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

by Lee Bond

  With such frenzy upon him, anything at all could’ve happened!

  If he had lost his temper in such a fiery manner, the memory of it was gone. Same as before, with the Brigadiers.

  “Only six remain.” Barnabas ground his teeth. God, what a mess. When the first of the Enforcers had popped, sparked and sputtered like a blown fuse, he hadn’t fretted terribly: the loss of a single power source meant only a lengthening of the process changing The Dome to its final form. “Such catastrophe.”

  But when N’Chalez had created his extraordinary Geared Armor, when he’d proven himself to be not only capable of working with Dark Iron with great skill but somehow able to bend physical laws that’d been in place for thirty thousand years … then the Enforcer spark plugs had started popping off every ten minutes.

  Pop. A month added to the change.

  Pop pop. A year.

  Pop pop pop. Like the rarest sparklers in the Unreal Universe, they’d burst up in showers of scintillating greens, reds and golds, each fountain of life a stolen soul returned to the dark abyss of their false existence.

  And now it cannot happen in this way at all, my Lord. Not enough juice, as Nickels would say.

  King Barnabas Blake the One and Only forced a smile. “You need not remind me, you intangible wreck. I am well aware that I am at an impasse.”

  We CyberPriests are nothing if not inventive, though, are we not? In the ways of calamity? Erg whispered slyly. Down through the millennia, continually … hmm … monkeying with our forms, always trying to achieve the most … perfect imperfection? If this was your goal, King, you have achieved it admirably so.

  “I am no CyberPriest.” Barnabas Blake ground the denial out, the kindling in his belly eager to grow full force once more. He quelled it as best he could, though, for –ignoring Erg’s barb about his King’s true nature- there was one thing that the ‘Priest was right about: he was inventive.

  It no longer bothered Barnabas Blake that the most perfect method of bringing the End of Everything about was lost to him. No, those blighted Platinum Brigadiers had been far too … smug … in the perfection, yes, yes, that was the word. They’d taken to the powers given unto them by King’s Will and been far too smug in using them, assisting and helping the men and women of Arcade City when, by all rights, they should’ve just sat about waiting to be turned into human batteries.

  Them stupid old Platinum Brigadiers had deserved their deaths, each and every one, hadn’t they just? Besides all that, hey, he hadn’t really been properly ready back then. Things hadn’t felt proper. The End needed to be done just right, else it wouldn’t really count.

  Same went for this latest renovation of The Dome’s power source and navigational systems. Now he thought on it long and hard, Barnabas had to admit to himself that he’d never really been too fond of using captured Enforcer suits to fuel The Dome, not when you got right down to it.

  Oh, using his ridiculous, nearly cartoonish brothers for the navigation systems was still on the books as the proper thing to do –you needed summat with a mind full of weirdness, he reckoned, to ply through the strange layers outside their Unreal Universe- but … them Suits …

  Too risky to have about, weren’t they? With Chadsik back in the fold, buried deep inside his own brain and trapped within the Soul Machine, it were all too possible –especially since it seemed the carefully crafted laws of Arcade City were tumbling this way and that- that his incorrigible son could find his way into one, or something. Mayhap call all of them stolen souls back to him somehow, hey?

  Too risky. Too risky.

  Oh, aye, King, you are no ‘Priest, not any longer. You are … oh, this is one of my favorite parts, right here!

  Barnabas Blake looked at the monitors, reluctant to agree with Erg1’s opinion, but damn him, it were thrilling to watch the hunt betwixt Gearman Dominic Breton and Master Garth N’Chalez, weren’t it? The former, full of vengeance and rage and not a little bit of Kingly ‘fluence to force a Gearman to act well beyond sanity, the latter, shot full of holes, running desperately, his magnificent –yes, magnificent- Geared Armor shining like a damned onyx star.

  On screen, N’Chalez was hovering mid-air, cursing and arguing with someone…

  The suit. Erg supplied helpfully. He’s arguing with his armor. There’s some sort of operating system in there. In fact, if I recall, N’Chalez was always over-reliant on artificial intelligence for backup and Intel. The number of ….

  “Shut it.” Barnabas barked balefully. “You drew my attention back to this moment, so shut it.”

  Dom, conspiring to use the Fool’s Basket to bring him onto the same playing field, and then the two of them fighting it out –more or less, though N’Chalez still seemed more out of sorts arguing with the … operating system … than in dealing properly with the Gearman- in midair while the one-armed Gunboy bore down on them.

  Barnabas found himself squinting against the supernova-esque explosion of energy burning its way through the Heartsniper. Gods, he should’ve never allowed the man to craft the first iteration of that damned weapon. Fully unlocked thanks to all that bloody Dark Iron and further augmented by the goddamn Kin’kithal’s instinctual understanding of that which should be a million miles beyond his intellectual grasp, that gun was beyond all limits.

  Curiosity killed the cat. Erg supplied cheerily. Though in this case, one could say ‘curiosity killed the Gunboy’, though that’s hardly …

  King Barnabas Blake the One and Only roared angrily and the bank of monitors and computers shivered into their component parts, filling the floor with granule-sized cubes that were swiftly reabsorbed into the metallic floor. “Must you prattle so? I am in dire straits, Erg. My plans for destruction are on hold, perhaps indefinitely…”

  Especially with what has become of N’Chalez. And the Matrons. And your Kingspawn points. And, well, everything. Erg chuckled dryly. I think in this instance, my Lord King Barnabas Blake the One and Only, you found someone with a rage greater than anything you ever imagined in your entire, long, wretched life, someone angrier and more filled with venom than even yourself. How else do you explain it all? N’Chalez should have become a screaming halfwit, a monstrous-sized gearhead inflamed with thousands of gallons of ‘sblood. Instead…

  A great deal of screaming and shouting and cursing followed then as King Barnabas Blake the One and Only dealt with the fact that –as much as he hated the disembodied wretch and his insightful opinions- Erg were entirely correct.

  Coming to amidst a landfill’s worth of shattered machinery that was no longer needed –the King counted amongst the equipment destroyed the defunct tools for troll construction, and the flying monkeys, and the regrettable leprechauns of six thousand years ago- Barnabas straightened his regal robes and summoned the monitors back into existence.

  The feed began replaying from a point fifteen minutes after the previous view screens had been … dismantled.

  This, though, this is my absolute favorite part. Erg clapped his hands. Imagine an army of these Kin’kithal, My Lord and King! His adaptive morphology is awe-inspiring! It is amazing to me that they didn’t defeat the Heshii when the War first broke! And that music playing from all about him. Why, it does send chills through my bones.

  The King waited for more outbursts of anger and was surprised when he realized he were –and for the time being- miraculously drained of ire. He supposed he should be thankful that he were bereft of the venom and vitriol that Erg enjoyed calling forth so frequently; it were highly unlikely the old workshop would survive another flare-up.

  Perhaps it was because he was empty of anger that Barnabas saw to the heart of Erg’s feelings: like as not, the Kin’kithal was awe-inspiring. E’en though –from this point on, given the man’s … condition- every ounce of Dark Iron and every pound of King’s Will one poor monarch could muster would be spent on bringing the ancient warrior down properly, still, it was impossible to ignore his impressiveness.

  Erg applauded at the screens,
drawing the King’s attention back to the Outsider’s impossible shenanigans.

  On the large monitors, N’Chalez was beating the unholy living bejesus out of the remaining Gunboy, deftly and imperiously dismantling what should’ve been a terrific challenge in less time than it’d taken for his stolen Gunboy to take on the appearance of the man himself, by literally pulling his foe to pieces with brutal efficiency and savagery; sparks and smoke and house-sized chunks of machinery erupted from each socket as arms were pulled off.

  During this most impressive display of fiendish fisticuffs, the music Erg found so captivating thumped and pumped and rocked, strains echoing across the whole of Arcade City, and as the singer –a man with a voice that did indeed chill the King’s blood- crooned that he had no rivals, that within him coursed the blood of kings. As the unrivaled hero’s song reach a thrilling crescendo, the … the … Garthbot grabbed hold of one of his vanquished foe’s dismembered arms and spun like a baseball player, cracking the first of the reclamation cylinders to come to Ickford so violently and with such perfect timing that it was hard not to imagine N’Chalez conspiring to have the tempo of the Dome-shaking song match the arrival of the cylinder, all so things could fall out as they had. The wretched thing arced away from the dead city, precisely like a baseball.

  And thus fall the Matrons! Erg sighed gently. It makes a man wonder, does it not, my King? That at this moment everything is being controlled by some greater purpose, some power beyond your ken?

  King Barnabas Blake snapped his fingers, and a complex assortment of equations drew themselves in the air between himself and where he imagined the floating fool to be. “As you can see, you underdone potato, it is nowt but simple physics. The stuff that not even I would meddle with. N’Chalez struck the cylinder. It flew, as such things as are struck thusly are wont to. As Arcadia is the center of Arcade City, there is little chance it would go anywhere else, what with the direction the cylinder flew to Ickford, how the man was stood. All of that put together yields but a single outcome, hey? There is no one here but me. There is nowt else controlling how things go but me. I am the power ‘neath The Dome and no one else. Bad luck, aye, terrible luck indeed that Matron’s Tower was brought down and eaten whole, absolutely, but … better the loss of them mad nannies than were it to’ve struck Chad’s … home. In truth, that cylinder could not have struck anywhere else.”

  Barnabas paused for a moment, watching the Garthbot tracking the descent of the second reclamation cylinder as he galloped madly over buildings, crushing everything in his path. A small glimmer of pleasure, there, as the cameras spied furtive movement down below, down in the cracked maze the blighted city had become; the deposed Queen Agnethea trailed cautiously along behind the gigantic man, no doubt growing angrier with each passing step, each collapsed building, every crushed garden nook.

  “At least N’Chalez is doing something charitable for me.” Barnabas quipped. “With all else he’s done.”

  On screen, N’Chalez picked his spot and shouldered the Gunboy’s bat-arm. Music continued filling the air, somehow pouring directly from the man’s stolen metallic skin. Agnethea leaped from an adjacent building, landing smoothly on Garthbot’s shoulder. She was an ant scurrying across treacherous ground, but she made it into a crevice just as the trapped Kin’kithal swung his ‘bat’ a second time.

  And there goes the second cylinder! Lucky for you, my Lord, that this one went t’other direction, out back the way you and he came what seems so long ago, else there’d be every chance indeed that it would’ve hit Chad’s prison. A pity he left the scene before the third one fell, though. I wonder that one might’ve landed! Here, perhaps? Erg clapped once more. This song, my King… whether he knows it or not, N’Chalez is calling you out, as it were. All that about being a prince of the universe, and that spot about a world with darkest powers? Too cutting to anything but a direct assault on you. I do think he intends on supplanting you.

  King Barnabas Blake said nothing at all. He’d already come to the same conclusion. And while N’Chalez was out there in Arcade City, destroying every instance of King’s Will he came in contact with, instinct and reason said that no matter what else the Garthbot was doing, the man would eventually return the way he’d come. Deep down in the black depths of rage and anger that coursed through his veins thanks to the hundreds of gallons of Vicious Elixir pumped in through unbreakable pipes jammed directly through his mutable flesh, a bit of control still remained to one Garth N’Chalez. It boggled the King’s mind to imagine such a thing, yet there had to be some hint of truth to it, else the strange travesty N’Chalez had become would be nowt but The Dome’s Tallest Gearhead.

  Oh, haha, there he goes, over the front gates of Ickford and into the outer ring of your gauntlet, my King, to smash and stomp all your Kingspawn points flat. Erg cheered a loud raspberry as the first of hundreds of Kingspawn points were destroyed. The apparently mindless devastation was anything but. With each ‘spawn point as went down, the King had a little less clarity in his world.

  Soon enough, Master Nickels and his tiny Golem Queen would be fully invisible until they struck.

  “No matter.” King Barnabas Blake the One and Only said quietly.

  When N’Chalez started moving inward again, hunting and seeking the King he sought to depose, then lessons would be taught.

  And when all was said and done, when master was finished instructing pupil, the King intended on using the apparently unlimited power housed within Garth N’Chalez to replace those lost Enforcer Suits.

  Somewhere between this world and the next, Erg1 cheered noisily as the Garthbot went out of his way to drain a Water Lady pool.

  Such fun.

  ***

  “It’s funny, in a way.” Herrig said suddenly, running a hand through his thin hair. Sidra caught sight of the nervous gesture and he yanked his hand free, grinning impishly at her impatient frown; he always felt that his hair –thin and growing thinner each and every day- was in permanent disarray while his lover and bodyguard claimed precisely the opposite.

  “What is that?” Sidra bent back to her prote, working on finalizing security details for the upcoming monthly ‘State of the System’ address that Herrig insisted be done live. The people, he claimed in that dreadfully just-so serious voice he had when talking about important matters, needed to see him. Needed to understand what he was about.

  It was maddening, getting everything to work the way it was supposed to be and making certain that any damage –if there was any- was quick and easy to contain. The last public address had gone off without a hitch, but since then … death threats and suggestions of violence never went away, but there was a curiously dark undertone to some of the crazed ‘LINK-letters, some tiny trill that bore watching..

  There were already far too many mutterings in the streets and on the ‘LINKs. So Sidra insisted on overseeing everything herself, now. Easier to manage and this way she could keep an eye on those who needed an eye trained on them at all times, especially those people who had a tendency to forget that they weren’t the most powerful man in the solar system.

  “Mm?” Herrig signed off on another of UMD’s requisitions for materiel. With the war effort going the way it was and with Goddies turning into divine soldiers, UMD and all it’s satellite companies were now either involved in transportation –poor old Vasco’s ‘owned’ space lanes were finally being put to far better use, now they were in wiser hands- or in revamping warehouses and manufactories for an astonishing number of projects. “Ah, yes. Well, several things are funny, really, now I suppose I think on it.”

  Sidra flicked her prote to standby and went to stand next to her man; the others would be arriving soon and while she didn’t care one way or another what they thought of their relationship, still it did not do to poke the shubin, as it were.

  “Such as?” The Harmonized God soldier asked when she stood behind Herrig. She considered teasing him, holding off from putting her hand on his shoulder, but changed her mind
at the last minute. The dear fool was under enough strain as it was.

  “Oh, this.” Herrig flicked a hand and the tabletop streamed full of the cost breakdowns for UMD’s reclamation projects. “When we were churning out weapons of mass destruction and all that, we were making a profit.”

  “Many of the designs the Engineer left behind were brilliant.” Sidra commented, quirking an eyebrow at the hideous cost overruns the design team responsible for a project entitled ‘QuickHousing’ had encountered. “If a little … over the top.”

  Herrig laughed out loud at that. “Yes, well, we won’t be building any Death Rays or … what did he call it … the big round thing? The giant metal moon?”

  “Darth Star.” Sidra thought the vast moon-shaped space station, complete with it’s own engines and a weapon capable of destroying entire planets, was just the sort of thing they would eventually need against the Great Enemy. Personally, she couldn’t understand why Herrig refused to put the plan in motion. It was a sensible precaution.

  “Are you certain it was Darth Star?” Herrig’s brow furrowed, and he sounded the word out silently. “No, no, it wasn’t Darth. Ah. No. It was Death Star. Yes. That … anyways, it is funny that, herm, so-called peacetime projects are infinitely more expensive than those related to overt death and destruction.”

  “Easier to tear something down than build it back up.” Sidra winced at the desolate tone creeping alongside the words. She bent down to kiss the top of Herrig’s head. The poor dear still refused to believe that they were Unreal, and any mention of death, or destruction, or The End got him riled up.

  It was a miracle in itself that he hadn’t tensed up when she’d used one of Garth’s monikers, though not much of one; of all of the things they called Garth Nickels, ‘Engineer’ was the least destructive sounding. What he failed to realize –and hopefully always would- was that the tide of battle could be turned on it’s head with one single, skilled engineer working away quietly behind the scenes.