by Lee Bond
A gleam entered the King’s mad eyes. “Why, I warrant my gearheads are the match of any of them. Shame they all died. Save,” Barnabas added reluctantly, “save the one. Where is this all headed? I have quite a bit to do, Erg. You wispy prat.”
Your own recollections of the Kin’kith and Kith’kin paint them as akin to your Platinum Brigadiers, yes? Erg continued when Barnabas Blake nodded slowly, the twinkling idea of where his disembodied brother was heading lighting in the elder ‘Priest’s eyes. Aye, I see it now, in truth. And well, Garth N’Chalez was their leader. Unknown at the time of our first life, but he was definitely the man in charge. In fact, I’ve given his role then and now considerable thought…
“Considerable thought!” Barnabas howled mockingly. “You’re a fantasy, a phantasm, some bit of Erg so warped by your mad experiences outside The Dome that The Dome itself wants nowt to do w’you! I’m amazed you’re capable of speech, you blobby bit of ectoplasm!”
Please, my Lord King Barnabas Blake the One and Only, Erg whispered humbly, allow me this last bit of news and I swear, if you wish it, I will keep my mouth shut until the end of the Universe
A sobering offer. Barnabas nodded. “Very well then, Erg1. I’ll allow it.” He pointed warningly at where he imagined Erg’s consciousness was housed; the disembodied wretch was extending considerable effort this time in remaining hidden, hinting that he genuinely felt the information was important. “Though I warn you. If you do not stay silent afterwards, I will postpone the apocalypse to root you out entirely. The others are gearing up for a battle with the Heshii. My plan doesn’t involve them at all. If need be, I can spend years prying you loose.”
On my honor, then. Erg paused, then began again. Garth N’Chalez is as unlike his brethren as you are to yours, my Lord King. He has been at the forefront of some of the most terrific battles, engagements, and mysterious goings-on this Unreal Universe has ever seen, and it is no accident that this is so. Just as you have your plans, Trinity has It’s machinations and the Emperor has … whatever he has, so too does Garth N’Chalez, though his plan runs deeper. Much deeper and has been in play for much longer.
“What are you saying?”
That whatever else Garth N’Chalez is, my Lord, he is right where he needs to be, at the right time, doing what needs to be done. I can barely understand the depth of planning and intuition required to formulate a plan stretching thirty thousand …
“I did it!” Barnabas shouted. “I planned something lasting thirty thousand years! Don’t you dare diminish my effort! Me! I am closer than all the others! Me, Watt, first and only true CyberPriest!”
Erg waited for the excitable King to find his peace before continuing. This is true, my Lord, but there are notable differences. First being the fact that Garth slept for all that time to awaken into a Universe primed and ready for his arrival
“It is impossible.” Barnabas set his jaw. “For all that he is a thorn in my side, he is in the employ of Trinity. He must be. Trinity Itself, in It’s nascent form, saw the value of those Kin’kith and whatnot and set about doing as It has always done. It merely held N’Chalez in reserve, expending legendary amounts of time and energy to ensure the buffoon’s survival.”
It may have thought that at the time, My Lord, but now I am given the clarity of proper contemplation, it is anything but …
King Barnabas flicked a hand imperially. “Wrap this up, you fool. You are telling me nothing important. You say N’Chalez is at the forefront of all this, implying somehow that he is greater than myself, or Trinity. I say it is impossible. You claimed at the beginning that I cannot kill N’Chalez. On the face of it, such a crazed statement seems to hold validity, for with my own eyes, I have seen that man escape death in ways too ridiculous to imagine. Now, explain what you mean and hold to your promise of silence.”
Erg sighed. As you wish
“It is no wish.” Barnabas snapped pettily. “It is a command.”
Since you are a fool and refuse to have all the pieces arranged for you in a pattern for full comprehension, very well, my Lord King, I shall skip to the end and good luck to you in understanding that which I say next. For lack of a better concept, Garth N’Chalez is chosen by this Unreal Universe as it’s champion. Whether this means that the Universe is conscious enough to point and say ‘him, this is the one’ or if N’Chalez is somehow a rational solution to an irrational problem generated by celestial mechanics too great for either one of us to properly comprehend, it is so
He is chosen to destroy the Unreal Universe. Unlike yourself, I have stolen a few opportunities to hear the things he says, Barnabas, down there on the ground. He whispered of his plans to bring disaster to this awful place, to eradicate this Unreal Universe and bring about a second, better realm, one he refers to as Universe 2.0. A realm, I might add, infinitely more variable and wondrous than the one in which we currently reside
It sounds messianic and improbable to call him ‘chosen’, I admit, and given what I have learned, it may be better still to say that he chose himself, and in so doing, by virtue of being the first Kin’kithal, direct descendent of the beast Kith Antal, the first of his kind to operate on old, ancient Earth, it is all too likely that an overstressed, burdened and weary Universe reached out and accepted N’Chalez’ grandiose decision
“Madness.” Watt licked his lips nervously. He repeated himself.
Madness it may be, Watt, for it certainly sounds this way to me, and, well, I am mad as anything, but it does not matter. Where you and Trinity and possibly even Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles have inserted yourself in the M’Zahdi Hesh’s grand game of Universal destruction by virtue of being in the right place at the right time, only N’Chalez volunteered to the task, and oh, how he has suffered because of it. You do not want the pieces, and so you will never know how much. It’s certainly more than I can bear to know. Because of that suffering, because of the price he pays over and over and over again, I can say with near one hundred percent certainty that you, Barnabas Blake the One and Only, once known as Watt the First, cannot kill him. You cannot kill him because you proved to be a threat worth noticing
“That means nothing to me!” Barnabas could feel Erg dissipating, his ancient electronic presence fading into the circuits of The Dome’s machinery as he’d wanted this whole time.
When would he learn?
Barnabas laughed bitterly at himself. Well, he reckoned he’d never learn anything now, not this close to the end.
As with all the Scions, he adapts to the threats, milord. The moment he stepped through the void between the walls and into your realm, that which comprises those most elegant and wonderful defense mechanisms of the Kin’kithal warrior Garth N’Chalez became so overburdened, so overwhelmed with the immense threat Arcade City presented to him that they had no choice but to dig deep, to protect and strengthen the Universal Hero. He is your match, now. Or soon will be. You had your chance to destroy him and you failed
“When?” King Barnabas demanded, lips thin, trembling with rage. “When on earth did I have my chance to destroy N’Chalez?”
Between the walls, milord, where the void and entropy reign supreme. There and only there. There, on the other side of the Unreal Universe, and nowhere else. All you can hope for is achieve your goal of destruction before he gets to you. Focus on that, and nowt else. Leave N’Chalez and his merry band of fools and misfits to their own. Do as you illuminated. Wink this Unreality out of Existence. Fulfill your dreams, leave vengeance to rest
Barnabas held his breath as Erg faded away to nothingness, pleased that silence had returned once more to his world. The One and Only King considered everything the bodiless sprite had whispered into his ears, considered it and …
Dismissed it.
He was the power under The Dome. Him, and no one else. He was in control of the most powerful substance in the whole entire Unreal Universe, and if there was anything in existence capable of killing Erg’s so-called Universal Hero, it was Dark Iron.
It was just a matter of finding the right methods. He’d discovered a way to destroy Reality. It’d be a piece of cake to destroy one measly Kin’kithal.
“And the first step in that plan,” King Barnabas Blake rubbed his hands together excitedly, “is to make it easy for N’Chalez and his wretched traveling companion to arrive at my gates. Along the way, they shall encounter all that remains. The fool. Even Agnethea has forgotten the worst the inner realms has to offer after ruling that blighted city, hey, hey? Hasn’t she just! Every step of the way, they’ll be dogged by things from the depths of their nightmares, and should they grow close to Arcadia and still remain undaunted, well, there’s the Menagerie, isn’t there? My own private collection of Dark Iron creations and again … if they make it past that, well, there’s the Platinum King, isn’t there just? Let free after so long corralled by the Matrons, that maddened metal monarch has become a holy terror in truth. Pah! Erg and his frightful musings are just that and nowt more! Universal Hero. Who ever heard of such a thing?”
King Barnabas Blake the One and Only clapped his hands once more, though this time, the sound echoed across the width and breadth of Arcade City. He wiggled his fingers as the command consoles solidified around him. It’d been some time since he’d reordered the very earth of his pet project. He was a bit rusty, but tectonic manipulation wasn’t something you forgot entirely.
His face gleaming with excitement, the King began reordering the land into something more … agreeable to harry a Kin’kithal and his Golem wench.
***
Agnethea felt Garth’s presence behind her, and she couldn’t help but smile a dry smile. “For a man who claims to need no sleep at all, Master Nickels,” she called out, her voice ringing with humor, “you do seem quite capable of sleeping through the end of the world.
“Yeah, well.” Garth leaned against the doorframe, staring out across as chaotic a scene as he’d ever seen before. Agnethea was sitting in a chair most recently belonging in the bar proper, feet propped up against an empty beer cask. “When you been through what I’ve been through, a few extra hours of sleep while the world ends is totally permissible.”
Another crack, easily as loud as the sound that’d pushed the whole of Arcade City into unconscious ripped through The Dome, a groaning, moaning cacophony that was just as much a feeling rumbling through his bones than a simple if deafening explosion.
“What the fuck’s goin’ on, anyhow?” Garth asked as he went in to grab his own seat. By the time he sat down beside Agnethea, the Golem had her answer.
“Our King.” Agnethea whispered, looking into Garth’s eyes through her veil, hoping to see at least a little bit of awe; although the two men hated each other with a passion, surely, surely Master Nickels had to admit that what was happening now was something amazing. “He doth reorder the land. No doubt to make our lives more difficult.”
Garth pursed his lips, nodded, both at the wisdom of Agnethea’s description of the King’s motives and her inexplicable decision to don her eye-veil once more: something was going on with the Queen, sure enough, but if she didn’t want to talk about it, he wasn’t gonna press. He looked out onto the world that King Barnabas Blake the One and Only had wrought, and considered what that same monarch was doing to it right that second.
The whole underbelly of The Dome was alight with lambent bursts of energy, great, flashing pulses of golden fury interspersed with crackling, jagged-edged black shafts of lightning that speared the ground. He tried to envision what those areas struck by such ebony light looked like, as King unspooled the matter there. Were entire hectares bursting into flame? Or –as Garth suspected- did it seem as if nothing was happening at all until the ground disappeared in a puff of sparkles. Now and then as his gaze roved across the sky, Garth felt certain there was more light to The Dome than that being wrought by the King’s extensive nanotech terraforming, but without a proper telescope or a truly clear night, there was no way to be certain.
The Engineer supposed it didn’t matter. The Dome was a weapon of some kind. Whatever lights or circuits or whatever built into the capstone covering Arcade City wouldn’t be any more interesting than the circuit boards of a laser gun. Any answers that could’ve been gleaned from seeing the tremendous clockwork pattern above all their heads was unimportant now, and –as Barnabas himself would say- besides all that and then some, they were all too far along in the day for any new information to matter.
Agnethea swatted Garth’s arm. “You don’t seem impressed, Master Nickels. Either that or you are doing your best to seem otherwise. What have your eyes gazed upon that this,” she flung her hands out as a particularly large burst of light quaked into the sky, “seems to bore you?”
The Goreene System, locked in place, held rigid, a vast interstellar machine hovering just this side of being fully formed.
A queasy quicksilver blob of something the size of an entire planet, through which –if you were mad or desperate or afflicted with a weird form of suicidal boredom- you could journey to a fractured iteration of the Unreal Universe.
An entire Galaxy at war, one impossibly large swathe of space punctured by a warship big enough and powerful enough to literally tear through the very fabric of Unreality. Explosions the size of solar systems, men and women and strange things with powers above and beyond normal ken, grinning into the madness howling up from that galactic warship, grinning and saying ‘what the fuck, why not, let’s do this’. And him… waking up, his hidden self, rising up through the layers of consciousness like a swimmer eagerly pushing for the surface, to look out across …
Garth blinked the memories away. “Stuff.” He answered, lamely. “I seen … stuff. Hey. Where’s Dave?”
Agnethea snorted. “Being his noble self.” When Garth raised an eyebrow, she explained more fully. “He is out there, skirting the edge of the King’s … renovations. Looking for survivors. It seems as though the altercation in Ickford has awoken in him a need to hew to his responsibilities once more.”
“Is that wise?” Garth shielded his eyes against a particularly violent splash of light that turned night into day.
Thank God nanotech was a thing that didn’t work properly on the outside. Even here, within the confines of The Dome, it was a thing to be feared and respected. The things Dave took for granted were powers great enough to conquer solar systems.
Then there was the King Himself…
If anyone on the outside discovered a way to make nanotech functional in the Unreal Universe proper, madmen the universe over would be doing as King Barnabas Blake was doing right that moment, only on a galactic scale.
“Ah.” Agnethea nodded. As with so many things where Master Nickels was concerned, she’d simply assumed he knew all there was to know about the Platinum Brigadiers. “Yes. My fault. I was under the impression you knew.”
“Knew what?” Tactically, what Barnabas was doing did –and didn’t- make sense. It was fucking obvious the crazy King had grown bored of the backing and forthing between the two of them and was looking to eliminate virtually every chance for escape.
It made sense because with Agnethea by his side, Barnabas would have a rough time tracking him –them- down, so reordering the acreage fully meant a nicely reduced parcel of useable land that’d be much easier to scan. And, if there were monsters left over after everything was done being rebuilt, well. It’d be a lot easier to fling Shaggy Men and Bolt-Necks and what-the-fuck-ever at them that way, wouldn’t it just?
“Everything,” the Golem said, worried at the particular type of gleam in the man’s lone eye. Hoping it wasn’t for her, she continued, “about Platinum Brigadiers.”
“Oh.” Garth shrugged. Popcorn. He wished he had popcorn. Sitting on a porch, watching the world beneath their feet being molded into some new, more efficient shape … needed popcorn. “Well, yeah. I mean, it’s obvious our buddy Dave is all whammied up. Direct access to King’s Will, all that. Sort of like a demigod, your stereotypical Ur-character. Been through
the whole Gauntlet, started off with the rough stuff, that old Vicious Elixir and worked his up through the ranks, fighting and dying and being given access to purer versions, just like you said, right?”
“That’s not the whole of it, Master Nickels.” Agnethea said slowly. “At least, not entirely. You asked if it was safe for Davram to be out there whilst the King does his thing,” she narrowed her eyes as Garth laughed at the unintentional rhyme, then continued, “and, to a large extent, he is. Just as King’s Will finds it nearly impossible to bring me harm, or to spy on my location or habits, so too is Davram the Brigadier. I must confess, I know little about the proper transformation, having only ever seen the first one, but I’ve been led to believe that in the act of becoming a Brigadier, some … what … some portion of King’s Will is set aside? No. That’s not right… the Brigadiers are … inscribed into King’s Will? Yes. It takes the King’s direct hand to do for a Brigadier. He must be in their presence, fully of Kingly Wroth. E’en then, I am told those who are ready for it can give the old bastard a run for his money if they are so inclined.”
Agnethea went to relay the most humorous moment when her King had failed to do for her to Master Nickels when she caught sight of the look in his off-colored eyes.
“Oh?” The First Golem smiled prettily. “There is something I know that you find interesting after all.”
“Agnethea.” Garth replied in all seriousness, “There are a great many things about you that are interesting as hell. In the way that black holes are interesting. Don’t ask. It’d take a zillion years. Anyways. You saw that first transformation? The very first Brigadier?”
Agnethea nodded, hand tingling with that odd, slow heat held to her bosom. “Aye, Master Nickels. ‘twas a long, long time ago. A month or so before my rebirth into the thing I am now. Much of my life before becoming a monster is long forgot, but that moment, and the life of the man who became the First Brigadier … it is well known to me. I could no more forget that moment than my own dark resurrection.”