The Architect King

by Christopher Schmitz

  “I had to slip away,” Sam said. “It was a kind of secret mission. Nobody could know about it… not even Shandra.”

  Cerci nodded slowly as she backed casually up against the portal machine, trying not to give away the fact that she was not convinced by his performance. “Well, welcome back to the Miles Mansion. They’ll all be glad you are back.”

  She watched his eyes. Sam nodded without any recognition for the inside joke. “It’s good to be back.”

  Cerci turned her head and looked past the suspicious Sam and at an empty room. “Oh, hey there, Claire,” she said, fooling the impostor.

  He turned his head and Cerci used the momentary distraction to her advantage. She snatched a hand gun she kept loaded and hidden atop the portal machine.

  Fake Sam snarled and let his disguise fall. Scales revealed themselves as Krenyr the Hunter leapt for Cerci. She fired off a few shots, but none were even close to the trained assassin. He ducked and weaved as he drew her fire in the wrong directions while he rushed for her.

  Krenyr snatched her by the wrist and wrenched her hands upwards so she pointed the gun away. They struggled for a moment, though she was far over-matched.

  Fighting for the gun, they did an odd kind of tango across the floor and Cerci noticed they’d moved precariously close to the portal which hovered in the middle of the room, flat and fiery, it hung in stasis just above the floor.

  She yielded the gun and put all her efforts into kicking his leg. Krenyr’s foot flailed and clipped the edge of the portal. The laser-cut edge burned Krenyr across the ankle and he yelped, losing the gun somewhere behind him.

  The shade turned and bared his fangs while drawing a wicked dagger from his belt. He hissed with murderous intent.

  Cerci panicked; her options had run out. She snatched the vial of the Architect King’s blood and pocketed it to keep it safe. The limited supply of regular blood they’d secured from a local blood bank kicked in as an automatic backup. She tried to escape, but the enemy sidestepped and prevented any movement except backing her up against the wall around the bulky edges of her equipment banks.

  Krenyr wrapped his talons around her throat and brandished his knife.

  Cerci reached for a weapon, whatever her hands could find. Her fingers seized upon the grip of a familiar instrument of death and destruction. She brought it to bear in front of her. The flyswatter was little more than a flimsy wire with a plastic slapper—but it would have to do.

  The scientist gulped and Krenyr laughed in her face as she tried to fend him off with the wiry whip. Cerci momentarily wondered how many annoying insects it had killed in its day. What’s one more, then?

  She slapped the glass cylinder containing the wundrefluvium and caused a massive explosion. It mushroomed out from the wall while the machine’s bulkhead shielded her from the blast. The flames engulfed the surprised assassin and fried him to a crisp. Damaged beyond immediate repair, the machine went offline.

  Cerci hissed and stared at the mess in the long silence that followed. The portal was gone, but the laptop across the room had sustained only minimal damage and it still operated. She had plenty of cash and easy access to the parts, wundrefluvium aside; Cerci could rebuild the machine, but knew it would take her weeks all by herself.

  She sank to the floor, certain she could have no impact in whatever battles raged within the Prime. For now, she had to hope and pray that Zurrah would make it out alive.

  ***

  The Prime

  Gita and Jenner dashed through the halls. Bodies of fallen vyrm littered the corridors, and they stepped over them with footsteps echoing as they tromped through.

  Jenner grabbed her and they climbed a flight of steps. “There’s a back way to the throne room. Maybe we’ll get an angle on Nitthogr. It’s a good sniper position.”

  Up ahead they cleared the edge of the stairwell. At the end of the corridor a trio of vyrm stood at a large picture window.

  Gita raised her pistol and put three precise shots into the enemy, one for each of them. Jenner caught up to her and they looked out beyond the castle walls. Vyrm fought against vyrm, but the men and women of the Prime had arrived to join the battle as well. Blue flashes of ice and red waves of fire glimmered below and beyond them near the fraying edges of the tarkhūn force.

  “I wonder if this is what the Syzygyc war looked like?” Gita asked. Dread reverence quieted her voice.

  “I hope not,” Jenner put a hand on her shoulder. “That was the final breaking point for the vyrm… when the Edenya realm truly became the Desolation. What would become of the Prime if all that death and destruction came here?”

  Gita turned and headed the opposite direction. “Come on,” she finally said with malice in her voice. “We’ve got a monster to kill.”

  Jenner hurried on ahead of her and led Gita to a bank of doors with a keypad. “I did a sentry post here once shortly after joining the Corps.”

  “And you just happen to remember the password?”

  He smiled. “By coincidence, the number is my birthday. It’s hard to forget something like that.” He entered a code, and a door clicked open.

  They sneaked into a balcony with booth seats that overlooked the royal court. Below them, they found their friends squaring off against the writhing mass of tentacles and teeth that Nitthogr had become. The horrific incarnation of Sh’logth surged towards Claire and Zabe.

  Jenner pulled his rifle to his shoulder and opened fire. Gita raised her pistol as well. Laser bursts splashed off the monster from the rear. They did not hurt the beast, but he whirled and snarled.

  Sh’logath crab-walked nearer with incredible speed and lashed out with an elongating tentacle. He ripped the balcony free from the wall and sent it crashing to the floor.

  Gita and Jenner crawled from the rubble, coughing on dust and bleeding.

  Sh’logath smiled, licking his giant, jagged teeth. “Slave,” he commanded her, “Turn your weapon on your friends and kill them.”

  “No!” she screamed, finally loosing her pent up rage. “You can’t control me anymore!”

  “Fool. Your sister will die—and I will not give her the courtesy of leaving her petrified during the act. I will restore her to life and flesh before I devour her, alive and conscious, and she will know that you could have saved her.”

  Gita opened fire on the monster, mainly so that she wouldn’t have to listen to any more of his threats. She had already made her choice.

  The others pressed their attack, and the monster met each one, tracking their attacks with his one monstrous eye and multitude of tentacles. As soon as he’d knock back one, another fighter took his or her place.

  A tentacle snatched Claire and threatened to squeeze the life out of her when Zabe slashed it with the Stone Glaive. He hacked a chunk of Sh’logathian flesh away, but it did not turn to stone.

  They all gasped at the discovery.

  “Fools—I have grown beyond the power of your petty, mystical tools. I have transcended the rules that bind your reality—I am born of the void and you cannot stop me! I am Birthed and I am Awake!”

  Chapter 25

  Klyrtan fled into the cracks and squeezed through the fissures that twisted like jagged pumice tunnels between the walls. Laser blasts sparked and snapped behind him as he wriggled through the gaps. Fear and dread gripped him to the core and radiated out from his spine.

  He barely knew what had come over him. A feeling of intense joy and manic power had overwhelmed him only minutes ago; his emotions seemed to dictate his movements as if he was not in control. Klyrtan could still feel where the hot blood had splattered across his face and a sort of primal frenzy had over-ruled his mind and heart.

  As soon as he’d wriggled through the winding passage, the memories washed over him. His entire life poured out in his mind’s eye. Klyrtan remembered staring at the stupefying face of madness and living life as a cripple. He remembered the siren call of Nitthogr’s dream and knew where the dark lord was; even now it wa
s connected to him.

  Klyrtan stumbled to his knees and collapsed within the confines of the castle walls. “H-he used me,” Klyrtan groaned, understanding that he’d been set up. He had acted as an unwitting agent of the enemy—groomed since childhood for this very role.

  Even now, the dark whispers called to him. Evil thoughts nibbled at the raggedy edges of his consciousness. Voices of the vile one reached for Klyrtan, all one thousand of them cooed, cajoled, and cried out for him, trying to wrap his sudden clarity up within psychic fetters.

  He looked up towards the inner buildings and dashed across the near-emptied royal grounds. Klyrtan knew exactly where the agod lurked. The vyrm’s hate consumed him, but this time it burned against Sh’logath.

  Klyrtan did not know how long he could resist the lure of those siren voices. He was barely sure of which voice was his, even; the others grew with swelling volume. Klyrtan dragged the sharp edge of his blade across his skin. His own voice cried out with pain. With it, he found it among the others, intensely hot.

  Locking onto the sound of it, Klyrtan made sure to remember which one belonged to him. The only thing Klyrtan was sure of was the sharpness of the short sword in his grip; it was covered in the prophet’s blood. He looked up and then sprinted across the courtyard, searching for the agod and inexplicably drawn to him.

  ***

  Sh’logath contorted as he moved, evading the weapons of the arrayed heroes. Gita and Jackie both peppered him from the flanks with their blasters as Jenner readied an explosive device. Their shots did little more than annoy the fiend.

  Jenner hurled the cluster of bombs and his friends leapt aside as it detonated. Flames and jagged shrapnel washed over the beast.

  The monster shrieked. Weapons of the humans scorched and shredded Sh’logath’s adaptable skin, but none of them did significant enough damage.

  Jenner’s face soured—he realized that they could not win this fight. He picked his gun back up and opened fire. “I don’t think all the ammo charges in our entire armory could take this thing down,” he told Gita.

  Sh’logath whirled his tentacles above Claire and the others and then snapped them back like a whip. Jenner caught a wicked glint in the monster’s bulbous eye; he grabbed Gita and shoved her out of the way.

  The tentacles smashed the ground where Gita and Jenner had just stood. Sh’logath’s appendages moved like whips but hit like clubs.

  Gita and Jenner scrambled back to their friends who covered them. A writhing arm tried to ensnare them before they could reach safety. Zurrah shredded the tendril with his razor claws. Sh’logath ignored the scratches and wrapped the limb around the werewolf like it were a python.

  Zabe leapt to his brother’s aid and slashed cleanly through the curl of monster flesh. The severed arm fell to the floor and Sh’logath growled. Although a splatter of nearly black blood fouled the floor, his lost extremity crawled back to Sh’logath like a snake and reformed into his inky mass.

  “We can hurt it!” Wulftone cried. As a group they all surged forward, drawing attacks and recoiling as others assaulted him.

  Sh’logath seemed to loom only larger and larger with every swing and shot they took. Claire wielded her kophesh, but the magic of her telekinetic power had no inherent effect against it—Sh’logath seemed a blind spot on the magical spectrum and she feared touching him psychically too much to try anything with those abilities. She had tried it in the past and it had never ended with anything but pain… and they could not chance distractions. Especially not now.

  A vyrm berserker suddenly bust in from a side door, too fast for any to react to. The blood-soaked vyrm wielding a short sword leapt into the fray, screaming, “You will never use me again!” Klyrtan slashed and cut cleanly through one of Sh’logath’s arms, and then whirled and hacked apart another writhing appendage. He struck and attacked with reckless abandon, not caring if he lived or died—just that the voices plaguing him ceased.

  Sh’logath roared at the minor annoyance and recoiled so that he had a space cushion to move in. With more room to operate, one of his tendrils wrapped around Klyrtan and crushed him limp; the pressure of Sh’logath’s grip broke shoulders, femurs, forearms, and spine with horrific cracking sounds.

  The beast opened his mouth and chomped down on the rogue vyrm. He could have swallowed a person whole, but he took pleasure in the chewing as Klyrtan shrieked, powerless to stop the grinding, stomping teeth as they smashed down upon him over and over.

  One of the tendrils Klyrtan had severed lay limp upon the chamber’s tile. It bore the stone fist of Shjikara at its tip.

  Gita stared at the cursed hand of the High Priest where it lay a meter away from her. When Sh’logath roared, his severed chunks of flesh writhed and squirmed, moving back towards the monster.

  “No! Stop it,” Gita cried, lunging for the writhing, snakey thing. It slipped just beyond her grip.

  Shandra stepped forward and smashed it with her hammer. The black flesh splattered and smeared into something like an ink stain across the floor. The force of her blow cracked the fist-like shape.

  Gita scooped it up and pushed against the cracks that had formed after Shandra’s attack. She pried it open like a nut at Christmas time and found nestled within it an onyx runestone etched with a mystic sigil. Gita clutched it to her chest and tears streamed down her face—she finally had what she needed to rescue her sister… now she had to keep it safe.

  Sh’logath roared as the heroes formed up against him again. He cackled, laughing off such inconsequential damage as they’d caused. “You can not beat me—not all of you combined—not if you had a million years to prepare.” He grinned wickedly. ‘And you have much, much less time than that.”

  A loud click throom-boomed behind both Sh’logath and the heroes. Slowly and on creaking hinges, the doors to the Chamber of Mysteries opened to reveal the Architect King. He stood in the middle of the vault and stared at the beast who had drawn precariously close to the arcanely locked barrier.

  Gita stared, squinting slightly at the glowing man within. “Doctor Jones… Sam Jones?” She shut her mouth and gasped when she realized who it really was.

  “Maybe they cannot stand,” he said. “But I stand with them.”

  Sh’logath drew himself up to twice the height of J’v-Ellah. The agod practically trembled with rage. He shouted and screeched accusations and traded barbs with J’v-Ellah in some unknown language. Sh’logath began to approach the doors of the sanctum where the Architect King stood.

  “Quickly,” Zabe ordered. “It must be a trick or a trap of some kind—we must not let him reach the Chamber!”

  ***

  J’v-Ellah held up a hand as his princess-daughter led the charge. “Stay where you are. None of us can stop this now.”

  Their faces fell, crestfallen. The Prime’s mortal enemy, an insidious sorcerer who had birthed a nega-god within him, had finally breached the royal chamber and was about to profane the most holy sanctum of the realm.

  Sh’logath sneered as he walked past the ancient barriers that Nitthogr had long tried to breech. He could have annihilated the entire realm—all of it and still been unable to bypass the magic that held those doors shut. His destruction would have created a paradox, one that allowed existence to continue for all eternity—even in Sh’logath’s realm of Awakened void.

  “He is certainly no Nitthogr,” J’v-Ellah told them, stepping aside to let the beast pass. “The sorcerer is gone. Burned away. Devoured. This is something entirely other. It is Sh’logath incarnate.”

  “Have none of you believed me?” the agod hissed, only tenuously stepping within the doors. Light, arcane and holy, shone throughout the chamber. Only the most valuable and rare items were stored within. Most of them had passed out of remembrance, but one item had lived large and in pure legend.

  Even Claire had never actually seen the Tesseract; though she could open the Chamber, she was too fearful and reverential to do so. The Tesseract rested upon a decorative plinth
in the center of the vault. The lights that rippled around the room came from light generated by the holy jewel.

  “No!” Claire cried out. “You cannot let him have it—we cannot simply surrender.” Tears welled in her eyes.

  J’v-Ellah gave Claire a compassionate look, and then he winked. “No, my daughter. I never said I would surrender.”

  Claire traded confused glances with Zabe. They both looked to Shandra, the religious expert. Worry lined her face, too, but she was as confused as the rest.

  “I will give you one chance, Sh’logath,” the Architect King insisted. “Because I created where there was once void—though you had not even yet lived, I will allow you to leave this place. I will even construct a new void for you, something outside the confines of reality—much like this chamber—a place where creation will never again intersect with the silence of your rule.” He stared at the monstrosity with a flinty edge to his gaze. “I suggest you take my offer.”

  Sh’logath hissed. “Your offer sounds like a prison—I quite enjoy existing, now that I am made real. And if you are bartering, then you must be desperate—you cannot defeat me… I have grown too strong to contend with.”

  “Do not confuse compassion for weakness.” There was a stern edge to J’v-Ellah’s voice.

  “False! I will show you the true, eternal power of the void!” Sh’logath lunged for his enemy with god-like speed and attacked with a force like an eternal, brutal tide.

  ***

  Sh’logath lunged and struck with scary speedy. He struck and lashed at J’v-Ellah, but the Architect King seemed to disappear every time, like a blur. So fast, J’v-Ellah became momentarily unbound by time and evaded each attack.

  “We must help him!” Clarie cried out again, motivated by her feelings more than common sense.

  “We cannot enter that,” Shandra insisted. The center of the Chamber had become a maw of teeth and violence, a whirlwind of daggers and malice. “We’d never survive.”