by Zack Archer
The ground shook, and an oversized stone appeared out of the ground in front of us, breaking through the rubble like a dolphin surfacing in the middle of the ocean.
We tensed, but nothing happened.
“Check it out,” Splinter said, bobbing his head at me.
“Why me?”
“Because the new guy always checks out the mysterious stones.”
The Kaptain nodded. “Pretty sure that’s a law in Fiasco Heights.”
I grumbled, then tip-toed forward and peered at the stone, which was asphalt-black and the size of a manhole cover.
I paused, then reached out and ran my hand over the stone.
The black suddenly expanded to reveal a fiery red center.
Instantly, I knew we were screwed.
It wasn’t a stone at all.
It blinked because … it was a fucking eye!
35
Before I could turn to warn the others, a roar like thunder rolled up from under my feet. My equilibrium shifted, and the ground exploded mushrooming bones and debris a hundred feet into the air.
I fell back as the ground opened up and something, some enormous creature, pulled itself up from wherever it had been lurking.
Ever see a dragon up close and personal?
Well, neither had I, but there I was, looking down into the bottomless mouth of a dragon on steroids. The jaws on the beast pulled back to reveal a seal-black gullet with two-foot incisors.
“Please tell me I’m hallucinating,” I croaked, crashing to the ground next to Lyric and Liberty.
The olive-colored monster roared, a thirty-foot tall nightmarish abomination with short wings, four whip-like arms, a tail the size of a telephone pole, and a head, elongated like a crocodile’s, that was ridged with fleshy protuberances that made it appear like the thing was wearing a kind of crown.
The monster’s arms speared out and slammed into the ground, helping it rise fully from where it had lain.
“KILL IT!” Splinter said.
Easier said than fucking done.
Splinter whipped a handful of wooden splinters at the beast, before opening up with his grenade launcher. Kaptain Khaos doused the dragon in flames as it writhed and struck out at us, one of the whip-like arms headed directly for me—
WHOOSH!
I ducked at the last second as the limb snapped over my head.
Pissed, I pulled my arms back, standing my ground, Liberty on my left, Lyric on my right.
“TIME TO TAKE OUT THE TRASH!” I shouted.
The dragon’s exterior was covered in heavy scales so that when I fired a series of plasma balls at the thing they just bounced off it. Aurora was doing the same as the dragon rose up, and Atlas planted his feet while throwing a haymaker.
His mighty fist connected with the beast’s jaw, knocking it back.
We cheered and then the dragon whipped its tail, hitting Splinter full-force in the chest and tossing him into the air.
Enraged, the Kaptain set the tail on fire as we advanced, using our boots to spring forward, trying to flank the dragon.
I tossed the trap bottle to Aurora and ran down the edge of the monster’s spider hole, pummeling the thing with plasma.
Lyric was on my right, pounding it with sonic bullets, blood spraying from the creature’s tiny ears.
Liberty shadowed me on the left, white-knuckling her sword, waiting for the right moment to strike.
I was surrounded by my harem of ladies, and I felt fucking invincible. The dragon was wounded, but it wasn’t going down without a fight.
It torqued itself up on its four appendages and came crashing down toward me.
I looked up and stared into the dragon’s mouth which was shooting right at me!
Diving to the left, I barely avoided becoming a snack.
The powerful jaws jackhammered into the boneyard and kept on going, the dragon pulling itself back down into the ground, disappearing from view.
Chest heaving, I looked around.
Lyric and Liberty were backing up, peering at the ground.
Atlas and Aurora were helping up Splinter who was battered, but very much alive. The Kaptain was spraying the boneyard with fire. “Trying to smoke the fucker out!” he shouted.
“Things like that don’t die easily,” Liberty, said twirling her sword. “I’m going to find that bastard and then I’ll ram my sword down its—”
The ground opened up under Liberty, and she was swallowed by the dragon.
Just like that.
“Nooooooooo!” I shrieked.
The dragon vanished from sight and we began franticly digging at the ground. Kaptain Khaos told us to move back, that he’d create a tremor to open the boneyard back when we all felt it.
A vibration, a sense of movement from under the ground when—
The dragon reemerged from the boneyard, flapping its wings, propelling its massive body into the air while creating a mini dust storm.
The thing flew up and arced around us as I fired on it.
The bastard might’ve taken Liberty away, but we were going to make it pay!
I blasted its head and neck with plasma as Atlas fired a punch that rocked the dragon in its jaws, forcing it into a crash landing.
“Where the hell’s Liberty?!” I shouted.
“You saw it!” Lyric replied. “The fucker swallowed her whole!”
We charged the dragon as it landed and reared up, mouth open, ready to resume its attack, when it happened.
Its body jolted violently.
Its head spasmed.
Its body quivered.
The dragon upchucked a fount of what looked like blood and black mucous.
It wailed in agony and fell onto its side, writhing like a salted slug and then something popped inside the monster, and an object pierced its soft belly from the inside.
It was a blade!
The tip of a sword.
The sword sawed down and a gash appeared in the creature’s underside.
Buckets of black blood and bile sheeted the ground as a form stumbled out of the dragon’s stomach like a baby being jettisoned from a birth canal.
It was Liberty, and she was marinated in the creature’s greasy innards. Anger gripped her face as she turned and climbed up the stomach of the dragon, leaping into the air before planting her sword in the thing’s neck.
The dragon bucked several times, moaned, and then fell silent.
It was all over.
Liberty slid down the side of the monster and slumped to the ground. “Please tell me it gets easier from here on out,” she said, before collapsing in a faint.
We spent five minutes reviving Liberty and then crossed the boneyard which ended at what looked like a silver ocean. I reached out a boot and tapped the surface of the ocean to find that it was actually a sheet of metal or alloy the color of steel.
The metal was curved, corkscrewed almost, and sloped down toward a section that glowed orange and red, like the magma reservoir in a volcano.
Rising over this was a structure, a six- or seven-story malformed castle-like edifice made from the same metal. The castle was immense and studded with all sorts of towers, parapets, and steeples.
“That’s the Keep,” Aurora said. “That’s the place where the Elementals hid the Light Breaker.”
“Where’s the Light Breaker?” I asked.
She placed the tips of her fingers to the sides of her head and squinted. Then she frowned. “Something’s blocking the Polymath’s map. It’s probably the Keep. I can’t see inside the walls.”
“So we’re going to have to go inside blind?” I asked.
Splinter grinned. “Pretty much, yeah.”
Aurora gestured for us to follow and we made quick time across the silver ocean.
Soon, we were pulling ourselves up an embankment and seconds later, we were gathered in front of the Keep.
The outside of the structure was featureless, no doors or windows.
I looked at Aurora. “Who’s g
ot the key this time?”
“I do,” Atlas said.
He measured his distance and threw a punch, his powerful fist slamming a hole through the Keep’s outer wall.
Kaptain Khaos and Splinter grabbed the edges of the hole and with much effort pried flaps of the Keep’s outer wall back, creating an opening large enough for us to slip through.
I crawled in after the others and was startled at the size of the Keep, which was illuminated by a constant orange-red light, the same light we’d seen glowing under the structure on the outside.
All of us stood silently for several heartbeats, observing the Keep’s soaring balconies, faux-stone stylobates, circular courtyards and galleries filled with the debris from upper floors, many of which had pancaked down onto most of the lower ones.
“I imagine this was a beautiful place once upon a time,” Atlas said.
“Before the rebellion,” Aurora said.
The debris in most places was mountainous, at least eighty feet tall, but there were natural paths between the piles.
Satisfied that we were where we needed to be, I took a step to move past Aurora, but she grabbed my arm.
“You need to tread carefully.”
“Why? We killed the monster. We put the dragon down.”
“There might be others.”
I looked around, and Liberty placed a finger on my lips. “If the stories are true, the Elementals left…things to maintain the Keep.”
“What kind of things?”
“Biomechanical watchers,” she said.
“Circumterrestrial drones,” Atlas said.
“Circum-what?”
“Guard dogs,” Kaptain Khaos said.
“Big fucking unmanned machines,” Splinter said.
“TSJGEFU,” I said.
All eyes rotated toward me. “The shit just got extremely fucked up,” I said.
“We need to move now,” Aurora said.
I stepped back and swept my hands at her. “Ladies first.”
36
We moved silently through the initial structure and across the compound proper, filing through cavernous spaces with vaulted ceilings that enhanced the ambient noise. All of us were on edge, reacting to every sound, every shadow flickering on the far walls. I had no idea what was waiting for us inside the Keep, but I mouthed a silent prayer that everything would go smoothly.
We cut through the center of the compound, following a winding trail that meandered between the great heaps of debris. The entire area was eerily silent save for a faraway hum, the kind of note made by a furnace when it’s just fired up.
“This place is too damn quiet,” Splinter said.
“Like the Barrows,” Kaptain Khaos said.
“The what?” I asked.
“The place where we bury our dead,” the Kaptain added. “A graveyard at the edge of the Tanglewood.”
“I didn’t know you guys died natural deaths.”
“All living things do,” the Kaptain replied. “But when we go, our inner core just burns out.”
“Like a supernova,” Splinter said.
The Kaptain nodded. “Instant cremation.”
Splinter smiled. “Saves on funeral expenses.”
“Which wouldn’t be much anyway, since you’re made of wood. I mean, you are your own coffin!”
Splinter flipped the Kaptain a middle finger. “I’m all man, brother.”
“Yeah, if by man you mean a godsdamned oak tree.”
“Oh, I’m a tree alright,” Splinter said. “I’m a Redwood. From the waist down!”
The guys shared a laugh and slapped palms.
“You mind me asking how it got like that?” I asked.
Splinter pointed at himself. “What? My skin?”
I nodded.
He shrugged. “It’s some kind of mutation. A reaction my ancestors had to the radiation before the Caul was built. Basically, the same thing that darker-skinned people have back on Earth who live close to the Equator.”
“Coolness.”
“Not when I was little. Everyone back then thought I was what we call a ‘bender.’ A weirdo.”
“‘Cause you are,” the Kaptain said. Splinter didn’t smile that time, and I could tell whatever had happened to him as a child had stayed with him.
“Everyone on this planet is special,” I said.
Splinter nodded. “But some are more…special than others. Just goes to show you that bullying is somehow hardwired in all of us, I guess.”
“But you made it.”
Another nod from Splinter. “Because I learned to turn a curse into a blessing. Took me a while, but I realized all of us are freaks in one way or another.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with that,” the Kaptain said. “I mean, in order to be irreplaceable, you gotta be different, right?”
We nodded and soon came to a fork in the trail, an area where a clutch of massive beams had fallen from the roof. We hooked to the left, only to find another collection of refuse, blocking the path.
“Over or through it?” Lyric asked.
Aurora and Atlas studied the way forward.
Aurora dropped to her haunches. She reached out a finger and traced a line in the inch of very fine dust that coated the metal floors.
That’s when we all saw them.
Footprints.
Dozens of them.
At least four feet long and two feet wide.
How long they’d been there, I didn’t know, but I knew one thing.
They definitely weren’t human.
I could see that the prints seemed to vanish at the edges of the path. As if whatever left them either went over the debris…or went into it.
It suddenly came over me at that moment, the deep, haunting sensation that something was (yet again) seriously fucking wrong.
I turned to the others and then a note, what sounded like a quick indrawn breath, riveted me and I looked asquint at Splinter standing at the outer end of the path.
He didn’t hear it.
Didn’t even sense what was behind him.
But I did, I could see everything unfolding in slow motion.
My mouth opened, but the words collapsed as the trash seemed to come alive. Something, some mammoth mechanical machine, had been hiding in the debris the entire time.
Waiting.
It rose up and wrapped its arms around Splinter.
I blinked.
And then the screaming started.
37
“AMBUSH!” I screamed as the machine wrenched Splinter back into the pile of rubble.
Everyone swung into action as large forms moved haltingly out of their hiding spots.
There were at least a dozen of them, the robotic guards that Aurora had alluded to, in various shapes and sizes, biomechanical horrors that had somehow harvested what looked like body parts from men and monsters, combining everything with pieces from the Keep to create terrifying, shambling constructs.
I stared in nerve-brutalized wonderment at the various body parts, human and otherwise, all yoked via lengths of translucent wire and held together with tubing that snaked over the machine’s exterior like a hungry vine.
The construct that had Splinter in its clutches, a behemoth with thick metal legs and long, corded arms, towered over us by at least ten feet.
Its metal mouth pulled back to reveal rows of sharpened, rusted teeth.
The thing loosed a metallic shriek and lifted Splinter higher before tossing him across the room.
“What the hell do we do?!” Lyric asked. “If we blast this place apart we could detonate the Light Breaker!”
“It’s a risk we have to take!” Atlas said. “Keep the fire contained within this room and defend yourselves!”
The others opened fire, blasting the construct to pieces as the machine’s brethren went on the attack.
Atlas signaled for us to take cover, and we did.
“We need to get outta this fucking killbox!” Kaptain Khaos shouted.
&n
bsp; There was a strangled cry, and I looked sideways to see Lyric pinned by one of the beasts. She opened her mouth, and the construct wrapped its hand around her cheeks, squeezing them so hard I thought her face might shatter.
I summoned up a ball of plasma and tossed it at the metal monster, shattering its legs. The machine fell back, freeing Lyric, who destroyed it with a volley of sonic bullets.
Kaptain Khaos helped Splinter up, and the pair turned and attacked the guards.
Splinter hurled clots of corrosive sap at the monsters, melting their bodies as Kaptain Khaos threw out his hands and created a minor tremor that was just powerful enough to sweep the remaining guards off their feet.
“TAKE COVER!” the Kaptain shouted.
We dove out of the way as a section of the ceiling, ripped loose by the minor quake, tumbled down, crushing the biomechanical horrors in a thunderous clatter.
Still more of the creatures appeared, and Splinter brought his Pez Dispenser launcher around.
“BURNING!” he bellowed.
He launched a series of rounds from his weapon that flew out flare-like and exploded in mid-air, the blast ricocheting off the faraway walls sounding like a hammer strike.
The resulting shockwave birthed a fireball that swept over three of the approaching constructs, setting them afire as they toppled to the ground, melting, covered in small fires.
Caught up in the fog of battle, I covered the others, throwing plasma balls at our attackers while keeping my eye on Liberty, who was being pursued by yet another machine that was as sleek and fast as a ballistic missile.
I was stuck in place, by several other monstrous guards, unable to assist Liberty who spider-climbed up a wall of stone and steel debris, the construct chasing her with cat-like precision, slicing at the air with its talon-like claws before jumping forward.
Liberty threw herself ahead and withdrew her sword, bringing it around as the construct landed hard in front of her.
She flinched, taking in the thing’s terrible visage, its metal snout painted red, shoulders necklaced with yellowing body-parts, both human and alien.
