Dark Iron King II: Arcadia Falls (Unreal Universe Book 5)

by Lee Bond

  Still. He had switched camps and made his choice. Wrong as his misplaced alliance with Luther was, there was no going back. The ancient Golem dipped his head in chill greeting. “I am Winston.”

  Details of Winston’s long life flitted through Garth’s head.

  Well, shit, he thought miserably.

  Six thousand years old, one of Agnethea’s longest friends, the rascal on his left –who was honestly so fucking French Garth was surprised the man wasn’t poncing around in fancy velvet underpants, waving a baguette around like a sword- was a veritable army unto himself.

  Winston smiled cruelly. “You know me.”

  “Yup.” A six thousand year old Golem was a fucking juggernaut of a being, easily equal to a Foursie, only not nearly as stupid.

  As far as options went, there weren’t any.

  With Winston’s identity revealed, the situation had gone quantumly pear-shaped in three seconds flat. Mirabelle had a hungry gleam in her bizarro eyes that suggested she was going to spend a considerable amount of time trying to eat his face clean off while Winston … was doing nothing except looking totally super pleased his reputation had preceded him.

  Garth appreciated Winston’s tactics. If the tables were turned and he was confronting a lone dude with, say, Zurich at his side, he’d be doing as Winston was doing right that moment: being the cool, mellow fella, with Zurich gearing up to just wreck shit sideways.

  Then he’d swing in with the coup de grace.

  Sometimes, it just didn’t pay to get outta bed.

  “There are times,” Garth said seriously, “When you’ve got to know when to hold ‘em.”

  “And?” Mirabelle stepped forward, Winston following suit at the same time.

  “When to fold ‘em.” And with that, Garth N’Chalez, Engineer for Reality 2.0 and Kin’kithal warrior of the highest order, turned tail and booked it towards a jumble of collapsed shelves.

  The Golems followed suit, faces shining in triumph.

  ***

  Winston leaped away, right arm dangling uselessly, shock, fear and revulsion twisting his face in ways he’d never believed imaginable. Their opponent, the so-called Specter, was … the best opponent they’d ever fought. Though they were stronger, he was faster, though they possessed limitless martial knowledge –which they’d used to push and pull the fiendish, armored warrior back and forth across the warehouse floor- his weapons drew blood, broke bone, punctured skin. Poor Mirabelle, if she managed to survive her wounds, would never … never be the same; Winston had been standing right next to her when Specter had delivered a face full of shot from that epic hand-cannon.

  Shreds of her once beautiful face we stuck fast in his hair and … and she wasn’t doing well; half the poor girl’s face was a shredded mass of torn flesh, chipped bone and, dare he think it, a burst eyeball. How Mirabelle was even alive after being a deathblow was a considerable mystery. Mercifully, She was off to one side of the ‘main arena’ now, leaning against a jumble of broken furniture or what have you, wailing like a mad banshee, mind swept away by what had to be incomprehensible agony.

  Winston eyed his enemy critically, silently –impossibly- pleased that the shot used to disfigure Mirabelle was the last one available to Master Nickels: never before in his life had the ancient Golem seen such a devastating weapon in use. He’d been hit by less than half the shot coming from the end of that damned gun and he was unashamed to admit he didn’t want to feel its sting a second time!

  Inasmuch as Nickels –aka Specter- was proving to be more of a tough nut than imagined, they’d been giving as much as they’d been getting in return, oh yes they had! Mirabelle was a shrieking, gibbering mess and yes, his arm had seen better days but Specter’s awesome geared armor was on its last legs all the same!

  Both vicious cog-swords were bent and warped in their tracks neatly preventing the warrior from reaching over his back to grab hold of that deadly long gun without risking his life in the process and the … hydraulic lines providing strength to their foe’s legs were partially collapsed, reducing his dervish-style speed to something more manageable.

  Oh yes, Winston smiled to himself as he caught sight of pained anger flashing across Specter’s bloody face, and there is that broken nose, and those grooves in the man’s forehead.

  “How fare you, Mirabelle?” Winston took a few steps backwards. His shoulder ached like nothing else, though, he reflected mockingly, it’d been some time since he’d felt any kind of pain at all.

  “How do you think I fare, Winston?” Her face was a devastated ruin. There were chunks of her once lovely visage all over the arena floor. Was life, she wondered, worth living if it was lived looking like a ghoul?

  “I think…” Garth grabbed hold of his busted beak and twisted it around until it clicked back into place, sharp cry of pain drowning out the disgusting snick, “I think your friend is unhappy.”

  Well, so was he. His armor was completely fucked. DarkBook had given up entirely on cracking the secrets of total communication between the various systems in favor of providing as much support as they could muster, redirecting the flow of Dark Iron to those areas most damaged by the incessant, punishing attacks. True, that meant his suit would suffer an overall decrease in efficiency until he could spend time repairing things the old-fashioned way, but it was by far a better alternative than what he’d face otherwise.

  Whatever the fuck else the horribly misnamed ‘Obsidian Golems’ were, they were a goddamn nightmare fighting force unlike anything else he’d ever encountered. Winston and Mirabelle were a match for any God soldier, hands down, bar none. Their speed rivalled that of a truly juiced up Kin’kithal and the resilience of their flesh was through the roof, and as he stood there, half-paying attention to the data trickling through the HUD, Garth found himself wondering quite seriously how these bizarre immortals would do against the Bruush.

  “Are … are you…” Winston chose to mimic Master Specter’s motions a few moments ago with his arm. It certainly couldn’t hurt more than it already did. Grabbing hold of the dangling, useless appendage, the Golem forcefully shoved the bloody thing back into its socket.

  A black miasma of swirling nausea and agony grabbed hold of the Golem and for a long, precarious moment he genuinely thought he was going to fall unconscious.

  Garth opened his mouth to ask Winston –in all sincerity- if he was willing to just lay down and let a man be about his business when DarkBook asked him a direct question across the HUD.

  : redirect Dark Iron flow to augment refabrication [y/n]:

  Mouth open, completely forgetting where he was and who was no more than ten feet away, Garth … didn’t know what to do. Literally. The ramifications of what the damn thing wanted were clear, but when he pushed for more information –again, literally winging communication by the seat of his pants- DarkBook came back with nothing.

  : redirect Dark Iron flow to augment refabrication [y/n]:

  Well, Garth thought to himself, it seems as though ‘Book thinks this is goddamn important.

  A circumspect check of both Winston and Mirabelle showed that his opponents were still more or less wrapped up in their individual miseries; learning –and with such swiftly brutal instruction- that they weren’t nearly as immortal and invulnerable as they’d been led to believe, they were understandably quite … perplexed … about their lot in life.

  Mirabelle in particular.

  The ‘poor’ Golem had resumed shrieking quite shrilly about the condition of her face, and –though he’d certainly deny if it pressed- Winston’s bruised and blood-smeared face held quite a bit of concern.

  Stepping back five feet from his targets as casually as possible, Garth offered a terribly ironic suggestion. “Listen,” he shouted, “uh, yeah. It’s quite obvious we’re gonna resume bootstomping each other here in a few minutes. Like, I’m totally not going to let you, uh, abominations run around and you guys can’t afford to let me out of this place alive, so, uh, how about we take a five minute bre
ak, you know, drink some Coke and maybe work on our living wills? How about it?”

  : redirect Dark Iron flow to augment refabrication [y/n]:

  Winston looked from Mirabelle to Specter and back again. “

  “Such delicious irony.” He sneered against the pain in his arm. “We shan’t fall for the same trick, ‘Master’ Nickels. This respite will end shortly and there is nothing you can do to save yourself. Wounded though we are, we are your betters. Mirabelle. Mirabelle! Get your silly ass up and prepare!”

  Garth ignored DarkBook’s flashing, very insistent request to continue or not. “Yeah, well, uh. I guess that’s totally fair, but also too, I wasn’t hurt before, and you guys beat the shit out of the armature holding the weapons on my back. I’ve, um, totally got to get back to the shop and hammer all this stuff out before I can get back to shooting you weird-beards from a safe distance. Won’t that be more fun? A cat and mouse game across the City? Will I shoot you? Won’t I shoot you? Are you right behind me as I run through the alleys, or are you hanging around on a street corner, preparing your deadly traps? We could, like, stretch that shit out for days. Make a fucking miniseries out of it or something. We could get Steven Bochco to direct. It’d be rad.”

  Truth was, he reckoned he’d rather go on a blind date with a Bruushian gene witch than go hand-to-hand with a fucking Obsidian Golem ever again. He wasn’t entirely certain, but there was some tweaking and twinging in his ribcage that suggested one or more of Winston’s perilous roundhouse kicks had done more than just warp the gears in his breastplate.

  Like Danny Glover, he was getting too old for this shit.

  In fact, the longer he stood there, the longer and louder the list of complaints from his body grew.

  “Whaddya say, man?” Garth stepped back a few more feet the moment Winston’s eyes swept back to Mirabelle, who’d just shouted that they could have a bloody half an hour for lunch if only her partner would get his ass over to her and led some bloody support.

  Winston flicked a hasty nod and moved to Mirabelle’s side.

  Ignoring the very real concern and soft, nurturing words because that didn’t fit anywhere into the legend of evil, baby-napping cannibalistic weirdoes, Garth pulsed a ‘yes’ to DarkBook, hoping that he wasn’t accidentally consigning himself to a state of total paralysis or something. Even in their tremendously weakened state, the two Obsidian Golems were tough.

  The results were instantaneous and … off-putting.

  : rerouting subcutaneous Dark Iron flow:

  Garth was about to wonder what that meant when the strangest, nausea-inducing sensation rose from deep inside his arms. It was precisely like someone was yanking taffy from inside his veins, one long thin strand of stretchy, gooey taffy at a time, all the way out of each vein, leaving behind a curious vacuum that was –just as quickly- filled with the regular old feeling of blood hissing about in the normal sort of way.

  Realizing that DarkBook had managed to take control of –at the very least- the upper portion of his handcrafted Geared Armor and that the queer feeling rolling through his arms and upper chest was actually the Dark Iron being siphoned from his skin and blood filled Garth with about as much joy as he’d ever felt since stepping inside Arcade City.

  And then, much to his surprise –not to mention Winston’s, who looked up so sharply and abruptly from where he was consoling Mirabelle that if looks were knives the air would be positively … knifey- the armor started … rebuilding … itself, drowning out the female Golem’s probably eternal wailing and moaning about being ugly with the sounds of a machine shop going full tilt.

  : Dark Iron matter connections being made. 15% complete:

  “That’s fucking aw…” Garth’s excitement and awe was cut instantly short by a volcanic roar of fury that had the warehouse rumbling. “Hey. Do you guys do this thing every once in a while where, you, like, have a machine that makes really loud noises? Some kind of … fuck … some kind of thingy to freak people out when you guys get bored?”

  Winston moved to stand protectively in front of Mirabelle. The poor woman wasn’t going to be normal for some time and was out for the remainder of the fight. “No, sirrah, we do not. It sounds like …”

  Another roar split the air. DarkBook flashed a quick and dirty echolocation map of where this second stentorian scream of anger had come from. The HUD spat and fizzed and crackled with a poorly summoned rendition of a hazy memory.

  “Yeah, I know what it sounds like.” Garth rejoined bitterly. “Only that’s fucking impossible. And crazy. Like, crazy crazy.”

  “That shout came from a different location than the first.” Winston said, placing a hand protectively on Mirabelle.

  “Gee, Sherlock, thanks for the update.” Garth tried to think above the noise from his armor and the echoing reverberations that had to be filling Ickford with unilateral terror.

  From what he understood about the nature of King’s Will and Golem’s Miasma, they were mutually exclusive. There could be no Kingspawn points anywhere at all within the city or its limits because … because. The only possible way –and it was at this point so theoretical that Schrodinger’s brain would explode from the implausibility of it all- that anything remotely resembling Big Kings could be anywhere near Ickford was if that asshole was building them outside the sphere of influence.

  And then cutting them loose, because until or unless Ickford was completely destroyed, King’s Will would have no purchase in those giant steampunk robots.

  “Fuck me sideways.” Garth made intentional eye contact with Winston. To the Golem’s credit, he didn’t flinch. In point of fact, though he was beaten in ways he’d always imagined impossible, Winston returned with a frankly impressive amount of resolve.

  “Yes?” Winston asked coolly, embarrassed to admit that he rather hoped the suggestion about to come out of Specter’s mouth was one wherein they all agreed to run away as fast as they could. It was a funny old world, Winston reflected ruefully, and quite amazing how things quickly reshaped your needs.

  Garth ran a hand through his hair. “So, this thing we’re doing here, it’s just a job, okay? The King made me to take care of you and all that…”

  “It rather seems your mad monarch has decided to go down a different route.” Winston commented dryly. Mirabelle yowled like a cat and scrabbled fingers through abused flesh, causing the six thousand year old Golem to finally lose his temper. “Oh, do shut up, Mirabelle.”

  “Yeah. Yeah.” Garth nodded. “Hey, so. Here’s what I’m thinking…”

  Mirabelle’s ragged voice was like nails on a chalkboard. “Get to it, Specter. You want to run away, and so do we. We shall pretend it’s to get to our loved ones, to save Ickford, whatever facet of this unlikely Big King invasion makes us feel better about ourselves. But running away is what we want, yes? If there are two Big’Un’s out there, we all of us have a lot more to worry about than a conflict between Specter and Golem.”

  Garth absorbed Mirabelle’s statement and nodded. “That … about sums it up, all right. We, uh, run away? But not like cowards or scaredy-cats or anything. We’re … going to save Ickford. Yeah, no, that sounds totally better. Good game, you guys. You beat the snot out of me.”

  Winston ignored Garth’s chattering prattle, instead helping Mirabelle to her feet. Gods, one entire side of her face was beyond ruined. All that remained were a few scraps of flesh wrapped tightly around a gleaming white skull.

  The elder Golem blanched. It was an awful, dark miracle that the deadly shot from that cannon hadn’t done for her, though the sounds she made hinted she wished they had.

  Winston considered doing for here when they were well away from Nickels the Specter, but decided against it. If the King was doing as they all three believed, every hand would be needed.

  Shouldering his weeping friend, Winston spared a glance over his back at Specter. “We will meet again, Master Specter. Out there, on the battlefield, perhaps en route to dealing with these Kings, but we will meet aga
in. And we shall finish…”

  Two more earsplitting screams of raw fury shattered the eerie silence brought about by the previous eruptions that’d heralded the arrival of the Kings.

  “Well, fuck.” DarkBook plotted the two points and the results were … discouraging.

  Garth gave Winston the finger and ran away towards the door he’d come through what felt like sixteen years ago, secure in the comfort that the very noisy rebuilding his Geared Armor was going through was going to keep the Golem away.

  There weren’t two Big Kings at the gates.

  There were four. Four of the big mechanical bastards.

  “I’m gonna need more Dark Iron, aren’t I?” Garth asked DarkBook as he fled down an alleyway, instinct mapping out where he was in relation to Agnethea’s impressive Iron Bank.

  DarkBook responded by flashing him an image of a horse being very excited to eat an apple.

  “Asshole.”

  8. A King’s Will, an Assassin’s Desire, and A Bartender's Secret

  King Barnabas Blake the One and Only stepped back and marveled at the wonder he had created. Though imperfect, though he was using equipment tainted by the outside world, and though there was the nagging doubt that not everything was going completely according to plan, power was moving through The Dome at long last.

  Soon –not soon enough for the monarch’s liking but soon either way- the grand and glorious adventure he’d embarked upon thirty thousand years ago would come to fruition!

  And yet, the monarch couldn’t help but frown.

  The primary solution had been so much more elegant, so much more … wondrous. Long and long and longer still had Kingsblood taken to grab hold in those worthy of transformation, slowly but surely purifying them of the sicknesses and maladies that life in the Unreal Universe bestowed upon all living creatures.

  If only he’d seen sooner that it weren’t purity and emptiness he’d been reaching for this whole but the other thing entirely.

  Ah well.

  The Suits and the brothers and his own mind would work well enough, wouldn’t they just? To be honest, when he were successful, there’d be nowt about to comment on either the elegance or the roughness of his grand scheme anyways, hey?