee. Something about it tasted wrong. “You have a better suggestion?”

  “Yes,” She said, carrying the pot to the nearby closet bath and dumping it out. “Don’t make decaf. Your brain doesn’t work right on that stuff.”

  Sam picked up the can of cheap coffee grounds and shrugged. He’d been so tired he hadn’t noticed.

  Shandra reset the machine and began to brew a proper pot with some beans from the local roaster. The smaller bag was old, but couldn’t be more stale than the blue tin he’d been using.

  “The Jecima House? The Miles Jecima Mansion?”

  “I’m partial to the Jecima Estate,” he offered.

  “I can get behind that,” Shandra said, finally pouring a cup of black coffee for herself. She wandered into the portal room where the rift generator had been set up. It was perhaps the best place for the early risers to talk and plan without disturbing the others. “I’m still a little confused about what Sisyphus wanted—I mean, besides the parts for his portal generator; he had to have a grander scheme… and whatever happened to Vikrum Wiltshire?”

  Sam tightened his mouth. “He’s, uh, gone. I don’t know where—heck, Wiltshire probably doesn’t even know where. We can search for him later. After we deal with Nitthogr.” He sipped from his hot mug. “He and the rest of us here stopped Sisyhphus from getting his hands on some kind of powerful artifact that could’ve turned him into an even bigger threat than Nitthogr. Something Jecima collected… Wiltshire called it the Venus Oculus.”

  Shandra stopped mid-sip. “The Oculus? It is here?”

  “You know the Venus Oculus?”

  “We know of it on the Prime. An arcane mirror. It was originally built in our dimension, as were so many of the magic items that found their way to Earth, but it was lost long ago.”

  “What does it do? I haven’t had a chance to read Jecima’s notes, yet,” Sam asked.

  Shandra didn’t answer immediately and footsteps shuffled down the hall. Claire walked in, raccoon-eyed and clutching a coffee mug with both hands. She shambled into the room and sat, taking several long sips until she was ready to talk. “We need to come up with a plan. I know we’re all still recovering, but we need to strike soon. We don’t have the option of cooling our heels too long… not with Nitthogr released.” She took another long sip. “We do have one advantage: nobody else knows that we have the gate generator. With the Tesseract’s portal system shut down, we’ll have the element of surprise.”