by Lee Bond
A horrible thought stole into Davram’s mind. If this thing Book referred to as ‘MatronNet’ had experienced some type of catastrophic damage, enough actual, physical damage to the communication facility deep inside Arcadia, it was entirely possible that more than just the system was defunct; Davram knew little about the Matrons, but he did know they relied heavily on ‘MatronNet’ for everything in their robotic lives.
If they’d all been connected to that system at the time of it’s –for now- hypothetical destruction, they could very well all be dead, as Book seemed to suggest.
And if that were the case, then Gearmen the world over were either dead or soon would be: bereft of communication, all them suits would lock up nice and tight, hey? Oh, all them Gearmen frozen in their tracks, starving…
Davram shook his head to clear the image. There were nowt he could do. E’en were he to shine bright and fierce like never seen before, e’en were he to travel the length and breadth of Arcade City in search of them trapped Gearmen, ‘twould be impossible without the very thing as was already missing.
It was as he feared. The end of Arcade City was closer than ever. And it was all his fault. If he’d only prevented Nicked Jimmy from flooding Garth Nickels with more Dark Iron than any man had taken in a single sitting … none of this would’ve come to pass.
Davram read the fiery black words again. It scarcely seemed possible, but … if the Brigadier were forced to make a guess, somehow, some way, Garth Nickels had possessed the Book in his hands and long enough for the machine to synch with his memories. As an Outsider with an undeniable depth of knowledge surpassing anyone born ‘neath The Dome, it were possible –plausible, even- that the man had come to understand the true nature of King’s Will.
Making Book’s demands Specter’s will.
His mind was made up before he even knew what he’d been planning. Davram snapped Book shut with a pop loud enough to startle the Lady of the Weeping Eye. “Apologies for the fright, milady. I … I thank you for the company, but I must take my leave of you, and this place.”
“Are you going to do what Book asks of you?” The Lady asked, jerking her chin at the magical tome.
“I do not think I shall. Though Master Nickels fought to save this land, Specter … my memories of him are too bleak to describe.” Davram placed Book on the ground next to the two fallen Gearmen. He looked up at the Lady, avoiding eye contact. “I caution you not to touch this tome. There is a bit of power flowing through it still. It may snatch your life away.”
“I assure you, Lord Brigadier, I will not.” The Lady said promptly. “What will you do?”
“Return to my own spot of land.” Davram rose once he was certain that the Lady’s foot wouldn’t brush against it. “The hero of Ickford is out there somewhere, turned strange and mad. As Specter, he once ran from my pub. In this new guise, he may run to it. ‘tis a feeling I have, no more. You … you may come with me, if you like, stand by my side, to see I don’t make any mistakes?”
The Lady of the Weeping Eye looked over her shoulder, looked into the angry and sorrowful eyes of the two statue-like Gearmen, then beyond them into the devastation of Ickford. They … her kind was somewhat to blame for all this. They’d pushed Master Nickels, pushed him hard.
He had pushed back, as was his right. Hard. She were most likely the only Golem left now, given the nature of things.
Mayhap it would be too little, too late, but …
The Lady of the Weeping Eye shook her head. “I … I shall stay, Good Master Brigadier. These two Gearman no doubt came to Ickford upon their great steam horses. I will take them to their steeds. I spied them cantering about the long cracks outside the walls. It do seem fitting.”
“And then?” Davram wondered softly, his heart hammering in his chest. It was impossible.
The Lady smiled a sad smile. “And then I shall return here, I think, and try to find others who are trapped, and afraid, and alone, Good Master Brigadier. Find them, and free them. And when all is done and I can do no more, I will go to the hungry machine and feed it one last meal. And if all is right in the world, I can hope it will choke itself to death on my meat.”
Davram bowed lower to his Lady of the Weeping Eye than he ever had to any one before. When he straightened, he looked into her eyes and said, “Arcade City shall ring with your story, milady, until The Dome falls.”
The Lady flickered a fleeting smile. “Until the Dome Falls, Master Brigadier. Now go. You have your mission, and I do have mine.”
Davram nodded, then departed.
He did indeed have a mission to complete.
Or so he thought.
17 I Totally Called That
Agnethea hadn’t left the confines of that handmade city since Ickford’s birth. Mostly out of fear that should she step past the walls, King Barnabas Blake would destroy it, or that he would do the same to her and by the time she’d realized her city was as immune to Will as was her kind, Young Luther and his coterie of lunatics had arrived, forcing her into the unenviable position of remaining out of fear.
That fear for herself and for her city had grown and grown and grown, it seemed, finally blossoming into a fear of going outside at all, for within her tiny little walled city, it had seemed hardly like ‘outside’ at all. Exiting the bank doors to meet Master Nickels and the King had been a moment of stark revelation for her; she’d hidden tremors behind the fan while the awful emptiness surrounding her on all sides rushed at her over and over. Then, intrigue over the King’s arrival with an armored man had aided her greatly in controlling those terrors until she’d gotten back indoors.
Chasing after Nickels … she hadn’t had a choice. Were there any chance for the man at all of breaking free from his prison, one stupid Golem and her insignificant fears did not count. For a time there, especially those first few hours, Agnethea had felt on the brink of death from heart palpitations but endure the terror she had, with absolute and resolute Obsidian Golem strength. Once she became Mistress of herself once more…
The ride of a lifetime, some would call it. A grand adventure, others still, from times long past when there had still been things like authors and poets, prophets and madmen, spinning grand tales of derring-do and derring-don’t, of treasures hard won and luck most foul. Oh, upon an ancient time, Arcade City had been home to the most amazing dreams and phantasies! None, though, compared to the tale of the Eldest Obsidian Golem astride her giant robot friend!
Agnethea recalling if, those many thousands and thousands of years ago, any of those authors had ever written a thing about giant metal men striding Arcade City in seven-league boots. The nearest tale she could bring to mind were them old tik-tok men as did their own weird things in the very same castles where Bolt-Necks now got up to their electrified hijinks.
“No, I do not think a single one of them imagined summat like this.” Agnethea mused aloud, barely heard over strains of something Master Nickels had referred to during one of his more lucid moments as ‘only the best rock and roll in the Unreal Universe’.
Master Nickels, trapped in giant robot form and currently engaging in his own one true passion –expressing his extreme distaste for anything immediately related to the King or expressions of the monarch’s Will through the judicious use of absurd, Iron-wrought vengeance- merely grunted, allowed another blast of ‘Robzombie’ to clatter through the area and continued stomping the Shaggy Man warren into the dust.
Giant Garth grew close to the end of that self-appointed task, so Agnethea did as she’d learned to do after nearly tumbling to certain physical injury the very first time he’d finished doing for a long-forgot outcrop of linen-wrapped Shamblers; she grabbed tight hold on Master Nickels’ tremendous metallic earlobe and hoped to high heaven that the next bit of their concerto of violence was no more uplifting than every other time.
The Obsidian Golem held her breath tightly, one hand tracing the fine line of scars she’d been given by Master Nickels just prior to his transformation.
The imprisoned Outsider’s frenzy grew closer to the crescendo.
The last of the Shaggy Men fell prey to Master Nickels’ ire, flattened … flat beneath his giant boots. Nickels tilted his head back, let loose with a bellow that did anything those animalistic ‘men’ got up to when the howled at the night sky to shame, then …
He jumped. Straight into the air. As high as he could.
Agnethea’s stomach flip-flopped and she rather felt she was doing her absolute best in not losing the last of her lunch.
“No closer, Master Nickels, no closer at all.” Agnethea patted the earlobe affectionately.
In one of his rare lucid moments, Garth had explained what he was trying to do when the angry side of him spent a minute –or an hour- leaping towards the ever out of reach Dome, hands held high above his head, desperately grasping at empty space as if he could just find an invisible ladder.
Somewhere high above them all, he said, was where the King Himself hid, where his plans were made, were the secrets of Arcade City were hidden. Not in Arcadia, not anywhere else. Somewhere in the arcing Dome that covered the whole of a place once known as the ‘United Kingdom’, King Barnabas Blake the One and Only had offices and labs and who knew what-all, and somewhere up there, there would be the secret of breaking him free from the prison the Gunboy’s metallic flesh had become.
With each instance, he claimed, of King’s Will destroyed, each Shaggy Warren or Widow’s Peak Aerie ruined, there was a chance that Will would grow thin until the laws of physics broke down enough to let a towering freak leap right up to the King’s doorstep.
That was when he was lucid.
The countryside swam and blurred, swam and blurred. Her stomach, empty for what felt decades, grew temperamental. Agnethea clamped her eyes shut and hummed songs from her youth to quell her riotous innards.
“I do wish,” Agnethea whispered gently into Garth’s ear, “that you would believe me, Master Nickels. You cannot achieve this goal.”
“It happened once.” Garth’s voice, tinged with metal overtones and echoing loudly through the flattened, empty glade, filled Agnethea with woe. “I saw it. The very first King I ever laid eyes on, Agnethea. It was trapped between two buildings and it jumped hundreds of feet into the air. If it can be done once, it can be done again.”
“That’s…” Agnethea made the mistake of opening her eyes for a brief moment. Nausea swarmed up from her guts and she clamped her mouth shut and focused on breathing through her nose for a long, perilous moment. Part of her was amused at this … sickness. The evilest creature in all of Arcade city, scourge of many a citizen, generator of a hundred thousand terrifying bedtime stories … motion sick.
If that wasn’t irony, she didn’t know what was.
When she could speak without fear that her stomach would turn hostile traitor the moment her guard down was down, Agnethea resumed. “That’s as may be, Garth, but there are a number of factors you seem to refuse to recognize. For one …”
“The Dome is too high to reach by simple jumps.” Garth muttered sullenly.
Agnethea nodded. “It is. And the King…”
“Does not like flying things, so it doesn’t fucking matter I’m a giant fucking robot that was goddamn well forged by nanotech. I gotta play by his rules and that’s that.” Inarticulate fury roared and growled and hissed and gnashed invisible teeth, filling the land with nightmarish sounds. The few remaining natural beasts in the immediate area were flushed out by the terrifying noises issuing forth from the same place the music played.
“Sorry.” Garth apologized. “I hate when that happens.”
Agnethea could barely appreciate the dire straits Garth was truly in, as nothing like this had ever happened before in the entire history of Arcade City. Early on in their journey, she’d attempted commiseration with Specter, earning for her troubles the discovery that –while they hadn’t been deployed against Ickford’s defenders- the Gunboy frame Garth inhabited still possessed the same old gamut of external offensive measures as the Big Kings.
Since that time –she was a smart girl, needing only a single object lesson- Agnethea had focused more on accepting apologies and ignoring things than in trying to make the man feel better. As the hours grew long, Agnethea worried there was indeed no end to Garth’s secret anger, that there never would be, that the Gunboy’s particular hold on him would continue trying to outpace things, only to fail. Always to fail.
In failing, the lucid moments were destined to fall by the wayside until all that remained was Specter. In his clearest of moments, Garth had explained in very precise language and in a very perfunctory manner exactly what needed to happen if the music pouring from his skin never stopped.
Whatever it was he’d done, whatever regret or anger or hatred or rage that the Vicious Elixir fed on … it appeared to be as unending as her own weary flesh.
Making him the perfect vessel for Vicious Elixir. While the method of that infection was overkill –Agnethea could only imagine what was going on inside the robot’s body, and every time she mentioned getting a clearer view of his condition, Master Nickels grew beyond irate- there was certainly no denying that if there was ever a man who needed the darkness in his soul purged clean through the King’s Gauntlet, it was Garth Nickels.
It was time, the one-time Queen of Ickford decided with a firm nod of the head, to bring that subject up again.
“We should be moving inward, Garth, so we can…”
The air filled with mechanical distress, cutting the Obsidian Golem off midsentence.
“Pick another subject, Agnethea. Anything. Anything but that one.”
She wanted to, she really did. As the first Golem, as the sort of woman she’d been until very –very- recently, Agnethea knew she was honestly and truly not the right person to offer any kind of emotional succor or psychological aid but –she looked around, fervently hoping someone had materialized on Garth’s other shoulder and smiling half-heartedly when no one did- she was the only one around.
It was unlikely Garth would kill her.
“I am sorry, Master Nickels,” Agnethea used the tone of voice that said ‘I am tired of arguing and you shall listen whether you want to or not, get used to it’, “but I cannot let this go. There has never been a recorded instance of anything like this happening, and while I cannot fathom -in truth- what you endure, but there is one thing I know better than any other thing, sirrah, and that is Kingsblood. Not only that, but what it can do, and how it works. I’ve witnessed the transformation firsthand. Seen what purer and purer versions can do for a man, and if there was ever a person who needs purging of his demons, it is you.”
Garth had heard the argument three times now, and frankly, he was sick to death of it all. He knew the woman meant well, understood all too clearly that what she wanted him to do was –in her mind- the perfect cure for what ailed him, and –as he trudged resolutely through a copse of trees, smashing and bashing the greenery to bits and pieces- he supposed under normal conditions, she’d be right.
But she wasn’t. She didn’t understand. She would, though, if she kept pressuring him to concede to her demands, and then one of two things would happen.
Agnethea would either believe him and her life would change forever or she wouldn’t, and she’d just keep on hammering away at some imagined chink in his armor.
“Did you by any chance happen to see which direction the cylinder went?” Garth asked suddenly.
“Do not change the subject, Master Nickels.” Agnethea scolded gently. “It is high time we had this talk, especially if we are to devise a method of separating you from this machine. We are lucky enough that you are in control of your own self from time to time. I fear the longer you are within, the greater Specter’s control will become. I do not think you will manage to override King’s Will to the levels that are needed for freedom on your own.”
“For starts,” Garth countered, “King Barnabas Blake the Fuckbag can suck a dick. My will is a billion times stro
nger than his. Hooking me into this here robot was probably the stupidest fucking thing he’s done since he woke up one morning and decided to put a Dome over the UK. I have literally thousands of gallons of Kingsblood at my control. More instances of fresh Cloud Particulate are within my reach than he has.”
“And for finishes?” Agnethea looked out over the land they were trudging through. It’d been some time since she’d come this way… more than two thousand years, now she counted backwards. It –like most of Arcade City- had seen better times. The King ‘disappearing’ for a century, letting the Matrons run things … a terrible, terrible mistake.
This whole area, once lush and green and vibrant with dozens of Estates and e’en some small villages, was the closest thing now to an actual wasteland. “Remembering, of course, that while you may indeed have access to ‘fresher Cloud Particulate’, which I think is your fancy way of saying ‘King’s Will’, our King in his heavenly roost has been at it for … shall we say a fair bit longer than you?”
“And for finishes,” Garth snapped, “I sure as shit don’t plan on telling you why I’m really refusing your King’s Gauntlet approach to ending the madness raging inside me. I can guarantee, Queen Agnethea of Shattered Ickford, you won’t like the story.”
“There is nothing you can tell me, Master Nickels, which will harden my heart or turn me away from offering you counsel and aid.” Agnethea opened her mouth to begin a litany of her worst crimes, but Garth chuckled so bitterly that –for just a brief second, mind, but it was there- she thought mayhap she was wrong.
“So? The cylinder? Did you see which direction it went? I was preoccupied with getting all tentacle raped. Fucking gross, by the way.” Garth stepped high over a brook; the last stretch of water he’d come across, he’d misjudged, accidentally diverting the whole thing into a nearby Estate. The settlers there had been way too pissed off at having to deal with a sudden flood to even realize that a humongous robot man and a teeny-tiny devil woman had done the deed. He’d intended on offering his services, but Specter had caught wind of the Shaggy Man enclave he’d just put down and that had been that.
