Dark Iron King II: Arcadia Falls (Unreal Universe Book 5)

by Lee Bond

  Agnethea was first. Agnethea was ancient. There was something in her makeup that had always allowed her to kill the others of her kind as easily as anything else, and for thousands upon thousands of years she’d perpetrated the illusion that they were one and the same.

  “A girl’s got to have her secrets.” Agnethea sighed the sentiment softly as she rounded the corner. If the other Golems had ever known –or even assumed- that their lives were as simple for her to snatch away as a human’s, they would’ve risen up against her ages ago.

  Well, the secret was out now, that was for bloody certain; that silly cunt Ada and her equally moronic boyfriend, kicked out for poor behavior, had witnessed the savage bloodbath. The two of them had hightailed it right out of there, all ‘interest’ in pushing the limits of their indestructible flesh to the furthest edge suddenly far less captivating than surviving the next thirteen seconds.

  Didn’t matter. With the Green Metal Men dominating every major section of Ickford and with so many gearheads out and about trying desperately to do for them –not to mention a couple of Gearmen and Master Nickels somewhere in the city- it was extremely unlikely that Young Luther and whoever remained in his cabal would find their way to freedom without some kind of loss.

  “Hopefully that demonic child has already been done for, and by something ignoble.” Agnethea stopped short of walking into the area flattened by the King’s vengeance. Little sense in getting within range of those tremendous feet, for no matter how invulnerable she was, there was simply no telling if being squashed by something so large and heavy might not just do for her anyways. “Perhaps by a falling brick, right in the eyes.”

  Gods, the thing was majestic. A towering testament to King’s Will, or as Agnethea had taken to calling it most recently, King’s Vengeance. This was definitely all about revenge and everything associated with the feeling. Their dear old ancient monarch had finally gone off his rocker and was looking to do for the whole of everything under The Dome and –were it not for the fact that she was still alive and had an extremely vested interest in remaining so- Agnethea would stand idly by and let the old bastard have his way.

  Arcade City was broken, that was a fact, and while King Barnabas Blake the One and Only had done more than one reset in his term as eternal ruler, this … this had the feel of summat different. This had the feel of permanent endings, as when a gearhead who’s blood ran red instead of black coughed out their final breath and lay still.

  The large metal man would dwarf the biggest King that any squad or crew had ever summoned, and here, Agnethea was including those few times –long past- where the gearhead gangs had been more tolerable of one another, getting together to call up from the dirt truly epic Kings to battle.

  “If you,” Agnethea braced herself against a nearby building when the Man stopped it’s feet so hard that the bodies of fallen gearheads flew like scattered leaves, “are an inch, you are seven hundred feet and then some, big boy.”

  Agnethea tapped her lips thoughtfully, mouth quirking into a frown when she noticed chunks of skin beneath her fingernails. They’d turned her into a bloody savage. Dismissing the past, the Queen chose to focus instead on what the lumbering behemoth was up to; ridding itself of obstacles made a great deal of sense, but beyond that, it –and presumably the others- weren’t doing much of anything. It wasn’t really chasing any of the crews on the rooftops ringing the area it’d cleared for itself, which was … odd. Those crews were armed with truly impressive weapons, guns and bombs and all manner of device not seen in more than eight thousand years.

  It well pleased her that she’d made the right decision in allowing tinkerers like Twisted Mickel and Havilland Harvard the privilege of staying in her city to ply their trade. She herself had discovered long ago that whatever strange cloud prevented the King and his from finding her properly also gave her a … leniency in what could and could not be built. It was nice to see that, over time, that odd little quirk of her nature could be passed to others.

  It was an odd kind of shame that the grandeur of both men had to be revealed and used in such a manner, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  “And you.” Agnethea pointed at the corpse of a nearly totally pulverized gearhead. After that last stomp, many dead bodies had flocked towards her little alleyway, and now she was here to deal with the problem at hand, it were best if she spent a few minutes preparing herself. “And you make no sense at all, now do you?”

  There were dozens of corpses littering the area like so many discarded toys, which was perplexing. Agnethea knew the names and abilities of every single gearhead and wardog inside her walls, and to a one, to a one, they were all gents and ladies of the highest caliber. Folks ready –were it not for her glorious city- to move inwards and onwards, as some used to say.

  Powerful tall and strangely built and even more strangely acting as these not-Kings were, Ickford was home to gearheads so powerful in their own right that they should all be down the pubs by now, drinking to their glorious, mighty victory.

  “But,” Agnethea crouched by the corpse –Amazing Annie, if she weren’t mistaken, a snow-white pale lass from the deep south, a Shaggy Man specialist but quite capable of killing Kings- and poked at the ravaged flesh, “but there is no victory here. None at all. And why should that be?”

  The Queen tilted her head, looked up at the tear ripped into the leg of the monster, then back to poor Annie. They’d had a conversation or two down the years, nothing important, nothing special, but as the oldest woman in Arcade City, Agnethea had to admit –if only to herself- a certain glowing bit of pride in her blackened chest at other women who rose to the very heights of their abilities. To be done for so thoroughly after such a long career hardly seemed fair.

  “That hole in your leg,” Agnethea rose from her crouching position and addressed the monster, “should’ve been more than enough for my boys and girls to get inside and do you right proper, beastie. There’s more to you than meets the eye, isn’t there just?”

  Queen Agnethea of Ickford straightened her bloodstained clothing and started running. She were going to do for this bastard all on her own. The people of Ickford would see that their Queen was no slouch, that she could –when necessary- get down in the dirt with the best –or worst- of them and keep fighting until she was either dead herself or she had come out on top.

  When she was about halfway to the Gunboy, whatever passed for a mind in the blasted thing seemed to become aware that someone different was coming at it, and so it did an ungainly two-step shuffle that brought the wound Agnethea’d been planning on using as a way in out of range.

  “Bollocks, you great lump sack of metal.” Agnethea didn’t bother adjusting her course. Big as the damned thing was, it seemed it could move fast enough when the mood struck and she truly didn’t want to risk being squashed. Besides which, once she was on the thing, it would be a simple matter to shimmy around the top of the iron boot anyways.

  Agnethea leaped, an awe inspiring leap that –unless she was imagining it- brought an eruption of cheers from those lookers and leaders spying through their glasses. The most ancient Obsidian Golem collided with the top of the Gunboy’s boot with force, woofing out a double lungful of air. Clinging urgently to the aglet of the nearest lace –in her wobbly state, Agnethea couldn’t help but be impressed at the King’s attention to detail- the Queen focused on sucking in enough air to keep from passing out.

  When she was able, Agnethea hoisted herself up singlehandedly onto the top of the boot and wedged herself between the tongue of the boot and the leg. Somewhere high above her, the Gunboy realized what’d happened and cut loose with a bellowing cry of disappointment.

  As she ran her hands back and forth across the dark green metal ankle, the Gunboy shuffled back to it’s original position and resumed shouting incomprehensible robotic insults at the gearheads trying to kill it with such tiny weapons.

  “Well, this is passing odd.” Agnethea didn’t like this beast at all. Though she
was ‘only’ on the boot, by now, any number of environmental effects should be trying to take her life away, anything ranging from electricity rippling out from the skin to said skin turning hotter than the hottest liquid metal from a forge.

  “Or slicers or cutters or even, once, those tiny little guns.” Agnethea remembered those little guns with fondness. It’d been, oh, three thousand years ago if it were a day, how they’d popped out of the King’s cheek to pepper her upper torso with even tinier bullets. Completely ineffectual, of course, but endearing enough.

  The Queen began working her way towards the great wound in the beast’s side, using her Golem-born strength to punch holes into the skin of her enemy to make the journey that much simpler. It slowed her down, of course, but since she’d found herself en route to the monster without taking some rudimentary precautions, she had to deal with her own foolishness.

  Damn those Golems! If her city fell because of them, Agnethea swore –even as she banged her head on the leg- she would track down any of her kind that still lived and do them out of pure spite, collusion with Luther notwithstanding.

  “I do not like this.” The Queen couldn’t erase her concerns over the lack of protection the beastie seemed to have. It didn’t make any sense.

  Even the most rudimentary of Kings, a shoddily summoned thing called up out of the earth by a ragtag group of barely Ironed wardogs had more to offer in the way of challenge than this one did; near as she could tell, beyond nigh-on indestructible skin and the sheer, daunting size of the bloody thing, there was naught at all to be concerned with.

  At last, she made her way to the wound torn into the leg of the thing. Grinning and panting from the exertion of punching holes into armor plating easily three times as thick and tough as anything she’d ever encountered before, Agnethea gratefully grabbed hold of huge metallic tendons and began the easy task of hoisting her…

  “Is that a corpse lodged in …” Agnethea increased her efforts, pulling herself up as fast as she dared; no doubt the thing could feel her crawling around in it’s leg, as the Giant Green Man had resumed it’s shuffling dance, a poor effort at trying to shake her loose.

  The moment Agnethea got the corpse, her heart sank. She cradled poor Old Mackie’s head in a free hand and made sad cooing noises. The oldest gearhead never to finish the gauntlet had been a dear old friend, had –in fact- been the first to help her build Ickford from the ground up.

  She remembered when the great gray man had come lumbering up to her as she’d stared thoughtfully at the plot of land that’d eventually become the site of her castle, remembered quite clearly the sudden burst of dire concern that she might not be able to do for such a Dark Iron man as him.

  Agnethea also remembered him asking if there was ‘nowt an’ ole metal man such as me could do fer such a graceful lady as yerself, Queen, as you got the look of someone lookin’ to put down roots and I hain’t got no interest in movin’ on in. Ole Mackie ‘ere’, I is too tired to fight nowt but me own grumbly belly’.

  “Oh, Mackie, what did happen to you here?” With the crude, rude and gruff gearhead helping her, the bare bones of Ickford had gone up seemingly overnight, and not long after that, so too had the buildings sprouted as if by magic. She laughed as she remembered the one and only time Old Mackie the Metal Man had braced her for a bit of the old ‘rough and tumble hey now’, and how embarrassingly awkward they’d both been around one another for very nearly a solid month.

  Once they’d talked about it, her boon companion had admitted he’d only asked because it ‘were the sort of thing a fella does e’en when he hain’t really got the urge, dontchersee? I ain’t e’en had the urge since me old whizzer went grey as the rest o’ me’.

  Agnethea gave Old Mackie’s purely human face one last look; it was frozen as could be, full of calm repose, acceptance even, which was good. The old man had been filled with torment and grief the last few years of his life, living as long as he had, slowly but surely being transformed into something more akin to a Big King than a man any longer.

  It was with some small amount of relief that it appeared as though his death hadn’t been filled with pain as so many gearhead’s lives were. Wishing Old Mackie the Metal Man well in whatever waited them all on the other side, Agnethea’s eyes fell on the engraved inscription, the gearhead’s last warning.

  “Loyal to your brothers and sisters down to the last, eh, Old Mackie?” Agnethea gave the fleshy corpse a kiss on the forehead before resuming her trek upwards and inwards.

  Just as she began hoisting herself up the iron and steel sinews of the exposed leg, the air around Agnethea filled with the sounds of combat once more. Havilland and Mickel, supplying the front lines with ammunition once more. The Queen thought of their fancy forges and the highly sophisticated tools they used, and how they must all be cherry hot from continual use. They –as she was right that moment- had to be in their element.

  “If,” Agnethea spied a furrow grooved through two body-thick sinew muscle fibers not more than fifteen feet above her head, “they know what’s good for ‘em, they’ve shown the other few blacksmiths down there how to do as they do.”

  Chance to move inside and get away from the bombardment that was even then beginning to pepper Irondrinker fueling her muscles with extra speed, Agnethea slipped in through the heaving, riveted muscled in no time at all.

  “Well.” Agnethea took stock of her surroundings, lower lip pushed out into a small pout. “This isn’t at all what I was expecting.”

  ***

  : Dark Iron matter connections complete:

  The thing, Garth was rapidly discovering, about proper nanotech that you got to see being made right there on the spot, was that it didn’t look like anything was happening.

  It was, in point of fact, super boring. He’d just stood there, maneuvering himself deeper and deeper over the lip of the Dark Iron container, watching the thick black stuff disappear, drawn into his armor through osmosis or some other equally disinteresting process, waiting and wondering the whole time when things were going to get … nanotech-ish.

  “There should be, like, some fireworks or something.” Garth complained aloud. “I mean, the only thing that felt like anything was happening was when the iron needles came outta me.”

  Now that had been an interesting sensation and one that he would pay anyone all of the money ever to avoid experiencing again, no matter what.

  Garth shuddered. One of the worst feelings, true enough. The moment the slender needles –comprised of metallized hair gone rigid- had begun quivering beneath the skin, he’d been all about becoming still as a statue; there was no telling what would happen if he were to suddenly twitch, or have to defend himself while said ‘needles’ were pulled from his flesh. Luckily, the only asshole in all of Ickford to come up with the idea of robbing the bank had been dwarf-punted right back into the mix. Everyone else had been and would continue being interested in protecting their city from outright destruction, which was how things should be.

  “I don’t even feel sorry for that asshat.” Garth held his hands up to the light, turning them this way and that, desperately trying to locate some sign that the armor was doing something cooler than just hanging on him like a very complicated pair of long johns.

  Flexing the muscles in his arms revealed to Garth the absence of the slender, fibrous feeling that’d been a result of having the gauntleted metal arms literally rooted to his upper extremities. The ex-Specter wrinkled his nose. It’d taken an awfully long time to get accustomed to that particularly weird sensation, and now that it was gone, it was going to probably take an equally long time to get used to it not being there.

  Garth shook his head. Arcade City was a completely fucked up place. No one in their right minds should ever get used to having ultra-thin hair-needles jammed into their flesh. That was a thing that shouldn’t be.

  The sounds of war were picking up again, explosions and shouts and the roars of the Gunboys resuming. The smiths down Tinker Way we
re undoubtedly providing the gearheads and anyone else who chose to battle the giant robots with the weapons and ammunition, which was both wise and the right thing to do.

  “What better way to advertise than to let ‘em use your shit to defend the old homestead?” Garth sucked at a tooth and waited for his fucking armor to do something cool.

  Where were the fireworks? The scintillating, over-saturated, glinting, overused lens flare eruptions of light? He’d literally just leveled up, so to speak, transforming himself from some dude in a pretty cool clockwork suit of armor into a friggin’ Knight of the Nanotech Round Table and he was receiving precisely jack shit in the way of recognition for the epic achievement.

  : eye removal commencing:

  “Say what n…”

  The eye! It’d been with him for so long now, he’d grown so accustomed to the odd pressure of the plates pressing tightly against his skin and of the outgrowth of Dark Iron that’d sealed the damn horse eye lens to his face that he’d damn near forgotten he hadn’t been born with the fucking thing.

  Another quip on his lips, Garth had to grab the rim of the now nearly empty Dark Iron container tightly; the sensation of hundreds –if not thousands- of ultra-thin tendrils of crudey-crude sliding away from the lens and back into his skull quickly became the newest thing about Arcade City to hate with a deep and abiding passion. It felt precisely as gross as how he’d always imaged an octopus’ tentacles to feel when they were wibble-wobbling their way around, trading slimy grossness for hot oil greasiness. For a few heart-hammering seconds, gripping the lip of the brass and glass vessel, Garth thought he was going ignobly yack into the mostly empty brass and glass container.

  Not a terribly fitting thing for the First Knight of the Nanotech Round Table to be seen doing.

  And then it was done. Bent over, literally hanging on for dear life and making the same sorts of promises hung-over people make to God the morning after an epic barhopping bender, Garth watch as the hated horse lens popped of his face. It fell into the container, struck a bolt holding the bottom in place and then shattered into shards of glass so fine they were bits of diamond amidst dark dregs.