Wicked Ways: An Iron Kingdoms Chronicles Anthology

by Douglas Seacat

  Elliot used the sensory controls on sides of his hood to darken the lenses, cutting him off from the visual world completely, while Abigail clicked different lenses into place in her own glasses. Excited, Mel pulled her own goggles into place and threw toggles on the projectors to fill the darkened field with a flood of Strangelight.

  The low purple glow revealed a cloud of glowing souls all around them. Mel could hear Elliot’s muffled voice through his mask as he tried to soothe these confused spirits. The caller adjusted the metal dials on the side of his hood to further adjust his sensory levels. A few of the nearest souls floated closer like dandelion seeds. As they did, Grimes squared his stance and watched warily, ready to bat them away.

  The spirits began to speak to Elliot. Their voices were a distant, dry whisper that made the skin along Mel’s spine prickle. The sound was too soft and indistinct for her to make out any words, but the young caller’s head bobbed as he listened to them.

  Elliot’s head tipped up. “They want to move on. Their spirits don’t have any business left on Caen. They’re asking for my help.”

  Abigail said, “Okay. We’ll do what we can. Now let’s see if your guess is right, Mel.”

  Mel suspected that the grymkin theory would be vindicated. Already the cats were angrily prowling around them, swatting at the air and pouncing at the shadows. Artis’ hackles were raised so high that her spine looked like a hog-bristle brush.

  Mel, Abigail, and Grimes all reached for the fine brass tuners that let them adjust the configuration of their goggles. Mel flipped through several configurations, layering treated lenses on top of one another. As she flipped the lenses back and forth, several blurry shapes began to take form around them, becoming clearer and more distinct as Mel tried different combinations. Another twist of the knobs and she was looking straight at a ring of tiny grymkin surrounding them. Mel whooped and grabbed Abigail from behind to shake her with excitement. “Look at the little bastards! Gremlins, I told you! Try minus five left, about six or seven right!”

  It took a few moments for Abigail to adjust her own lenses before she confirmed what Mel saw. There were about a dozen of the misshaped little things shielding their tiny eyes from the bank of projectors. They had fat bellies and oversized heads split by wide lipless mouths stuffed with fangs as sharp and small as a puppy’s teeth. Their noseless faces were screwed up in angry snarls. Mel watched as they tried to get close to the Strangelight gear, only to have Artis raise her back and hiss at them in threat. One came too close, and Artis swatted it back. The gremlin tumbled into a crater with deep gashes across its face.

  “Serves you right, you gear-grinding, bolt-breaking, boiler-bursting little shit!” Mel said. Some of her friends had nearly lost their lives in workshop accidents that had no clear origin, and she’d suffered enough mechanikal failure during her career to take delight in watching a gremlin in pain.

  “Look at them all,” Abigail said, pointing out to where the edge of the Strangelight touched the battlefield. There were dozens more of the little things milling there in chaotic knots. Scattered among the gremlins were a handful of malformed imps about the size of gobbers; they were dressed in suits of patchwork fabric. “Those aren’t gremlins.”

  Some of the grymkin tugged at the pockets of dead men or pulled rings from their dead fingers to wear like bracelets. Atop the few pieces of junked warjacks that had been left on the battlefield, whole swarms of gremlins yanked and fought with one another over some trivial bit of mechanikal scrap. Mel scowled as one of the creatures relieved itself in a soldier’s discarded helmet.

  “So, we know there are grymkin. That’s half of the mystery.” Grimes gestured to the swirling souls. “What about the other half?”

  “It can’t be a coincidence we’re seeing grymkin here and the souls aren’t behaving normally,” Abigail said. Mel agreed with her.

  “They’re connected?” Grimes seemed skeptical.

  “I think so, but there’s only one way to find out. Elliot, try to coax one of the lingering souls. See if you can help it pass on.”

  The caller needed no further encouragement. He worked with the controls of the hood. His muffled voice fell to a soft murmur. Despite his hood cutting him off from the outside world, Elliot turned his head as if he were trying to catch pieces of conversation in a crowded room. He honed in on one of the souls that had been drawn to him, and Grimes patted him on the shoulder. The jammer looked around at the others. “He’s got one.”

  It began to subtly change, taking on a bit of solidity that echoed the shape of its old body. In a hushed voice, Kincaid asked, “Is it becoming a ghost?”

  “Not yet,” Elliot whispered. “My calling it helps it manifest. It’s normal.”

  The soul began to ease down closer to Elliot. Abigail brought up her lumitype and waited as Mel grabbed the handle of a projector’s mount and swiveled it to bathe the spirit in Strangelight.

  Elliot spoke again, his voice strained. “I can feel a resistance. But I think I can push through.”

  As the soul moved closer, Mel saw a swirl of brighter light appear in the air, and the spirit moved toward it like a leaf caught in the current of a river. She heard Elliot’s words of encouragement as the spirit drifted nearer. Abigail activated her lumitype, starting the exposure.

  “What is that?” Kincaid asked.

  Abigail answered, her voice awed. “An opening to Urcaen. They show up when a soul crosses. I’ve never seen it with my own eyes—just in spectragraphs back at HQ.”

  “It’s definitely where the spirit wants to go,” Mel said. She watched it drift closer by inches. Elliot made a pained exhalation, holding one hand up to the side of his hood. Then, there came a sudden bright flash, and the spirit was swept into the vortex of light. The soul was gone, passed on. Mel had seen it many times before, but it never failed to create a feeling of awe. Abigail switched off her lumitype.

  Then, instead of vanishing as Mel expected, the light lingered. From it slid the grotesque shape of another tiny gremlin, dripping down from the vortex to dangle in the air before falling to the ground with a wet plop. The little thing bounced off its oversized head as it hit and picked itself up before dashing off toward a throng of its kin.

  “Sweet Morrow,” Abigail said, lumitype hanging slack in her hands. “The gremlin came from the other side. It’s not impossible. So now, we can finally get proof.”

  • • •

  “PROOF? PROOF OF WHAT?” KINCAID ASKED, CONFUSED.

  “Of something passing from Urcaen to Caen,” Abigail said in a rush. “We’ve seen the reverse, of course, whenever we send a restless spirit on. We’ve long theorized there might be a way things could come back, that the opening might go both ways. But we’ve never seen it. And no one knew grymkin could do it. It has to be where they come from. The grymkin must use the passage of souls to enter our world somehow.”

  Elliot said, “Many people before us have seen souls pass on, and no one has ever seen grymkin come through. It has to be rare. Likely related to whatever is making it harder for the souls to cross. So, this is new. It’s also keeping the doorway open longer than usual. Maybe it’s giving the grymkin time to get through from the other side.”

  Kincaid cocked an eyebrow. “And that’s good?”

  Abigail could hardly contain herself. “It’s unprecedented!”

  “It’s bloody terrifying,” Grimes said.

  “It’s great!” Mel said. “This tells us more about what grymkin are and their origins than anyone has ever discovered.”

  “Like finding out there’s a new disease,” Kincaid countered dryly, “even if you have no cure for it.”

  Abigail looked at her lumitype and sighed. “I took the exposure too early. But if we can get Elliot to send a few more souls through, maybe we can get spectragraphs of the actual moment a grymkin arrives. Isn’t that exciting?”

  Kincaid said, “Uh, very?”

  Grimes just shook his head, scowling.

  “We ne
ed you to help Mel situate the projectors better, Kincaid. Elliot can try to help several cross over at once. That way, we might get a larger opening.” Abigail spoke quickly as her excitement gathered momentum.

  “If that stupid kapitan hadn’t stolen my ectoplasmic disruptor mine, I could have helped you, Elliot,” Mel said. Kincaid raised an eyebrow, so she continued. “The ghostbomb. It’s a new prototype Bailey wanted me to test. He made it to help us in Elsinberg just in case we ran into trouble with a major hostile spectral event. The mine is supposed to give a shock to ectoplasmic forms and help weaken the energy of spirits across a wide area. He thought it might help them pass on by breaking their anchors with the physical world and maybe forcing them into the next. I bet if I tinkered with it a bit, maybe even hooked it to one of those damaged projectors, we could widen the hole to the other side. I’d just have to snap off the charge limiter and maybe crank up the… Kincaid?”

  The way Kincaid kept looking back to the ruins of Glynam, Mel guessed that he was only half-listening to her. She jabbed him in the ribs with a friendly elbow to capture his attention. “C’mon. Gimme a hand.”

  He sighed and surrendered. In moments, she had him helping to grapple one of the projectors next to the one she would man. It would provide a wide bath of Strangelight on a concentrated area, allowing Abigail the best chance to capture the passage with her lumitype. The investigator indicated a point a few yards from their position. “Elliot, try to get them over there. Mel, can you give us more light?”

  Mel took hold of the accumulator attached to her projector’s conduit. “Kincaid, there’s a twist valve on the side. Give yours a quarter-turn widdershins.”

  He complied and moved back to his own projector as Mel pulled on her goggles and fed power to the lights. When they powered on, they flooded the field with deep purple light once more, brighter and spread out much farther than before.

  Kincaid groaned when the light revealed the dozens and dozens of invisible gremlins scattered through the cratered pasture. He and Abigail had encountered them recently, and he told Mel how little he’d enjoyed the experience. “I’m really sick of these little bastards.”

  “Okay, Elliot, try to get a few more this time,” Abigail said. The caller resumed his work, but this time something was different. Mel could see his whole body was tense, like he was straining to lift something heavy. Still, a few glowing souls began to drift down in the air. Abigail furiously worked her lumitype, shooting image after image. The swirling points of light appeared again but much larger this time. Mel wasn’t sure, but she thought perhaps they turned a bit slower in the air as well.

  “There’s something here,” Elliott said a bit breathlessly behind his mask. “On the other side. Pushing back. Holding the way open.”

  “The little guys are getting agitated,” Kincaid said. Mel glanced at the gremlins around them. They had drawn closer than before and were hopping and snarling. A few had picked up shards of grenade casings to wield like tiny swords. On her left, a pair worked together to heft the knife from a soldier’s mess kit like a spear.

  Artis and the other cats worked diligently to keep the little gremlins at bay. The cats hissed at them, then swatted and pounced on the grymkin whenever one drew too near, but the cats could only be in so many places at once. Despite their efforts, the gremlins started to flank the group. A brave one approached Kincaid to jab at him with its makeshift weapon. The bouncer booted it into the night, where it made a satisfying gong noise when it smacked into a dead warjack’s hull.

  “Keep working, Elliot. Send them home,” Grimes said. The jammer activated his suit’s gauntlets; they spat electrical sparks. He made a few quick jabs down at the closest of the creatures to drive them back. The nearby gremlins flinched and covered their beady eyes. One accidentally stabbed another with its crude sword. Grimes smiled as its body fell.

  Elliot said a few more encouraging words to the spirits he was guiding, and they moved toward the floating light in the air. “I can get more of them, I think.”

  Over a dozen spirits drifted down now, each one causing a galaxy of uncanny light to open in the air. But before they could slip through as before, the swirls of light flared brighter and disgorged several more creatures. The first ones through were gremlins like the others, but then different larger things spilled forth as well. Mel saw a hollow-eyed man with wispy hair and fingers with long, hooked claws. In one hand, he gripped a silver utensil like a weapon. A spoon? Before she could confirm, the small man gave an evil grin and dashed off into the darkness.

  Abigail kept taking her images, but as more of the creatures fell onto the field, a heavy ball of doubt formed in Mel’s stomach. More souls cascaded down, each one opening a flare of light that spat out grymkin. Elliot seemed caught up in the moment, his arms wide. She played her light back and forth as stranger things began to emerge. A shark-faced trapperkin clawed through the portal in the air, followed by something like a gremlin but larger, dragging behind it a crude metal lance.

  “They’re bringing weapons!” Kincaid shouted.

  “That’s enough,” Grimes said, swiping at an imp that lurched too close. “We should stop. Elliot, that’s enough.”

  The lance-wielding gremlin gamboled across the battlefield, grabbing the snapped haft of a battle standard from one of the dead. It laughed, a high, tittering sound, and rode its makeshift hobbyhorse off into the darkness, flailing the lance over its head.

  Soon the air was filled with the unsettling laughter of other creatures as they dribbled into the world. Even Abigail was pulled from her deep focus and backed up slowly into the protective circle of her friends. Her eyes were wide. “Elliot, stop now.”

  Elliot groaned a response, his outstretched arms shaking. Either the mask or the effort made his words indecipherable.

  “Elliot, are you still with us?” Kincaid asked. He swung his projector from place to place, catching the strange figures of grymkin wherever the light landed. Mel struggled to keep her own light fixed in place on where the creatures emerged, despite the bizarre silhouettes she could see at the corner of her vision.

  In the hot spot of her projector’s light, she watched in horror as several gaunt figures dropped out of the air and landed in ungainly heaps. They looked like the bodies of the soldiers in the field around them, except these ones shuddered and rose up to look on the battlefield with empty eye sockets. At the rear, a hooded figure stood. It held a long walking stick that supported a swinging lantern. The thing raised its lantern, and the device glowed to life. An unearthly light fell on them, the radiance meeting the Strangelight’s glow to cast the field in nauseating shadows that wavered and overlapped. The strange figures held rifles. In unsettling unison, they yanked the pinlocks back.

  “Elliot, stop this!” Grimes shouted with more force. He backed up to defend his friend. But when the caller didn’t respond, Grimes tugged off one of his gloves and ripped off the hood. Elliot’s face was pale and slick with sweat, his eyes rolled back and his eyelids twitching. His mouth worked like a fish on dry land, and his lips were stained pink as if he’d been chewing them.

  Grimes slapped Elliot hard across the face.

  The caller’s eyes snapped open, and the vortexes to Urcaen flashed away in brilliant columns of light. The afterimage of the gaunt silhouettes burned onto Mel’s vision amid a constellation of bright spots. She heard Kincaid shout in alarm, and then Abigail pulled her to the ground. There was the crackle of rifle fire—and then the sound of hot glass in her projector exploding as bullets punched through it.

  Mel was still blinking away stars when Abigail hauled her to her feet. “Run!”

  Grimes threw Elliot behind him and grabbed a coil of loose conduit from the ground with his charged glove. Nearby, Kincaid snapped out his tiny pistol and drew a bead on the closest figure. As the bouncer fired his single shot, Grimes activated his gauntlet, sending a crackling charge down the length of the cable. He whipped it at a pair of the figures, causing their bodies to jer
k and smoke when the electrified whip touched them.

  Kincaid reloaded his pistol and shouted at the two women. “Get to the wagon!”

  On unsteady legs, Mel rose and ran. She heard another volley of rifle fire and Grimes shouting, followed by the crack of Kincaid’s pistol. Artis bounded along in front of them with her hackles high, scampering back to the shadows of the charred farmhouse. Abigail and Elliot ran at her side, though Elliot’s damaged satchel tangled in his legs and almost pitched him over.

  The three of them reached the farmhouse before the creatures fired a third volley. Mel looked back to Kincaid and Grimes, who were retreating from the circle of gear. Without the cats there to defend their equipment, a tide of gremlins washed forward and attacked the mechanika. The large capacitor flashed in a brilliant halo of arcane power, causing the remaining projectors to flicker and die. Lacking the Strangelight projectors to reveal them, the tiny creatures became invisible once more. Only the faint cone of Abigail’s lumitype showed the smaller creatures on the field. The small group of desiccated-looking soldiers remained visible, a quiet and detached part of Mel’s brain noted. They wouldn’t need the projectors to evade these.

  “We need to get out of here,” Abigail said as they rushed inside, scooping up the armful of spectragraphs on the table. Mel grabbed a hefty mechanik’s wrench from the stash of gear and rushed through the building headed to the small stable where they’d left the horses and wagon.

  The wagon was where they left it, but the stalls where they’d left the horses hung ajar. Mel couldn’t hear them making any noise, so she readied her wrench and walked forward slowly, trying to make no sound on the scattered hay underfoot.

  From the far stall, the shadow of a horse’s head lifted up, and she saw the nose of Kincaid’s ornery dray push at its stall door. As it creaked open the head flopped out, followed by a long, thick bloody stick. The animal’s head had been ripped away from its body and then jammed in place atop the stick, a grisly prank. Riding the gruesome hobbyhorse, one of the large gremlin-like creatures trotted into the open space with its lance couched beneath one arm.