The Last Spellbound House: A Steampunk Dark Fantasy Thriller

by Samuel Simons

  Do what you have to, Pyke told it, trying to remain conscious despite the pain and how swiftly the Voice was whipping his head about.

  Fifteen racing steps later, the Voice spoke again.

  Then a bright light filled Pyke’s blurred vision, and he knew no more.

  Jenna’s hands were curled into fists with the effort it took not to let her eyes drift shut. She wanted to give Pyke time, but she didn’t know how much longer she could stay awake.

  To give her mind something to do, she’d taken to watching her reflection in the mirror. It wasn’t a pleasant method. She looked at least ten cycles older than she had when she’d last seen herself in her grandmother’s mirror a week ago. This place really was draining the life from everybody present, with aging as a side-effect, as Lifa had explained. While Jenna prided herself on not being vain, it was disconcerting to see her youth ebbing away.

  A flicker of movement in the mirror drew Jenna out of her exhausted reverie. She blinked, and stared as another image superimposed itself on her reflection: that of someone else standing in her place in front of a much larger yet similar underground room. As details grew clearer, she could see that the person in the mirror was Aquamarine, the strange and intriguing fiend whose beautiful voice had sounded to her like the music of oboes and humming crystal glasses.

  Aquamarine’s face was much changed from when Jenna had seen them on the viewing-screen. Their tiny, thin-lipped mouth had been replaced with a toothy maw, and their eyes were now milky orbs clinging to their face amid the faint suggestion of eye sockets. Despite this, the weariness in the Seer’s posture and the listless droop of their ear-fins conveyed misery.

  Behind Aquamarine, the room stretched much longer than the real-world chamber, and it was filled with murky water in which floated a mess of full-length mirrors and what appeared to be corpses. One of the floating bodies was Gigant-sized.

  “Aquamarine?” Jenna whispered.

  The Seer’s ear-fins twitched, and they looked up, making what Jenna could only assume was eye contact.

  “Jenna? How are you within my vision?”

  “I don’t know. I’m looking at a mirror in the real world, in the same chamber as you. My version of the room is smaller, and there’s nothing but a lever and this mirror in it.”

  “We are trapped. Our enemy, whom I shall not name, has drawn us into our greatest and most irrational fears for the future, which we will relive endlessly until it breaks us.”

  Jenna took a deep breath. The Seer’s unwillingness to say anything about their enemy told her the Fae were involved. “How can I free you?”

  “You cannot… but I can help you rescue the others,” Aquamarine said. “Beware: unlike me, they will not know that what they experience is a vision. You will have to help them face their deepest fears: simply telling them the false nature of the vision will not make their terror any less real.”

  “Why are you free? Maybe knowing will help.”

  “My deepest fear has already come to pass. Our foe can show me naught but a pale reflection. Please, allow me to reach through you. There is little time, for their very wills could be broken at any moment.”

  “How do I—?” Jenna began, but stopped as the mirror turned the black colour of deep water.

  Jenna experienced a disorienting sensation of being in two places at once. A presence pressed against her mind, and after a pause during which she wondered if this were a Fae trap, Jenna deliberately relaxed and allowed the foreign entity to filter through into her consciousness. With an unpleasant feeling like chill water flowing into her head, Jenna’s sense of being in two places at once was replaced with a sense of being two people at once.

  Without Aquamarine’s needing to communicate anything in words, Jenna found she knew how to shape illusion, how to see into unguarded minds, and how to transport her consciousness through the gate this mirror represented. Hesitantly at first, and then with increasing assurance, she reached her will through it and touched the first mind she felt.

  Eiten fled through an endless forest, but his father’s drunken shouts were never farther away than the other side of the trees behind him. He was eight cycles old, and wanted nothing more than to escape this place, escape what had happened, what was going to happen.

  But there was no escaping the sight of the farmhouse emerging from the dark field at the forest’s edge, and though he tried to turn aside, his traitorous feet carried him on aching legs through the door and into the living room, where a lit lantern hung from the ceiling and illuminated Merana bleeding on the floor.

  He fell to his knees and pulled at the one-eyed Relic-seeker’s shoulder. In a child’s voice, he pled, “Merana, get up. Please, we have to go, he’s the maddest he’s ever been!”

  “Get back here, Eiten, you… you squealing li’l piglet,” slurred his father’s voice from the doorway behind him. A cold sweat wrung itself from Eiten as panic seized him. He turned to look up at the monstrous silhouette of the man, shrinking away from the heavy glass bottle of cheap liquor in his father’s hand.

  “Y’had no business talk’n back to me,” the man-shaped creature mumbled, swaying. “Do what I want in my own damn house.”

  “You were hurting her!” Eiten screamed. “She’s going to die if someone doesn’t fetch the village healer!”

  “She’ll be fine. Don’ contradict me, boy!”

  Eiten received no warning. The monster’s fist slammed into his right ear, and the world around him came to a jarring halt as he began to fall. In the clarity which followed, Eiten knew what would happen next, as though he’d been here before. His father would beat him to within an inch of death. After hours of lying half-conscious and delirious while Merana quietly expired behind him, Eiten would watch his father sober up. The murderer would grow terrified of being hanged by the townsfolk, and would use lantern oil to burn down the house with both Eiten and Merana in it, muttering about getting away and starting a new life on the other side of the Kingdom.

  A pair of waiting arms caught Eiten before his head could strike the floor, and the pains in his ear and head faded away. The young boy looked up: a woman, silhouetted against the light above, met his gaze.

  “You’ve been here before.” Her words echoed Eiten’s earlier thought. “Who was she?”

  “I don’t…” Eiten shook his head as though to clear the fog from it. “I have to save Merana! I have to save her, he’s going to kill us—”

  “Who are you, woman?” The dark silhouette of Eiten’s father raised the bottle of drink threateningly. “Get outta my house!”

  The woman looked up sharply, and the fury in her gaze shattered the bottle.

  “Witch! Fiend!” Eiten’s father stumbled back drunkenly against the doorframe.

  Eiten stared up at the silhouetted woman. “You’re a guardian spirit, like the Church of the Phoenix says will come to stop bad people.”

  “No. I’m just Jenna,” she replied. “You’re alive, and that’s what matters. Now, I need you to do something for me. Tell me who’s really there on the floor under that lamp.”

  “You mean Merana?” Eiten couldn’t understand why she needed him to question his reality… but one didn’t argue with a Phoenix-sent saviour. He strained to think why he felt he’d seen this all before. “I… something’s there, but it’s far away, or a long time ago…”

  “Shh… It’s okay. Take your time, and try to remember. It’s not Merana lying there. Who is it?”

  Eiten was silent for a long moment.

  “Mother. It was my mother,” he murmured. “Father was in one of his rages. He struck her in the face, hard, and she fell… and there was blood, and she didn’t get up. I tried to make him stop kicking her, but he turned on me, chased me through the forest…!”

  Eiten was a grown man again. As
his present asserted itself, tears ran down the scars mottling his face. “...I was only eight cycles old.”

  The spectre of Eiten’s father had recovered from his shock. “Idiot piglet! You been inviting fiends and worse into my home! I’ll kill ya, stupid boy!”

  The man-shaped shadow advanced on Eiten, and the light from the lantern dimmed as the creature entered its pool of light. Eiten’s father swung the jagged neck of the bottle, and an old, familiar terror rushed through Eiten. He flinched and covered his face.

  Jenna stood and raised an arm to block the blow, but the shadow’s strength was inhuman: the fist holding the bottle’s neck swept Jenna’s arm out of the way and clubbed her on the side of the head. She flew across the room to crash against the wall, sliding down it with a groan.

  “I’ll teach you not t’pretend at being th’man of this house,” slurred the drunken brute, looming over Eiten. “Inviting in all sorts of… of riff-raff, talking back to me. Stupid boy… learn this lesson well!”

  Rage, smoldering in the depths of Eiten’s heart, ignited. He stood in a rush. “What lesson was that to be, Father? How to beat those weaker than you? How to keep them compliant with threats and fear?”

  Amid the deep shadow of the man’s silhouette, Eiten could see the whites of his father’s eyes bulging. “Big words! Let’s see you live up to ‘em, child!”

  “I’m not a child any longer,” Eiten said coldly, and took a step forward. As he did, the spectre of his father retreated, seeming to grow smaller and less powerful. Disdain ran through Eiten: he’d seen, confronted, and defeated many a bully in the time since these events, and as always, they were at their weakest when someone showed them no fear.

  “You’re not a man: you’re a monster, and a feeble one.” Eiten took another step, and the silhouette shrank back again. It was no longer even a facsimile of a human being, but an eight-foot-tall horror with long arms and cruelly clawed fingers. It raised its arms defensively and let out a bestial growl.

  “Will you be all right?” Jenna asked, picking herself up from the floor. She gingerly touched her face where she’d been struck, and took in a sharp breath.

  Eiten, still eyeing the monster before him, nodded. “I believe so.”

  He stepped forward one more time, and the beast threw itself at him. Unafraid, Eiten raised his right hand. His rage at his father’s ghost manifested itself as a gleaming sword of red steel, which he used to parry the creature’s grasping claws.

  “I can’t help you with this fight, but I think you’ll win it. Good luck, Eiten.” Jenna turned away, and was gone.

  From atop a frozen hill, Raine looked out over plains which had seen no sun in a hundred cycles. The only light for many leagues gleamed from a beacon Relic she held high in one hand. Below her, the bodies of a Tribe of her kin littered the ice-bound wastes amid the ruins of their dwellings.

  The Gigant howled her bereavement to the heavens. She had returned victorious from her travels, having ripped the heart from the manse of the Dead Lord Tamelios and extracted what she needed from the wish-granting Sehrah, only to find she was too late: her people were being slaughtered by the very threat her quest had hoped to answer. The expanding, land-hungry empire of the Mosoleiosh, the Drowned Ones from the dark oceans, took no Gigant prisoners. This was the twentieth Tribe she had found dead… and there were only twenty-one Tribes in total. Raine did not fear death… yet she feared finding the last of the Gigants slain already, for failure was the only force she knew of which could break her.

  “What is this place?” asked a small, high-pitched voice from behind Raine.

  The Gigant whirled and raised her club, but the tiny human standing there didn’t register in the slightest with her danger-sense. By the bruise on her face, she looked to have been in a fight, but she seemed utterly harmless. Her lack of killing intent must have been how she had managed to sneak up behind Raine in the first place.

  “Thou hast come to the tundra, home of my people. This region was once a part of the Plains of Glory, where the Gigant Tribes trained the mightiest guardians in all the Spellbound World.” The Gigant’s features were as still and cold as etched stone as she turned away and began trudging north. “Now, they are Plains only of Sorrow.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I go to find my family, the High Tundra Tribe. If they yet live, then I have succeeded. If they do not, I shall find in the home of my ancestors only dishonour and an empty death.”

  Jenna hurried to follow, her puny legs taking several steps for each of the Gigant’s strides. “If they’re gone, how’s that your fault?”

  “If they are gone, then I was too slow. I will die without honour.”

  “And you couldn’t go on another quest? Find a way to rebuild your Tribe yourself?”

  “One with no honour cannot carry on the ways of my people. Honour is our legacy, little dagros.”

  “Dagros?”

  “Outsider. One who is not Gigant, who cannot understand the meaning of honour.”

  The dagros, still hurrying to keep up with Raine, crossed her spindly little arms. “You’ll call me Jenna, or nothing at all. Using a nasty name is just rude.”

  At least this human was more direct than the others Raine had met. “Very well, little Jenna.”

  “So... if it turns out you have no honour left, you’re just going to seek death? Where’s the sense in that?” Jenna appeared sincere, but Raine was running out of patience for her questions.

  “I was given a single task, and my kin sacrificed much to make me stronger than any Gigant has been before. To fail despite that strength is unforgivable.”

  Jenna grabbed the sleeve of Raine’s winter coat.

  “Look, I can’t think of a tactful way to bring this up, so I’ll be blunt.” Jenna didn’t quail despite Raine’s glower down at her. “Anyone can fail, no matter how strong. Do you really think your people would blame you if it turned out they asked you to do the impossible?”

  “It is for none but myself to decide if my task is impossible! Thou art dagros. Thou canst not understand.”

  “Then help me understand!” Jenna held on tightly to Raine’s sleeve. “You think you can do this alone, but you’re wrong! This place will make sure you experience the worst failure you can imagine!”

  Raine turned her most baleful amber gaze on the human, but in her heart she was impressed despite herself at tiny Jenna’s audacity. “If I cannot do this, no one can. Dost thou prophesy my doom?”

  “I want you to know there are… tricks being used against you. I want you to be prepared for the worst.”

  “For that, I always was prepared,” Raine said, shaking her sleeve roughly out of Jenna’s grip and striding away. “Now cease patronizing me, thou human so far from soft sun-drenched lands. I go to my people.”

  As Raine spoke, the two crested a rise, and looked out on a battlefield where a sea of tall, skeletal figures in black cloaks wielded heavy bows and long-handled scythe blades against a beleaguered knot of massive figures atop a hill. Raine’s pulse quickened as arrows fell like sleet and her kin cried out in pain: there was still a battle to be fought!

  “Gus’drok tak!” Raine bellowed, and leapt, her preternatural strength sending her five times her own height in the air and far out into the ocean of foes. She landed club-first amid the horde, and an explosion of unparalleled force radiated outward. This single blow felled hundreds of the Mosoleiosh, crushing their bones with the sheer force of the shockwave, and it knocked Jenna from her feet even at this distance.

  The battle was over swiftly. The Drowned Ones had come here with an army only five thousand strong: they had been prepared for a slaughter, not for the return of the Gigants’ mighty hero. Raine was not constrained by the danger of her shockwaves echoing from walls as she had been in the manse of the Dead Lord, and her bared power slew her foes in mere minutes. Yet, when she had finished, she arrived at the hill to find that none of her kin yet breathed: t
he final hail of arrows had been enough to finish them.

  Raine’s legs, which still held the strength to slay another five thousand Mosoleiosh, buckled beneath the weight of her failure. She barely heard the tiny human approach, and did not register the girl’s whisper of, “No. The illusion won’t end like this… not if I can help it.”

  A distant coughing noise and a muttered curse in the mostly-forgotten ancestral tongue of Raine’s Tribe spurred the Gigant to her feet. She hurried to the wreckage of the tents, scarcely believing there might be a lone survivor. Leaning against a cluster of frozen stones she found an elderly Gigant, covered with arrow-wounds and barely clinging to life.

  “Honoured Elder.” Raine fell to one knee in respect. She pulled the sack from her back to place it in front of the other Gigant. “I have returned successful. I bear an object torn from the beating heart of an ancient manse, a magic to defend our people forever!”

  “Raine…” coughed the Elder, “Raine, is’t thee? Dost thou not recognize thy sister?”

  Raine’s eyes widened. “Ryver? Blood of mine, what hath befallen thee? Thou appearest as a venerable Elder, yet thou art only three hundred cycles of age!”

  The other Gigant smiled, gesturing weakly for Raine to draw closer. “We do not live five hundred cycles as we did before the Ritual. The eighty since thy departure have been enough to make mine arms feeble and mine eyes dim, sister. But thou art yet hale, I see. Good.”

  “I stole thy youth, and the lives of all the true Elders,” Raine realized, horrified. “The cost of the Ritual was greater than I was told… and yet despite your sacrifice I have returned too late to save our race. I am dishonoured.”

  “No,” Ryver cut in sharply. “As the sole surviving Elder of the High Tundra Tribe, I invoke pragh gaghta in the name of our ancestors.”

  Raine winced. “Be not so cruel in thy mercy, sister. Where can I go if my Tribe is no more? Without family, my deeds honour no one.”

  “Thou hold’st in thy pack our people’s future. Go to the Spirit-Obelisk and beg a gift of new life. The High Tundra Tribe must not end here.”