The Last Spellbound House: A Steampunk Dark Fantasy Thriller

by Samuel Simons

  Tears fell to the stone floor of the tunnel, and once again Jenna wished she were stronger, more capable of distancing herself from her emotions. She wished she could be more like Pyke, who always seemed so practical and level-headed.

  She had no way of knowing how dearly Pyke wished he could be more like her: adventurous and spontaneous; in touch with her own feelings and those of others; motivated by deeply held values and not by cold pragmatism.

  If she had known, perhaps Jenna might not have judged herself so harshly for her tears as she wept for Anabel by the dim light of her lantern.

  After slightly more than a minute of dashing headlong down the stairs, Pyke’s group emerged onto an unworked floor of grey-and-black speckled bedrock, in a cave-like chamber with an irregular twelve-foot ceiling. Raine, who had arrived well before the rest, was standing motionless with her back to the stairs, gripping her club tightly in both hands as though preparing for trouble.

  At the other end of the chamber, a metal door with an oversized rectangular keyhole was set into a frame in the smooth granite wall. To one side lay a set of humanoid skeletal remains, the bones so massive that they could only have belonged to one of Raine’s own people. As Pyke peered around Raine’s hip, the skeleton glowed white, rose from its resting place, and swiftly assumed a standing position.

  There was a flash of radiance, and where the skeleton had been there stood another Gigant, towering half a head higher than Raine at eleven feet tall. Instead of winter gear like Raine’s, she wore a helmet which hid her face save for her eyes, and a chain shirt under a gleaming breastplate of red-painted metal trimmed with gold. Her forearms and shins bore more red-and-gold armour, and her elbows and knees were protected by upper arm and thigh-guards with articulating hinges. In a sheath at her side was a blade which would have been the largest of broadswords for a human being, but which served her as a longsword. Every part of her equipment shone with a dim white glow, and her presence emanated a deadly confidence. Something about the apparition shook Pyke’s resolve, left him struggling against a preternatural fear which threatened to make him turn and flee against his will.

  Raine remained deathly still, and for a long moment even her breathing ceased. Then she spoke, her voice barely a whisper: “O misfortune… it pains me to see kin yet enslaved by the Ancients. Even death did not release thee.”

  “Who comes?” the luminous warrior boomed. Her voice was deeper than Raine’s.

  “One who would gain safe passage,” Raine replied, her solemn tone lending the words the feeling of a ritual. “I beg of thee a boon: grant me thy permission to pass this way in haste.”

  What’s this latest danger, Voice?

 

  “Who do you serve, honoured kin?” demanded the Revenant, placing one hand on her blade. “Know that if you answer wrongly, I shall slay all these weak ones who cower behind you, and drive you from this place.”

 

  Raine looked back, and her gaze rested for a long moment on Pyke. He could scarce guess what was going on in her mind.

  “The Dead Lord Tamelios,” Raine lied bluntly.

  There was a long pause.

  “I trust that in the time which has passed, our people yet know honour,” the Revenant boomed. “I can see in your eyes that you would sooner die than lie to thy kin. You may pass… but not these. Such shrinking things as humans and Seers are not to be trusted.”

  “They are under my aegis,” Raine growled. “To question their worth is to question mine!”

  The Revenant shook her head. “I cannot risk that they may have tricked you. I am revived in memory by the Queen of the Fae, given a second chance by her power. Where I failed one hundred cycles ago, I shall not fail now! None passes save for you, servant of Tamelios in whose word I trust.”

  “Kin, step aside,” Raine demanded, shrugging off her large pack as she spoke. “I would not fight you, yet it seems you leave me no choice.”

  “If I draw my blade, you and your fear-drenched wards are doomed,” the Revenant said, and there might have been a hint of sadness to her tone. “Abandon them and pass, or take them with you and leave this place unharmed. To choose otherwise is death.”

  “Not so.” Raine curled her lips back to bare her teeth. “I invoke Gag’dazget, the Duel of First Blood! By its rules, you are forbidden to harm mine allies until you claim victory.”

  The Revenant drew her sword. “I have no blood to bleed. I accept thy challenge, but I name the rules of Gag’razxut. If we duel, it shall be to the death.”

  “Then, as you say, I choose death… but not ours!” Raine surged ahead with her club raised.

 

  Pyke took in a sharp breath. What? Why so low?

  The fight didn’t pause to wait for the Voice’s answer. Raine bulled forward as though to collide with the Revenant, her club arcing to connect in advance of her. The strike passed harmlessly through the apparition as the Revenant stepped closer and to one side. As soon as the club was no longer phasing through her body, the Revenant struck out with her blade. Raine sidestepped deftly, avoiding the blade by a hair’s breadth.

 

  Raine redirected her club, revealing that her telegraphed blow had been nothing more than a feint with no follow-through. Raine’s new strike boomed with thunder which echoed from the walls, and blasted a hole the size of a human being into the side of the Revenant’s torso.

  As Pyke’s Voice had promised, the hole closed immediately. The Revenant, now too near to maneuver her blade properly, instead dropped the sword and stepped in closer. Wrapping one hand around Raine’s on the handle of her club and placing the other on Raine’s chest, the Gigant flexed her arms in a show of some long-lost martial art, planting one foot between Raine’s and extending both hands in a rush. The club was torn from Raine’s grip to fly across the room in one direction, while Raine herself was knocked backwards in the other.

  All of this had taken so little time that the Revenant was able to catch her sword’s handle before it ever struck the ground. She didn’t pause to speak, instead giving chase as Raine stumbled back against the wall.

  What can we do to increase her odds?

 

  If we don’t intervene, Raine will die anyway, as will thousands of people as the life-draining Working spreads to cover the Phoenix Kingdom. I’m prepared to take that risk.

 

  Pyke’s eyebrows rose. He had never conceived of using his secret insurance policy in that way. Will that be effective?

 

  With a torre
nt of information about the Hollow Scarab pouring into his mind, Pyke hurried across the cavern toward the fallen club. Behind him, Raine dodged aside just in time as the Revenant’s longsword dove in to stab at her stomach. The blade whistled past Raine and struck the wall behind her, where it shattered against the granite and re-formed in the space of a second.

  Pyke reached Raine’s cudgel and knelt next to it, unfastening a clip on the inside of his belt. The clip was an ordinary piece of metal, but clinging to it was a Relic of extreme yet specific power.

  At first glance, the Hollow Scarab was nothing but a lightweight decorative beetle ornament. It was styled after a scarab and coloured the iridescent green of an unknown species of that insect. On its front were six hook-shaped silver legs which clung tightly to its metal holder until Pyke worked the clip gently free of the Relic’s grasp.

  He placed the Scarab’s belly flat against the handle of Raine’s club, wrapped his free hand around the Serpent’s Tongue in his cloak, then murmured the phrase the Voice spoke into his mind.

  “Tor pakhas ravest, nen rash Rash vakhfahalist.”

  Join with this weapon, and decay all Workings.

  The Scarab’s six metal legs glowed white-hot, sinking into the handle of the club and holding it fast as Pyke felt the Res-connection forge itself.

  Unlike with every other Relic Pyke had ever activated, the result was no mere sensation of a tug. Instead, Pyke’s senses were blotted out. His body jolted involuntarily and went numb. As he struggled to remain conscious, his ears filled with the loud flutter of a book’s pages turning swiftly.

  Pyke found himself on his hands and knees on the stone floor of a new place: a workshop with strange machinery arrayed on a wooden bench bearing a vice at one end.

  He had no idea how he’d been transported here, but the workshop felt familiar, as though he’d seen it many times before. He tried to rise, but his arms trembled and failed to do more than hold his weight. An irresistible urge to cough rose within him, and he hacked a bloody mass onto the stone floor.

  He had failed, he knew. Again. This was the second vessel he had destroyed in an attempt to strengthen it with artificial youth and a greater capacity for Res: a mortal body simply did not seem capable of holding more than its proper share of power.

  Yet accursed Enviselas was able to do it. Pyke raised one withered fist as though to strike the floor in frustration… but the motion was more than his balance could withstand. He fell sideways and forward, and the impact with the floor shattered the brittle bones of his shoulder and collarbone. He lay there quietly, experiencing his vessel’s agony and watching the blood seep from it and into the drain-pipe set into the centre of his workshop.

  A sound from the distant doorway alerted Pyke to the presence of an unauthorized individual in his workshop. From the cadence of the steps, he could tell this was the same child from the nearby fishing village of River’s End who had been sneaking about his mansion’s grounds for the cycle and a half since he’d constructed it. Despite his attempts to frighten the lad off, the boy had continued to investigate, displaying the innate recklessness possessed only by the young. He knew not how the child had bypassed the locks on the main doors and the workshop, but that mattered little at this point.

  “Boy,” Pyke rasped with a voice which was his and yet not his. “Begone from here!”

  The lad recoiled at the unexpected voice from the darkness, and raised a candle higher to see by.

  “Who’re you?” he demanded to know.

  “That matters little. You must leave this place, before…”

  His words were lost amid an involuntary series of coughs as one of his vessel’s lungs collapsed and its diaphragm seized.

  Instead of fleeing, the youth drew closer. “Mister… you’re bleeding.”

  Pyke looked up at the boy through eyes which barely functioned. With a touch of Res, he caused his retinas to mend themselves temporarily, and the child’s round face swam into focus. This little intruder could not have been older than thirteen cycles of age.

  “Did your parents not teach you the dangers of approaching strange houses?” he asked the child once his body resumed responding to his commands.

  “Uh-huh. But my friends said the old man who lives here does magic, and I wanted to see.”

  “You are fortunate I am not like the rest of my kind. They would have harvested you without a second thought. Next time, listen to what your parents tell you.”

  “I will.” The boy set down his candleholder amid the pool of blood and pulled off his woolen shirt, which looked to have been handcrafted by some generous relative.

  “Did I not tell you to begone?” Pyke asked. “What are you doing?”

  “What my parents told me. Before he went away to fight in the war against the Dead, Father said I must grow up to be a good man. And Mother told me a good man doesn’t walk away when somebody needs help.” The boy pressed the balled-up shirt against the bleeding wound through which Pyke’s ruined collarbone protruded.

  “You cannot assist: the damage is too great. I have prepared for this eventuality. Leave me.” Pyke had made arrangements for the village healer to come and investigate if he did not return by the following morning. He knew her heart, for he had listened to its quiet speech when he had arrived in the town of River’s End two cycles ago. The woman was a killer and a coward, who had poisoned the village’s last leader for an entire cycle under the guise of medical treatment before letting him die, all the while extracting ever greater payments from his family. She did not know Pyke knew her secret, and when she found this vessel dead, the opportunistic woman would be unable to resist carrying away with her the old man’s obviously magical key, his Phylactery. From that moment, she would be his.

  But this child’s arrival threatened to upset Pyke’s plan. “Leave me,” he repeated, trying and failing to channel enough Res through his broken vessel to force the lad to obey.

  The boy frowned stubbornly, holding the blood-soaked shirt firmly against the wound and sending waves of pain through Pyke as the garment pressed against the shattered bones. “I’m staying to help. I have to be a good man, like Father!”

  “You… you hail from the village,” gasped Pyke. “Yes? Then… get the village healer. She… can help me. But you must go swiftly, or it will be too late!”

  The child stood. “Just wait right here, mister. Don’t die. Promise!”

  “I… promise,” Pyke lied, in the instant before his remaining lung filled with blood.

  His vision faded as the child turned to leave, and the last thing Pyke saw as he lay on the workshop floor was the broken end of the cord around his vessel’s neck. He heard the boy pause and reach down curiously to pick up the worn key of black metal from where it lay on the ground.

  The self-loathing which howled silently in Pyke’s heart was not his own. No, none of this belonged to Pyke. He had already guessed whose memories he was experiencing now: those of the Dead wanderer, Tamelios, whose story he’d so foolishly read from the Relic-book.

  Tamelios’s despair grew until he thought it might break him. Then, the anguish transformed itself into desperation. Three centuries ago, as he had walked free of the ruins of Enviselas’s Hold, he had sworn to himself that he had harmed a child for the last time. Fifty cycles ago, soon after the Fae Queen had cursed him with a heart which felt, he had decided such an oath was worth dying for. He would do anything, including destroy himself, before allowing his Phylactery to steal the future from a mere boy whose only crimes were curiosity and compassion.

  With a final exertion of Res which sapped the remaining life from his expiring body, Tamelios reached out with his will and sabotaged the Res flows of the key, altering its function forevermore. He would be sealed within the object until the moment its holder should perish: no more the Dead wanderer, Tamelios was transformed into nothing but a curse upon any who would harm the boy.

  Perhaps it is only fitting, Tamelios mused a
s the sensations of pain and weakness from his dying vessel vanished and were replaced with the cold nothingness of his Phylactery. A banal, meaningless end for a parasite such as myself.

  A pins-and-needles sensation raced through Pyke’s limbs as his senses returned to him. He took a long second to get his bearings after the lifelike vision, but the sight of Raine’s club at his feet reminded him of his reality: he was back in the figurative middle of a clash of titans.

  Awkwardly, Pyke slung the massive cudgel’s handle over his shoulder. His vision tunnelling, unable to turn his stiff neck to see anything beyond the weapon, he tried to drag it in Raine’s direction.

  Near the wall, Raine had managed to dodge around behind the Revenant. She wrapped both arms around the other Gigant’s forearms and pinned both of the apparition’s feet to the ground with her boots, immobilizing both combatants.

  “You are mightier than any Hoard-Watcher of my time. A lesser Gigant would have broken herself in the attempt to restrain me.” The Revenant tried and failed to raise her legs to kick backwards at Raine. “It is good to see that my people remain strong. But you should let go now, for you tire while I do not.”

  Raine refused to respond, so focused was she on the task of keeping the guardian still. Beads of sweat gathered on her forehead and dripped down onto her leather winter gear.

  Vino wasn’t wasting the time Raine had bought. He hurried forward and snagged the Lock and Key from Pyke’s pocket, then continued on to the door, pressing the bronze hoop against it to encircle the oversized keyhole.

  “What’s the phrase?” he yelled.

  “Hastas sansii rin khas isvist; hastas sansii isvist: siskas nen rakhas eshest,” Pyke responded, and Vino gave a start as the Lock and Key activated, materializing a giant brass key in his hand.

  The Revenant looked up. Eyes visible through the slit in her helmet fixed on Pyke where he was dragging the club toward the two struggling Gigants.