by Lee Bond
One of the man’s friends poked the stunned gearhead in the chest. Rabble-Rouser Raphael toppled backwards like a mighty tree.
Every damn last one of them erupted into an excited frenzy, driven nearly mad by the impossibility of what they’d seen. Where before the noise had been manageable, shouts of explanation and demands of these wild new weapons filled the air. There wasn’t even a pause when a series of Kingly yowls washed over the city.
Mickel pointed his gun in the air and fired. The boom was just as satisfying as before. He was all permanent smiles now, and he knew that Harvard was busy wowing his audience with some of the secret toys he and his had been working on. That they’d waited until now to show their mastery was a bittersweet enjoyment, but on this, probably their last day under The Dome and in Arcade City, it were well better to go down at the top of your game and in ways that those who did make it free would whisper about for the rest of their unnatural days than to just hide. Hiding were for other blokes and other days.
They would be legend and that was the kind of publicity you just couldn’t buy.
All eyes snapped to Twisted Mickel, who had his foot back up on that crate. He held his beautiful handcannon in one hand and held the most satisfied look on his face. “Why,” the Master Smith said into the abrupt, graveyard-like quiet, “that King’s Will hain’t got no purchase here, that’s wot. Here, in this place, and in this fucking moment, we is what we is, lads and lassies, and that be Ickfordians, proper and true. Them as turn their noses up and call ‘emselves Arcadians hain’t got nowt on the meanest of us.”
He fixed his boys and girls with a steely eye. Were it not for the shrieking beasts outside the walls and Harvard running his gob, you could hear a pin drop. “Now. Which of you measly, metal-mouthed bitches is goin’ to fight alongside a Master Smith and his unbeatable apprentices?”
The roar of approval was the equal of the roars coming from the other side of the walls.
***
“Well,” Agnethea said quietly, “I am not entirely certain I approve of those gewgaws, Masters Mickel and Harvard, but I suppose I am spoiled for choice.”
Though her telescope had only given her a glimpse into the kind of weapon used by Mickel to blow a hole into that gearhead’s head, the Queen knew precisely how dangerous it was; given the nature of tinkerers and smiths, and Twisted Mickel’s and Havilland Harvard’s own instincts, it was only logical to expect that sooner or later they would attempt something … unique. It was what made them the very best at what they did and who they were. She’d long known of the tinkerers and their secret forges deep in the guts of their shops, but had never set personal eyes upon the results ‘til now.
They were … impressive. Worrying, but impressive nonetheless.
Resting her chin atop the telescope eye piece, Agnethea considered the implications of the weapons that those two merchants of death would be handing out to the hungry crowd. There was no telling the havoc crazed gearheads could wreak in her city with toys like that; forged here, they were … tied … into the very strange nature of what some called –rather unkindly- the Golem Miasma. Formed out of but cast away from King’s Will, the ‘taint’ of her kind –and her specifically, given her terribly advanced age- worked much the same as the Kingly variety, only … differently. Weapons built under the Miasma’s queer influence could very well have properties that were anathema to, say, Golems themselves. Some of the weapons would be instrumental in doing for the King’s monsters, aye, true enough, it was certain there’d be things down there as could ruin her city just as much as the enemy themselves.
And that wasn’t something she could countenance.
Agnethea summoned one of her loyal servants. While she waited, she turned the telescope back to the outer walls, where these new Kings were growing out of the earth, massive, armor-plated, terrifying.
As the Queen absorbed what was happening, a small bit of relief flooded through her; the maelstrom of ever-hungry Will had at last stopped eating the countryside, and had failed to reach through or past the walls surrounding Ickford but the ancillary damage was profound.
“Why,” Agnethea mused sorrowfully, refusing to gaze upon the beasts as they pulled themselves up properly from their birth chambers just yet, “I rather think that even if we are successful in repelling these unhuman monsters from my borders that Ickford is done for. Those craters all but make it impossible for people to come to and fro, and I warrant that the very air around them is full of poison. Will is thick as smoke everywhere and in that state, flesh would fall from bones in a single tick. The King has finally lost his mind.”
Agnethea pulled her eye away once more. Her grand dream of giving back to the people of Arcade City, unspoken and unrecognized recompense for thousands of years of nigh-on invisible barbarism and lethal violence was at an end, no matter what. Few would risk the journey to Ickford now, and of those who did, the Queen felt those who did were the kind of mad gearhead she’d always sought to deny entry anyways.
Damn Blake, damn him and whatever it was he planned!
With the level of savagery growing on her borders, it became clear to her in a flash –as one of those mighty beasts let loose a bone-rattling roar of implicit rage- that this was about far more than disgust at awful Ickford.
No, Agnethea thought shrewdly, this had much to do with Master Nickels. Whatever secret it was that drove Master Nickels to Arcadia, whatever it was he planned on doing once he arrived at the relit Forge … that was what had their omnipotent King full of wroth; ignorant as he may’ve been on Master Nickels’ true intentions –which Agnethea still wanted to learn, and quite badly- the King was clearly aware now.
And was apparently quite displeased.
“Whatever it is,” Agnethea sighed as she took a look at the metal men finally breaking free of the Will-spawned birthing caverns, “I hope it is worth all this.”
Agnethea’s heart went still as a quiet night out in the wilderness as she gazed upon one of the quartet clambering loose-limbed just there, as unsure of its gait as a newborn deer. Were the sight of it not daunting –indeed, terrifying was far more apt- the sight would be comical.
But fear won out over comedy.
These were no Kings. Easily the bigger than the biggest King ever summoned by foolhardy or brave gearheads, these were … soldiers. Yes, that was the nearest thing to what she saw through the telescope lens; rather than bespoked crown and vague semblance of lordly frippery, these men -who roared and bleated and made all manner of odd sounds, almost as if they spoke to one another- had helmets and simulated combat fatigues.
“Damn me.” Agnethea could think of nothing else to say. Where before the things called up out of the earth had been skilled in retaliatory combat in one way or another, the challenge in bringing down any of the Big Kings had been more in surviving long enough to do the right kind of damage. It had always been thus, for Blake didn’t want all of his citizens to die at the hands of his creations.
Some had to survive, to move onward further through King’s Gauntlet, improving themselves until there was no more room for improvement, until they’d been forged into perfection itself.
From the moment Big Kings had become the only way to properly progress, Agnethea had made it a habit of killing them herself, learning the ins and outs of each type of metallic monarch to come forth out of the ether, and down through the years, she’d catalogued well over three dozen different variations. One thing remained clear and true across all the types available:
They had weaknesses. Hard, seemingly impossible to get to and to exploit, but weakness nevertheless. An unprotected hatch leading into the brains of the beast. Poorly crafted external armored plates. Malfunctioning defenses. Whatever the flaw, flaws there were, flaws that gave them gearheads something to do with their beleaguered brains, forcing them with the ability to do more than swing a hammer or fire a gun or throw a bomb to find a way through. It had been the way of the world for just over twelve thousand years and that way was
changed.
These great green soldiers who even now –frighteningly quickly, given her presumption that Blake would’ve needed to give them their intellectual freedom- finding their legs quicker than she liked looked to be perfect. No weaknesses she could see, and Agnethea saw plenty. No flaws.
Striding strong and steady as any man now, each of the soldierbots gave a triumphant demanding yowl before turning their attention at last to Ickford.
Agnethea pulled the magnification on her telescope as far back as she could, desperate to see as much of her city as she could. She needed to get a fair estimation of how prepared everyone was; all told, right that minute, there was a population of about twenty-two thousand gearheads and wardogs of varying skill and Dark Iron complexity. Of those, Mickel and Harvard had enough weaponry and equipment for roughly –and this was stretching it so thin all hope almost vanished- a thousand. The other smiths were probably doing the same with their stashes, though she doubted muchly that their wares were similar to the Master Smiths’.
There were perhaps two hundred thousand or so regular men and women ‘tween the walls, and of those, perhaps ten percent would rise and fight. Of the mortal kind, they’d die swifter than the rest but … they’d find their peace with less pain than those who hid, yes they would.
There was nearly two hundred eighty of her kind within the walled city, twenty of them absurdly loyal to the demonchild Luther. Those brothers and sisters still reliable enough to see the sense in preserving Ickford rather than exploit this terrible time were –hopefully- preparing to defend their ‘Queen’s’ homage to Arcade City’s better moments.
Agnethea spotted ranks of gearheads lining up atop the walls and she smiled. Twisted and made maniacal by the rank Dark Iron coursing through their veins, nearly as cruel to one another as Golems were to lesser species, they’d nevertheless found it inside them to stand cheek by cheek, jowl by jowl, to do battle. She espied some few greyskins here and there amongst their brothers and sisters, all jagged edges and awful protuberances, and hoped that their broken hearts would mend enough to rile them to proper violence as only they could own.
The Queen swept her telescope about, hoping to find sight of Nickels in his glinting, gleaming Geared Armor, wondering as she did where in the hell her servant was; Agnethea hoped to get a message to some of her friends, a warning to stay clear of any gearheads toting weapons crafted by Mickel and Havilland.
Like as not, they would be deadly to Golems.
There! A flash of brass-tinted light. It could only be Master Nickels.
Where on earth was he headed?
Agnethea focused.
***
: Dark Iron matter connections being made. 35% complete:
Since leaving Harry’s Hat House, DarkBook’s progress on integrating the various systems together hadn’t moved from that initial figure, which was kind of a letdown; for a while there, the old counter had been zooming along as fast as a regular old install.
As Garth mulled over the implications of what, exactly, ‘Dark Iron matter connections’ meant, he navigated the streets on autopilot. He knew where he needed to be in relation to where he was and that was that. Were it not for the panicking gearheads and even more panicky regular folk, the path would’ve been straight as an arrow.
As it was, he was seeing Ickford’s back alleys and strange byways for a second time in as many days. “If this were a perfect fairytale and everything was all about me all the time…” Garth stepped into a doorway scant seconds before a gaggle of loud, obnoxious and terribly excitable gearheads funneled down the alley. The ex-Specter watched them pass, listening half-heartedly to their exclamations.
Easy victory, they said, brandishing their weapons and working themselves up into the proper mood to be doing for the enemy. New Kings. Bigger, better, different-er than any they’d seen so far. No crowns on these Kings, they shouted to one another, they look as regular blokes ever did, them in their helmets and green shirts.
A trailing gearhead made the mistake of looking into the doorway where Garth was leaning casually. She opened her mouth to scream for help, automatically identifying the Geared Armor as some sort of Gearman getup. That scream slammed shut in her throat when the cogswords slid out of their arm-sheathes with a sound of knives across whetstones.
Garth held a finger up to his mouth, whispering, “Shhh. Run along, gearhead, run and fight these new Kings. I’ll be out there, somewhere soon enough. Don’t do anything regrettable.” He smiled and nodded encouragingly when the woman –whose hair was a coiled mess of wires instead of the normal stuff- fled to join her comrades.
Hurrying onward to his Kingsblood stockpile was what he should be doing, but what he’d overheard was the kind of thing that needed a minute or so to think on without a head full of anxious thoughts.
Without doubt, the quartet of metal men waiting to break through Ickford’s gates were a direct result of ‘King’ Barnabas Blake’s desperate urge for retaliation; since two of the monarch’s greatest enemies –for surely that asshat had to know who Garth ‘Nickels’ really was by now- were under the same roof, it was all guns blazing and damn everyone to hell.
The brief –and frustratingly vague- description of these Kings didn’t sound right.
Another scream, followed by three more steam-driven eruptions, washed over Ickford, awful, powerful echoes that somehow managed to sound worse they longer they persisted.
In order to prevent obsession over the future problem from distracting him from the more immediate concern of getting at his Kingsblood, Garth had done the by blocking the horrible, metallic screeching sounds out.
In hindsight? Probably not the best idea.
Though he’d been distracted by the relative fool factor of an actual Kingspawn point in operation, that King had really taken less than thirty seconds or so to assemble itself once the fucking thing had been up and running full bore, and that sonofabitch had shot past ‘tough opponent’ to ‘one of the hardest things to kill ever, including cat memes’.
Responding to the furious focus of his thought, DarkBook pulsed a number across the HUD. These Kings had already been cooking in their nanotech Cloud wombs for about twenty minutes.
Garth wanted to rub his eyes, but stopped himself at the last minute.
Twenty minutes!
What the fuck could that mean?
DarkBook gave no response, other than to show an unspeakably graphic picture of two horses out for a lively … time.
He was getting nowhere, so the Kin’kithal stepped out of the doorway. Continuing with his current trajectory would put him at the Dark Iron Repository in less than ten minutes, at which time he could fuel the suit as needed. Once he was powered up and ready to rock and roll with giant robots in a manner and method that would have any survivors talking about what they’d seen until The Dome fell sometime shortly thereafter.
And as The Dome fell, rock and roll would spontaneously recreate itself in perfect wonder and anyone left alive would flock to the center of Arcadia and they’d just, like, have one fucking hell of a good time because dammit, they all deserved to let their hair down and get funky with it.
Then, Garth thought pleasantly, I can be quit of this fucking creepy Dark Iron bullshit and move on to the next pile of weirdness on my plate.
And, Garth thought as he shivered at the sounds of another screaming fit from the rising beasts, I seriously fucking doubt anything can be worse than Dark fucking Iron.
An errant –and worrisome- realization crossed his mind: his attitude towards Dark Iron had undergone a complete one-eighty! With the discovery that, given time, the mechanisms attached to his arms would ultimately siphon the horrific junk from his veins and skin with relative ease, there really wasn’t anything to worry about. It practically gave him a nice, tingly feeling, knowing that he could subject himself to Dark Iron, use the power inherent in the stable nanotech.
Even better, it was a really good bet that since he’d already managed to win out over th
e worst of Specter’s insatiable hunger not once but twice, fears and concerns over that dark side rising up out of the impending violence to rain incandescent terror on everyone in his path were probably pointless.
As long as the armor stayed on until he was free of Kingsblood, everything was going to be just swell. The ex-SpecSer shook his head to get himself back on track. He’d jumped from considering important options to random, pointless self-congratulation.
He could either continue on towards resupplying his Geared Armor with enough Dark Iron to integrate the various systems he was toting around into one whole piece or he could deviate towards the nearest not-King and see what was what.
“This sucks ballsack.” Garth griped as the internal debate raged back and forth between his desires to see what a properly powered suit of Geared Armor could do and the more logical, rational wish to gain a better understanding for the looming threat. “Everything was crystal clear like, three fucking minutes ago. Bah. I’m not rushing in completely blind this time. No matter what!”
Garth scanned the area in search of a building tall enough to afford him a proper bird’s eye view of the not-Kings growing outside the walls. Three blocks away. That wasn’t too far off the mark.
He set off at a fairly quick pace, mindful of any gearheads or wardogs that might be in the area. With the new threat looming over their heads, they were twitchier than ever, and really, he was hardly being circumspect. Someone might get it into their heads to deal cold hard vengeance for lost friends. It’d be stupid, but people were pretty much always stupid.
Four more screams, these ones filled with triumph.
Awesome. Fucking awesome.
Lips pressed tight, Garth put on more speed. Whatever was out there had finished being born and would soon begin assaulting the city.
***
Agnethea tracked Garth’s progress as carefully as possible with the telescope, relying more on instinct than actual talent the grand machine hadn’t been designed for the purpose to which it was being put and following a single man through the mazelike streets of Ickford was proving difficult.
