Science and Sorcery Box Set

by Ryan Tang

  It'd been a privilege to fly it.

  It wasn't so bad for her last experience.

  All she had to do was break the barrier.

  Stock screeched again.

  Retching intermingled with gunfire.

  The explosions echoed through the empty courtyard, and the goddess shrieked.

  Her machine jerked furiously in the air, and the remainder of the screens flashed blood red.

  Alex nearly tumbled out of her chair and out into the pitch-black rainstorm. Her stomach lurched.

  CRITICAL DAMAGE.

  CRITICAL DAMAGE.

  CRITICAL DAMAGE.

  The rain washed her possessions out, and they tumbled down towards the ground.

  Her bookbag and models tumbled to the floor.

  Alex felt a brief pang of out-of-place longing until she remembered that it was okay.

  All she had to do was make it to the top.

  She wouldn't have any use for those things anymore, not after she crashed her Paragon into that dome of lies.

  She twisted and turned, flying this way and that.

  The hail of gunfire streaked towards her.

  Her battle-mind was at a level she'd never experienced before. Without even looking back, she drew her rifle and eliminated the shots behind her.

  She hit the false sky.

  Sparks flew, and there was a terrible echoing splinter.

  Her machine crumpled against the wall.

  The bent screen shattered to pieces. Eternium and glass pierced her arms and chest. Her blood sprayed out, and cold black rain seeped into her body, freezing her flesh whenever it touched her.

  Alex was flung from her seat and out into the bitter, drowning cold.

  “You! You’ll pay for this! You’ll pay for disobeying a god! Who did you think you are?"

  It was bright again.

  She could see.

  She gazed at the true sky, which was black and filled with stars. The sun shone down on her, not nearly as bright as the false sun, but much warmer. The cold slowly retreated from her body.

  Alex smiled.

  It was good to see the sun for one last time.

  They didn't need her anymore.

  They'd win without her.

  Stock was nothing without the false sky shining down on him.

  She fell with blue Eternium tumbling all around her, the shards of her loyal Paragon.

  A hand fell right in front of her, four cracked fingers still remaining.

  Alex reached out.

  If only she could reach the pieces.

  Maybe she could reform her machine, maybe she could create something to stop her fall.

  Maybe she'd survive after all.

  There was a shrieking retch, and the pieces were blown away.

  Oh.

  Never mind.

  Alex felt like she was watching herself from very far away. She was falling to the ground, and there was nothing she could do.

  Stock screamed.

  “You! You! Death won’t be enough for you. I’ll make you my slave! You’ll serve me forever! You’ll – "

  He stopped mid-sentence and wailed in horror.

  Alex fell past the Spire, where rays of light poured through the windows.

  Tiny holes burned through Stock's body, and this time they stayed there, oozing black blood.

  "No! Stop! Gnats! Stop! I'm your boss! I'm your god! Stop!"

  Mrs. T shouted for her.

  “No! Alex!”

  Her students screamed.

  “Ms. Alex! No! Ms. Alex!”

  "Save Ms. Alex! Someone save Ms. Alex!"

  The sound grew louder at first as she fell toward them.

  Then it grew softer as she fell past them.

  Down and down she went, all the way to the very hard colony floor.

  Stock grabbed another handful of his brainwashed workers and flung them at the tower.

  “Gnats! Die gnats! I've had it with you gnats!"

  They screamed as they flew through the air.

  “Kill them! Kill them all! I order you to kill them all! I'm god!"

  He threw more of them.

  They screamed too.

  Alex continued tumbling down, and then a cushioned hand caught her.

  Jared laughed.

  “I owed you! I owed you for that one!”

  Alex blinked.

  What happened?

  Wasn't Jared supposed to be surrounded by drones?

  How was she alive?

  More and more windows opened in the Spire. They shone their tablets on Stock and his monstrous goddess. They shouted out stories as loudly as they could.

  Jared joined in, screaming on the shattered speakers of his Paragon about how his father had been killed.

  The Spire door opened and out stepped Mrs. T, anger etched on every inch of her proud and dignified face. A Recent History of Plenty was clutched tightly in her hands, and she was reading out the story of Block 12, reading it out alongside a boy with a ghostly pale face who interjected to enhance her research at every other turn.

  Alex saw her students reciting the stories she’d taught them.

  Some of them waved model Paragons back and forth in their hands as they spoke.

  Stock fell to his knees and wailed.

  “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

  He whirled away from her and turned to the library instead. He reached down to fling another group of white-uniformed workers, but they weren’t there anymore.

  Their shouts and steps fell out of their unnatural synchronized cadence.

  With the light of the true sun shining down on them, they finally began to waken from their terrible paralyzed dream, from the Contracts Stock had forced them to sign.

  It was chaos.

  There were cries of joy, screams of sadness, and howls of anger as hundreds of thousands of people were freed all at once, their emotions released after their torturous imprisonment.

  Some fled at once, sprinting away from the Spire and the monstrosity that loomed above them.

  Others stood slack-jawed, unable to believe what was happening.

  The majority surged through the massive crowd in desperate search of their loved ones.

  But before long, they all turned towards Stock and began to fight alongside the rest of them.

  The ones with tablets pulled them out of their packs and pockets.

  Most of them just recited the tale of their imprisonment.

  They tore off their gloves, waving their broken hands high in the air, shouting loudly about what Southern Robotics had done, piercing Stock with his own lies.

  They were trapped in their bodies, but they'd seen the battle. They knew what to do.

  Alex gaped as she sat in the gel-covered Paragon’s hand.

  “I mined that Eternium for you!”

  “He made us dig through to make parts! Look at what happened!”

  “He told me he’d give me food and a roof above my head! That’s why I joined him!”

  "He made me go back home and recruit my whole family!"

  "Me too! Me too!"

  "The massacre at the Governor's mansion! I was there! I got a machine to find my son! I barely survived! He sent in troops and shot everybody! And then they were waiting outside the hospitals!"

  "You stole my dad! You stole my dad!"

  Stock screamed.

  With the false sky raining down, the cries of her students had been a mere irritation.

  But now, as the voices of thousands swelled together, it became far too much to bear.

  “No! No! No!”

  Stock stumbled forward, but every movement was a struggle.

  The white and gold limbs rattled with every step. One of the arms suddenly looked like it was about to snap. The writhing mass at the back retreated deep inside the metal, whimpering in pain and terror as it wilted in the light of the true sun. Teeth clattered to the floor. Tongues drooped and then died.

  The dripping ink turned into a gush. Smoke vanished i
nto thin air.

  The Eternium started melting. The machine shrank faster and faster before her very eyes.

  The chorus grew louder and more excited.

  A chant started back up, a chant that they took up so easily it must have been practiced before.

  “Fuck Stock!”

  “Fuck Stock!”

  “Fuck Stock!”

  It took Alex a moment, but then she joined them. She saw her students grinning deviously as they joined in from the tower.

  The defeated monster fell to his knees.

  A white Eternium hand reached out to push him back up, but it dissolved before it even hit the floor.

  Stock belched out a flood of messy red ink filled with tendrils and melting flesh. The torrent was freakishly large, coming from the human-sized body at the crest.

  Stock half-writhed and half-stirred, but he had no hope of standing again.

  The tentacles in the back dissolved faster and faster, joining in with the crud he’d puked out onto the floor.

  “No! No! Stop! Please! Stop! I’m god! I’m god!”

  The rein-like tentacles in his hands withered away, and then Stock detached from the machine. His legs plopped out of the crest, and he fell into the puddle of ink and dying meat.

  "No! No! No!"

  Smoke twisted into the air then disappeared. The ink began to dry in the light of the true sun.

  And then they were all standing victorious together in the ruined Spire courtyard.

  ____

  Laura and Mary laughed and laughed as they sprinted around the top floor with Christmas lights wrapped around their arms.

  A pair of pale-skinned youths strolled out from the ninth floor exit, chattering happily with Alice as they walked. One of them was Jon, who'd been brothers with the boy who lost his head. It was good to see him smile again. The children of Block 12 had become very fast friends with her students.

  Nico and Gigi waddled into the room, huffing and puffing as they carried large crates of books in their arms.

  They set the books down and groaned.

  "Alright, Ms. Alex! One more box, and then it's our turn to do the lights!"

  Alex laughed and pressed her hand against the wall.

  The book-corridors opened, and her students sprinted inside.

  "Bet I fill up my box before you do!"

  The books inside the book-corridors were an endless treasure trove. There was so much knowledge inside – knowledge of the sinful gods, knowledge of the Paragons, knowledge about the history of Plenty.

  Alex smiled as she opened the crate.

  She couldn't wait to read them, and she was even more excited to share them.

  Alex pulled a book from the crate and smiled at the title.

  She slid yet another copy of The Engineer’s Tale onto the shelf.

  The once rare book was now very common, and nothing could've made Alex happier.

  They'd returned Southern Robotics’s fraudulent Eternium to the colony’s core, but with books like The Engineer’s Tale and readers like her students, Alex knew that Plenty would one day unlock the secrets of the holy metal.

  Alex smiled as she returned the book to the shelf.

  A blue wave danced across the black.

  Her own machine had been returned to the Spire as well, and her office was back in its rightful place.

  But the blue twine told her the Spire was ready to fight by her side once again.

  Alex peered out of the window and smiled at the Paragons they still had, the Paragon that had saved her life.

  Jared hooted from the cockpit of his machine, grinning with uncontrollable joy at the massive fleet all around him.

  When it came to rebuilding, the Peacetime model created miracles. The strange troll-like machines amplified the strength of their pilots by ten thousand when it came to colony maintenance.

  The homes climbed higher and higher, far taller and grander than ever before.

  A Peacetime model walked up to the door and deposited a massive stack of books. They'd removed the countless copies of Stock's autobiography, but the machines and equipment he’d built to print them were being put to very good use.

  The people of Plenty had countless stories to tell.

  From the trapped prisoners of Block 12 to the people left homeless by Southern Robotics’s abuses. From victims fooled into signing Contracts to the hapless bystanders whose family members were deceived by the Council and then sacrificed in Stock's ritual.

  All the stories were written down and collected.

  They were filled with their own horrors and struggles.

  But they all recounted how Plenty toppled Stock with the voices and stories of thousands.

  All of them described the better world they'd build together.

  The dome-like cockpit briefly popped open, and Margaret waved down at them from the cockpit, a massive grin on her face. She was having so much fun piloting her Peacetime model.

  Jared’s design was just as easy to use as he promised.

  Alex shouted up to her.

  “Thanks for the cake!”

  Margaret laughed. Alex had thanked her for that cake every time she saw her, and she'd continue thanking Margaret for the rest of her life. Margaret would never know just how much that blue cake meant to Alex at that time.

  The stack of books in the enormous hand of Margaret's machine was a miracle. They were piled up so tall that it took a Paragon to move them around.

  Mrs. T turned around and pointed strictly, but she couldn't hide the laughter from her face.

  “Hey! What’s going on over here! Come help!"

  The kids giggled playfully.

  Laura and Alice stopped messing around and rushed to help Nico and Gigi with the books. Other students sprinted out as Emile shouted into the book-corridors.

  "Hey! There's a new crate! Come out and help!"

  Brick by brick. Book by book. Everyone would work together. Everyone’s story would be told. Together, they’d restore the damage and create a world where nothing like this could ever happen again.

  Together, they'd build a new Plenty with the strength of thousands.

  Credits

  Continue reading by ordering TO BE AN ACE, Book 2 in the Science and Sorcery Series, coming out on May 7th! (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086L7H746)

  In addition, visit my Twitter page (https://twitter.com/ryantang203) or Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ryantang203/) to find out how you can get the prequel novella, THE DOUBLE LAST STAND, for free!

  Edited by Kiran Misra (kiranmisra.carrd.co)

  Cover Art by Vincent Lefevre (ptitvinc.com)

  Part 1 Art by Mikaela Keung (mikaelakeung.wixsite.com/website)

  Part 2 Art by Athena Wang

  Part 3 Art by Peter Balogh (deviantart.com/peterprime)

  Special Thanks to Aaron Hetzer

  For more amazing artwork, please check out the following artists, who will be featured in the next two installments – TO BE AN ACE and HEIRS TO SHATTERED STARS.

  Aedel Fakhrie (@KontrolAltDelt on Instagram)

  Taira (@taira.san.no.atowaku on Instagram)

  Benedick Bana (@banabenedick on Instagram)

  Theotime Galmiche (https://www.artstation.com/theogm)

  Julio Bencid (@julbenart on Instagram)

  If you liked my work, please follow me on social media!

  @ryantang203 on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

  Email me at ryantang203@gmail.com

  TO BE AN ACE

  Book Two of the Science and Sorcery Series

  © 2020 by Ryan Tang

  BOOK 1: THE GHOSTS IN THE COURTYARD

  An ace.

  She had to become Plenty's ace.

  Alex the librarian took one last look at the walls of books surrounding her as she stepped toward the cockpit. The damage Stock and his goddess of Ignorance had inflicted on the Spire's books could never be reversed. For the sake of his demented ambitions, Stock had desecrated hundreds of years of invalu
able knowledge.

  When Alex first summoned her Paragon, the machine had purified hundreds of books to create a blade that sliced effortlessly through the monstrous goddess. But the librarian had failed to duplicate the process despite her best efforts. When she summoned her Paragon now, the sword was just a physical blade.

  But there were still countless surviving stories, many of which they hadn't even discovered yet. The dark and twisting Spire contained books from floor to ceiling, all the way up to the two hundredth floor. Alex longed to read them, but first, she had to fulfill her most important duty. The Spire's stories were full of Paragon aces - brilliant pilots who inspired comrades, terrified foes, and commanded their mighty humanoid machines like they were extensions of their bodies.

  There were aces who killed anyone who stood before them.

  There were aces who could hold off entire armies by themselves.

  There were aces who never missed a single shot.

  There were aces whose Eternium blades sang and danced like they had a mind of their own.

  There were all sorts of aces, and as much as Alex wished she could read more about them, she had to train her skills. She had to rival them, and there was no time to waste.

  The burden of being Plenty's ace had fallen to her. The Eternium in the Spire had chosen Alex of all people to protect the colony, and she couldn't fail her friends and neighbors. If it wasn't for their courage, she would have died during her duel against Stock. Shattering the false sky that granted Stock and his dark goddess of lies unlimited strength and stamina had reduced her mosaic blue Paragon to a smoldering and vulnerable ruin. Even with her friends' timely intervention, it'd been a perilously narrow victory, one that'd cost thousands of lives.

  Alex fumbled at the door of the simulator pod with dull and deadened fingers. It took her a while before she realized her fingers had already wrapped around the handle. She pulled the door open and stumbled into the chair.

  She hadn't been sleeping very well.

  Plenty had captured Stock, but there were other villains for the colony to fear. Alex wasn't the only one who could summon weapons from inert Eternium. Stock had at least two associates, a bearded mountain of a man and his pregnant partner, a tall and beautiful lady with silver hair. They'd escaped the library courtyard in an orange Eternium pod that'd blazed brighter than the sun. And there might be other enemies too. Stock had friends on every colony.