Strathmoore began to unbutton his vest. “Come now. Don’t look so grim. This is what it’s all been for, my good man. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Strathmoore, you’re lousy in a scrap. What if you run into trouble?” Keller said. “Let me go instead.”
“Nonsense. I’ll not send another soul to that place but mine.” He paused in the middle of removing his shoes and smiled up at the much larger man. “Besides, you know you’re much too fond of the spirits to fit into the suit.” He patted Keller’s modest gut to drive home the point.
Keller’s dour mood finally broke, and he chuckled. But he looked at Strathmoore the way one looks upon a true friend never expected to be seen again.
Yet Strathmoore seemed to be growing more energized with each passing second. He took the suit from Keller and loosened a series of laces on its back. “Now help me get into this blasted thing.”
• • •
STRATHMOORE HOBBLED TOWARD THE STRANGE CONSTRUCT, his steps hampered by the heavy mechanikal suit. Originally intended for deep-water diving, the suit was laden with metal reinforcements and iron rings, the weight of such equipment presenting no issue when underwater but putting a considerable load on Strathmoore’s old bones now, even with its compensating turbine fed by linked capacitors. Behind Strathmoore walked Keller with his gun slung over one shoulder and a brass diving helmet in his hands. The helmet had been modified with a respirator and filtering mechanism linked by a flexible hose to several compressed air canisters on his back nestled alongside a large backpack. This was loaded with supplies and hung with various generally useful tools and other gear, including multiple canteens and Strathmoore’s Strangelight lantern. To anyone who might have seen him, Strathmoore appeared to be headed on some great expedition, though one could not have been sure if his destination was the bottom of the ocean or a distant land.
Above them, a pair of crows took flight from their roost atop the observatory, startled when the armillary sphere began to move. Its arrangement of rings turned within one another as representations of major celestial bodies changed position and alignment. The old crone emerged from the turret to stand upon a small balcony, her talons clicking upon her gnarled staff as she peered into the heavens. Strathmoore watched as the enigmatic woman pointed an outstretched talon at Laris, the blood-red moon at the bottom tip of the triangle of moons, and he could have sworn it pulsed slightly when she did. As she slowly traced the point of the talon upward toward Artis, over to Calder and then back down to Laris, glowing runes ignited in the air before her once again, inscribing a complex arcane formula in violet light.
“It is time,” the old woman crooned.
Strathmoore nodded to his man, and Keller lifted the helmet, placing it over Strathmoore’s head to rest its weight upon his shoulders. He fastened a series of bolts, securing the helmet in place, and then checked a valve on the respirator.
“How’s it in there, Mr. Strathmoore?” he shouted loud enough to be heard over the din of the armillary sphere and through the brass helm.
Strathmoore unlatched the porthole in the front of the helmet and swung it open. “No need to yell, my good man. I’ve installed protected vents in the helmet that allow me to hear the outside world while still remaining airtight.”
“Of course you have, Mr. Strathmoore. There’s one thing you haven’t thought of, though.” Keller took the scattergun from his shoulder and handed it to Strathmoore.
“I don’t even know if it will work over there,” Strathmoore said, shaking his head inside the helmet.
“Well if it doesn’t, use it as a club. Either way, you won’t have far to go to get where you’re going.”
Strathmoore grinned and took the gun. “Watch after the Workshop. They wouldn’t know what to do without you.”
“None o’ you would.” Keller clapped Strathmoore on the shoulders before taking a few steps backward. He then turned and headed for the coach. The horses were becoming increasingly anxious as the old crone continued her sorcery atop the construct. Keller took hold of their reins to ensure they didn’t bolt.
From the balcony on the front of the observatory, the crone called into the night in a tongue both ancient and completely alien to Strathmoore. The armillary sphere seemed to move faster, its rings spinning within one another as glowing runes burst around the crone then faded away, only to be replaced by more.
Finally, the hag raised her staff brought it down swiftly, striking its butt upon the balcony. The anguished faces carved into the staff came to life, glowing from within with a ghastly green radiance as they writhed and contorted like living things. Above her, the center of the armillary sphere—a great iron representation of the planet Caen—split in half along its equator, the top half separating and rising up from the bottom half. Within its hollow core floated Strathmoore’s globe. The inscribed lines defining the concentric rings exploded with violet light. An instant later, the rings telescoped outward, altering the shape of the globe from a sphere to a six-pointed star. The star began to spin within the larger iron shell of Caen. The violet light grew in intensity.
With a clap of thunder that caused his helmet to ring, the world before Strathmoore’s eyes ripped open. Where there had been nothing but air above the stone dais now swirled a vortex taller than the crone’s walking observatory. Around its edges, reality appeared to bend as it was pulled into the gaping maw of the violent storm. But within the spiral, Strathmoore could see a different world, a dreadful, smoldering landscape of jagged rock spires and twisted woods that writhed like the faces upon the old crone’s staff. Strathmoore knew these were the uncharted wilds of hell in Urcaen, the realm of the dead. He had toiled for thirty years to open a doorway into them.
“Go now, Jacob Strathmoore. Find the Golden Tower in the outer ring’s ninth ward of the City of Man. On the eighth floor, behind the 88th door of its 88th room, you vill find vhat you seek.” The crone pointed a wicked talon toward the vortex.
Strathmoore squared his shoulders and stared into the vortex, readying himself for his journey ahead.
“Quickly now,” the crone cackled. “The Harvest is about to begin.”
Within the vortex, shadowy forms began to gather. Creatures of all shapes and sizes, hideous and inhuman, crept toward the door between realms. Something sinewy and predacious scurried forth and probed the open portal with a long, black claw. Satisfied, it grinned, baring a craw full of needlelike teeth that gnashed together with rabid anticipation before leaping forward to land right in front of Strathmoore.
“Mr. Strathmoore!” Keller cried. “Shoot the thing, for Morrow’s sake!”
But Strathmoore merely stood his ground as the vile creature scampered around him on all fours, sniffing at him from beneath a matted mane of wiry black hair.
The horses stomped the ground, neighing and snorting in alarm. Keller held the brake in place and struggled against their reins.
“Go now, Keller! Be gone from here! Hurry!” Strathmoore shouted at him. The hairy creature had seemingly lost interest and was now making eyes at the horses. But it was what he saw on the other side of the vortex that made Strathmoore fear for Keller’s life.
An army of horrors swelled just beyond the portal, somehow instinctively drawn toward it. One by one, they slipped through. A demonic hound with human hands for feet; a frenzied, mace-wielding swine mounted on the back of a shriveled and tortured man; fanged imps riding flaming broomsticks with the severed heads of ponies impaled on their ends; a lumbering giant skinned in a garment of stitched-together living faces. It was the stuff of nightmares dreamed by the mad and deranged, and it poured into the land of the living like an unstoppable, hellish flood.
The demonic hound leapt at the horses, lashing them with the grotesquely long tongue protruding from its fang-rimmed orifice that barely resembled a mouth. The horses reared and bucked, flinging the stagecoach sideways and shearing the front right wheel off. Keller barely managed to hang on as h
e drew a pistol and fired at the terrible beast, ripping a chunk out of the side of its skull.
“What have you done, Mr. Strathmoore? Who is this witch you’re in league with?” Keller howled.
“The bargain was struck long ago, my friend,” Strathmoore said sorrowfully. “But you know I had no choice. Ethelyn and Tabitha have been waiting far too long.” He closed the portal on the front of the diving helmet and waded into the tide of hellspawn that surged from the vortex.
Keller clambered off the coach and, pulling a great knife from a sheath at his side, cut the horses free of their harnesses. As one horse bolted into the woods, he climbed onto the back of the other, pulling back its reins with all his strength to keep it from bucking him off in its terrified state.
“Witch!” Keller yelled at the top of his lungs to the cackling crone atop her monstrous machine. “Witch! What have you brought upon us?”
Strathmoore could hear the glee in her response as he stepped over the threshold between worlds and into the realm of the dead.
“Salvation!”
— ABOUT THE AUTHORS —
Matt Goetz
Matt Goetz is the Writing Manager at Privateer Press, where he works with words and the people who make them. He spends his free time with his wife Roxxy and their two dogs, Blackjack and Buckshot, pursuing a wide range of different hobbies from archery to woodworking. He’s still looking for a hobby that starts with an X.
Zachary C. Parker
Zachary C. Parker is best known for his work on the award-winning WARMACHINE and HORDES tabletop miniatures games, including his novella, Wrath of the Dragonfather. He is a graduate of Bowling Green State University and a former editor for Shock Totem Magazine. In his free time he reads, murders people living inside his word processor, and tests the grandfather paradox with the time machine in his closet. He lives in Washington with his wife and obligatory cats.
Aeryn Rudel
Aeryn Rudel is a freelance writer from Seattle, Washington. He is a notorious dinosaur nerd, a baseball connoisseur, and he has mastered the art of fighting with sword-shaped objects (but not actual swords). His first novel, Flashpoint, was published by Privateer Press in 2016, and the sequel, Aftershock, will be published this year. Aeryn occasionally offers dubious advice on the subjects of writing and rejection (mostly rejection) on his blog at www.rejectomancy.com.
Michael G. Ryan
Michael G. Ryan is Director of Publications at Privateer Press, where he previously served as editor-in-chief for No Quarter magazine. In addition to the dozens of short stories and hundreds of articles in and about the gaming industry he has published over the last twenty-plus years, he is currently writing a fantasy novel…because that’s what you do.
Douglas Seacat
Douglas Seacat is the Senior Writer at Privateer Press, where he has spent over fifteen years fleshing out details of the Iron Kingdoms setting and managing its continuity. It is fair to say Doug spends most of his work and free time living vicariously in the Iron Kingdoms through games and fiction, including such works as The Blood of Kings, At What Cost, and one of the novellas in Rites of Passage. Any spare time is occupied reading all manner of science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction, playing computer games, and participating in weekly pen-and-paper RPG sessions. He is called upon to shed light on topics as varied as the existence of rum in the Iron Kingdoms, whether gobbers and trollkin are mammals, the difference between ghosts and specters, and how forensic necromancy works on a dead people after their souls pass to Urcaen.
Matthew D. Wilson
Matt Wilson is the Chief Creative Officer for Privateer Press and the creator of WARMACHINE & HORDES. Occasionally, he throws off the shackles of executive management to write or illustrate some random project in order to remind himself why he started this company in the first place and to make sure that the actual writers and artists don’t get to have all the fun.
Available Now from Skull Island eXpeditions
MURDER IN CORVIS
by Richard Lee Byers
The labyrinth of tunnels beneath Corvis is home to some of the city’s worst criminals, but now even these hardened thugs have reason to watch their step in the dark, shadowy undercity. Death moves in that darkness, leaving behind a trail of horribly mangled bodies. The identity of the killer is a mystery, although his calling cards—brutally savaged corpses and a distinct, repulsive odor—are constants at each bloody murder scene.
As business falters in the wake of the murders, the shady owner of an illegal gambling hall hires a ragtag group of mercenaries and adventurers to find the killer and end his reign of terror. Among these mercenaries are the trollkin bounty hunter Gardek Stonebrow, the enterprising mechanik and soldier Colbie Sterling, the investigator and arcanist Eilish Garrity, and the skulking alchemist and thief Milo Boggs. Together, these four must work to overcome their differences, track down a killer, and end the murder in Corvis before one of their own becomes the next victim.
FIRE & FAITH I: GODLESS
by Orrin Grey
To Protect the Protectorate…
Tristan Durant, once a refugee from Llael and now a priest and warcaster of the Protectorate of Menoth, struggles with his faith and his role. When a dark vision of the future warns of a rising threat to the theocracy, he returns with Hierarch Severius to the homeland for an epic confrontation against the godless enemy, the skorne. And when the Protectorate is thrown into turmoil by internal political machinations, Tristan Durant must choose a side to prevent the skorne from enslaving the faithful, and his choice will determine his fate—or have it determined for him.
skullislandx.com
Wicked Ways: An Iron Kingdoms Chronicles Anthology Page 34
