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

by Lee Bond

  But there was something in him. Something that made the errant heat in her one hand seem to throb and flare cruelly.

  His time in the Gunboy had wrought significant change. Change the man hadn’t been expecting.

  Change he was saying nothing about.

  “Ch…Chad. Sikkmund. Of Taryn.” Agnethea pulled her hands away as gently as possible, reluctant to harm Garth in any way; whatever was happening to him was far different than even the strange path Dark Iron had taken.

  Garth shut his eyes. What he wouldn’t do for a nice, cool breeze to wash across him. All he got, though, was the eternal rumbling and violent crashing of the King’s Will as it tore the land apart. Bitterly, “Because of fucking course. Because why not?”

  “Do you know this story?”

  It was possible: with King Barnabas Blake throwing men and women into the Outside on a regular basis, all to keep the legend of The Dome and Arcade City alive and well lest proper FrancoBritish citizens forget who their monarch was, Agnethea supposed it wasn’t too far a stretch of the imagination to assume some stories survived.

  Garth scratched at his head. “In a roundabout manner, yep.” All he got for his vagueness was a puzzled look, so Garth recanted. “Not so much the origin story, no. But I know the sequel. The ‘armorer’ in Arcadia. That’s your Chad Sikkmund, returned home after a hundred years away. Where do you all think he went?”

  “There were the occasional hunts, a few searches, though mostly, anyone who would care to look for the man were already dead by the King’s hand.” Agnethea shrugged. “Other than us Golems, who move back and forth between the various levels of this kingdom, the few gearheads who’d moved inward and were even capable of carrying on looking wouldn’t even bother. I can tell by the sour look on your face, Master Nickels, that this isn’t true.”

  “We know him as Chadsik al-Taryin on the other side of The Dome, Queen Agnethea.” It’d be so easy to tell more of the man Chad was known to be throughout Trinityspace, but … not this time. Agnethea seemed to think fondly of her version of Chadsik. Whoever and whatever else Chad Sikkmund of Taryn was, here, in Arcade City, he’d been something else entirely.

  “Impossible.” Agnethea shook her head mulishly. No one left The Dome. Not by any means save the King’s own hand, and even then, the numbers were miniscule. Just enough to whet the appetites of those who lived beyond The Dome, just enough to tweak the interest of FrancoBritish fools; it was difficult to imagine, but there were men and women stupid enough –when they heard stories of Kings Son’s being inviolate, above the law, untouchable- that literally rushed right out, hunting down the venerable –albeit honorary- folks.

  Garth described Chadsik one of the last few times he’d seen the gaunt cybernetic super-assassin on the streets of Hospitalis. “Tall, thin, pale skin, even paler hair? Trends towards ancient military dress codes, long, long jackets, shiny buttons. Talks to himself a lot, in different voices? One of the most efficient and vicious warriors I’ve ever come across, and lady, take my word for it. I’ve seen a lot. In fact,” he admitted boldly, “Chadsik al-Taryin is roundabout the only person I’ve ever fought with who could really hold his own.”

  Agnethea sighed. That poor, poor man. The darling of Arcade City. The whole width and breadth of the land –even those cities opposing his success- had, in time, come to view Chad Sikkmund as some sort of legendary hero, risen up to knit the City into one whole world. She could remember still the banners snapping in the wind, a stylized man on a horse seeming to ride eternally across the field. Faint strains of music not played under The Dome in thousands upon thousands of years welled up, and cheers roared through her. Chad Sikkmund had done the impossible, back then. Everyone had loved him. Everyone had wanted him to succeed.

  So few got to see the fight in Arcadia, the literal Battle Royale, but everyone had learned of the outcome.

  “He…” Agnethea stammered, surprised at how strong the memories were, “he wasn’t like that until after he won.”

  “Well,” Garth replied drolly, “if there is anyone other than me who can fight King Barnabas, it’d be Chadsik. But, ah … you don’t seem as happy about Chad’s victory over the King as you are over his other achievements.”

  “The battle in Arcadia, Master Nickels, took a full two days to complete.” Agnethea closed her eyes, and the city-within-a-city as it’d been eleven thousand years ago sprang to mind. Towers, knocked down. Smoke filling the streets. Matrons marshalling a panicky populace into calming down enough so they wouldn’t do something foolish, like wander directly into the path of two juggernauts intent on destroying each other. “In the centuries that followed that moment, I have never seen a … a war so intense until just a short time ago. The two men, one proto-Brigadier and our King … the clash started out with a great deal of pomp and circumstance as you might expect. There was a parade, and everyone made pretty little speeches. The King was ecstatic that there was even a challenger. Seems he’d never really been certain any singular hero would rise above the others, and so was quite a bit more bombastic than any of us had ever seen or heard before.

  That mood changed quick enough, Master Nickels. Chad Sikkmund called the King out, when he rose to the take podium. Lambasted our monarch on the spot, calling him all manner of awful things. Accused him of intentionally depleting the ‘warrior stock’ of Arcade City out of fears that one day, the people would rise up and attempt to steal the kingdom away. That, and other things.”

  Garth hooted with laughter. The audacity! Oh, how brilliant. Even before the man had become some kind of super cyborg, he’d been stuffed to the tits with a special kind of fearlessness, a swagger that normally only resided in madmen. “Oh I bet Barnie didn’t like that at all.”

  “He did not.” Agnethea gave a minute nod. She’d been there, in the crowd, with her father; she remembered he’d worked diligently, trading favors left and right, to make sure the whole family was on hand for that speech. A great honor, he’d said, to stand in the presence of our patriarch, and even greater still to witness Chad Sikkmund in all his glory. “And so, instead of a laissez-faire beginning to the brawl, both King and soldier went to it right there on the spot, amidst a crowd of perhaps fifteen thousand.”

  “That’s my Chad.” Garth clapped. “Never one to let collateral damage stop a good fight.” He waved away Agnethea’s sour look. “Sorry. Sorry. Here, he’s a hero. Outside … he’s something else. Go on. You can skip a blow by blow, though. I’ve seen Chadsik in action. I’m pretty sure I can guess how things went. I gather Barnie played fair?”

  “Until the end, aye.” She hadn’t been on hand for that final moment. No one had been, save for Chad, the King, and the Matrons; the mistresses of Arcadia had finally managed to get the two fearless combatants to stage the end of their conflict in a little-used portion of the capital city, beaming the final stage out to the rest of the world. “A more wonderful fight I’ve never seen, though in practical terms, the King was outclassed in every way. As a true immortal, it was plain to see he’d never truly bothered to learn the proper forms of hand to hand combat. Chad, though, Chad was a blur, Master Nickels, a phantasm of fists and feet, of sword and shield.”

  With everything else that Barnie had created in Arcade City, was it possible that he had –through his endless Gauntlets and the merciless, pitiless tribulations he’d forced his people to endure- also created genetically perfect warriors? It seemed likely, especially –if Agnethea’s tale wasn’t doctored or embellished in any way- since Chadsik had apparently fought a nanotech-fueled King to some kind of standstill.

  A grin crossed Garth’s face. Maybe … maybe their last encounter had involved more luck than he was willing to admit. Hopefully –when they ran into each other in Arcadia- the pale-haired ancient warrior made no attempts to carry out that assassination contract a third time; Garth wasn’t entirely certain he had it in him to withstand the cyborg.

  Agnethea wanted Garth to explain the smile on his face, but also wanted to
finish her story, for the King’s storms were drawing to a close, which meant, sooner or later, Davram would return and the three of them would ride off towards Arcadia to deal with the wretched madman. There’d be little time, she suspected, for proper gossip and storytelling on the road. “The images broadcast live to the whole world of Arcade City, Master Nickels, tell a story of truly heroic combat. We all knew that King Barnabas Blake could not be harmed in any meaningful way, but it seemed to everyone who watched on that Chad Sikkmund had somehow managed to forget this fact himself. His eyes were full of anger, his muscles trembled, he kept on hammering and battering at our King, almost as if he had become an automaton.

  We shall never truly know what happened next, but one second, the King was holding his own against Chad’s violent assault, taunting and jibing the warrior as he did, the next … the next Barnabas was on the ground, hands upraised to protect his face, Chad standing over him, a grim howl tearing out of him. The very air seemed electrified. Some of the Matrons –they’d been standing guard, you see, backs turned against the two foes- had turned to rush to their fallen Lord and King the moment things turned worse than they already had.

  But it was too late. None could move as fast as Chad in that moment. He brought his sword down as savagely as anything you would see today in the worst of the gearheads and that blade … struck the King. Where before the air seemed electric, it now sang. A most terrible, awful noise burst forth from our King, Master Nickels, and a hideous cacophony that elicited the most awful responses from those who watched, no matter where they were. My father fell unconscious, weeping angrily the whole time. My nose bled ferociously for an hour. Others still complained about aching joints, sore muscles, strange dreams, waking nightmares … a veritable treasure trove of ailments stemming from that moment.”

  Garth wanted to laugh. He knew what Barnabas was now. It seemed almost impossible, but he was rapidly learning that the Unreal Universe loved living up to it’s name. Somehow, some way, Barnabas Blake was a CyberPriest, one of those queer cybernetic monstrosities brought into being thanks to Armies of Man and a stupendously failed experiment into forging their own form of Harmony.

  It was the only possible answer.

  All the Harmony soldiers heeding the word of the Kith and Kin had fled Earth with Antal the moment the first of the nodes had gone online. Barnabas was no reformed Kith’kin or Kin’kith, either, as they’d either all died on Pluto during their aborted escape attempt or earlier still, during the first of the truly vicious Heshii Warlord strikes.

  Barnabas being a CyberPriest was the only thing that made any goddamn sense, no matter that the ‘King’ was entirely at the opposite end of the spectrum as that twisted tribe of broken cyborgs.

  Bravo had had so little information on the ‘Priests, other than a basic cataloguing of their powers and their brief appearances on the galactic stage. That, and their penchant towards nihilism. Given Barnabas’ seclusion for his entire stint as monarch of Arcade City, you couldn’t even blame those holographic minds for missing the connection.

  Hell, if it weren’t for the unmitigated destruction burning across the City right that second, Garth knew he’d’ve mocked anyone making the same suggestion.

  “If you were a thirty thousand year old nihilist in possession of the most advanced, powerful science known and an unshakeable conviction that everything, everywhere, was an affront to the very fabric of, uh, everything, what would you do with it?” Garth asked, eyes tracking the last few spates of jagged black lightning.

  Everything was slowing to a crawl.

  The world was almost done being destroyed.

  “I imagine I would do all I could do destroy that which offended mine eye.” Agnethea didn’t like the pensive look in Master Nickels’ eyes. She wasn’t done telling her tale, yet summat of what she’d just relayed had him looking … weary, she supposed, was the right word to use.

  Garth gave his friend a thumbs up, then turned his head to The Dome. It all made sense. Didn’t it just, as all them gearheads did like to say all the time. Didn’t it just? “Yep. I’m sorry, I’ve made your short story into an epic retelling.”

  “No apologies necessary, Master Nickels.” Agnethea was no slouch. You learned to think quickly when you were the most hated thing in the world. If Garth believed that King Barnabas Blake had constructed The Dome as some kind of weapon that he planned on turning against the whole of Creation, then there was no reason to doubt. Barnabas had already proven his willingness to eradicate all life inside The Dome.

  What difference would the rest of everything make?

  Garth rolled a hand. “Please. Finish. The whole world erupted into awful music, music that made those who heard it sick or suffer in some way. What happened to Chad Sikkmund, hero of Taryn?”

  “He screamed along with the rest of us, at first.” Agnethea closed her eyes so she could better remember. “He screamed and screamed and screamed, in fact. It did seem to go on forever. As we watched, though … his skin … changed. Rippled. Flowed. Beads of purest light formed across his bruised and battered body in a way most similar to what Platinum Brigadiers would later experience once they’d done for the Platinum King. And the screams, they changed as well. Instead of just a single, roaring sound erupting from Chad, one, ten, a hundred, a thousand … a million different echoing cries filled the air, causing The Dome itself to rumble. It was glorious, that singing host. I remember quite clearly the look in our King’s eyes. Surprised delight. Almost as if something he’d wanted to happen but had held little faith in happening had come to pass after all.”

  “And so,” Garth put on his best movie voice-over tones, “it came to pass that our hero, Chad Sikkmund of Taryn did become the Platinum Brigadier, the first of his kind.”

  “Aye.” Agnethea nodded somberly. “From that day forth, and for many thousands of years, very few people ever got to see Chad the Brigadier. Victory against the King meant a terrible shattering of his mind, and our ruler grew most protective of the man that remained. I ran into him a few times, Master Nickels, and …”

  “It was like talking to twelve different people, each one of whom wanted to do terrible things to your face.”

  Agnethea agreed. “Aye. Shortly after the King stole Chad away and built the Armory, the first of the new monsters began plaguing the countryside. And well, from there, I suspect you can piece the story together well enough, yes?”

  “Whatever change Barnie wrought in Chadsik wasn’t easily replicable because Chad was himself a rarity, probably ultimately unique in all Arcade City. Some genetic quirk combined with all that he’d endured in the Gauntlet and versus the King himself unlocked that potential. From there, being stuck with the broken Harmony residing within the King caused everything to crystallize into … Brigadier-ship. Brigadier-itude? Thing. Only, where the flesh was perfect, the mind was shattered.” Garth pursed his lips. “So the Kingsblood system was unveiled. A ragged, rough, long-term experiment, with the gearheads themselves acting as purification modules for the nanotech. Every time they die, some of the Dark Iron in their bodies is reabsorbed into the Cloud. When they die or are otherwise incapacitated, all the crude is returned. Anything not terribly tainted is ‘moved up the line’ for the next level of gearhead, and so on and so on. A trickle of purified power. Who knows how many gearheads had to die each time, on and on, down through the last eleven or twelve thousand years! Goddamn. That’s …”

  “Genius.”

  “Well, I was gonna say completely fucked up, but sure, we can go with genius.” Garth pointed down the road. “Here comes Dave. I bet he won’t be happy we’re talking about Brigadiers and all. He seems to be carrying a lot of guilt about being the last one.”

  Agnethea concurred. “He does, doesn’t he? I thank you for listening to my story, Master Nickels. For all that you may have had poor experiences with Chad Outside, remember, here, before all he became, he was a hero. We shall most certainly run into him when we take Arcadia. If possible, please, stay
your hand. Whatever he became out there was because of here and not t’other way ‘round.”

  Garth said nothing, but he did wonder if Agnethea realized she’d just begged him to spare a man’s life.

  That was hardly something the worst monster in the world would ask, was it?

  Hope for himself glimmered in Agnethea’s eyes.

  The two of them rose to greet Davram properly.

  19 I Have Inside Me Blood of Kings

  “I feel like he’s overdoing things. A little bit.” Garth commented idly, watching as Davram took the head off a Shaggy Man with a single, scintillating sweep of a razor sharp blade. “I mean. Come on.”

  Agnethea nodded minutely. “He feels he has a lot to apologize for, thus, his refusal in letting either one of us join him.”

  “It’s fucking mental, is what it is.” Garth nudged his giant steamhorse a little to the left, not entirely certain if he was comfortable riding a giant steed that’d been summoned up out of the earth like … like magic. It was weird. He had no problems whatsoever with any of the things that King Barnabas had gotten himself up to, or any of the weapons and armor he himself had forged, but Davram held little or no real interest in dealing with the fact that what he wielded was –in truth- extremely advanced science.

  Davram was a perfect example of being raised in an enclosed environment and was, when you got right down to it, kind of a weird guy.

  “Ahhh.” Agnethea sighed dreamily, clutching a hand to her bosom. “The old sword and sorcery days were a reality here, Master Nickels. On more than one occasion.”

  “You’re shitting me.” Three hundred feet away, Dave filleted some kind of weird hopping monster that had unrealistically long arms ending in pincers and claws. As always, when the bits and pieces of whatever he was killing go close to the shining armor, the matter caught fire and turned to ash before any ‘foul bedamned refuse could disgrace a Brigadier’s one true symbol’.