Only days later, in a small sea fort Court in the midst of the Allatanc, did he show himself again.
In the midst of all this, Mr. Ruins kills himself.
Far feels the dagger blade sink in, feels the power of his bonds spill out, and like a glacier packed with TNT down a bore-hole, the whole thing explodes.
Gold showers out into the aether like spun sugar, like bondless atoms loosed from a QC cannon. Just another Wall, and Mr. Ruins knew it well enough to unravel.
Doe looks at him. "My turn," she says.
There is nothing else to say. They are both the same, made of the same stuff, only now Doe is going to die. Far leans in and kisses her tenderly on the cheek.
"Tell Ritry I love him," Doe says. "Tell Ray. And tell him Mr. Ruins did well."
"I'll be them all," Far says, "and I'll never forget any of it."
Doe smiles. "I like you, Far. I like what you've become." She ruffles his hair. Then she dives.
He watches as she flies toward the roiling blaze of the twin suns. It reminds him of La, falling down through the deathgate to the Molten Core below, only this time there is no coming back. Death in the bridge is a true death. Against the great red churn she becomes first a slim matchstick figure, then a tiny speck of dust, then nothing.
"T-minus three and counting," comes her crackly voice on blood-mic.
"Goodbye, Doe," Far says. "Thank you."
"Two, one."
He feels it as she impales herself on the knife, relinquishing all her bonds at once. So much power rushes out, and the explosion is the most beautiful thing Far has ever seen. It spreads outward like a new nebula, in seconds encompassing the whole of the right sun in yellow and blue bond-ripping petals, a massive QC eruption.
There is no sound, but the force gushes over Far in tsunami waves, filling him with snatches of memory blown out in a final act of heroism.
She was the candlebomb.
"Thank you," he repeats, as he watches the lightshow dim, and crackle, and resolve down to nothing.
Where twin suns had hung, spinning red and brilliant, now there is only one, steadily tingeing to gray.
Far turns, and flies back toward home.
MOVEMENT 3. THRENODY
TONE CLUSTER A-F
Standing atop the suprarene tank that held me prisoner, I feel the supernova as Doe dies. It washes out and changes everything through the bonds, altering the world like the godship tsunami.
Every soul on the bonds will have felt it. All of King Ruin's brood.
Ray stands at my side, looking out over the desert, as Far returns to us. There are four hands laid out for them, empty vessels waiting for motive control. We both feel it as Far is born into one of them. With him he brings the trace of So, La, and Ti, each to a body of their own.
But no Doe.
One by one these newly forged tones open their eyes. I kneel nd put my hands on them, as though these are the firing pods and this is the Bathyscaphe and I must welcome them home, but they are not and this isn't. This is the real world, and we will each be a part of it.
La and Ti see each other and lurch into an embrace. So staggers over to Ray and hugs him tight, sobbing against his neck. I look at Far, and he looks back at me. Together we have done this, and changed everything. I think of the depths of King Ruin's torment, when it was only the little voice in the back of my mind that kept me sane, kept me fighting.
"I couldn't have survived without you," I tell Far, while La and Ti alternate between sobbing and laughing hysterically.
"Nor I without you," says Far.
I step in and pull him into an embrace. He is taller than me, now that I am a woman.
"This is going to take some getting used to," I say, and he laughs.
"It's all going to take getting used to," he says, looking around at the six of us, here in the real world.
Down broken bond-paths, riding our suprarene across the desert, we find the shell of King Ruin in a stalled tank-crawler in the dunes a thousand miles north, in the thick of the desert. We approach cautiously, but no mind-bombs fall, no black-clad marines burst out with EMR-helmets buzzing to fight us.
I board first, alone, leaving the rest of the chord and our recovering army behind. I find all his hands here dead. Their drained and dehydrated bodies lie like husks of used-up corn in the corridors and control rooms.
The helicopters are all gone. The bonds leading away are faint, partially scrubbed.
Deep in the bowels of the massive tank-platform, I find his remnant. It is a withered old brown body, with the front half of its head cut away. Inside the skull, the bone has been polished smooth. It lies in a dried-up artificial womb, nestled into a frame that would once have allowed it to rest, hand in hand, gazing into the mind of its twin.
Now its twin is gone. There is dried blood everywhere. It would have been an emergency procedure, to sever the two. King Ruin will never be the same again, never be as strong.
The body that remains is female. Looking at it, it is hard to imagine that this strange, malformed, sad creature committed the atrocities I have seen. It killed so many, and for what? To end up here, like this, diminished in half.
On the wall is the writing, painted in old blood,
RITRY GOLIGH
Perhaps it is a warning. More likely it is a pledge. But there are others I have to worry about now, springing up from the weeds, now that the overwhelming shadow of their father is gone.
King Ruin's brood.
I remember everything, shared through the chord. I know what Mr. Ruins did, and what his warning was. I know there are others who are brutal, callous, cruel, perhaps even more so than King Ruin. He raised them to be that way. And there are so many.
They have seen everything I have done, and they have learned. Soon one of them will breach the bridge, and everything will change again.
CODA
There is no body, nothing physical to remember Doe by, because she never had a physical form in life.
We remnant tones of Ritry Goligh stand grouped together, around the empty coffin atop the helicopter deck of our suprarene. I, Me, stand at the head, as befits the captain of the chord. I wear a woman's body, dug out from the depths of King Ruin's Court, but I am still Me.
Ray stands by my side. Ti and La were born into twins we prepared, both with dark curly hair. So is in the form closest to an Asiatic we could find, a lighter-skinned arene with straight black hair. Far stands at the base of the coffin, opposite me, no longer a boy. He chose the body of a young man.
"We loved her," says Ray. "We always will."
I look around at them all. I am Me, but I am also Ritry Goligh. He is the chord that connects us, the tie that makes us one. I love him like I love Loralena and the children, like we all love the family we have left behind.
One day we'll go back, and we'll be her Ritry again. Our body may be different, but I dream she'll look past that. She'll see through to what I am, to what we have Become, and what we want to be again.
A family. Something to build upon, and grow.
We sing a song for Doe, before we tip her empty box over the side. It is something simple, an old war chant I used to sing in the subglacic with Heclan by my side, graysmithing, that sometimes I'd hum while Ven was in the other room, between tender bouts of making love.
I will teach it to my children some day. We will sing it with Loralena through the mouth of Ritry Goligh, and remember what it's like to be loved and carefree and open to the world. It's a song about fighting, and loving, and living again.
Being a chord, our voices are of course in perfect harmony. Or nearly perfect. There is no Doe.
Into the deep bore hole we have dug for her in the sand of this foreign land, into the site of an old Court named Memphen from which we have Lagged away all the memories of pain, we drop her empty coffin. Now we are six.
I pray to Ritry Goligh it's enough.
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enjoyed King Ruin. I had a blast writing it, especially the ruins locations- some of which I've been to real life versions of (Don Zachary's military bunker is based on the abandoned air bases I've explored in Japan - check out my book Adventures in Abandoned Japan to see them).
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I'd love to hear what you thought of Ritry's journey. Your reviews on amazon.com or amazon.co.uk will be greatly appreciated (check here if those links don't work). I also welcome and respond to all direct emails at [email protected]
Finally- is Rit's story over and happily-ever-after? In a word, no. Things are going to get bizarre for his chord in the final part of The Ruins Sonata, God of Ruin. There's an excerpt from God of Ruin just a few pages on.
Thank you again for reading King Ruin!
Michael John Grist.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael John Grist is a 34-year old British writer and ruins photographer who lived in Tokyo, Japan for 11 years, and now lives in London, England.
He writes dark surreal science fiction and fantasy, and explores and photographs abandoned places around the world, such as ruined theme parks, military bases, underground bunkers, and ghost towns. These explores have drawn millions of visitors to his website michaeljohngrist.com, and often provide inspiration for his fiction.
OTHER WORKS
Ruins Sonata
#1 Mr. Ruins
#2 King Ruin
#3 God of Ruin (upcoming)
Ignifer Cycle
#1 Ignifer's Rise
#2 Ignifer's Fall (upcoming)
#3 Ignifer's Life (upcoming)
Short fiction
The Bells of Subsidence - 9 science fiction stories
Bone Diamond - 9 weird fiction stories
Non-fiction
Adventures in Abandoned Japan – Exploring Japan's Modern Ruins
EXTRAS
If you enjoyed King Ruin,
look out for the star-smashing sequel,
God of Ruin.
An excerpt follows.
GOD OF RUIN
Book 3 of the Ruins Sonata.
In the battle to defeat King Ruin and protect the Bridge between souls, ex-Arctic marine Ritry Goligh tore his own soul into pieces. Now those pieces, embodied as six rugged marines spread across the tsunami-blasted world, are adrift without Ritry to guide them.
Their captain, Me, is addicted to dying in raids against the remnants of King Ruin's army. Ray longs for the love he lost. Far seeks the mythical heart of the Bridge, So is lost to her calculations, while twins Ti and La have split as far apart as possible. They trudge from bunker to bunker blinded by loss, mopping up holdouts from the war.
But the war isn't over. It's only just begun. From the ashes of King Ruin's defeat a godlike power rises, one that understands the Bridge better than Ritry ever did, and means to bring a flood so vast it will erase every soul from history. Me's only hope is to become a god himself, before everything he knows is gone.
Coming late 2014.
GOD OF RUIN (EXCERPT)
The Hollow Desert lies vast and golden around me. I'm standing in a new hand's body, ten stories high at the conning tower forward prow of King Ruin's old suprarene tank, looking out across the deep wilds of Darain sand. It is early afternoon, and a glorious molten sun beats down on the endless waves of dunes from a plastic blue sky, making them shine like the promised land.
It's just another raid.
Tiny grains of sand skirl across the metal-grille gantry beneath my combat-booted feet, blown by a hot and rising wind. The railing under my fingers is warm and smooth, polished by the hands of countless arene commanders dating back through the skirmishes.
I notice these kinds of details, when I know I'm going to die. It's strange. I notice that the sun is hot on my cheek, but a dry wind sucks away my sweat in seconds, something I can't get used to about the desert. I can't even sweat here. This body was made for the sand, but not me. I'm a marine, not an arene, and I belong in a Bathyscaphe deep within a Molten Core.
Not here. But here I am.
I look out toward the target. Beyond the undulating golden dunescape, studded with brownish-green outcroppings of cacti, lie a few pale tan escarpments of ancient rock rising in a spine-like ridge a few kilometers distant. They could be shark fins on a solid ocean of sand. Between here and there are three villages, hidden behind the vales of yellow dust, and beneath them, a Court.
It's a raid. It's a skirmish. It's just another way to die.
The air smells of corroded metal and old salt.
"This is the life," I whisper to myself.
Ray is standing behind me, and he laughs. "Cleaning up death camps is not my idea of fun."
I turn to him. He hasn't died since Becoming, hasn't had to, so he's still in the body of the first hand he took, a copper-skinned Darain dressed in full arene combat gear. He's leaning casually against a railing, picking at his teeth with a coil of gunspring, looking at me with his usual blend of cheerful insolence.
Of course, this is Ray. A year has passed, but still it's strange to see him like this, without his glinting tooth-loops, without his pure black skin. Instead he's added a strange kind of fractal pattern tattoo across his left temple, which I know is a memento of Doe. Without Doe none of us would be alive.
We buried her in the sand a year ago.
"I know what your idea of fun is," I say. "Is there anyone on this tank you haven't fucked?"
Ray laughs, rich and belly-deep. I laugh too. This is how it goes.
"Yena," comes So's voice from below, three decks down. She's in my head, like they all are now. There's no need for blood-mic when we're just facets of one mind split across the aetheric bridge. "He wouldn't dare."
Ray nods. "She's right, Me, I wouldn't. Yena's all yours."
"Very kind."
Things have changed a lot since King Ruin.
I know that Ray has been sleeping around so much because of Doe, because he misses her, and that's why I'll only gently tease him. I know how much it hurts him that she's gone, because it hurts me as well. What harm is there is him finding solace in lust? We're all addicted to something, now.
Far hardly ever leaves the aetheric soul, diving deeper and deeper for days at a time, searching for I don't even know what. La and Ti avoid each other compulsively, have put thousands of kilometers between each other, as some kind of reaction to finding the freakish husk of King Ruin's twin. It was just too much, I suppose. I think it's sad, but maybe they'll get over it.
So's addiction is the map. She never sleeps, only crashes, never taking her eyes off it voluntarily except to piss and shit. Even then she watches through the eyes of a borrowed hand.
And Me?
I die.
"We need to focus," I say. "So, give me what you've got."
We turn our thoughts to So. She is down in the suprarene's control cab, sixth floor, working on readouts, dials, and radar. Around her are three techs, she knows their names but I don't, which is what the schema of command is for.
The map can be displayed in a thousand possible ways, many of them only understood by So, but the main one is the master globe of the world. On the big screen at the head of the cab it slowly revolves, every
pixel of it resizable to greater detail, containing everything we've gathered, scraped together, and been able to scan.
It is a mass of red lines still, like one of those balls Art used to make by wrapping elastic bands on top of each other. These are the bond lines of King Ruin's Courts, and they are everywhere still, smothering the world like a cocoon, except for two small patches that are empty.
This spot in the Hollow Desert, and Calico.
It's taken us a year to come this far.
Most of our advances came in the days after King Ruin's fall, when his Courts and his brood were in shock. We ran a flash raid on Calico via Dactyl helicopters, taking out old Courts and brood-members with mind-bombs and dry-ice blasts. There were another ten or so hydrate rigs repurposed as Courts spread around within range of Calico, several buildings even in the center of the city, and a whole suburb that was gradually being turned.
Saunderston.
They'd had it for years. I'd ridden trains through it many times, along the Wall, but each time they'd Lagged the memory of what I'd seen, Lagged it from everyone that rode by. They had people strung up on lamp-posts and skinned, people hanging out of skyscraper windows knotted together like one long bloody cord of intestine, people bolted to the street and left to stand while younger brood members raced cars amongst them, scoring points.
King Ruin: A Thriller (Ruins Sonata Book 2) Page 26
