The Last Spellbound House: A Steampunk Dark Fantasy Thriller

by Samuel Simons

  “Only one being may be the manse’s master,” Melianne explained. “It’s always been him: now that he remembers who he is, no one else will be able to command it so long as he exists.”

  “You’re telling me Pyke is once again the only one who can stop this place from killing everybody, and for that, he has to die? This makes no sense!” To Jenna’s continuing shame, her tears spilled over again. “He’s done nothing to deserve this. Let someone else suffer! He’s not your Dead Lord, he’s Pyke!”

  “I fear that he may be both,” said Aquamarine. The music of the Seer’s voice was subdued, mournful. “There is a reason he does not remember his youth: the original owner of that body must have died while possessing Tamelios’s Phylactery. He has no childhood memories at all: the personality we call Pyke, and the construct he named his Voice, were both contained in the Relic along with the Dead Lord’s sealed memories.”

  “But rejoice! He remembers, and is whole once more!” Melianne placed a hand on Pyke’s shoulder and smiled in a way which seemed calculated to make Jenna’s blood boil.

  “How dare you? He’s dying!” Jenna glared at the Fae through her tears, one fist closing around the dowsing-rod Relic in her pocket. If Pyke died, nothing would be right with the world ever again. Jenna hated that anyone could be happy right now, that this awful woman could mock his sacrifice with such a lack of concern.

  The Queen’s smile faded. “I’ve offended you. I’m sorry, young mortal. If it were as dour as you think, I’d be there with you, holding him and weeping. Worry not: our love will live on, in a new body.”

  “No.” Pyke pulled himself free of Jenna’s embrace and, with a monumental effort, straightened his back to look up at Melianne and the rest. “Once my consciousness leaves this body, it will be sealed away in the manse and not in the Serpent’s Tongue. Now that my memories are unbound, they’re too large for the Tongue to hold. It has returned to being only a conduit for my consciousness to transfer from one body to another, not a vessel.”

  “Then we deactivate the rest of the manse,” Melianne suggested. “Without its Ancient-sealing magics to capture you, you could remain in the Phylactery until I find you another body.”

  Pyke shook his head. “The Ancient-sealing magics must remain active. We constructed this place to serve as a false Phylactery for the Dead, and designed it to fashion those Dead minds into a trap for the names and stories of the Fae. If we deactivate it, they’ll be free.”

  Raine let out a bark of mirthless laughter. “Ha! I see thy dilemma of necessity. Thou canst not but permit thyself to be trapped as well, for by saving thyself thou wouldst free all the others.”

  “Then all you need is a new form to inhabit before this one passes away.” The Fae Queen drew herself up, her chill white irises glinting. “I’ll make a fresh corpse of one of these mortals, if you but renounce your allyship.”

  “If you tried, I’d destroy myself and you.” Pyke’s voice was firm and commanding despite the wheeze underneath it. “Don’t test me. I’m giving you a chance for the sake of Tamelios’s fond memories of you… but I’m not your Traveller, and I won’t see them harmed.”

  The bluster left Melianne like a cloak dropping from her shoulders. To Jenna’s surprise and discomfort, the Fae knelt down next to her to spend a long moment looking into Pyke’s eyes. “My love… if this is the choice you’ve made, I won’t gainsay you. You know the pain your loss will cause me, and have judged it to be worth that price. You always did consider every angle.”

  “And you’re just going to allow this?” Jenna’s voice rose, and her eyes darted desperately to search the others’ faces for support. “Raine, I heard you… you owe him. He saved your life. You have to help him survive this, you… you have to!”

  Raine shook her head and bared her teeth, though the expression seemed a pained one alongside her ever-present aggression. “His is a warrior’s choice! My people know better than any what he has won for this world by sealing away the Dead. To join them in captivity, so that his victory might not be empty? This is an act of honour, and I will not sully it.”

  “Jenna… listen to me.” Pyke’s withered hands gripped Jenna’s upper arms with surprising firmness, and the metal rod in his right hand pressed against her shoulder. “I was blessed with this life, as well as the three others I’ve lived since the Cataclysm, because Melianne altered my memories and sealed them away moments before the mechanism activated. The Working overlooked me because I didn’t know what I was.

  “When this mortal shell perishes, I’ll be sealed away for as long as the Last Spellbound House exists. When the manse finally crumbles, I’ll be gone, and the rest of the Ancients will have dwindled. Over the coming centuries, when the sealed-away Fae and Dead become weakened enough that they might cease to exist, the machine will give each one a choice: pass into oblivion, or accept a binding. They’ll be bound never to regain the power to rip away another life or subjugate another mind.” He took a strained, unsteady breath, one which sounded painful. “Melianne and I are the only two beings in the Liberated World which have those powers still. I’m a monster, not a man, Jenna. You need not weep for me.”

  Jenna stared into Pyke’s wizened face: despite the tears in her eyes, she could still see the earnest, awkward man she’d met on the road. She struggled to wrap her head around the idea that Pyke was an ancient monster, was anything but the person in front of her… but found she couldn’t. Though aged and wracked with pain, this was still the face of someone she loved too dearly to lose. Even if he wasn’t human, she knew in her heart that he didn’t deserve to die.

  “Use my body,” she pled. “Anything it takes!”

  “Jenna. I need you to do something for me.” Pyke spoke quickly, as though he sensed he was short on time. “Work with Melianne. Ensure the manse stays active for at least another two centuries. Let me go: I’ve lived more than I deserved to already, and knowing you was the most wonderful parting gift I could have hoped for.”

  “That’s not good enough!” Jenna shook her head stubbornly, scattering tears every which way. “Can’t you do something to survive this? Can’t you just forget again?”

  Pyke shook his head, his brown irises dimming as cataracts formed at impossible speeds. His hair had all fallen out now, save for a thin shock of white fluff around his ears and the back of his head. His breath rattled as he tried and failed to form complete sentences. “The sealing of the memories… would cost more Res… than remains in the manse and my body combined. Please… let me go. I’m tired, Jenna… And I’ve lived too many centuries to fear the long sleep.”

  “You can’t leave me. It’s not fair…” Sobbing miserably, Jenna buried her face in Pyke’s shoulder. As Pyke wrapped his feeble arms around Jenna, a gentle hand came to rest on Jenna’s back as Melianne knelt and embraced them both from his other side. The Fae Queen was weeping, now, too, and Jenna felt the first hint of warmth for the woman in her heart: even if Jenna still thought of Melianne as a threat, it seemed she cared for Pyke after all… and it somehow felt better not to be alone in grief.

  A loud hissing noise, as of steam escaping, emanated from somewhere a short distance ahead and to Jenna’s left, but she ignored it, her eyes still pressed desperately into the shoulder of Pyke’s tattered old cloak. The hiss went away, and a new set of footfalls emerged from within the Serra-Engine.

  Raine growled and stepped forward protectively to place herself between Pyke and the newcomer. “I’ll not stand for another Ancient interfering,” the Gigant threatened, raising her club at someone Jenna couldn’t see.

  “Oh, I’m no Ancient,” said an unfamiliar voice in a plain, foreign-seeming accent. Jenna and the others looked up from their various reveries to see who had spoken.

  “My name’s Serra.”

  Alendras turned his neck stiffly to watch out of the corner of his eye as the speaker stepped from a new, narrow aperture in the side of the Serra-Engine, a fading blue light silhouetting her f
rom within the machine.

  The woman who had introduced herself as Serra appeared human, and ordinary at that: she had brown eyes and wavy shoulder-length hair the colour of chestnuts. She wore a plain brown traveller’s cloak over a cream-coloured linen tunic and swordbelt. Black breeches covered her legs all the way down to her worn leather boots, and a hand-and-a-half sword with a green stone at its pommel sat comfortably sheathed at her side.

  “Come no closer! I warn thee, I’ll strike,” Raine promised, her voice taking on the quality of stones being crushed against one another.

  “I’ve not drawn my blade.” Serra met Raine’s amber gaze without a hint of concern. “From what I’ve seen, your people’s honour demands you use no weapon against an unarmed foe unless you were the one to disarm them. Strike me with your fist, if you must... but I’d rather not fight. I need to go to Tamelios, if he’s to survive.”

  Raine’s nostrils flared. “Mak’st thou this promise idly? If thou liest, I shall be justified in slaying thee with whatever weapon I please.”

  “Could I possibly do any more harm than he’s already suffering?” Without waiting for an answer, Serra walked around Raine while the Gigant hesitated.

  Alendras felt both Jenna and Melianne tense as Serra approached, and he shook his head slightly. “I don’t remember her yet, but my intuition says she’s not a threat.”

  “At least somebody’s figured that out.” Serra grinned. “I just need to put a hand on him, if I may?”

  Jenna and Melianne pulled back slightly, and Alendras nearly fell to the ground without their shoulders to support him. His bones felt brittle, and his failing eyes barely gave him the balance to remain kneeling upright.

  Then a hand came to rest on his back, and a great burden lifted from his shoulders. He gasped at the abrupt relief of the strain on his aged body: in defiance of the manse’s design, his link to its heart had been temporarily pulled away from him. Now, Serra would suffer the backlash of Restore Life’s final throes.

  Alendras’s Phylactery was full to bursting with Res after his time linked to the manse. A brief effort of will accompanied by a silent command of ranist, ‘heal,’ was enough to clear his eyes of cataracts as he looked up at Serra. Despite this, he could barely see her: his vision was blurred and clouded by his deep exhaustion. “Who… what are you?”

  Serra smiled. “You’ll remember, once you give your mind and body some time to rest. I’ve got some business to attend to while you do that.”

  As she stepped back, her head turned at an angle which triggered a memory. One of the still-unfolding recollections from Alendras’s past came to the forefront of his mind, and the Dead Lord recalled the first time he had seen this exact sight. The recollection was from ninety-nine cycles before the combined Fae and Dead armies had attacked the manse: a hundred and ninety-nine ago today. The Manse-Heart had still been under construction, and he had still gone by the name Tamelios, Traveller…

  e-weapon

  The four thousand, four-hundredth cycle of the Fae Queen’s rule, ninety-nine cycles before the Cataclysm. The Viewing Chamber of the manse-weapon

  e-weapon

  The Dead Lord Tamelios watched through the scrying monitors on the grounds, inspecting the lone figure who was approaching his manse in broad daylight. Her features were ordinary for a feminine-presenting human of perhaps twenty-five cycles of age. Scans showed no Workings in effect on her person, and only a minor Res-charge clinging to the blade at her side.

  The well-oiled gears and pistons of Alendras’s mechanical body churned slowly and quietly in his physically idle state, but behind his porcelain mask his thoughts were operating much more quickly. He calculated the probability there might be a Working or Glamour at play which could defeat his scanning Inventions. Given the potential foes he and Melianne had between them, he concluded such was not only possible, it was likely.

  No matter who it was, a single being was unlikely to pose a threat to Tamelios and Melianne together. The arrival could be a distraction tactic or an attempt at gathering information, though: had the Fae Courts learned of his aims here with his wife? Had the Dead discovered the truth, and become aware of the danger posed by a Dead Lord in alliance with the Queen of the Fae?

  It was centuries too soon for that to occur: the weapon was unfinished, and it was not charged with nearly enough force. If this was the prelude to an attack, then all was lost.

  To buy time and take the measure of the intruder, Tamelios shifted the light-automata from the Place Aside into conventional reality using his mental link to the manse’s systems, eschewing the physical controls at the Manse-Heart far below him. A hundred soldiers of white flame erupted into being, and at his direction they moved to engage.

  At first, it seemed as though Tamelios had overestimated the trespasser: the intruder drew her blade and fell into a defensive posture, warding off the light-automata’s strikes and retreating steadily. She maneuvered deftly enough to forestall the inevitable for several minutes, but in the end she was unable to avoid being encircled.

  Then the truth of the trespasser became clear. The gemstone at her sword’s pommel glowed green with a Working, and she went on the attack. Tamelios noted she used her blade only to defend herself: instead of slicing with the weapon, which would have been useless whenever the automata weren’t on the attack, she struck out with pulses of red or yellow light from her free hand which disrupted her opponents’ matrices with great effectiveness. She wove between the constructs, dispersing them one by one as she parried their blows. Within five minutes, not one survived.

  Tamelios considered sacrificing the Res necessary to fashion more, but decided against it: the light-automata had achieved all that they could, which was to give their master some insight into the nature of this being.

  “My love,” whispered Melianne, materializing a temporary form behind him and wrapping her arms around his chassis, “Won’t you come to bed? You’ve been in your workshop for nearly a full cycle of the seasons… I’ve so missed you in the long hours of the night.”

  “I must not accept your invitation this time, my dear, for we have a visitor,” Tamelios replied with sincere regret, indicating the Viewing Chamber’s far wall, which still displayed the manse’s grounds. He deftly operated a few of the buttons and dials, and the monitor began to replay the events of the past five minutes with doubled speed.

  “Witness: she appears to be human, yet wields the power of at least a hundred, and her body has aged not at all with the channelling of whatever Glamour or Invention she wields. Her style is not efficient enough for her to be one of the Dead, nor flashy enough to be Fae. And besides, your people tend to eschew human forms in favour of species of your own creation, while mine often find a biological body far too limiting.”

  “What else is there?” Melianne idly stroked Tamelios’s arm in a way which gently, tantalizingly stimulated each of the sensation receptors on the surface of the casing and made him wish there were time for lovemaking after all. “The mortal races simply can’t wield such power.”

  “A good question. I must find out.” Tamelios paused the replay at a point which showcased the intruder loosing one of her bolts of yellow energy. “This woman, if she is truly human, is an anomaly. Her secrets could be useful: at the very least, she may represent a revolutionary way to pass Res through a human body while maintaining its youth. My early attempts at discovering such a method invariably resulted in my own vessel’s swift degradation and destruction. Think of the saved time: we could make use of my body and those of our willing servants, and would no longer need to spend cycles designing Res-storage Inventions or gathering the exotic components needed to build them.”

  “It’s exciting to see you so passionate.” Melianne smiled, and her eyes flashed with the warmth of sunlight. “So, will you be taking this one for your experiments, maerisrei?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I shall go with you. If this is a trick of our people’s
fashioning, best we face it with all our might.” Melianne’s smile was now an eager one at the prospect of facing a new and intriguing threat.

  “Very well, beloved. Let us go.”

  They encountered the intruder at the front doors to the manse, where she was alternating between knocking and waiting patiently. The automatic alarm system had already warned the mortal staff of humans and diminutive Dorshii to take shelter in their quarters: the entry hall and its environs were deserted save for their visitor. When Tamelios willed the doors open, the woman leaned through and looked about.

  “Hello?”

  Tamelios released his commitment of Res to his Relic of invisibility, and his wife materialized a new form next to him in the centre of the entry hall. At his desire, the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling above blazed to life.

  Amid the brightness, Tamelios could now analyze the trespasser in full detail. Her shoulder-length brown hair and sturdy build made her seem a fairly average representative of humanity. The hand-and-a-half blade she had used to such great effect on the manse’s grounds hung at her waist. Aside from the weapon, the only notable thing about her was that her eyes were a vibrant green too bright to be entirely mundane. That, and the reality that no ordinary human would have appeared so utterly unconcerned at being face to face with a Dead Lord and a Fae noble.

  “Who comes to the hall of Tamelios and Melianne?” Tamelios intoned; and the air of the entry hall shook with the power of his demand, whose force of Res could compel any mere mortal to fall on their face against their will, helplessly divulging their secrets.

  “Oh,” the newcomer replied, completely unaffected. “I’m named Serra. I apologize for my intrusion, but I noticed your auras and the minor magic-shockwaves from the device you’re building in your basement, and I came here to see if we can help each other.”

  Melianne gasped and dissipated, re-forming next to Serra to peer intently into her eyes. “The Manse-Heart’s trembles in the Weave are hidden by the mightiest Glamour I’ve ever crafted, and you saw right through it.”