Steampunk Tales, Volume 1

by Ren Cummins

  Flipping the card across his fingers, he held it for a moment between his third and fourth fingers and flicked it to the floor in the center of the room. It vanished with a tek and a small puff of smoke. Cousins felt the gentle tingle of expressed magic rush past him – in the goggles, he saw it as a visible wave as the particular spell took effect.

  He took a slow breath. “That should coax you out, bastards,” he hissed. “No more hiding.”

  *****

  The scent of oxidized metals and welded cables filled her nose. It was a happy smell, the aroma of work and success and invention. But today the smell mixed with something else. Fruit…smoked meats… eggs. Her mouth watered. How long, exactly, had it been since she’d eaten? There was a roll with some cheese that she’d had yesterday – or was that the day before? Time did funny things in her workshop; sometimes, she wasn’t sure if she was working on a project or dreaming about it. Her eyes fluttered open, seeing a large shadow looming across her blurred vision. The lights in her lab were off; natural sunlight cast the shadow, making it just past noon, when sunlight could still descend through the large windows built into the ceiling.

  Kari blinked once, twice, rubbing her eyelids to knuckle free the annoying bits of sand that crumbled across her eyes in sleep. She’d rubbed them for several moments before she realized that she’d somehow taken her gloves off in her sleep – hadn’t she been wearing them when she laid down on her workshop bench? The youngest professor in the college of Atmology looked down to the floor beneath her, only mildly recognizing the grime that had long since been stained into her once-grey laboratory overalls. Her metal scaled gloves sat there below her; for a moment the odd thought occurred to her that they were resting. She shook her head, allowing a few stray black hairs to fall past her face, having somehow escaped her ever-present ponytail.

  The smell of meat and fruit was stronger now. Picking up her gloves, she stood up and looked towards her desk, upon which was sitting a platter of still-steaming strips of ham and smoked sausage, as well as a bowl of assorted colors of cut fruit. But her eyes went instead to the girl with the white hair who sat in a chair a few meters on the opposite side of the desk, a small winged creature purring on her lap as she stroked the grey hair between his tiny curled horns.

  Thoughts of food and construction were washed away in a single word: “Rom!”

  Kari jumped from her chair and ran around to throw her arms around her oldest friend, Mulligan managing to throw himself clear just in time to save him from being squashed. The two girls hugged for several minutes, both on the verge of tears or fits of laughter. Finally, Kari stepped back, brushed the long black hair from her face and punched her friend on the shoulder. “You left!”

  Rom nodded, letting Mulligan flap back up onto her shoulder. “I did, I’m sorry.”

  “Briseida said it was because you thought it would keep us safe.”

  Another nod.

  “Stupid. Really, really dumb.” Kari sighed, shaking her head. “But you know that, right?”

  A third nod.

  “Well, good. But you’re back, now. So you either found what you were looking for or need my help.” She took a long look at her white-haired friend, and nodded. “Okay, that was simple enough. How can I help?”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  Rom bit her lower lip, and looked over at Mulligan, who nodded as well. “I found a college in the city - and I think it’s connected to why the monsters exist. But I can’t get in and I thought that maybe you or Cousins or both of you could help.

  “Plus,” she continued, “it’s just been a long time, and…I missed you guys.”

  Kari put a hand on Rom’s shoulder. “Of course we’ll help. Cousins was just here yesterday, I, um, needed a good excuse to go apologize to him.”

  Rom’s eyebrows raised. “Apologize? For what?”

  Shaking her head, Kari waved it off. “It’s just… well, I was being dumb, and…” She pointed a thumb over her shoulder at a large construct in the center of the room. Rom had seen it when she’d come in with Kari’s food, but had no idea what it could be. It was all a mass of cables and fan blades, all strapped in underneath a tremendous pair of broad cylinders that were positioned atop a thick steel support frame. In the lower frame there were four chairs, and the most forward-facing of the seats was surrounded by a confusing array of levels and wheels. “Well, I actually owe him – he made me come up with this.”

  Rom looked at her friend, momentarily uncertain as to which – between her friend and her friend’s creation – was the more bizarre. “Um, yes, it’s, ah, lovely,” she said, hoping her choice of adjectives wasn’t offensive. At last, she discarded pretense, adding, “What is it?”

  Kari laughed. “Well, first, I have to swear you to secrecy – it’s…” Her voice trailed off, and she looked to one side, as if hearing something. “What’s that?” she asked rhetorically.

  A vague wave of nausea flowed across Rom, forcing her to pause long enough to push past it. Mulligan gripped her shoulder fiercely. “Rom!” he said, his voice strained. “Something’s coming!”

  Both girls looked up as a shadow passed over the skylight in the ceiling of Kari’s laboratory. The sunlight was briefly blocked out as a large number of people wearing concealing clothing and matching white masks scurried over the glass. One stood in the center and leaped up, only to come back down with both feet on the central support beams of the window frames. With a terrifying crash, the windows burst, descending towards the two girls in a deadly rain.

  Rom spun towards Kari, tapping her bracelet and raising her arm to catch the summoned parasol as it appeared, opening it in a single, fluid, motion. The glass bounced harmlessly off the magically enhanced material, shielding them both from the potentially fatal barrage. Beyond that, more than a dozen of the white-clad masked assailants also dropped into view. Rom quickly surveyed her options, and swung her left arm around her friend.

  “Hold on!” she called out as much to Kari as to Mulligan, still poised on Rom’s shoulder. She leapt up and over the least of their attackers, dropping behind Kari’s workbench. “Stay down,” she ordered, letting go of Kari and turning to face their enemies. She got a good look at them now, her heart sunk as she realized that these were definitively members of the Whitehold military units. They were people – just people, not monsters – and that meant she couldn’t use a blade on them. No lethal acts.

  But that didn’t completely limit her arsenal. She double-tapped the bracelet, and then spun her shepherd’s crook in a large arc to keep the men back. They all took a step back from her, but she guessed they were just gauging her range. In her mind, she briefly returned to the many times she was forced to protect herself or others from some of the small groups of bullies in the orphanage, remembering the many lessons she had learned from fighting larger groups.

  Though fighting a small team of well-trained soldiers would vastly overshadow a handful of prepubescents, many physical laws remained constant. For example, two objects cannot occupy the same space. Rom being one of those two objects would prove far more destructive to the soldiers than they yet realized.

  One of the soldiers stepped into what he erroneously believed to be a limited range and Rom hooked him by the neck with the large curve of her crook and threw him into two others, causing the three of them to fall back into a brief tangle. Another tried to slip in behind her, but she cracked him in the forehead with the base of her staff, sending him sprawling. The staff rang in her hands – it had felt like striking solid stone.

  She worked in a circle, striking first ahead and then behind, shifting to her left or right and jabbing again. Rom didn’t concern herself at first with causing any serious damage – she was only trying to position herself and keep them from completely surrounding her. Limiting their range of access to her also limited the number of them who could engage her at any given time. When she hooked another soldier by the neck, he held tightly to the staff,
and tried to root himself to the spot.

  Rom smiled. “Good. You’re learning.” Using the staff as an anchor, she pivoted and kicked up with both feet, catching another soldier on the jaw as she spun up and over. Her feet came down solidly on the head of the first soldier, dropping him to his knees. She slipped the staff from around his neck and spun it in a full circle to crack it across the side of his head, throwing him violently to one side. Her hands stung with the vibration.

  The moment’s ache cut through the rush of adrenaline to make Rom aware of the increasing pain in her arms and feet. She paused to look around her – all the soldiers she had hit were already getting up, adjusting their masks and renewing their advance.

  Her heart sunk. These were not just soldiers after all, she realized, but were all too similar to the creature she’d fought in Aesirium. “Sandmen.” A twinge of fear cracked her voice.

  Chapter 12: Fighting on Two Fronts

  Cousins kept the Looking Glasses on, his hands twisting the adjustment lenses across a span of visual layers. They were coming; he could feel it already, like an afterimage of bright objects when you close your eyes. His thoughts went again to Kari, sending an ache through his chest. She’s in trouble, he realized. He cursed silently. He’d been too slow in activating a decoy; they were already tracking Rom through the town, and evidently had gone to Kari first.

  He grabbed his key ring from atop his desk, but when he spun back around to take the stairs, he was startled to see a pair of men in white clothing, perfectly masked from head to toe. Their faces were covered with flawless ashen ceramic masks, under which was tucked their white cowls. The only openings on the masks were two almond-shaped holes for the eyes, but all he could see through these was darkness.

  Through the lenses of his Looking Glasses, however, he could see what seemed to be living shadows crawling across them. He didn’t know these things were, but clearly they were not men – or at least, they were no longer. Whatever their motives for being here, Cousins realized, their intentions were clearly of an ill nature.

  “Well, I must say, you lads do look fine in your charming little costumes,” his voice was deliberately light and seemingly care-free, “but I regret to say that you have come at a bad time. You see, I’m on my way to an essential meeting with a young woman I know, and as I already owe her at least one apology, I simply mustn’t be late…”

  As he pulled one of the spellshots from its holster, the men were already in motion. “Stun! Stun!” he called out, scoring two direct hits in spite of their relative alacrity. Both spells hit their targets square in their chests, throwing them backwards and out of the doorway. Cousins followed quickly, hoping to get a good look at them before any of the rest of them showed up. At the doorway itself, he slapped his palm against an otherwise ordinary-looking bronze plaque on the wall. The panel set off a series of alarm bells throughout the building, claxons sounding shrilly.

  Before he could approach closely enough to grab one of their masks, however, the far doorway from the top of the stairs to the lower levels burst forth, four more of the strange attackers moving into a defensive perimeter and cutting off his most obvious escape route.

  “Oh, you gents are clever, sure enough,” he smirked, stopping cold and slowly moving back into his office. While his right hand maintained a steady grip on the pistol, his left hand slipped into his pocket and pulled free one of his cards. He took no time to count through the sorted deck, so he simply grabbed one from the end he hoped were filled with the offensive spells and trusted his memory.

  He snuck a quick look at it as it cleared his pocket and his smile grew. “You know, now that I’ve had a chance to consider your company,” he said casually, flicking the card into the center of the room. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave now.” The four new arrivals all paused to look down towards the card, and Cousins covered his face as it exploded in a ball of eye-searing light.

  Cousins kept moving, able to make his way quickly enough to stand behind his desk even with his eyes shut. The redness faded from outside his eyelids, allowing him to tentatively open them. The men in the far room were all essentially gone – no, not quite, he realized, as the smoke cleared. Their clothing was still there, as if discarded in their urgency to flee.

  He flicked the amplification lens on his glasses, bringing the room to his face. No, he thought. Not discarded. That’s ash. My flare somehow burned them up! He frowned. That flare magic had no heat to it; it only generated a room-full of noon time sunlight. It had meant for it to be a distraction, not an immolation. He pursed his lips. He had seen something unnatural about their aura; perhaps something so simple as sunlight could be a weapon against them? “That would explain their being covered,” he realized.

  He nodded to himself. “I suppose all I need now is a broom.” Gunfire rang out from downstairs, however, taking the grin from his face. Kicking a release lever obscured by his desk, he hopped through the opened hatch and dropped to the floor below.

  *****

  Moving as quickly as the relatively confined space would allow, Rom hopped from one attack to the next, mostly at this point attempting to keep the sandmen from surrounding her. Mulligan remained snugly affixed to her shoulder, acting as a pair of eyes in the back of her head. Although it had been some time since the two had been engaged in this depth of combat, they fell quickly back into a familiar rhythm. Simply by the dexterous application of her crook, she managed to keep them clustered together with Kari safely behind her.

  “Hard right, coming in low,” Mulligan whispered. Rom hopped straight up, but flipped around neatly in mid-air, pulling the staff around hard – the thick end of the top curve struck the creature squarely beneath the jaw, popping the mask off with a deafening crack. Sunlight from above them struck the blackened features of the Sandman; its scream was one of pain and terror. The full robe and cowl briefly puffed outwards, with grey sand exploding out from the eyeholes and the seams. Rom landed daintily above the cloth and sand and fanned the crook out between her and her opponents.

  Rom glanced upwards to the sunlight, and back down to the remaining creatures, an amused grin lifting the corners of her mouth. “Ah, now I know how to kill you, monsters. So maybe you should just go back now before your queen loses any more of her creations.”

  She hadn’t truly hoped to cow them into submission after their first casualty, but, she was forced to admit she wouldn’t have complained if it had worked. Unfortunately, in apparent response to her bravado, another dozen of them dropped down from the ruined skylight.

  “Or, I guess maybe you could call for reinforcements, too.” Her voice, though clearly disappointed by the new development, failed to lose all its amusement. Though the odds were clearly in their favor, it had been far too long since Rom had really been able to surrender to her calling as a Reaper. She tightened her grip on the crook, determined to teach these annoying wretches a lesson.

  * * * * *

  Downstairs was much worse than he’d expected. Cousins had assumed that the six up in his office hadn’t been alone – certainly, his men would have set off the alarms or at least given them a proper introduction before letting them stroll casually into his private offices. But he hadn’t anticipated this.

  On the second floor in the common room, ten of his men had barricaded themselves and were doing their best to keep the two dozen of the men in white robes from overtaking their position. Cousins’ arrival behind the men in white might have seemed fortuitous, but it also meant they were between him and relative security. Hugging the wall of the doorway, he glanced behind him, scowling at the sight of five more of his men, prone and bleeding on the floor. If I were a touch more like Favo, a clever quip involving the challenges of hiring good help might be welcomed here, he thought. Fortunately, I’m not – he’d be out that door and long gone by now.

  He turned back to the white-robed assailants, who seemed ready to make a full press towards his men’s position. Now or never, he decided.

&nb
sp; Cousins fanned out three specific cards from his deck and raised his spare spellshot, leaving the other two fully loaded and in their holsters. He cast the three spells out evenly across the room – the first that struck the floor sent up an invisible wall to protect the wooden surfaces in the room from catching fire. The second exploded as it struck one of their invaders in the back, sending a spray of iridescent oil which engulfed most of them. But the third struck one of the men in the back of the leg, setting the cloth there instantly to flame. The rest of them looked about, surprised by the sudden conflagration of their colleague. But when one made the mistake of approaching him to help put out the fire, he, too, was engulfed.

  Smiling ruefully, Cousins drew one of his holstered pistols in his spare hand and made a run across the back of the room and forward along the wall. Two of the robed men saw him and turned in his direction.

  “Push!” he called out with a pull of the trigger. A wave of magical energy shot from the barrel of the gun, sending the two men sailing into the now-increasing column of fire. “Push! Push!” he called again with two more accompanying shots. Now, all the men in white along his path were pushed into the flames, and writhing about in obvious pain.

  What concerned him most, however, was the last of speech coming from the strange men. No screams, no cries of pain or panic. Just silent like the dead.

  He vaulted over the barricade and rolled to a stop, nodding to his men who cheered his arrival. “You two, keep an eye on our friends,” he ordered to the two closest to the barricades. To another, he barked, “Inventory – call it off.”