Dark Iron King Volume I: Thy King's Will Be Done (Unreal Universe Book 1)

by Lee Bond

  Gerome sighed testily. “If I pretend to be interested, will you go away when you’re done?”

  A win was a win, even if it was a gimme. It was only fun being smart when you could tell other people. That way they could go ‘holy shit, man, that’s amazing’. Hopefully once the secret was revealed, Gerome ‘This Isn’t Sparta’ Dude would marvel at the amazingness of it all.

  “I totes do, man. You let me tell you what I noticed, and I swear I’ll fuck off. But … you gotta pretend to be interested. Oh. And. Um. I need to ask you a question before I tell you. Because otherwise I gotta go find some other dude. Tell the truth, though, okay? I’ll know if you’re lying.”

  Gerome, whose head was echoing ‘Sparta’ nonstop now, waved a hand. He couldn’t care less. Once they reached the light, they would pass into Hell itself.

  After that, there would probably only be a minute or two of life left. So really, it hardly mattered if he humored the madman between now and then, right? If it was Hell waiting on the other side of that light, was it not possible that letting the maniac speak could make life simpler?

  “Awesome. Just. Ok. Now. Be honest. When we were outside and I was busy doing my Kamehameha punch thing on The Dome, did you, Gerard Butler, feel or hear anything clockwork related? Like, at all. In your feet, or in your ears or wherever. Did you?” Garth already knew the answer. People not expecting to feel a huge thunking roll up through your feet and up your legs missed a step or two when walking up to the doors, and he’d been paying very close attention to everyone around him.

  Gerard Butler and the Harrison Ford Guy and Skinny Vin Diesel had all felt it. Harrison Ford Guy was at the back somewhere gnawing on his own arm because he was a legitimate crazy person and Skinny Vin Diesel was way up at the front, singing and whistling some weird song about how excited he was to meet the King. So, also crazy.

  Gerard Butler Clone was the only one who’d also felt the gears but was also not insane.

  It was this relative lack of insanity that’d prompted him to confront Gerard Butlerclone over the other two in the first place, and he was willing to bet money that once he admitted he’d felt something strange on the other side of the doors, that Monsieur Butlerclone would feel all sorts of better about himself and his life choices.

  Gerome nodded but otherwise didn’t respond. The feeling of those gears turning over had rumbled like thunder and lightning through his bones. Not pleasant. Not at all.

  Garth went to knuckle bump Gerard Butlerclone but his new friend stared at the proffered fist like it was a ticking time bomb. “Ok, awesome, whatever. No big deal. You don’t know the fist bump. So. We’re walking through an aperture built right into The Dome, right? Like, the actual physical Dome we saw, right? They call it The Dome of Gears or the TikTok Dome, though that sounds like something that belongs in Oz and not this shitty old planet Earth, right? But … that’s the deal, yeah? We’re walkin’ through The Dome to get to Arcade City? Right?”

  “Yerssssss….” Gerome looked around him. Looked into the darkness. Felt it on his skin. He retrained his eyes on the light at the far end of the tunnel. The pressure of the dark lessened.

  “Where’re the goddamn gears, Gerard Butler?” Garth shouted the question so loudly that the ten or fifteen prisoners nearest him scattered like flies. Some ran away to the front, others stopped where they were until he and his friend were all by themselves. Others still shuffled all the way to the back.

  “Okay, sure, I get they wouldn’t want precious mechanisms being monkeyed with by people en route to being fistfucked … haha, sorry, I’m swearing a lot, but that’s only because my girlfriend’s not around … anyways … yeah, um. I can even accept that The Dome was built with tunnels through the clockwork gears because that’s the kind of thing smart people get paid to concern themselves with, but … come on, Gerard Butler, fill in the blanks, buddy. I know you can!”

  “The sound?” Gerard Butler shouted, unwanted clarity blossoming in an otherwise fear-clouded mind. “Where … where’s the sound?”

  “Bingo!” Garth waved his hands around again, ignoring the pain in the one with staunch reserve. “If I were building a tunnel through a gi-fucking-gantic Dome that was stuffed to the goddamn tits with gears and clockwork and then I was gonna force idiots like me and you to walk through that passageway, you can bloody well rest assured that I wouldn’t waste time, money or effort making that place soundproof. All that thunking and chunking and tiktoking … Christ on a sidecar, man, that shit’d drive sane people crazy and crazy people insane! We’re prisoners. Off to Arcade City. Hell on Earth. Why not mess with us from the fucking get-go? I would. I totally, totally would. I’d even, like, have dudes jumping out at us and shit.”

  Gerard Butler took one long, thoughtful look at the weirdo with the one blue eye and the one solid grey one before stopping where he was. He blatantly sat down, then crossed his arms, daring the man who’d succeeded in terrifying him with one simple observation to stop and sit as well.

  Garth nodded. He understood. For everyone else walking through the silent, stifling passageway, the destination was all they could think about. Once they got to the light and the massive geared door leading out into Arcade City opened with gas-driven coolness, they were going to spend the rest of their lives trying to survive against guys like Meechy. They had no time or inclination to ponder the deeper mysteries of their new home.

  Chewing on his lower lip, Garth surveyed the darkness as he walked. There was depth to the voluminous blackness that swallowed sound and ate all light save the one beacon. Combined with what he remembered of The Eye’s charting progress from the outer wall, right now, right that very second, they should be trying to climb up a cog approximately the size of King Kong.

  But they weren’t.

  They were strolling through a poorly lit hallway that made your eyes go bonkers if you stared into the darkness too long, which –really- was hardly the sort of thing you’d expect from a thirty thousand year old mystery.

  Garth took another worrying look around. The gears were real. The clockwork existed. From The Eye’s efforts in mapping The Dome before it’d been shut down, it’d encountered the curious shifting roughly three hundred meters in. Armed with his knowledge of engineering and based on his current experiences of shuffling his sorry ass through The Tunnel of Woe, there was –should be- maybe another three hundred feet to go, all of it crammed full of gears, pistons, and other old-timey gadgets that fulfilled the inscrutable and unknown true purpose of Arcade City.

  Where was the machinery?

  Garth shelves his concerns as best he could. Without The Eye and lacking the adaptive morphology of his Kin’kithal heritage to suss the answer out as part of its survival method, he’d either find the answers or die trying.

  The ex-Specter pursed his lips, fixed his one good eye on the light, and kept trudging forward. It was the only thing he could do.

  ***

  It was all down to timing, really. It’d taken Nicked Jimmy a few tries to get that down, and there were still times when he screwed it up by either getting there too early or too late. If he showed up too early, they were forced to do for the King before the new arrivals walked through the great big doors and it wound up being a party. Get there too late, and all the arrivals were gone, just sort of wandered off trying to figure out what was going on.

  Them as did wander off fell afoul of the beasties in the bushes well sooner than later, as without the residents about to show ‘em the way of the world, they was lambs to the slaughter right enough. Either way, they’d all get done for. But that weren’t the goal, oh no, not at all.

  The goal was to get the fresh meat killed by the King. Get them stomped flat or bit in half or killed by a thumper or a crusher for being in the way.

  No matter how it happened, each time a handful of prisoners were killed before they’d even had a chance to assimilate was a thumbed nose at damned Warden Peemes. Nicked Jimmy laughed at the thought of that immaculately dressed, whi
te clad buffoon huffing and puffing through his moustache as he –hopefully- received another missive bearing names of the dead.

  And e’en if he didn’t? Well, so what?

  Revenge was revenge.

  Something happened down below, yanking Nicked Jimmy out of the delightful reverie and he started bawling into his megaphone; Stupid Ferd had got himself tangled up in one of the King’s ankle mechanisms and if someone didn’t get him out soon, the massive pressure would eventually scissor the great yoink in half. Two thumpers and a crusher caught sight of the bulky fool trapped half in, half out of the King’s ankle and left off trying to dismantle toes.

  The hydraulic lift system on the King’s left ankle –stretched out to its full length as the gigantic simulacrum stepped over an overturned cart- slammed down on Stupid Ferd as the massive foot struck the ground. Stupid Ferd grunted once, but didn’t go down; he’d been around the block, had Ferd, had killed himself nearly fifteen Kings with different crews and had himself a nice, full body of Kingsblood. It’d take more than one crunch to do for Ferd, and e’en then, they could just stick the gormless twat back together. Less than an hour after that, old stupid Ferd with his stupid laugh’d be back to it, right as right could be. Depending on how quick they got him back together, well, he might have another foot added to his already impressive height, but that were only of benefit to a Kingkilling crusher.

  A hideous whine filled the air as the King’s hydraulic tendons failed to close properly. Bellowing furiously even as he deflected oncoming attacks from the neighboring rooftops –launchers, flinging whatever they had to hand at their majestic monarch, were doing a better than average job this time around of keeping the giant distracted from what was going on down below- the King stopped where he was and brought his foot back up into the air.

  Nicked Jimmy grimaced.

  Yep. That’d do for Ferd, well enough.

  The King brought his foot down. Again and again, a building-sized jackhammer. The men on their way to seeing about cutting Stupid Ferd loose from his ankle prison got caught in the Kingmade earthquake and fell to the ground. One of them –Big Tim if Jimmy’s eyesight wasn’t failing him- beaned himself good and proper on his own bedamned spiked hammer. Head trauma. The worst sort of damage a bloke or gel could suffer.

  Tough Brock and Skinny Evelyn grabbed Tim, complete with spiked hammer sticking out of his head, and began hauling their cargo out of the way.

  Nicked Jimmy did the math in his head with the ease of someone who’d found a way to turn a lifetime of accounting into something more worthwhile. Big Tim had done the King more than twenty times in his life, and engaged in regular warfare with the gaggles closest to where his old crew had put up their feet, meaning he’d consumed somewhere in the neighborhood of ten liters of Dark Iron in his career as a crusher. To listen to the man’s endless boasting, he’d only been brought down five times.

  Jimmy nodded. Once the hammer was yanked out and everything sort of smooshed back into the skull, Big Tim would be back in the game in less than five minutes.

  Stupid Ferd, on the other hand, who was … yes, yes he were crying for his dear old mum now, an irritating stupid little thing the twat did on a regular basis when he weren’t getting his way, Stupid Ferd was about to be cut in half and unless they could get the half trapped inside the King’s foot straightaway, Ferd was going to be a long time coming back; both ends of the goon’s body would soon start dripping Kingsblood sealing them wounds up, healing him as best as the crudey-crude could. If the lad were truly unlucky, he’d wind up a freak in truth and well … he’d be Ickford bound, wouldn’t he just?

  Be a back-alley freak like the rest of them as failed so grandly.

  The King looked around, huge eyes gleaming and flashing like angry red suns. A cruel grin, full of gnashing gears and meshing metal spikes, spread across the giant monarch’s merciless mug. Still ignoring the persistent and continuous damage being levered at him from the remaining crushers, thumpers and launchers, their Dark Iron King turned and grabbed hold of the nearest building with both hands.

  “What’s he going to do then?” Nicked Jimmy bellowed orders for someone to take the building down. They’d already spent too long mucking about with Stupid Ferd and if the goddamn King himself didn’t take care of that moron trapped in his foot, well by God, Jimmy was going to order one of his own men to do for the fool. The edge of The Dome was just over there, for the love of God, and the steam issuing out of the vents and grills by the doors was growing thicker.

  With the way things were going now, they were going to bloody well kill the King in front of a fucking audience and that was the last thing Nicked Jimmy wanted; some of the fools in his crew had –from time to time when flush from a fresh kill- given away some of their own Dark Iron, given some fresh-faced fool their first taste of Kingsblood right there on the bloody spot. This version of their imperator was one of the biggest you could summon up, making the prize roughly fifteen or so gallons. Why, that amount would already be stretched perilous thin with the crew he had left!

  The King bellowed stentorian laughter as his grip on the building grew stronger. Nicked Jimmy started hollering again, suddenly copping to what their target was up to.

  “You fucking lot bring that fucking building down right now or so help me God I am going to come down there and kill you all myself, kill you all and drink whatever dregs of Kingsblood course through your weak fucking veins!” His demands were no good, though, and he –and everyone down there- knew it as well: buildings in Estates were amongst the strongest in Arcade City.

  They had to be, just in case a neighboring Estate wanted summat wi’out paying for it proper, though that hadn’t happened in ages. No, they’d be able to do the King in well before they could lay the sort of charges needed to bring down a single story house here in Sliver Hills.

  “Bollocks.” Nicked Jimmy jumped from his rooftop vantage point and started hurrying into the fray, dropping his megaphone and pulling loose his knobkerrie in one smooth motion. He blurred past a few confused crushers, shouting, “He’s gonna launch hisself into the fucking air! He can’t break that stupid fucking Stupid Ferd loose from his ankle on his own! He’s gonna shoot up like a King rocket and land somewhere and God help you if he lands outside the radius of attack! If he despawns, you will all be dead by dawn!”

  Only thing worse than killing the King too soon or too late was not doing for it at all; get too far away from any one them as had summoned it up, Kings did tend to wander back from whence they’d come, disappearing back into the earth with a flicker.

  Or, if there were tricksy gaggles thereabouts, that King could be stolen. No, no, no, this could not be allowed to happen!

  One of the launchers appeared at Nicked Jimmy’s side as if by magic, scribbling something on a piece of paper with a short nub of a pencil, trying to do math even as they ran full tilt towards the King. The geek –Alfonse, if Jimmy wasn’t wrong- started shouting to be heard over the din of the attacks.

  “The damage we’ve done to his legs and arms, sir!” Alfonse tried showing Nicked Jimmy what he was working on, but their looker clobbered a slow-moving pusher in the back of the legs with his vicious-headed stick as they ran past. “And … and The Dome, sir …”

  “What about it?” They rounded a corner and Nicked Jimmy had to stop for a moment. Gods, he hadn’t been this close to the King in over ten years. The stench of machine oil, of overheated metal, of that weird wet dog stink that was steam … it was a hot mess nightmare. And the sound! Oh, the sound of the all that machine workings inside their beloved metal King, clunking and chunking and thundering … Jimmy had no clue how crushers and thumpers could stand it.

  “If … if … I think if he launches him straight up … well, obviously his plan is to use terminal velocity and his weight to snap Ferd in half, yes?” Alfonse flinched when Jimmy looked him in the eyes. Jimmy’d done for a lot of Kings, more than anyone else in this new crew, more than twice as many as far as they knew.
He had a lot of Dark Iron in him. You could tell by the way his cuts were all shiny with the grim black metal. None of ‘em knew why Nicked Jimmy refused to move in a circle or two, why he was perfectly content to stay here drinking the crudey-crude or why he truly despised Ickford … but whatever. Some men liked where they were and there was no harm in that.

  Soon enough if he wasn’t careful, their looker would go grey, and that’d be that.

  “Yes. Yes that’s what he plans indeed.” The air was filling with smoke and steam. Loose rocks and bits of the King were starting to shudder and shake beneath their feet. The King was absorbing an immense amount of damage even as he tried to restore full strength to his arms and legs. The vast ‘cloaked back’ of the King –a twisted metal framework of girders, pulleys and gears all splashed with royal purple- was a ragged, molten mess of ruination. As Alfonse and Jimmy stood there, the dark light of the King’s inner workings was revealed. It was going to be soon. Too soon, and too far away. “What does it matter?”

  “Well, sir … Our King is going to shoot straight up into The Dome overheard, sir. It’s … it’s only about two thousand feet where we are right now. I … I calculate…”

  “Enough said.” Jimmy started moving again, slinging his knobkerrie. Alfonse followed suit. “Where do you reckon he’s going to land?”

  Puffing to keep up with the stronger and faster Jimmy, Alfonse gasped, “Near enough by the doors, sir. Isn’t that what you wanted? Isn’t this a prison break?”

  Nicked Jimmy laughed as he swung his heavy-weighted stick at poor old Alfonse’s head. The collision was messy. The skilled launcher’s head exploded in a bright splash of blood, bone and slithery black liquid. Head wounds of such intensity took the longest to come back from, and when Alfonse’s skull and brain matter grew back together again, he’d be lucky if he could remember the last six months, let alone what he’d just figured out. What he thought he’d learned.