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

by Lee Bond

  Then he shrugged the thought away. No matter what, it didn’t sound like something a bloke should accept so easily.

  “And what, then? You think to steal Nickels’ memories for you own?”

  Dom shook his head, laughing. “No, you great twat. With ‘is memories at our beck and call, we can figure out how to do for him. I thought that were apparent.” Then he went back to digging.

  Chevy stood there, nonplussed, silently working through the parameters of Dom’s suggestion. If it was possible, if Garth’s ‘stolen’ Book had indeed acquired some –if not all- of the man’s experiences, could they use that information to their own advantage?

  Should they?

  “Bugger me backwards.” Chevy steeled himself against vomit-like occurrences, then bent to the grisly task of proving to Dom that there was quite literally no way …

  “Found it! I told you, Chevy, oh how I told you!” Dom’s bare fingers reached out to grab hold of Book. The overwrought Gearman was well pleased to see Chevy’s questing, gauntleted fingers doing the same. Their fingers brushed against the abused but otherwise completely intact cover.

  Something inside Book growled.

  Dom and Chevy tried to pull their respective hands loose from Book, but as they stared, columns of gears rose up out of the cover to hold them fast.

  A loud voice echoed through their heads, and it was the last thing they would hear for quite some time.

  : internal communications network located. Network 85% damaged. Seeking connections … seeking connections … see … redirect. Connections made. Injecting Cloud Particulate Variant Sequencing. Project: Rainmaker possibility of success, 25%:

  ***

  Agnethea stared at Garth, mouth agape. She couldn’t help it. She knew it was unladylike, knew that if –somewhere amidst the sneering grins and diamond hard eyes- there was some bit of the old Master Nickels in there, her rude shock had to be making the man uncomfortable.

  She was uncomfortable.

  “What is this all about, Queen?” Garth pointed up at the Gunboy, who towered above them, who in turn was staring oddly up at the descending cylinders. “There are more important matters.”

  “A-are you in pain?” Agnethea blurted out suddenly.

  “Honey, if we’re gonna stand around asking all the questions that could be asked, I could ask you if you’ve been swimming in brain matter. Your dress has seen better days.” Garth was about to add more to his witty rejoinder, but he grew distracted by the smooth interaction of the gears his fingers had become.

  Agnethea watched Garth, terrified. He was being ever so polite, but the Queen could tell it was taking all his concentration to do so. Whatever madness he imagined Specter to be, Garth Nickels wasn’t so far gone that he’d do anything foolish.

  For now.

  Despite all his pretentions at civility, there was the whiff of feral animal about the man, who was –again, despite everything- a walking, talking accumulation of gears in the form of a man. The slightest thing out of whack, the smallest … disturbance … could quite easily topple that affectation and like as not, Agnethea knew she could find herself in a battle for her life.

  One which the Obsidian Golem knew she could not hope to win.

  “And no.” Garth replied, snapping out of the trance. There were such things whispering in his head. When he was done doing for the Gunboys and the King and everything else that stood in his way, there would be time enough to listen to those sounds, decipher their meaning. There was something else afoot in Arcade City. It itched, deep underneath his cog-skin. Something wasn’t right. “No, I am not in any pain.”

  “Then why … why scream so?” Agnethea asked. The man in front of her dipped into and out of the Specter persona and back to Master Nickels so quickly it were a miracle his neck didn’t break.

  Garth rolled his shoulders. Time was wasting. He itched to be atop the Gunboy, pulling things out of whatever passed for its brain panels. There was so much left that needed doing, and so little time, and he wasting all of it talking to a woman coated in brain matter. “Because I was afraid of what I would become. I still am.”

  “You are in control?” Agnethea could scarcely believe it.

  Garth dipped his head once. “Barely. Specter is in here, figuring out how best to do for this fucking Gunboy. And probably those cylinder deals because they can’t be any good for what remains of Ickford. If we’re all extremely super fucking lucky, I can use this goddamn darkness inside me to my own advantage long enough to achieve my goals and get the fuck out of this shithole city. Now if you’ll step back and watch a badass motherfucker do his thing …”

  Agnethea stepped forward, slapped a hand on Garth’s shoulder to stop him from leaping upwards onto the Gunboy.

  She immediately regretted her decision. The gears and cogs and other mechanical devices that’d carved themselves into Garth’s hardy flesh weren’t just there for show, they weren’t some trick of the light or fanciful expression of King’s Will or any such thing.

  They were real, they were sharp, and they carved merciless grooves into her flesh as easily as a scalpel slid through a normal woman’s skin. Blood poured from the open wounds, splashing down the cruel black mechanics that had become Garth’s body.

  Specter shrugged Agnethea’s hand from his shoulder and whirled, eyes glittering with mad promise. He grabbed hold of the so-called Queen of Ickford by the neck, watching thoughtfully as his gear-fingers bit through the soft-looking skin. Thick red blood streaked with the blackest black he’d ever seen since coming to Ickford poured down the Queen’s alabaster figure, pooled up against the bodice of her dress, then joined the rest of the mess.

  He growled into her ear, voice full of fury. “Do you want to be a fucking statistic, oh Queen of Ickford? Do you want to join the dead and soon-to-be dead? The cherry on top of the mountain of corpses I plan on leaving in my wake? These Gunboys need to be brought down and you stand there trying everything to stop me. Push further and I’ll just fucking leave you all here to die.”

  Agnethea willed herself to ignore the excruciating pain radiating outwards from her neck, did everything in her power to pretend that the vise-like grip holding her in place wasn’t also grinding the skin there into a torn ruin. “I …” she swallowed against the pain, gagging at the effort, “I … it’s a trap. The King …”

  Specter threw his head back and laughed. “Of course it’s a trap! This whole thing is a trap, you stupid bitch. That asshole Barnabas knows what I am now, what I intend, why I’m here. He’s pushing the issue. I’m just gonna get there ahead of him, that’s all. There’s nothing I can’t do. Now, if you’ll permit me to save your sorry town?”

  Agnethea tried to respond, but suddenly found herself flying backwards through the air. Even as she rammed into broken columns hard enough to knock the wind out of her and make her wish she’d not gotten out of bed this morning, the Queen marveled at the speed and strength Garth now possessed.

  Laying there, cracked, broken, bleeding, Agnethea watched as Master Nickels jumped lithely from the ground to knee, knee to elbow, elbow to head. It was done so simply, so effortlessly, that the ancient Golem wondered why in the world the man sought to diminish such … dire perfection.

  “I am sorry, Master Nickels.” Agnethea wheezed. She coughed up a lungful of blood, then rose unsteadily to her feet. “I am sorry I failed to get to you before your own personal demons rose up. I am sorry that Specter has grabbed hold of you. I am even sorrier I failed to help you appreciate the … gods, I hurt … the depth of your danger, but now is not the time for you to let the Vicious Elixir in you help you deal with your fucking problems. We cannot have you messing about, working through your emotional issues.”

  Agnethea tottered towards the Gunboy, slowly gaining her strength back. Happily, the ragged wounds across her hand and around her neck were healing much better than expected, especially given the cruel nature of the weapons.

  The Gunboy suddenly roared, its volcanic voice sound
ing … different, somehow, as if there was something … or someone … controlling it.

  “Ouch! Ouch! Jesus! Stabbed by metal tentacles? Who does that in real life? Wha … what’s in these … these fucking pipes? Oh shit oh shit … fucking crudey-crude? Jesus … Jesus fuck. Nononononono! This … this … fuck me … this can’t be happen…”

  The sky split apart as demonic sounds of raw fury and pain erupted from the Gunboy. So stentorian were these screams that dust and debris surrounding the towering fiend blew about in a sudden storm, forcing Agnethea to cover her eyes and grab hold of a nearby wall less she be tossed about like a feather.

  When the squall subsided and she was able, the Golem Queen looked up and stared at the Gunboy, confused.

  The metallic skin of the beast seemed to shimmer.

  Was shimmering.

  The Gunboy roared again, and the shimmering against the skin grew more vibrant. Seams and cracks ‘tween the heavily armored plates flashed from inky, oozing black to soul-searing blue and back again, almost as if there were a lightning storm ‘neath the skin. The Gunboy was transformed into a wailing statue of light and dark that cast long shadows and bright lights in all directions as far as the eye might look.

  Agnethea took a step back. This was … unexpected.

  The beast screamed, coughed, shook its head and then, quite surprisingly, it spoke.

  “Are you fucking kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? I’m a giant fucking robot now? How does this make … no. Y’know what? Fuck you, King Barnabas Blake the asshole. I will do for your whole fucking City in giant robot form if that’s what it takes because fuck you. Once I’m done here, I’ll pull your motherfucking Dome down around your fucking ears!”

  The Gunboy with the voice of a man took a step towards the sole remaining threat to Ickford.

  Agnethea followed behind, as quickly as she could.

  And that was when shit got seriously weird.

  16 London Bridge Ain’t Just Falling, It’s Completely Fucked, All Together Now, Aftermath

  High above the world, hidden inside his Dome-castle that none save him could see, King Barnabas Blake the One and Only stared at the frozen screen, wondering just what in the goodly fuck was happening to his perfect plan.

  “Replay the footage.” The King snapped. Behind him, the disembodied pest snickered, though this time, Barnabas Blake restrained himself. But only just: following the escapade down in Ickford, whatever resources he possessed were more precious than life itself. As much as he’d like, squandering them to put Erg the Pest permanently in his place wasn’t something he could afford at the moment.

  So he’d bide. As he’d done for thousands and thousands of years.

  Erg1 snickered again. Such damage. Your Son’s final warning before flickering away into imprisoned silence does grow clearer now, does it not, my Lord?

  “Shut it.” Barnabas tossed out a low-level bolt of purest energy. It missed Erg’s ethereal form by a wide margin, tearing through one of the machines responsible for creating Water Ladies instead. Sparks and smoke and a brief smattering of fire licked up the walls before the system shut down. Eye twitching at the destruction, the King bellowed madly. “Replay the footage!”

  The semi-sentient computer –by no means artificially intelligent but smart enough to know precisely what footage King meant- followed the commands given to it.

  On screen, the madness and chaos started playing again.

  Barnabas remembered the joy he’d felt upon creating the Gunboys, remembered the pristine … gloating sensation percolating through his Kingly veins at finally building not just the perfect trap for someone who was mostly immune to Kingsblood but also a true and effective method of smashing Ickford and it’s damnable Queen into the dust. Things couldn’t have been clearer!

  The Gunboys had been the perfect solution!

  An unavoidable lure to the Kin’kithal, a siren song singing a lullaby audible only to fools, martyrs and those with a Messianic complex equal to none. Sure, gearheads and wardogs and e’en Golems had thrown themselves at the divine war machines, relentlessly so, ignoring all signs of the true death awaiting for them at the end of their leap, but they’d only ever been built for N’Chalez. A foolish man like him, with his noble ideas and kind heart, couldn’t let such monsters roam the realm.

  It’d taken some time, what with the maddened Gearman on his trail the whole time, but he’d finally fallen for it!

  Oh, the joy that’d flooded through Kingly veins! Why, it’d turned the lights on in those unused parts of his soul, so to speak, filling him to the brim with such pure confidence and radiance that his breath had literally been stolen from him!

  N’Chalez, trapped! Bound in a machine designed to do as he’d always wanted to the strange outsider! No way out! No one capable of freeing him, neither!

  Standing on the precipice of ultimate victory against one of the world’s greatest heroes, King Barnabas Blake the One and Only had felt like a god in truth.

  His victory seemed … far-fetched now. At least in terms of defeating Nickels.

  Erg whispered, This miasma is fascinating.

  “Shut it.”

  The beginning of the end of Ickford was interesting, to say the least. All the various and disparate gaggles of gearheads popping up out of the woodwork, eager and keen to destroy the new threat. If you were the sort of person to have your heart warmed by images of people who’d normally go out of their way to slit your throat, then the opening stage of Ickford’s decline would warm your heart until it burst into flames.

  Why, the King himself had to confess that he was rather supremely shocked to see the number of gearhead and wardogs that’d refused to move inward; it were almost as if the twisted fiends had somehow realized that the only thing waiting for them inward was eventual death.

  Yet another reason to destroy Ickford. All that Kingsblood hissing through reluctant veins, well, that all needed proper reclaiming, and in a hurry, hey? Beyond being used to repair damages done to important systems during his occasional lapse in Kingly repose, well, them down there had broken an old King’s heart, hadn’t they just?

  “Only ever wanted the best for my boys and girls.” Barnabas lamented. He squinted and tried to make heads or tails of what he saw on the screen. During the early stages of the effort, before his ‘boys had cleared the way for Will to make a proper entrance, the feeds had been a right mess of staticky images that went right down to the ground when things got jumpy.

  Can you not clear this up? Erg demanded.

  “Go away. Leave me to my misery. I cannot believe this happened.” Barnabas flicked a hand through where he imagined Erg stood. Nothing. Always nothing. “And no, I cannot. The Golem miasma remains impenetrable until later, when the Gunboys start flattening the city. Speed the replay, if you please. By three.”

  He wanted to get to the part where Ickfordians began using weapons designed by those fiendish devils, Havilland Harvard and Twisted Mickel.

  On screen, the first of the truly staggering explosions ripped through one of the Gunboys, tearing a tremendous, gaping hole in the leg. His wondrous creation bellowed at the pain and King Barnabas Blake the One and Only seethed in vehement frustration.

  If he had even possessed the inkling of an idea, the merest hint in a daydream that the Smiths of Ickford had somehow discovered a method of forging non-Ironed weaponry, utterly bypassing Will’s requirements …

  “I would’ve devoted the rest of my life to destroying Ickford long ‘ere now, hey? Comets and meteors and else I could’ve summoned true enough. Ickfordian steel? Damn and blast!” Barnabas spat. Literally spat. He was that angry.

  Weapons such as those being wielded in Ickford, guns and bombs and e’en buzzers causing his ‘boys such woeful torment … weapons like that’d be just the sort of thing to punch a Kingly ticket!

  Still and all, it were being taken care of, finally. He’d planned on going down into the dust once all was settled to partake in a thorough going-over o
f those weapons but now?

  Hardly.

  The King sensed Erg’s amusement. He snapped, “What is it, you spectral haunting? What fills your intangible essence with such delight?”

  It is just … this.

  Blake felt Erg’s gesture towards the monitors. On them, an extremely fuzzy Master N’Chalez was running towards Ickford’s Dark Iron Vaults. “Out with it.”

  Well, My Lord King Barnabas Blake the One and Only, Erg’s mirth was capacious enough to fill all of The Dome with smirking, snide hilarity, this is a recording, is it not? I can well understand even your mighty computers from lacking the processing power to filter through an active miasma as powerful as was surrounding Ickford, but with all that has happened … surely you could resurrect proper images now? Armed with the knowledge of how things went, it should be no more difficult to clear things up as how the Nannies do when they go poking and prying. My King.

  “I…” King Barnabas took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. Erg was correct, of course. The blasted floating voice seemed to be more and more correct about everything, these days; it … he … it had been most discouraging about the use of Gunboys in the first place, and even more opposed to all but the most final ploy to capture and eventually kill N’Chalez, going so far in his … it’s … disdain to offer up that nugget which had eventually proven to be solid gold.

  “I prefer it this way.” Barnabas Blake finished lamely. “I will not sully my royal eyes to the depths of perversion down there in Ickford. It would do my humor no good.”

  Ah. Erg said knowingly. And we must do all that we can to preserve your good humors, must we not? With all else that has transpired?

  Blake spun his chair around to look contemplatively at the smoking, charred ruins that nearly half his Enforcer spark plugs had become. The damage was extensive and honestly, the King wondered if it was even N’Chalez’ fault. Towards the end, when what had happened had … happened … Blake admitted nothing aloud, but his rage had been incandescent. Easily the match –if not greater- than when Chadsik al-Taryin had sprung loose from first his cage, then Arcade City altogether.