That was when the screaming started.
PART FOUR
System Beast
- System Beasts will form a new type of service to the members of the Great Assembly of Species. They can be geared in a number of roles, from laborer or draftbeast, to social secretary or aide for those with disabilities, or even items of luxury. The possibilities are nearly limitless, as the constructs can be quite intelligent and take orders well. I look forward to seeing how the people of the Nether receive and apply System Beasts to make their lives easier.
From a proposal by Mandamon Feldo, majus of the Houses of Healing and Potential
The three of us rushed into the hallway to find lights blinking, and rumbles echoing through the walls of the mansion. A majus ran past, carrying a bucket of water.
“The kitchen is on fire!” she yelled over her shoulder.
It wasn’t just Gompt’s System Beast that was malfunctioning. All of the Systems in the mansion had gone crazy. In this place full of maji, I hardly thought about how many Systems were hidden in the walls to drive water uphill, heat rooms, and even light corridors when the walls of the Nether had dimmed for the night.
Moortlin stumped away down the hall in the opposite direction from the running majus. “One will recruit all maji who can hear the Symphony of Potential,” they called in a voice like splitting wood. “Those are the only ones who can deactivate the Systems.”
“We’ll help anyone we can,” I called back, but then Gompt took my arm, and I turned to her.
“Kratitha,” she said. The fur on her shoulders was standing on end.
My eyes widened, and I ran after my colleague. The Pixie was surrounded by the most advanced Systems ever made in the Nether, and couldn’t hear the House of Potential. The System Beasts would tear her apart!
Our workshop was down several flights of stairs and in a different wing of the mansion. While we ran, scenes of chaos intruded on us—burst pipes spewing water from walls, broken and sparking lanterns, and several rooms filled with the roar of flames. But maji were everywhere, battling the mayhem. All six colors of the Symphony glowed around walls, ceiling, and Society members like a mad kaleidoscope.
I listened to the Symphonies of Healing and Potential as I ran, but the music was dissonant, with too many changes happening at once. I could do little to help those who already fought the chaos, even if I wanted to. The Systems weren’t only turning off or malfunctioning. It was as if their notes were being released in the most chaotic manner possible.
Finally we arrived at the workshop, and Gompt worried at the doorknob before thrusting it open and rushing in.
It looked as if a hundred people cluttered the room rather than just one, and all were clambering to get to the little Pixie in their midst. Light glinted from moving limbs, and my eye was drawn around the workshop, colors flickering in and out of existence as different Systems moved our constructs around.
In the middle danced the Ethulina pullbeast we intended to show to the Great Assembly, striking out with its front hooves and snorting clouds of steam, though Kratitha wove and danced away from it, avoiding a confrontation. Every bit of damage we did taking it down meant that much more work in repairs. We’d be destroying our own days of labor.
Kratitha was a blur of motion, her wings keeping her just above the floor and away from the smallest, reaching System Beasts. Her body glowed blue with the House of Grace and bright orange with the House of Power. She coordinated every move perfectly, and the Pixie hummed along with the music she heard, so deep in concentration was she. Her complicated voice box picked off paired chords and harmonics, and despite myself I paused a moment to listen.
I think that’s the closest I’ve ever come to hearing the Symphony of Grace.
Gompt also flowed into the Symphony of Grace, insinuating her thick body between two strutting peacock-shaped Beasts who lashed out with filed metal talons. Neither touched a hair of her pelt.
Kratitha was the only one of our trio who couldn’t change the Symphony of Potential in order to shut down the Systems. Instead, a spear of orange accompanied her tiny hand, showing she was adjusting the Symphony of Power. She inserted her hand between the head and body of a bulky dog-like automaton, twisting at just the right angle, then jerked and the head popped to one side. The clanking Beast listed and plowed into a wall. Not a big loss, as that design was meant to test the walking mechanisms.
A metal claw struck the doorframe a handbreadth from my ear and I jolted back. The malfunctioning System Beasts were angling toward me and, I belatedly realized, toward Gompt. They weren’t just attacking Kratitha, but any person within range.
Or any majus?
I fell into the music of Potential, hearing an overlapping stream of clanking, whistles, and shrieks. The music associated with Systems was artificial, lacking the beauty of the natural music of the universe. That meant it was easier to disrupt. I laid a hand on the head of a crawling lizard System Beast that came to my knee, keeping away from the wooden hinged jaw full of teeth.
Why did we ever put teeth in these things?
The foundational beat held the Beast’s mechanisms together—the cognitive gearing tied to the movement actuators tied to the structural frequencies. I dropped the beat to a lower register and the lizard Beast jerked to a halt. One down, and—how many to go? We’d made over a hundred of the things in the past five months.
Gompt reached Kratitha and powered down one of the larger prototypes as I had. Its mouth sagged open instead of sinking into the Pixie’s flesh.
I moved forward, avoiding clumsy thrusts, slashes and even attempts by two or three System Beasts to gang up on me, disconnecting the Systems as I did. Some part of my brain rejoiced, realizing our creations were working in concert, though we had not yet programmed that level of sophistication.
The Ethulina seemed almost to be coordinating the assault. Every time it tossed its head toward us, or kicked out a leg to strike, smaller System Beasts would swarm in around it.
The three of us moved together, each familiar with the others and overlapping in aspects of the Grand Symphony. Gompt and I shut down Systems, leaving a trail of System Beasts in mid-stride, or crawl. Kratitha moved with a butterfly-like grace, flitting between smaller opponents and the pullbeast, taunting it away from attacking while making thrusts augmented by the Symphony of Power. She left orange auras washing over the other colors of the Systems, disrupting how they interacted. She did the least damage she could to each construct, while leaving it incapable of further function.
I quickened notes in the Symphony of Healing, toning muscles in my legs. They would ache later, but doing so allowed me to keep up with Gompt, who flowed—a furry dancer—through the thick of our creations, stopping each one with a deft touch.
It took minutes, or a whole lightening, I wasn’t sure which. But finally, only the Ethulina prototype—the ringleader—still moved. None of us wished to damage it, or disrupt the fine-tuned System keeping it running. We’d been circling it, deactivating the simpler System Beasts first.
We’d created the Ethulina pullbeast with fantastical materials instead of the flesh and feathers of the native Kirian fauna, but it pranced and cavorted like a real creature. It shook its crystal mane with a chime of glass as its haunches—reflective metal above ranks of wooden scales—bunched and caught the overhead light. Gompt and I flanked it carefully while Kratitha buzzed in the background, calling out unhelpful admonitions not to injure the thing.
I dodged a flailing front hoof, its joints expanded into a dexterous hand, while Gompt stepped in from the back. She tried to lay a paw on the automaton long enough to sort through iterations of music formed from our notes and the Symphony of Potential.
“You’ll have to use both houses,” I called to my friend, and I fell deeper into both the House of Potential and Healing. Keeping both Symphonies present in my consciousness was like swimming against two currents, each trying to drag me down.
&n
bsp; I doubled the chords of melody in my skin, then tripled them, taking notes from the core of my being and making my skin temporarily much thicker, covered in a sheen of white from the House of Healing. Gompt used the House of Grace to dodge the System Beast’s quick slashes, as evidenced by the aura of blue surrounding her.
An iron hand-hoof grazed my arm, impacting my hardened skin. More bruises later to go with aching muscles, but at least the strike hadn’t broken anything.
Finally, Gompt grasped a forelimb firmly enough to keep it from another strike, and I moved in close, both hands on its metal and wood flanks. I flinched as a back leg kicked at my shins, but held my contact against its side.
The Symphony of Potential was a riot, with what should have been an arrangement of ordered solos and duets corrupted and tangled together. It would take time to sort, and would cost Gompt and I more notes from our beings. Without damaging the System more, I searched for the connecting node in the midst of it, buried between five louder pieces of music clamoring for my attention.
I grasped the notes that connected that System to the others and yanked them free. They had originated from my music in the first place, and the notes settled back in my core like old socks stretched past their original use. The creature stuttered and came to a halt.
The workshop fell quiet, save for the rustling of wooden limbs against wire mesh. A System Beast in the shape of a turtle clamored against its cage, still making its bid for freedom.
I let out a long breath and turned to the others.
“Will have to rebalance all servos before taking it to Assembly,” Kratitha said. She dabbed at several cuts on her arms, which dripped a brownish blood.
I took back the notes I had added to the melody of my skin, rejoining them to the core of my being, like cool water poured on a burn. I rotated one forearm, watching a blotch of green and purple that was forming. That will hurt later.
“I think that’s the least of our problems,” I said. “This was obviously some sort of attack or distraction related to the two murders.”
“Two murders?” Kratitha looked up from tending her wounds.
“Aegrino is dead, too,” Gompt said. She looked unharmed, but there were several places where her fur was matted and mussed, and she held one paw to her side. “Someone is trying their hardest to make sure the Society crumbles in on itself, both emotionally and physically,” she gestured to the ceiling by the doorframe, where a steady drip of water was beginning in one corner.
“Then what do we do?” I asked. “We have very little to go on, no suspects, and whoever is doing this seems to have more control over our Systems than we do.” I paused, frowning. There was still something nagging me about that.
“Help Moortlin?” Kratitha suggested.
“We should see how many others of the House of Potential they found to help,” Gompt said. “We can assist in shutting down other Systems in the mansion if they haven’t finished.”
I shrugged a shoulder in acceptance of her point, but it felt like giving in, somehow. The head of the Society is counting on me to figure out what happened.
“Yes. I have cleaning to do here, and servo recalibration,” Kratitha agreed, shooing us with one hand. Then she twitched, mouth tightening, and placed her fingers over a particularly wide and shallow cut on the other forearm.
“Will you be all right here?” I was not very good at regenerating flesh with the Symphony of Healing—it was a rare talent—but Kratitha waved me away.
“Others with worse. Tend to them. Find out who did this. I will set things right in workshop.”
I looked to Gompt, who shrugged. “Let’s go find Moortlin, then,” she said.
On the way there, Gompt helped tie a sling on an older Methiemum while I listened to the trills of pain running through his music. I turned a few from sixteenth to eighth notes, dimming the worst. He thanked us both, then went back to his job of keeping water flowing through this section of the mansion, despite a large crack in one pipe. The blue of the House of Grace and the green of The House of Strength surrounded him.
Near the stairs to the next level, we helped a Sureri woman with an elegant coif of hair. Auras of green and yellow—the Houses of Strength and Communication—kept the ceiling from totally collapsing, though a portion had already fallen in. Two Sureriaj males—her partners, I supposed—were picking pieces of plaster off her. I knew her by name, though the species was stingy with sharing that information.
I listened to the Symphony of Healing. “Majus Zuege, I don’t hear any bones broken, though you’ll have bruises more impressive than my own. Is there anything else we can do?”
“Well, I thank yer, but no,” she said gravely. “Go off an’ bodge together some aught folks with ills. There’s plenty injured more than meself.”
We found Moortlin on the highest floor of the mansion, brushing wood and plaster dust from their rough hide. Much of the shedding skin that told of their age had been scraped away. We confirmed they had found others in the House of Potential, and deactivated most of the other Systems.
“The damage is, hm, extensive,” they said, “though the worst is under control. The time to repair the mansion will be, hm, lengthy. One has not seen such chaos in one’s time as the head of the Society.” They let out a great gust of breath, like wind through branches, and slapped more dust from their skin.
“There is something more going on here, obviously,” I said. I hoped Moortlin would have some other information for us, despite the chaos.
“There is,” they agreed, and their unblinking yellow eyes stared between Gompt and I. “Before recent events, one was going to suggest this group, hm, attend to Aegrino’s body. Now is not the best time, but this one believes it is necessary to learn more.”
I traded a glance with Gompt, not sure what more we could learn from that source, though we could at least give him some dignity. Poor Aegrino. No one deserves that fate, and he was a good record keeper.
When we got back to the records room, Moortlin stumping along behind us, we were confronted with an empty patch of hardwood floor. Aegrino’s body was gone.
I spun to the others. “Where did he go?” Gompt’s eyes were wide behind her glasses and even Moortlin stood stock still, dazed.
“These ones are, hm, certain Aegrino is dead?” Moortlin ventured.
“I’m certain.” I said, as Gompt said, “He’s definitely dead.”
“We listened to the Symphony around his body,” I added. “I’ve seen death before. The melodies were breaking down in the same way.”
“Then who did this?” Gompt asked. She paced around the spot where the Etanela’s body had been until a short time ago, peering at the jointed oak floor. “Were the haywire Systems just a distraction?” The pool of blood was gone as well, and the space had been cleaned and tidied, as if nothing had happened, despite water dripping from a burst pipe overhead.
My Festuour friend bent until her snout almost touched the wood planks. “There’s still a stain here, but it’s faint. Whoever cleaned was faster than a racing thrint in heat.”
“The confusion would have covered much,” Moortlin rumbled, and I checked my chronograph.
Another lightening-and-a-half gone dealing with haywire Systems.
“Still, what one would have the, hm, ability to do such a thing?” My mentor took their own turn around the place where the record keeper died. “To affect so many Systems at once, and to do things they had not originally been composed to do—it is as if one majus has been multiplied into several.” They turned back. “This reminds one of the work this one conducted on harmonic resonances, Mandamon.”
I froze, my palms tingling, then sweating. That’s what has been nagging at me. It acted similar to one of my first inventions—the most dangerous. Similar in method, yes, but there was no way it could have affected an area this size. Plus, I had torn the thing apart!
It was also what caused Moortlin to invite me to the Society, desp
ite the accident. Despite me losing all I held dear.
I leaned against a bookshelf. It was not the same. ‘Harmonic resonances’ was just a fancy way of saying different actions were amplified by each other. I had the idea to link Systems people used into one big mechanism. Imagine being able to control heat, water, and power sources in one System. People could even have carried the resonator around with them, turning Systems off and on with a simple switch.
However, mingling so many Systems proved unstable. Every time I used my invention, at least one of them failed. I thought I could fix it. I thought I could accommodate the fluctuations in the Grand Symphony all by myself.
Right up until the day Abarham and my family died.
I’d recycled some of the safer ideas into the concept of the System Beast, but I’d never touched the harmonic resonator again. I’d purposefully tried to forget it, after dismantling the device.
“The resonator can’t have caused this.” My voice was weak, barely more than a whisper. I forced my hand away from fingering the groove below my right eye. “No one else knows how to use it, and it could never affect the whole mansion, unless modified greatly.”
“One is not suggesting anything,” Moortlin said. “One knows this is a, hm, delicate subject. Merely that the mechanism is, hm, comparable.” My mentor was contrite, their eyes dim. “One is confident this one did not cause this disruption. All invited to the Society are personally interviewed, and one holds them in highest regard. That includes Mandamon Feldo.”
“It had to be someone inside,” Gompt insisted. She was watching me, warily. “But Mandamon has been with me. I don’t think he took the list of members, and he certainly couldn’t have moved Aegrino’s body.”
“It wasn’t me,” I said, my voice a little stronger. “But I may have enabled whoever did this.” Gompt stepped back, but my mind was not on her.
Where did I leave the pieces? When was the last time I saw it? I could not bring myself to completely destroy it, no matter what it had caused.
Tales of the Dissolutionverse Box Set Page 39
