King Ruin: A Thriller (Ruins Sonata Book 2)

by Grist, Michael John

  I end their suffering, Lag as much of the horror as I can, and release them. I set the tormentor-hands to work as doctors and nurses, healing the damage they've done.

  On the level below, I find the glass zoo he boasted of. It stinks of formaldehyde and waste. I begin the awful process of birthing its victims shivering back out into the light, handing them off to hands that follow my commands and carry them away for intensive care.

  I find Yena and Naji by the sense in their minds, the faint memory of what they once were. They have been boiled so far down I don't know that much is left, but still I leave the hint in their thoughts that, when they are ready, there is still a war to fight, and revenge to be had.

  Exhausted with all that I have seen, I ride up to the suprarene con, where Ray is waiting for me.

  "No mind-bombs," he says. "Nothing inbound. He probably is worried we can take out anything he sends. I set up a simple Wall of hands on the third floor, so he can't get near us. We're already grinding away, and unless he comes to follow our tracks, he won't find us."

  I nod. "Good," I say. "I want to go outside."

  He grins. "Me too. Never seen a real sky."

  Together we walk up through corridors bustling with movement and action, all hands set to defense, set to succor and heal the maimed, set to begin the uprising. I let my mind float out, and know that for the first time in decades this tank-crawler is free of pain. There is a calm, and a burgeoning hopefulness, because now things will begin to get better.

  We ascend, releasing any more prisoners we find, those in line for treatment in the Court, Lagging the last fallow links to the King. We go up, following the straight lines and solid metal walls of this skirmish-era suprarene until finally we reach the top, and emerge into the light.

  Golden sun, and blue sky.

  Both Ray and I blink against it, the glow of the desert. All around us are rolling sand dunes, here and there broken by the dark fingers of old buildings leering upwards, spreading around our massive armored tank.

  I hold my face up to the sun and luxuriate in its touch. It has been all my life since I felt this. It has been since talking to Loralena on the wall, about her life growing up in the Dubian deserts, that I have imagined what it would feel like.

  Loralena.

  With that word, a wave of old memories comes flooding in, dropping me to my knees harder than King Ruin's horrors. Loralena. It is too much to have lost and now regain. Images strike me with vivid detail, as though it was only days ago that I went with my wife Loralena and our children Art and Mem to stand at the edge of the rollercoaster in Candyland, and tell each other stories about how it must have been. The touch of their cheeks on mine and the sound of their laughter makes me feel like I'm going to burst.

  "Daddy, can I ride the merry-go-round?" Mem asks me.

  I laugh. "I don't think it'll turn, honey."

  "But can I try? Can I imagine it turns?"

  As a father I can be munificent. I can give permission to a thousand innocent delights, with no cost to myself. This is the true renewable resource, and the source that my strength wells from.

  "Of course honey," I say, and think nothing of it, because it is life, was life, and every day brought more of it.

  I begin to weep, atop the suprarene tank, for all that I have lost, and what I may one day regain.

  Ray pats me on the back. I realize he has never felt this, not as I do, because he never lost it. These memories remained part of him throughout his dive. I was the only one Ritry Lagged, the only one he truly left behind. But Ray feels it now, through me, and we are together again.

  Together we sob on the hot, corroded black metal of the suprarene's open con, in the bright of the desert sun. This means hope, I think. They will still be alive. They will still be waiting.

  A time later, I stand. Some of the prisoners have died, just in being lifted from the stable misery of their punishment, and there was nothing I could do. Others seem too deeply lost in their madness, though there is time for them to recover. Some already show the fledgling signs of recovery.

  "This is our army," says Ray.

  I nod. I look into the distance, over the sun-scoured sands beneath which a vast number of King Ruin's sources of food have been buried, to the task that lies ahead. Mr. Ruins said it himself, to Doe in the White Tower. Cut all his Courts, and deprive him of the strength from their suffering. Overload him at the source, and force his sun to go supernova.

  There is only one of these I can do.

  For now, there are hands wandering all around us, through the corridors below and out in the dunes, gathering, working. We will fill them all up. We will hunt down King Ruins' Courts and empty every last one of them. We will hunt down his bonds and sever them, hunt down his brood and kill them all.

  In the distance, I wait for the supernova to come. This is the direction his wide hot bonds reached back to, and this is where we will find him.

  This is where Doe has gone.

  "She'll do it," says Ray. His voice is tight with emotion. "I know it."

  I clap him on his broad shoulder. It is strange to have to reach up to do so.

  "She will," I say.

  FAR G

  Far planned it all.

  In Spartan's Crag, after Ritry Goligh reached through the aetheric bridge and rebounded off King Ruin's golden shield, Far saw what would come, and began to plan.

  All the King's hands. They would be unstoppable, hundreds of them swarming out of helicopter dropships, EMR-helmet clad, and they would take Ritry Goligh. In an experimental Court they would break him open like an egg, and suck out all the juices from within. The King would have everything, would take his mind and his will and the bridge, and nothing would be left but a broken soul.

  Unless he broke himself first.

  Far adapted to save Ritry Goligh, as he had as a child in the EMRs of his parents, as he had under the torment of Mr. Ruins, as he always would. With the unerring power of the bridge coursing through him, he conceived a plan so impossible it might just work.

  They were going to split the tones.

  It had never been done successfully before. In graysmith divers with only the two-tone soul of their mother's pulse, it had always led to an unalterable schizophrenia, as two newly-made souls fought within the confines of one body.

  But they were not Ritry Goligh, and they had not dived the bridge.

  Far was first to hive off. He fled deep into the Molten Core, outrunning the pull of Ritry Goligh's conscious mind like it was the Lag. It felt like tearing himself in pieces, cutting off six sevenths of his mind, but he'd survived the incessant diving of his parents as a child, and he could survive this. He ran to the place he'd hidden a lifetime ago, behind the scarification wall within his Solid Core, and with a soul-deep tearing that hurt more than anything he'd ever felt, he passed through the aetheric bridge alone.

  The aetheric soul spread out before him, a universe so alive but so empty. Everything that meant anything was behind him now, and the galaxy of minds ahead was terrifying and vast. He huddled in a ball within the doorway of the bridge, sobbing for what he'd lost. There were monsters coming for him, he could hear them, monsters that would suck him empty from the inside, and he was already so few, so little, so nothing.

  He was alone, and any link to the Ritry Goligh that he once was was vague and foggy. Still he felt the rest of the dislocations, as Ritry tore himself into more pieces, as Doe, Ray, So, La, and Ti were propelled into the Bathyscaphe and sent plunging through the bonds to crash into the honeycomb shield around Mr. Ruins' mind, boring down into the sodden mulch of his Sunken Molten Core.

  Everything afterward was a kind of madness. Every wink of the soul's endless lights frightened him, every throb of the Suns at the soul's heart made him flinch. Through the faintest link he felt it as the only remnant part of their chord in Ritry Goligh, the captain Me, readied himself to be taken. He Lagged every memory that might help the King, cut Loralena and the children, cut Mr. Ruins, cu
t the bridge, cut everything, all more blows upon Far's reeling mind.

  He wept, but that was not his role. He sobbed, but that was not what he had to do. There was no Ray now to hold him, to play soft chimes off his skin. It was time to be the Far who killed, the Far who held firm, the Far who bound them all together.

  So he stopped crying. He stood up, and reached through the cracks in the aetheric bridge from the inside out. He was there with them as the five-member chord hung stationary in their firing tubes, unable to move. He was there as Me knelt amidst the horrors of Spartan's Crag, weeping for what he'd lost. Straining at his old scars, embracing this new thing he had to be, Far held them together.

  He kept Ritry Goligh alive. Because of him they weren't broken fragments of a single chord, but only outflung limbs of a chord diversified. He had to be strong now so they could all be strong. He was the foundation upon which they were built.

  While Doe panicked in her firing tube, he spoke softly into her mind, enough to make her move. He spoke softly into Me's mind as the torture began, enough to let him endure. And he watched.

  He watched as Ritry was punished and pieces were sloughed off him like skin from a snake, and held him together. He watched the lost chord battle through the wastes of the Sunken World, and guided them toward the one path that might offer them a chance.

  The White Tower, and the aetheric bridge.

  It was the only way to get close to King Ruin, a Iovian trick with Mr. Ruins as the horse.

  When Me came to the blast-door, Far would have killed him to protect the others. It would have ended any hope of becoming Ritry Goligh again, of recombining the seven shattered pieces of his broken soul from their muddy graves in the Sunken World, but he would have done it to give the others a chance.

  For Loralen, and Art, and Mem. For a life spent together, to keep King Ruin from ever finding them.

  But he didn't have to. Me turned back.

  Then came the last of the chord, Doe and Ray with a single pulse of Mr. Ruins as well, blasting through the bridge and into his waiting arms.

  Ray is already gone, out to the world to save Me. The next task falls to them.

  "It's me," says Doe, as Far's understanding creeps into her. "I'm the final candlebomb."

  Far nods. It could have been any of them. It is Doe.

  "And I'm the votive," says Mr. Ruins.

  Far looks at Ruins. He didn't know this would happen, not until the final moments. He'd expected to die bringing down the golden shield. But here Mr. Ruins has become a different man, and there is a chance.

  "I'll do it," says Ruins. "Anything for Ritry."

  "Then we have to hurry," Far says. "We have to do it now."

  He takes their hands, and with them dives into the aether.

  This is the soul, and he was born for it. It is dreams and possibilities all in one, endless minds playing out an endless iteration of the soul, expressing its love and its life an infinity of ways. Here there is King Ruin, who seeks to tear all things down, and here there is Ritry Goligh, ex-skirmisher, who seeks to build them back up.

  Together they soar through the shining universe, closing fast on the blazing twin red suns at the center. They grow vast as Far nears, filling the aether with angry red fire, crackling with a spiderweb chain of crackling bonds sucking in. The golden shimmer of their orbital shield spins and warps with their reflections.

  Far halts to hang near the burning orbit, feeling the searing heat of the Suns on his skin. The King may know they have come, but there is nothing he can do. This is the time for last words.

  "Can you bring it down?" Far asks Mr. Ruins. "You know him best of all. Can you unpick it?"

  "I can try," says Ruins.

  A long moment passes, as Far looks at Ruins, and Ruins looks at Far, and a simple kind of communication passes between them.

  This is the bridge. This is the soul. Here they can all be washed clean.

  "Tell Ritry," says Ruins. "That's all."

  Far nods.

  Ruins flings himself toward the shield.

  Far follows with his mind. He listens as Mr. Ruins reaches out to the sparking gold, recalling memories of King Ruin like a key, seeking for the space to slot them in. There are glimpses of parades past and a little baby found in a mudshed in the midst of Court, pride at his work with Napoleon followed by disappointment in his fall, aeons of dead souls sucked down for fuel, and somewhere within them Ruins finds the right note and it harmonizes through the shield, admitting him through.

  Eyes wide and straining, Far is pulled in after him, into a shield made out of memories woven from the deep past. There Far sees the beginning of it all.

  In ancient Ajyptia, in the deepmost rooms of a grand Faronic palace, King Ruin was born as a Siamese twin conjoined at the face, with eight newborn limbs splayed out like a bloody pink-skinned spider.

  The mother screamed, the father screamed, and the infants labored to breathe. They had no mouths or noses, only a faceless double-head, grossly large, quickly turning purple as each twin sucked the air from its sibling's lungs and back again.

  The midwife cut a hole cut in their double cheek, through which their first ragged breath came, and their first ragged screams went. This wound became its mouth, that it pressed up against the terrified wet-nurses who were forced to feed it in the dungeons of the palace. It could not see, could only hear. It was a spider with eight limbs, able only ever to climb itself.

  At one year old the Faroh tried to kill it, by smothering it in a deep-dug grave by the river. All it could do was hug itself and scream, but in its screaming it reached out and killed everything around it.

  It was a baby and did not know how, but the burial ceased. The rain of dirt down upon its overlarge head stopped, and it reached out further, to gather one simple mind to fetch it. It did not understand minds, had never seen the world before, but it knew it was hungry, knew it was terrified, and sought succor.

  The simple mind it found gave it succor. This was the first hand, which died after only four days, because it did not think to feed or water it. So it began to understand the endless hunger that was everywhere. It had to keep itself fed, and keep itself held close to a warm bosom to keep the terrible pain in its twisted body at bay, and it also had to offer that same treatment to others.

  Yet it discovered that to withhold that treatment offered treasures. The suffering as its first hand died offered relief for its own pain. It gave more succor even than food and milk. So it sought that. It found new hands, took shelter with then, and used their warmth and their pain to keep it alive.

  So it became strong. Years passed, and in hiding, in the shadow of the palace it had been cast out of, it fermented in the idling deaths of its hands, sucking down their souls, every bite better than any food crushed and delivered through the wound-mouth in its cheeks. It began to understand it was two minds, with two interconnected bodies, but it was also one. It wanted more.

  It learned to control the bonds in the air around it. It taught itself to see outward, through the eyes and ears of others, as well as inward, by mapping the inner folds of its twin Molten Cores, red stars that circled in perpetual orbit. There it first saw the door to the bridge.

  It had grown up cheating the Lag. There were four of it then, two warriors from each mind, to investigate each Core with, and they worked together seamlessly. By force of numbers they could overpower the Lag in either Core, allowing them to explore wherever they wanted. They found the door to the bridge at the center of a vast pyramid at the heart of an endless stone maze, and knew what was required.

  In seconds, carried forward by love of each other and a desire only to be closer forever, it Lagged the life from every soul in the city, and broke through the bridge. It dived the aetheric soul, from one core of its double brain to the other, permanently fusing its two souls into one with a blinding golden callosum.

  It never dove the soul again, because it never loved anything else enough, and pain was never enough to break the doo
r down.

  Still it tried. Driven by an insatiable hunger for more, it reached out. Atrocities were its satiation and it took whatever it wanted. It rode with Jinghis Kan on the battlefields of Ongol, with Aleksar across the Thracian divide, with Amethotep down the Nigh delta. It took hands whenever it pleased, through which it enjoyed the bodily pleasures its contorted frame would never allow, and to take revenge against the world for what it was.

  It never forgot the indignity of its birth. It inflicted some version of its own suffering upon countless millions, crushing them face to face so closely they couldn't move, could scarcely breathe, piling them up like grains of sand in a dune, like blocks of stone in a pyramid, left to wallow in a slow and agonizing death.

  It was all food.

  Centuries passed. Millennia. It took on children and lovers, enjoyed watching them grow and develop, some almost as strong as itself. They paid it tribute and called it the Suns, their father. The world turned, stable, upon an axis of its design.

  Then Ritry Goligh dove the aetheric bridge, and everything changed. One half of its conjoined mind was sleeping when the shock rang through its web of bonds like a thunderclap. It woke screaming, at once terrified by this new force, and hungry. It began to seek at once.

  Within hours it found Mr. Ruins, one of its wayward, disappointing sons. It found the trail of the one called Ritry Goligh through the air nearby, humming with a strange power it had never seen.

  It sent those hands and munitions that were closest, but somehow this Goligh defeated them, then disappeared. It scoured the bonds for some sign of him, it sent an army of hands to the Allatanc, in readiness for when he emerged, but when Goligh finally did emerge, he somehow escaped again. A quakeseed eruption blasted his hands to pieces, and tore the trail of bonds apart.