by Lee Bond
“What happened?” Garth asked curiously, still keeping his one good eye on the King. The gang of smashers inside the massive robotic body still hadn’t managed to get the fucking thing to stop flailing its arms and legs around, which meant –according to Jimmy himself- that the old boyo had some internal defenses not properly smashed. According to his host, like as not they’d be in there for a long while still, if some weren’t already done for. “To the King? To make him go, ah, ‘gothic’.”
The two of them were leaning just inside a shop that looked suspiciously like a bakery. The rest of Jimmy’s gang were doing as they’d been doing, though from Garth’s vantage point, they were half-assing it pretty seriously. Several seconds later, a few of the more skilled Kingkillers were actually goofing around, running up and down the legs and arms even as they flailed and hammered against the ground and the surrounding buildings. Garth rolled his eyes at the antics. Idiotic gearheads and suicidal Deep Strikers would get along like houses on fire.
“You can’t see it properly from here, but there’s this … building, I guess you could call it, right in the middle of Arcadia. Kind of like a gem or summat, floating high above the whole of everything. ‘s called the Armory. Dunno why, really. Whole time I’ve been here, it’s been dark. Until a little while ago, that is. Went on all of the sudden a bit ago. Anyways, lots of people say Blake went emotional when the Armory shut down. He had all them Kingspawns built all over the damn place to keep us busy, I ‘spect. Whilst he works on his … issues.”
Jimmy’s story jibed with Meechy’s frantic words. Garth winced sympathetically when somebody running up an arm got bashed against a wall. Jimmy roared his approval. “These … Kingspawn … points. How do they work?”
“Simple, really.” Jimmy was enjoying answering all these questions, something he thought he’d hate for certain. Made him feel loads smarter than he was. Oh, he knew Kingsblood had made him less keen on numbers and conversation like this than he’d been on the outside, and that were fine, being able to calculate all that … stuff that needed adding up wasn’t a thing that needed doing on the inside.
Why, if he’d known sooner that being a mentor to new fishes would make him feel like a genius, he might’ve stopped his revenge on Peemes sooner!
Running calloused fingers up and down the nicks and grooves in his arms, Jimmy continued, wondering in the meantime when in the damn hell those smashers and crushers were going to get up in the brainstem. “The Kingspawn points are pedestals, yeah? You can find ‘em practically wherever. Great big huge pedestals, with a place for you to put your hand.” Jimmy slapped his hand against the wall, splayed it out until the extra fingers stretched wide. “It counts the Kingsblood in you, you tell the pedestal how many you got in your crew, then get them all to slap their hand down on that dais.”
The Iron King in the courtyard howled furiously. Jimmy’s host scattered, a flock of weapon-toting crows.
Jimmy grew instantly alert. “They’re in the brain now. Won’t be long now.”
“And then what?” Garth asked, trying to puzzle out the point behind all this mayhem and … general fucking weirdness. While he was admittedly a noob in the woods, from where he stood, none of it made any goddamn sense.
“Well, then the King rises majestically up outta the dirt and mud and we start bangin’ away at him until he explodes. Then we collect our prize winnings and fuck off to Kingspawn Bar, don’t we just? We loiter about until those of us who’ve been done for are put back together by their Kingsblood and we hand out their share.” Jimmy howled madly as two of his crew came crawling out the King’s noble beak. Two more popped out an earhole. “Them as pop inside the King are especially mental, fish. Best to mind your P’s and Q’s around ‘em. Now, watch.”
The King started thrashing crazily, different parts of his enormous body spinning and gyrating as whatever the crushers had done to its brain took full and total effect. The bulky metallic body, all gears and cogs and pneumatic pumps and steam engines, started rippling and flexing. Partially formed new arms grew out of a forearm, only to fall off. Once the shed parts struck the ground, they burst apart at the seams, spilling shards of metal everywhere. Huge plates on a leg literally popped right off, flying through the air like guided missiles towards the huge geared door; they struck that exit in rapid succession, exploding into bits.
Then the seizures kicked in. As Garth watched, the King started kicking and jerking spasmodically, somehow terribly different and far more … real than before. It was like looking at a real man suffering a Grand Mal fit. More and more bits of metal began sloughing off the outer skin of the robot. The King groaned and moaned piteously. The din of metal being over-exerted, being pushed past its limits, filled the courtyard, rising above the moans and wails of the King, until the whole world seemed to be nothing but metal, bending and twisting under catastrophic pressure.
Garth wanted to clap his hands over his ears, but didn’t. He felt Jimmy watching him sidelong and couldn’t afford to show any weakness. Until he learned everything he could from the man, until he could find a way to get away from Jimmy and his crew, he was going to have be hard as … well, hard as Iron.
A shivering ripple forced the King to arch his back until it was bent nearly in half, the strange cog-work filigree that was the monarch’s hair sweeping the back of ravaged robotic calf muscles. The robot let out a pathetic, almost apologetic-sounding bleat. The damn thing’s massive lamplit eyes turned on Garth and a strong grip of sudden fear seized his unfortunately mortal heart.
“’s like he’s lookin’ right at you, hey?” Jimmy whispered, awed. “Happens sometimes. Some of us think that somewhere in Arcadia, the real flesh and blood King is strappy-strapped into some sort of machine that lets him look out through his robotic simulacrum, right, and that look he just gave you … that’s him, seein’ us like it was the first time, seein’ his eventual death. Me, I don’t fink so. Not at all. Naw, it’s just a moment like all the rest of feel as our light starts to go … Whoopsie daisy! There he goes!”
As Garth stood there, leaning heavily against the door frame, internal workings of the King started screaming like overwound winches. The King’s body slammed chest first into the ground, shaking the foundation of the courtyard like a giant’s footstep. Then it reversed course, slamming back into legs, then forward, then backward.
With each blow, more of the King shattered. First the chest broke loose, falling like heavy battleship plates. Then the legs cracked open and the gears and pistons shot straight up into the air. Then the ribs exploded to launch across the far side of the courtyard, literally shooting into the opposite walls like machinegun fire. Then the arms fell off, revealing huge iron bones that … Garth squinted. Huge iron bones that started flaking the moment they were free of the body.
The King’s body rose from the hips one last time. As it became fully upright, the metal monarch let loose one final bellow full of despair and woe. It toppled backwards, nothing but spare parts for the scrapheap. A few bits and pieces here and there continued twitching or spinning in their sockets but those, too, eventually gave up the ghost.
“Fascinatin’, hey?” Jimmy applauded once more, then gave a sardonic bow. “King’s done for. Come on, fishy. Let’s get out there. You don’t want to miss this next bit. It’s the tits.”
Garth followed Jimmy out into the courtyard, eyeing all the debris with the same level of caution he’d once given God soldiers. He was doing his best to freak out quietly, wondering how in the goddamn world all these mental rejects could be so blasé about what they were surrounded by; as he walked by a particularly large chunk of arm, it started flaking and peeling, shedding parts of itself like so much blackened snow.
Garth fought the urge to barf until everything he’d ever eaten came out in one massive burst. He settled for shivering like he was in the arctic, naked, hugging a snowman.
Even without The Eye, this was proof, if with a bit of a twist on the tale. The Matter Zombies of Gorensworld had
flaked and fallen apart like this towards the end, when The Cloud’s cohesive properties had begun failing. Where they had been unstable, able to cause Cloud-infection simply by coming into contact with unaffected matter, it seemed that Dark Iron King Blake’s version was … well, not stable. Stable would keep this destroyed robot from flaking to pieces before his very eyes.
Non-infectious, then. Several of Jimmy’s goons were wasting time kicking the King’s decaying body to bits, cavorting through the resultant black clouds of matter like they were kids during the first snow of the year.
“Okay.” Garth pointed wretchedly at the fools. “Okay that … that’s fucked up.”
“Post-battle euphoria, fishy.” Jimmy came to a stop by the dead King’s noble skull. All the men and women in the crew that could still walk hurried up. Jimmy smiled wide. “Well done, gang, well done indeed. First rate kill in my books.”
Staunch Mel furrowed her brow at the fishy, who was busy staring at the corpse of the King like he was going to upchuck all over the place. “Why’s he still alive, then? We done for the other fish. Why’s he still floppin’?”
The gang murmured their sullen agreement. Most of them were still trying to figure out why they’d come all this way with the King in the first place. Urban Kingkilling was the hardest of all, especially when they called up one as big as this one had been. Far simpler to do battle on an open plane. Why, they’d lost half their gaggle on this mad run to an empty Estate, with many a poor fellow impaled upon trees or crushed under boulders!
Jimmy raised his hands against all the shouting. “Hold on, hold on, now … now just hold on a moment or two, yeah? All them questions will be answered in the pub, sure enough. I promise. Old Nicked Jimmy ain’t a liar … heheh, well I ain’t lying right now, let’s say that, shall we? I will say this on the route we took to get here. It won’t happen again. Not never. And … it’s because of this fishy.”
Garth felt two dozen pairs of eyes turn on him. He waved feebly. “I’m, a, um, blacksmith?”
The cacophony that rose from the questionable answer was remarkable. Jimmy raised his hands again, and his beady eyes started calculating the chances of his survival should he need to fight his own crew. It’d happened before. Some few crews had copped to his betrayal at the last minute and had come at him. Lucky for him, then as now, he was stuffed full of the crudey-crude. The Dark Iron elixir in its roughest form made him one monstrous beast if push came to shove and as he waited patiently for his men and his women to shut their gobs, he saw the same thoughtful looks from some of them.
Then, as expected, Jimmy saw a glimmer of understanding, a faint nod. “’struth, friends. Why, this here fish,” Jimmy clapped a hand lovingly around Garth’s shoulder, “he guessed the height and weight of our King as it was coming to crash down in this courtyard, all at a glance. Used the proper engine-talk we’ve heard before.”
Staunch Mel’s eyes gleamed. “That means…”
Jimmy interrupted. “It means what it damn well means and I’ll say what that is when we’re sitting in our pub, drinking and carousing, all right? We got more important things to deal with right now, yes?”
And with that, Jimmy pointed high above their heads. As he pointed, three sonic booms split the sullen silence of the crew.
It was all about timing, it was.
***
Garth followed Jimmy and a few of the others as they moved away from the giant metal corpse, all too aware of the hostility coursing through most of the man’s crew; it seemed the only thing keeping them all from trying to pull Nicked Jimmy to pieces was Nicked Jimmy himself.
That meant Nicked Jimmy was even tougher than he seemed.
Then, because he was all sorts of curious about what the sonic booms represented, the ex-Specter turned his eye back to the sky.
“Our prize, fish, our prize falls from the very tip-top of The Dome itself.” Jimmy remembered the first time he’d seen the canisters fly down, recalled to mind easily enough the awe … first times were always the best. “Now watch what happens, hey?”
The impact, when it happened, was … underwhelming. Launched from the top of The Dome, the three capsules should’ve shattered the courtyard into unrecognizable chunks of stone and mortar. Instead, each one collided with the corpse of the roboKing with a muffled thump.
“That’s it?” Garth took a step forward, stopping when Jimmy grabbed hold of his arm. “Huh?”
“Don’t want to go out just now, fish.” Jimmy jerked his chin, eyes shining with hunger.
Garth followed Jimmy’s chin and his jaw dropped. Only a bit, but it dropped.
The tops of the canisters had opened. The King’s metallic corpse was decaying with considerable speed now, decomposing into billions and billions of tiny black flakes that swarmed through the air, a blizzard of darkened specks turning the courtyard into a macabre inverse whiteout.
As –Garth assumed based on nothing other than what he was seeing- as every single piece of the King that had been a part of the original was reduced to black snow arrived, each of the three canisters started humming noisily, sound like giant vacuums as they started sucking the stuff in, turning the swirling storm into twisting, flexing tornados.
“That’s…” Garth’s throat betrayed him. It locked up tight and wouldn’t let him speak.
“Amazing, hey?” Jimmy licked his lips hungrily, as did everyone else. For some, Nicked Jimmy knew, it’d been a month or more since they’d had a taste of Kingsblood. For him, because he’d killed so many kings, hunger for the stuff was a constant companion.
“I…” Garth fought against another surge of bile and another shiver of blatant terror, “I was gonna say super fucking gross, but sure, amazing is definitely a way to go.”
In the courtyard proper, the three canisters finished vacuuming up the last of the King’s … matter. Lids slammed shut with the grinding of gears and a gnashing of cogs. Unseen before, lights started flickering from red to green.
“Come on, fishy-fish, let’s head back out and get our prize.” Jimmy shoved Garth out into the courtyard. Everyone laughed, and they headed out as well, bodies aching for the taste.
Garth eyed the canisters thoughtfully. They appeared to be made of wrought iron, the same stuff as the King. Jazzed up with filigrees of fanciful gears and cogs and spiraled grooves and tarnished brass, they certainly looked like they belonged in a fanboy story of steampunk gone wrong, only Garth knew that wasn’t true. Whatever the canisters were made of, it wasn’t iron, didn’t need the meshing of gears or the hydraulics.
The lights on the sides of cylinders started turning more green than red. On all sides, Jimmy’s crew started dancing from foot to foot, capering like madmen at a Burning Man party. Their faces grew flush. There was a sinister sheen to their eagerness, one that gripped Garth’s heart. They were addicts, all of them…
But to what?
One by one, the canisters’ lights went green and stayed there. Plumes of steam puffed out the top. With a ratcheting clank, cavities in each cylinder popped open to reveal a four-gallon glass container. Jimmy grabbed one out, motioned to those he considered lieutenants in his little army to go ahead and claim one of the remaining three, and stalked up to Garth, hoisting his prize.
“You see, fishy-fish?” Nicked Jimmy hoisted the brass-wrapped glass jar high above his head. Everyone cheered. Twelve gallons of Kingsblood! A major achievement, sure enough. Those as played on the furthest ring would be hearing of this and they’d be trying to do the same in no time at all. Jimmy brought the huge vial back down and proffered it to the fish. “Kingsblood. The Vicious Elixir. Dark Iron. The crudey-crude.”
Garth took hold of the prize. The brass frame holding the very thick glass was marked ‘001-Kingsblood’ and was warm to the touch. Inside, a heavy-looking substance swirled of its own accord. Even without a microscope, it was apparent what he held in his hands. With a surge of horrified insight, Garth saw instantly what was wrong with everyone in the crew, understood what the
grooves and nicks on Jimmy’s arms were really made of, comprehended what this was all about.
Everyone who killed the King was an addict. Their drug of choice? Perverted nanotech. Garth plastered what he fucking hoped was an awe-inspired smile on his face and handed the four gallon ‘vial’ back to Nicked Jimmy, skin gone clammy, heart racing to leap from his chest. What the fuck was this Goth… was this Dark Iron King playing at?
Jimmy accepted the prize back with a loud hooraw shout. He tucked it into a sack handed to him by someone, then turned to his crew. “All right gang, we’ve got to get the hell out of here in case them Gearmen show up to kick our asses for killing the King in an occupied Estate. We go the pub to divvy up! Oy! Before I forget! Some of you lot round up the two halves of Stupid Ferd and see him glued back together, hey? Carry him along nice and easy. The big lug did a fine job, hain’t deserve to be Ickford bound! There’s a good crew!”
The assembled host shouted their excitement then disappeared over buildings, silent as ghosts.
Garth watched them leave, lips pursed pensively. He knew what was coming next, or thought he did, and it probably wasn’t going to end well for someone.
Jimmy clapped a hand around Garth’s shoulder once more. “Come on blacksmith-fish. Let’s us get to the pub. Take a day or so, seeing as how you’re just a normal bloke. For the time being. On the way I’ll fill you in on how things work around these parts, maybe tell you what I’m suddenly thinking might be a good idea for all of us. How about that, hey?”
Garth smiled dumbly again, and started following his unwanted traveling companion.
Oh yeah, he knew what was going to happen when they all got to the pub, and it was definitely not going to end well for someone.
