Steampunk Tales, Volume 1

by Ren Cummins

  So this is the way it’s going to be, Marcos thought with no small amount of irritation. One tiny thing slips through on my watch, and I’m sent to rot on bird duty for the remainder of my tour. I’m never going to get that promotion at this rate. He adjusted the cartridge on the netgun, and pretended to fiddle with the sights briefly before slipping the rifle under his arm so he could adjust the smoke-colored goggles over his eyes. Assuring himself he was as presentable as he could be in the ridiculous finery of a member of the Royal Auxiliary Vermin Eviction Services, he shouldered the weapon and stepped from the dressing rooms and proceeded down the service hallway towards the upper roof access doors.

  He’d only received his new assignment following the debriefing from what they were already calling the dirigible incident among the lesser officers. It was ludicrous to assume they could have foreseen it, any of them. None of the exiles had even attempted flight in generations; it was generally accepted as fact that they’d abandoned the concept, if they even still possessed a functional knowledge of science to accomplish such a thing. He’d even spent several years among those unscientific farmers, posing as a vendor while looking for some little girl her Majesty sought. He shivered, not entirely from the rush of cold air that roared past him when stepping out into the wind. That had been yet one more assignment which had not gone entirely as he would have liked.

  The doors closed behind him, any sound they might have made was swallowed up in the powerful blasts of wind blowing off from the dark blue body of water below the castle walls to his left. He hadn’t really looked at that sight in a while. It wasn’t easy to see it from within the city, what with the large retaining wall that had been set up so long ago, just after the desolation of the Art War that had nearly destroyed them all.

  Marcos had never actually been this high up, this far into the city. Although dwarfed only by the Great Wall which kept them all safe from the ever-present threats in the Wild, the royal castle was the most elevated building in the entirety of Aesirium, but its ramparts and crenellations were only accessible by royalty or particular members of the royal military. It was something of an honor as well as a mark of shame for him. His past efforts and dedication had saved him from the bulk of the Queen’s wrath, but clearly not all of it. Granted, there were always the so-called “educational promotions”, which were little more than indentured slavery. Some of the more popular titles for these punishments included assignation to the Royal Vegetable Discriminatory Processing Center, Ministerial Executor of the Subterranean Pavestone Census, or the ever-dreaded Esteemed Polisher of the Regal Excremental Disposal Facilities.

  He’d met the Queen on two occasions – or, more accurately, he’d stood in her presence twice. The first was on his day of enlistment. It was traditional for the ruling member of the royal family to give their blessing to the latest crop of new conscripts, and even though Queen Karema had seemed distracted and possibly bored with the entire ceremony, she’d passed only three or four meters from him as he stood at attention, eyes focused respectfully forward. Even so, he’d gotten a good look at the face of their monarch. Beneath her perfectly attended red curls, her face had the look of fine porcelain, smooth and flawless. From the artificially tinted rouge of her lips to the brilliant green of her eyes, she was an embodiment of the royal lineage; resplendent and radiant. He’d known in that moment that his choice to register for royal service had been the right one: he’d follow his Queen wherever she might command him.

  The second time he’d seen her was at his assignment to cross the Wall. He and three others had been hand-selected to be sent across to infiltrate the remnants of the original exiles and look for a young girl. Although it was never expressly defined as to the reasons, the four of them knew better than to question their orders. Although the original description of their target changed, from time to time they would receive additional or altered information through their tubular-chambered aethernet. The aethernet was powered by the electrically-charged vapors developed and processed by the Royal Science Division, also known as aether; it was often said that the ability to communicate was what set them apart from the lesser species. Marcos thought it was a true enough statement, but…

  He cleared his throat, overcome by a desperate wish to shove the resulting memories deeper into his mind. Were it possible, he would love nothing more than to fold those images into a lockbox and drop it into the depths of the sea. A sound to his right distracted him; another soldier in a matching tunic approached from around the corner, carrying a small moving sack in his left gloved hand, the right hand bracing the stock of his netgun. Marcos’ goggled eyes glanced briefly to the captive animal, and nodded respectfully. He’d only seen a bird once, and that was from his vantage point on the Wall several months ago. They were definitively more common out there than in here, where anything capable of flight was outlawed by royal mandate.

  Only the lower half of the man’s face was visible, below the goggles and upper cowl of his headgear. His skin was reddened and chapped; clearly the time spent up on this rotation took its toll on the soldiers thus stationed. The two shared a silent greeting, borne of a common understanding: no soldier in outright poor standing was ever assigned to this task, but had for one reason or another been at the wrong place at the wrong time. Marcos wondered what had sent this other soldier here; what grievous misunderstanding had him likewise charged with watching the skies for unlawfully airborne animals?

  The other soldier stepped to a nearby cylinder embedded in the walkway and depressed a lever at the base, which opened a thin circular hatch at the top. He placed the still-wriggling bag into the tube and released it, allowing it to fall with a soft whoosh into the darkness below. He nodded towards Marcos again, accentuating the gesture by releasing the disposal lid with a loud clank. Mission completed, he was off again on patrol along the periphery of the castle’s upper floor.

  So that’s to be my fate, Marcos mused, having the skin wind-blasted from my face until I resemble the walking dead. The thought occurred to him that perhaps the Queen’s successor would be more forgiving; less inclined to neither prohibit birds above the palace nor consign poorly fortuned soldiers to their eradication. But there were whispers among the other officers that not only had the Queen refused to choose a consort but that as a result no other heir was thus in line to replace her. She had had cousins, but these had all met with unfortunate ends; only the reckless or heretical would suggest or imply there was more to it than bad luck, but even had there existed a grain of suspicion, the result was the same: no one else would be Queen but Karema.

  Marcos’ fleeting glimpse of a happy retirement flickered and died along with the rest of his optimism. All he could manage to do was to recall the disappointment in his wife’s eyes and scan the skies idly for movement. Any movement at all; some poor wretched bird upon which he could unleash his frustration with the tragic tale of woe his life and career had become.

  *****

  Her mouth tasted like dirt. And leaves, or something. She coughed, once, twice, spitting out the bits of whatever it was and squinted against the additional bits of whatever they were that had made their way into her eyelids.

  “Ouch,” Rom mumbled, the mere utterance sending waves of achiness across her skull. It felt like half a field’s worth of soil had wound up in her face. She started to wipe a bit of it away, but her hands felt something warm and sticky on her skin. Blinking to let the tears wash her eyes clean, she got a look at her hands. Her fingers were covered in blood – in fact, she noticed, everything out her right eye looked dark and red. Something was making a lot of noise nearby – she could feel it through the ground, but it sounded funny, like it was happening through a tank full of water.

  Something small, grey and furry was shaking her, his eyes wide with fear. His mouth was opening and noise was coming out, but they just felt like sounds to her. Nothing was making any sense.

  Rom was curled on her side, resting in a small ditch filled with sticks and branches. S
he tried to sit up, but the world reached up and threw her back down. Her stomach curled in on itself, and the little grey animal moved out of the way just in time to avoid being thrown up on.

  “Sorry,” she muttered when she stopped heaving long enough to speak. Her mouth tasted horrible.

  Her voice sounded a bit clearer now, but still seemed to be coming from the other side of the room. No, not a room. A forest. A forest? What was she doing in the forest, she wondered? Wasn’t she in a city? No, not the city, she was in a canyon – the City of the Dead, she remembered. Her eyes flashed open, memories flooding into her.

  “Mully!” she said, sitting up again, almost failing in the attempt. A blast of pain crested through her brain, coming out her left shoulder. “Oooh,” she reeled.

  “Rom, can you hear me?” Mully was asking her. She tried to nod, but gratefully he understood what little of the gesture she was capable of making. “Are you all right? Where does it hurt?”

  She glanced around, moving her head as little as possible. It was already starting to feel better somehow, but she didn’t want to risk it. She pointed at her left boot. “That doesn’t hurt,” she said, “but everything else isn’t feeling very good.”

  The loud crashes were becoming clearer, too, and Rom’s heart skipped a beat when she remembered what had been making that sound before she’d been knocked out.

  “What’s going on? What did I miss?” she asked, wincing again at another wave of pain.

  “Yu and I heard the xanos and came running outside, but we didn’t see you anywhere. The airship was smashed, and Yu is fighting the xanos while I looked for you.” His eyes briefly examined her, and he seemed satisfied that nothing seemed bent in improper angles. “Can you stand?”

  She wasn’t sure, but attempted it. It took what felt like an entire minute to finally balance herself on her feet again, all the while everything around her continued to try turning sideways. Whenever it did, she would hold her hands out and take a pair of deep breaths until the world righted itself once more. At last, she looked to Mully and tried to show him an expression of confidence but was pretty sure she just looked like she’d lost her mind. She thought it might be more accurate that way, anyhow.

  Her staff was gone; she tapped the gem on her bracelet twice, summoning it again to her hand. Rather than leaping back to the clearing, she walked, using the staff to keep her from falling. “Well,” she said weakly, “I guess I better go stop a xanos.”

  Favo looked out from behind a tree he’d used as safety. Rom’s blue creature had just started attacking the xanos, but the fight still seemed fairly one-sided, in spite of his obvious resolution to defeat the much larger beast. It looked as if his tail and claws had scored some minor hits, but the xanos had struck a brutal gash across the animal’s side, which was causing him some obvious trouble in remaining agile and airborne. He was truly impressed it had lasted as long as it had, in fact.

  He looked over into the crushed remnants of the airship. What few bits remained of the balloons lay in tatters over the area – some even flapped randomly in the breeze, dangling from branches full meters over his head.

  From behind him, he heard Cousins’ approach and turned to wave him over behind his position. The lad looked to be in fairly good condition, all things considered. He seemed to be favoring his left leg and was holding his right arm gingerly by his left hand. His face looked like it would be decently bruised, but there was no sign of more significant injury. But as Cousins’ eyes went past Favo to see the crushed airship, the blood seemed to drain from his face in an instant.

  “Kari!” the young man screamed, and ran past Favo before the older man could stop him.

  Cursing under his breath, Favo ran from behind the tree after the blonde-haired younger man. Favo caught up with him only a few meters from the ship, managing to step in front of him to bring him to a stop. “You don’t want to look, trust me on that,” he said steadily. “Focus on right now! We need to stay safe and care for the fallen after…”

  His words were cut off by the sound of wrenching metal and a soft breath of exertion behind them. As they both spun, they were shocked to see the entirety of the ship shuddering, and finally, incredulously, rising up from the ground. The balloons were shredded and hanging down over the edges of the wreckage, and it was another few moments before they could see the cause of its apparent levitation.

  At first they could only see a pair of steel legs, looking initially like a cast statue, but it shifted its feet as its hands gained better leverage and lifted the vessel completely from the ground. Raising it fully over its head, the metallic figure took a small breath and dropped the craft behind it onto the ground.

  Cousins raised a hand to slide his goggles back onto his eyes, confused and desperate for comprehension, but the small figure held up a metal-shod hand for patience.

  “It’s me, Kari,” it said. She raised her arms, and sure enough the two men could recognize the gauntlets, but it appeared as if the same patterned scales of metal from the gloves now covered her completely. “I, um, I think I’m okay.”

  Favo, who’d been keeping an eye on the fight beyond the wreckage, inhaled sharply, barely spitting out a warning before pushing Cousins down and leaping towards Kari. The xanos, though busy defending and attacking Yu, must have noticed their movement and swung its tail down towards them with the same intensity it had used to crush the ship. The impact of its strike knocked Favo backwards again, filling the area with dust and bits of matter from the clearing and the ship.

  Favo was the first back onto his feet, and thus the first to stare in amazement at Kari, still standing where she had been, but now turned around and holding the tail in her gauntleted hands over her head.

  “Reaper’s blood, girl!” he gasped. “That’s impossible!”

  Cousins, standing beside him, chuckled. “You might want to consider a redefining of that if you plan on spending much time around us,” he joked. “Though, in all fairness, this is new.”

  “I’ll explain later!” Kari said, her voice metallic and breathless behind the metal scales that covered her face. “Or I will if I figure it out. But I don’t know long I can hold this up.”

  In fact, the xanos seemed now very troubled at the prospect of having its tail caught and held, ignoring Yu completely to try and wrest its tail from the strange metal human. Its jaws opened wide and it hissed, claws coming around to bear down on Kari. In that moment, she recalled the words of one of her instructors in the importance of having the courage to start up a steam engine, but more urgently having the wisdom to know when to shut one down. Suddenly, that statement made a lot more sense; though lamentably served little other use to her, aside from making her realize she wanted to live long enough to tell her professor she finally understood him.

  * * * * *

  As Rom leaped back into the clearing, a softly glittering purplish light caught her eye, some halfway between where she landed and the xanos. She jumped quickly to it, shock and disbelief choking her.

  The broken form of Terenaa looked weakly up at her through one good eye. Distantly, Rom noticed that there was no blood. The damage was evident through a grotesque mangling of limbs and the distorted positioning of the small animal’s body. But worse, Rom could feel it – a gradual, unavoidable distancing growing between them.

  Rom quickly touched one of her gems. “Go back, Terenaa. Quickly, you’ll heal up and be just fine.”

  Terenaa tried to shake her head, but coughed and wheezed. “No, Miss Romany. I can’t, the link is broken. But…it is fine. I…I am complete now. There is not …enough left to continue. I … am done.”

  Several screams of denial wrestled together behind her eyes, but in her heart, Rom knew it was certain. Not only were Terenaa’s wounds too severe, the combined sacrifices had added up to a resolution in her soul. She was at peace, and had simply now grown too tired to go on as a struggling creature within the world of the living. Rom remembered that Terenaa had lost children in the de
vastation that had led to the war in which they had first met, and she could hear Terenaa’s song in her mind. She could now face them with a clear conscience, and missed them without reservation or guilt.

  Rom nodded, taking a measured breath to calm herself. “I release you, Terenaa. Go find your family.”

  With a deepening sigh, Terenaa’s body visibly relaxed, her shattered torso releasing a final breath, borrowed through the magic of the Sheharid Is’iin, and embraced, at last, her death. The air sparkled and glowed once again around the fading image of her, one final time.

  Mulligan landed beside Rom as she crouched on the empty ground, saying nothing. The xanos, a hundred or more meters away, thrashed about and turned to focus again on the wreckage of Kari’s airship. Rom’s eyes focused on Cousins and Favo and saw the xanos’ tail come crashing down on what appeared to be Kari wearing some kind of armor, but instead of crushing her was caught. All the while, Yu flew in complex circles around the xanos’ head, serving more as a distraction and irritant than as a combatant.

  Rom stood, summoning the great sword to her hands, her wounds already fading or forgotten in the face of greater risk to her friends. She took another deep breath and leapt the remainder of the distance between herself and the xanos in a single bound. Through the air, errant tears marked a brief shimmering trail behind her. A small, quiet voice in the back of her mind promised that she’d mourn, but not now.

  Chapter 30: The Pros and Cons of Being Enormous

  “Hurry up!” Kari yelled back over her shoulder at the two men. She twisted the xanos’ tail in her hands, bringing it between her and the fanged maw that withdrew rather than risk wounding itself. Instead, it snapped shut in a ferocious display of aggression, and twisted around to find a better angle for biting the shiny annoyance.