by Lee Bond
The first and only thing that really stood out as ascent turned into descent were the walls. Finally, an explanation for why they were meandering around the countryside as though they were in some kind of latter-day super futuristic version of Tom Sawyer! The whole entirety –at least, as much of Arcade City as Garth could make out in his beleaguered state of mind- was sectioned off by walls, forcefully restricting people from wandering freely inward. Getting to Arcadia wasn’t as simple as walking there. Just as there were doors to get into Arcade City, so too were there doors to move further in.
As Garth rolled in mid-air in search of a position that he felt might be better suited to crash landing a second time in as many minutes, dim memories of someone mentioning that it cost Dark Iron to get to the next ‘level’ of Arcade City filtered up.
“Well, fuck.” Strains of Tom Sawyer as sung by Geddie Lee filled Garth’s ears. “Why in the hell couldn’t Barnabas have told me that? Why the big secret?”
***
Moxy Mollie watched the handsome man with the glass eye and the brass arms and the big hammer land with the others. It was a shame, really, that someone as recklessly brave and fine-looking as him should die so unceremoniously. “Oh, that’s it, then.” She said sadly.
“King’s just standin’ there, now.” Deezy chewed at a lip. The others were –whether they knew it or not- exuding just as much nervousness as he was, and for the same reasons. None of them had really come to admit it yet, but it was the truth.
They were afraid of Kings now. It happened. Oh yes, it happened all the time. All the time. Kingkilling was a risky business and the closer you got to your last time at bat, the more afraid you got because it seemed lately that the Kings, even the big ones, were tougher to kill than they’d ever been before.
“Why’s he doin’ that, then?” Deezy looked at the man who’d hit the ground. Obviously, the poor fella had used his last rational thought before striking at terminal velocity to spin around so that when he did make that swan dive onto unforgiving earth, he hit with his back. The looker admitted to himself as how if he’d been the guy accidentally sending himself flying not once but twice into the air like some kind of bomber’s grenado, well, he’d do whatever he could do to keep his corpse groundside.
Deezy repeated the question as he and his crew turned to wait for the King come their way. With the summoning fool all dead and squashed, a King such as this ‘un locked on to a gaggle if one were near enough and Deezy knew for cert he and his were well within targeting range.
The crew exchanged puzzled looks with each other. Between them, they had six hundred years’ worth of experience in killing Kings and –disillusionment at their future prospects in the Game of Games notwithstanding- not a single one of them knew of any moment where a King had strolled along the pasture as calm as you please once ‘is caller were dead.
Why, the King had even stopped roaring. It were well eerie. Add that silence to the fact that this King was fully formed, complete with proper looking metal clothes and all and … it made Deezy feel inexplicably tiny.
Obese Pat pointed to their monarch. “Why’s ‘e all proper-like? Ain’t never seen a King wiv a shirt on before.”
Deezy knew the answer to that one. “Summat to do with the area, I reckon. Way out here it’s likely that there’d be only the one crew, right? No need for it to look like a skellington with metal skin only here and there, right? A citified King, well, now, one o’ them can get caught betwixt two buildings, as we’ve all seen, and so it needs parts of itself to grow grabbers and shifters, right? Out here, right? Different sort of story, I reckon.”
Deezy cast a withering glare over his gaggle, daring anyone to call him out on the fact that he were doing nowt but spewing out made-up guesses.
Obese Pat looked like he wanted to say something, but gave up. The world were a well strange place.
“This don’t make no sense.” Deezy calculated the distance between them, the King, and where the Kingkiller’s corpse should be. “Our Metal Monarch could cover eight hundred feet in two steps if he were so inclined. Anyone remember any time when a King didn’t bugger off when his callers were dead?”
“It’s … fuck me …” Garth leaned on his hammer, watching the King along with the rest of the clueless crew, “it’s cos I ain’t dead. Yet.”
Large Ronald, Riddled Smitty and Moxy Molly all gave shrieks of panic and bolted like scared rabbits.
Deezy Cue turned slowly around, hand inching towards the buzzknife at his waist. Obese Patterson, who’d been holding onto his chainsaws since the whole affair had started unwinding, flaunted them menacingly at their unexpectedly alive and thoroughly unwanted guest. Coralline Criss pulled a scimitar from her back and started moving to Pat’s left.
“We don’t want no trouble, mister.” Deezy Cue said calmly. The man with the golden arms and the big hammer and the … was … was that a liberated Gearman horse eye grafted over one of his peepers?
Deezy licked his lips worriedly and started waving his hands nervously. A second or so later he realized he was holding a buzzknife and that their visitor was still just leaning on his hammer with this ‘are you serious’ look on his mug. He obligingly dropped the buzzing blade and watched it scamper off towards a bush.
“Well this is just awesome.” Garth replied with a cheer he most certainly didn’t feel. He waited for the seriously fat wardog and the lovely-ish gearhead –she’d be far more attractive if she didn’t have creepy flat dead-looking robot eyes high on her forehead and smooth patches of skin where her real ones used to be- to properly pay attention before resuming. “Um. Can one of you, like, hold my hammer for a secco?”
Off in the distance, the Big’Un started slowly tromping forward, while the other three members of the crew circled around behind him. Garth made some noises with his mouth. “You, uh, you don’t got all day. I dunno why Kingzilla over there is taking his sweet-ass time all of a sudden, but he’s got a kingboner for me and I will bet all of your lives he’ll take super fucking offense to the three dicks who’re planning to kill me from behind.”
DarkEye perked up with some interesting tidbits on the three in front of him; the one with the squint and the binoculars called himself Deezy Cue and was the looker/leader for the group. The ridiculously fat –like Kingpin fat- monstrosity was, boringly enough, Obese Patterson and the creepy lady with the forehead eyeballs was Coralline Criss. DarkEye suggested through simple ‘life meters’ –which it humorously put above each person’s head- that Deezy, Pat and Criss were on their last legs.
So. His systems weren’t entirely compromised by Kingsblood; this video game-ish aspect was something The Eye did –had done- when it’d been feeling … impish. The Engineer took a small bit of solace at this sudden resurgence.
Garth shifted from leaning on his hammer to a grip that implied very seriously that he would smash the fucking shit out of all them in a damn hurry if they so much as twitched in his direction. He gave them all a shark’s grin that screamed ‘hey, I just launched myself twice into the air and didn’t die so I bet I can murder you all before you know what’s goin’ on’. Just so they could all appreciate the gravity of the situation.
Deezy tut-tutted with his hands, then glared furiously at Obese Pat. The fat bastard was going to be renamed ‘Ridiculously and Unconscionably, Not to Mention Probably Headless, Stupid Pat’ any bloody second now. Criss put her scimitar down on the ground and stepped away. “Smitty, Al, Molly … if you could all be lambs and come ‘round this way? Our … our friend is feeling uncomfortable with you on his backside.”
“Hurry up hurry up hurry up.” Garth couldn’t be sure –every time he turned his eyes on the King, DarkEye went all sputtery-spastic and refused to be any help at all, so very much like The Eye in every respect- but it seemed that Kingzilla was picking up speed.
The hidden gearheads hurried to their looker’s side. One of them –DarkEye labeled this one ‘Riddled Smitty’ and he had more life left to him than any of Dee
zy’s crew- started whispering behind a cupped hand into the leader’s giant fucking bolt of an ear.
Deezy Cue blanched. The others in his crew backed away, then fled. “Well.”
Garth held his hammer out for Deezy. “I need for you to fucking hold this fucking hammer, Deezy Cue.” Garth shook the heavy hammer at the man, who looked like he was about to ask how he knew his name. “I didn’t think this part through very well, asshat. Put your fucking hands on the shaft right beneath the big heavy part and fucking hold it still.”
Deezy nodded rapidly, unable to stop his head from shaking. He reached out and wrapped both hands around the incredibly detailed hammer, just below the head as directed, gasping when the weight of the thing nearly caused him to drop it. He blanched and spat out an apology as the dark-haired, one-eyed wild man with the forever-moving brass arms glared angrily.
“Okay. Okay good. Now, Deezy,” Garth flicked a few very small toggles on each of his forearms in rapid succession. The internal workings of his … well, Garth guessed they counted as bracers … began shifting. The ex-Specter looked first to the King, who was less than fifty feet away, then back to Deezy, who looked like he was deciding whether to barf or to try and kill him, “Now Deezy, some really weird shit is going to happen in a second. I don’t know if my hammer is going to blow up or what, and, um, given how little Dark Iron you’ve got in your blood, let’s just say … if you blow up, dude, I am totally sorry.”
Garth reached out, spun three cogs on the hammer to deactivate the pressure plate and prepared himself for what was either going to be the coolest thing to happen under The Dome since The Dome got put up or an hilarious addition to ‘Most Stupidest Deaths’.
“What…” Deezy Cue didn’t have time to finish his sentence. The unnamed man with the hammer … punched each side of the hammer with his geared up fists.
When nothing awful happened, Garth grinned. The internal workings of the hammer bit his knuckles as intended, and a curious decrease of pressure radiated outwards from his flesh as dreaded Dark Iron began flowing from him and into the hammer.
Satisfied for the moment that everything was okay, Garth held his breath and twisted his fists slowly, rotating the face plates of the hammer until his thumbs aligned with the ground. The hammer jolted like a thing alive in Deezy’s hands. To his credit, the terrified gearhead held on tight, eyes shining with the calculating interest Garth had learned to recognize in everyone with the crudey-crude in them.
The hammer jolted a second time. Garth pulled outwards and the hammer plates came with his fists, revealing fiendishly intricate clockwork guts. Cogs and gears started moving quickly now, literally crawling out of the guts of the hammer like insects, pulling the shaft up through the head of the hammer itself.
Deezy Cue opened his mouth to say … he didn’t know what. Words were failing him. He watched on in awe as bits of the hammer danced and spun across the man’s hammer-connected knuckles like mechanical fairies. Then he did shout a wordless bark of surprise as the man’s arms, all gear-y and cogged up like some fantastic machine started clicking and clacking and opening up to accept the addition of what was coming off the mechanical mallet. Before his very eyes, the … the … Deezy looked into the man’s eyes.
“Are you a wizard?”
Garth laughed and shook his head, but didn’t respond. Were it not for DarkEye controlling the Dark Iron flowing under his skin, through his metal arms and into the hammer, none of this would be possible. The ex-Specter doubted that there was any blacksmith or artificer or tinkerer in the known world of Arcade City capable of producing anything remotely like this. “No,” he answered wearily, “not a wizard. I’m just some guy who’s good at building stuff.”
And even better, he thought morosely, in destroying stuff.
Deezy stepped back the moment the last of the hammer’s shaft broke apart. He wanted to turn and run towards his gaggle. They stood not more than fifty feet away, shouting and calling his name, but … he couldn’t. He was witnessing a miracle.
All that remained of Thumper’s hammer was the head, which was itself very nearly depleted; the odd smith’s fanciful arms had absorbed most of the machinery and was waiting for the final bits to be broken apart, so the engineer complied by twisting his fists back to their original position. Then, too fast for Deezy to follow properly, the … impressive … man shoved his clenched hands together through the skeletal remains of the once-complicated machinery of the hammer’s head until his knuckles touch deep inside.
Mechanisms on his forearms grabbed hold of the remaining machinery and, when Garth felt his arms shudder as the final connections were made, the Kin’kithal pulled for all he was worth. The remainder of the hammer split wide and started spilling miniscule bits of metal and random gewgaws everywhere. The spinning maelstrom of parts on his limbs seemed to lurch and grab as many of these falling pieces as possible.
Deezy felt the rest of his crew stand beside him, and together, they watched the unnamed but obviously talented … wizard stand there, arms held outwards as they fairly hustled and bustled with frenetic, mechanical activity.
Garth watched his arms reconfigure themselves pensively. Things were popping and clacking like old-school car making robots, pistons and gears and what have you sending jolts of pressure up and down each arm as things whirled and spiraled and struggled to accommodate his will. Information that he was still having a hard time understanding fully came and fled quickly across the lens of his DarkEye, but as Garth watched and waited, more or less convincing himself that things were going to go poorly, the torrent of semi- known sigils and words dwindled to nothing.
The man who would Engineer of a new Reality gazed upon his arms, a big shit-eating grin on his face. When Barnabas –if, Garth amended hastily, all too aware that he had yet to actually fight Kingzilla, who seemed to’ve stopped to watch the proceedings as well, if the giant fucker’s lollygagging was any kind of indication- if Barnabas had a chance to see what his unwanted apprentice had wrought, well, that old fucker was going to be so jealous he’d shit himself unconscious.
“Here I am…” Garth crooned, paraphrasing one of the greatest songs he’d ever heard while in the pocket universe, flexing, waving his arms around, “born to King. I’m the prince of the Universe …”
The King bellowed, finally, filling the sky with more anger than ever. Deezy and his crew fled again, splitting up like startled crows taking to the skies.
Garth grabbed hold of the pressure plate that was currently attached to his right arm via a series of four flanges. It wouldn’t budge. “Are you …” he reefed on the plate, “are you fucking … shitting me … right … now?”
The fucking thing refused to move. Garth started running again, pulling on the recalcitrant pneumatic plate and cursing a blue streak.
The earth started shaking once more. The King was a-hunt.
***
King Barnabas Blake the One and Only knew peering through the eyes of the Big’Un was a terrible risk, but given everything the outsider was doing, a little telepresence was a risk worth taking.
Besides all that, the King reasoned, it weren’t as if he were there in the flesh and beyond all that once more, he were well confident this ancient Big’Un’d do for Nickels nice and proper. So it didn’t really matter one way or t’other what Nickels did or did not sense.
Now did it?
Confidence in the impending mechanical mayhem notwithstanding, Barnabas found himself seething with spittle-soaked rage at Garth’s frustrating skill. Here, inside The Dome, he was King!
No one else. No other man or woman who’d ever woken up one morning with an idea for a gun or a hammer or a sword had ever shown anything like this man’s skill or intuition when it came to Dark Iron. Why, even them two rascals in Ickford, Mickel and Harvard –both true geniuses in their own right and fair enough for all that- they’d be well challenged to come up with arms and armor similar to what the outsider had apparently dreamed up in a single night.
Oh, and aye, such restless work, too, such non-stop diligence … e’en he found he needed rest after more than four hours of working with King’s Will, he did, a bit of a moment to shut his eyes or do summat else as didn’t need such focus.
But not Nickels, oh no, not him with his smug face and twinkling blue eye! All day and all night and now he looked to add solo-Kingkilling with nary a proper drop in his blood to add to an already impossible resume!
It was almost as if the man had previous experience with nanotechnology! Which, as everyone who e’en knew there were such a thing as nanotech agreed were impossible.
Nanotech did not work anywhere inside Trinityspace, that much Barnabas Blake knew to be just as true now as it’d been thirty thousand years ago... or was it?
Since … vacating the throne to focus on configuring The Dome anew, King Barnabas Blake the One and Only hadn’t stuck his head outside –figuratively, of course- to see how the rest of the Universe was faring. What point to such mindless time wasting, with such important work going on inside?
Yet, in times past, yes he had, and in all that time, when he and Trinity had been unwilling compatriots –all whilst waiting until one or t’other slipped up- never once had the machine mind shown even the smallest or slightest advancement in nanotechnology.
The King grinned, then let out a soft chuckle. Unless, of course, you were willing to consider the loss of cities, continents, worlds e’en as ‘progress’.
Barnabas watched Garth’s arms absorb the mechanisms that’d once been Thumper’s hammer, a small flare of hot jealousy rising in him. Inspired genius indeed. Savants such as Nickels had been born to Arcade City before now, that were true as anything, but this skill! Them other geniuses, they’d only ever had Arcadian technology and concepts to work with. Nickels, though, well. His claims of being some kind of mercenary-smith of considerable skill in the outside held water, for the man was capable of adding ‘outside tech’ into his works with fair ease. It were purely distracting!
