by Lee Bond
“Truthfully.” Agnethea remembered those times with a certain fondness; the more sophisticated a society became, the more likely they were to realize she wasn’t really a demon or witch or some other kind of horrific monster but just someone with a strange case of Dark Iron affliction. When a civilization waned and sophistication lessened… Preying on the weaknesses and superstitions of a population was terribly easy. Not to mention a good deal of fun. “Next to this … screampunk?”
“Steampunk.” Garth corrected, wincing as something that looked an awful lot like a troll with clubs for fists beaned Davram so hard their knight errant took three stumbling steps backward before resuming.
“Ah. Yes. Next to this steampunk style that fully captivated our King for the longest of all Ages. He was also quite fond of the derring-do of knights and maidens and all that sort of thing.” Agnethea itched to be out there alongside Davram, doing something other than riding alongside Master Nickels. They were barely twenty miles from where they started, and the waves of monsters crashing in on them from either side had barely even begun. As vaunted and powerful as a Brigadier was, they were not immortal, they were not tireless, they were not ceaseless. The power inherent in the Platinum Brigadiers were akin to a lit candle.
Left alight too long, the flame did flicker quite fitfully.
The only one of them that was was Master Nickels, and he claimed to have no powers whatsoever. The crawling heat in her hand had moved all the way along her arm and was now gently coursing along her neck, putting a pin in that particular lie. She supposed it didn’t truly matter why the man was lying, nor did it even really bother her; obviously he was aware that –at the end of this long road they followed- he was going to have to do battle with King Barnabas Blake on his own.
In the man’s own whispered words that moment after being rescued, she was a coin that had to be spent in pursuit of a greater good. Cruel-sounding as it was and always would be, Agnethea saw the necessity and accepted it. Nevertheless, she wondered more and more often at what awaited her, and to what specific purpose The Engineer was bending her Golem-flesh to.
The odd thing was, with the acceptance and the curiosity had come a complete lack of interest in hoping to catch a glimmer of acknowledgement in her friend’s eye that said ‘aye, I do recall, and ‘tis a horrible thing, but needs must’. But there was nowt. Master Nickels was the same as always, and as there was nowt, the Golem’s mind had uncovered a new, stranger worry.
Mayhap there were something wrong with Master Nickels that he himself was unaware of, something that ran deeper than the cold intellect of The Engineer, for how could you not know something like that about yourself?
It were frightening. She longed to bring it up in casual conversation and were it not for the blue eye that still seemed to glimmer at her now and again… she could not. All would fail if he knew the truth of what he’d done.
That was what she’d been told, and no good would come of testing it.
Beside her, Master Nickels groaned and shook his head as Davram took another severe drubbing.
Grim to imagine though it was -it was almost too certain a thing to think about- Davram was almost assuredly being as reckless and dangerous and … and … wild as he was because deep down in his heart, he simply could not bear to lay eyes on his King again, nor could he be witness to the end of Arcade City. So he pushed himself towards death all while proclaiming he did as was necessary to ensure his bosom friends survived the journey inward.
Agnethea supposed she, too, was on her last journey through a wild, weird city that’d been all she’d known for eleven thousand some odd years, but where Davram was throwing himself against a veritable tide of beasts the land hadn’t seen in decades or centuries, she wanted quite desperately to lay eyes on Arcadia once more.
And she wanted to fight, to give Davram a chance to live on a little while longer, to enjoy the feeling of sweet abandon that came from battling alongside those you trusted implicitly.
Agnethea puffed an errant strand of hair away. The strange thoughts and wants coursing through her mind were a distraction she could well do without.
“Hey, there he is!” Garth fist-pumped and shouted as brave Davram returned. “Buddy, you’re a fucking juggernaut.”
Dave waited until the liquid armor surrounding his face dissolved back from whence it had risen before speaking. The strange way he sounded when fully armored was too reminiscent of the Gearmen and their dreaded helmets for his liking. “I do what I can, Master Nickels.”
That brought up a point he’d been meaning to address since they’d started their little Yellow Brick Road Adventure to Arcadia. “Hey, I destroyed every single monster warren and Kingspawn point I could find from Ickford to Blackened Moor Estates. What gives with all these beasties and whatnot?”
Davram took a deep breath and wiped a bit of sweat from his brow. “Apologies, Master Nickels, Queen Agnethea … I am more out of shape than I care to admit. Being a bartender for the past century has slowed me down somewhat. As to your question, Master Nickels, not every beast in the King’s arsenal comes from warrens or Kingspawn points. Some simply … appear.”
“A single Hand of Glory missile.” Garth ground the words out furiously. “A single one, and that fucking asshole would be looking for a new place to hang his damn crown. This would all be over in a few seconds, great big clumps of bazillion degree metal raining down, whole sections of The Dome turned to metallic plasma. Yeah. That’d be awesome.”
“I know not what a Hand of Glory missile is, Master Nickels, but I tell you truthfully when I say that other men have tried launching weapons at The Dome.” Davram scanned the horizon. There was nothing out there. For now. If he knew the King –and he did, better than he wished- another round of beasts would rise before the night was out. “’tis why there is nowt that flies, any longer.”
“Well, that ain’t true.” Garth countered. He’d mentioning that bit of strangeness for bloody every and everyone was ignoring him. “The first Big King I saw right out the Door, it flew. Really fucking high, too.”
“Ah.” Dave and Agnethea replied in unison. The Brigadier continued when Agnethea bowed gracefully. “A matter of degrees, you see.”
“Degrees.”
“Aye.” Dave threw his hands into the air. “Imagine if you will, circles emanating from Arcadia, and in the center, the Matrons who do most of the running of this world. The further out from the center you go, the less power they have, and with the King willfully absent, that control grows fainter still.”
“You’re telling me King’s Will is at it’s weakest closet to The Dome walls.” Garth said this slowly, playing back that fateful encounter with Nicked Jimmy. It sure explained a lot. He hadn’t known about Will back then, nor of the pervasive and cruel strength provided by Kingsblood, so he’d done as he always did by attacking an enemy. And the tiny dregs of energy remaining to his quadronium systems had provided him with just enough speed and strength to do something that Nicked Jimmy could never have expected, which in turn had given that metal-skinned weirdo the idea to …
Garth shook his head. Tiny little things. They rolled and rolled and rolled until suddenly, he was astride a great gleaming silver horse that hissed steam and sounded like a Shelby GT500 on idle than a fucking horse, on his way to kill the wicked King.
“Is there a problem with what I’ve said, milord?” Dave asked, forehead beetling worriedly.
Agnethea burst out laughing at the honorific. “Oh, do call him that again, Master Davram, I did so enjoy the sour lemon look on his handsome face at that! It took considerable time for him to be okay with ‘Master Nickels’. If you could sprinkle other words alongside, such as Lord, this mad journey of ours will be one full of fun!”
Garth laughed. “You,” he pointed at Agnethea, who looked at him so innocently it was almost –almost- possible to believe her, “shut it. And you,” he looked at Dave, “no. Nothing wrong with your explanation. It makes perfect sense. It’s just that �
�� everything that’s happened to me since I came here seems guided.”
“Most assuredly, mi … Master Nickels.” Davram nodded assiduously. He caught sight of the sour-lemon look again, so he explained. “Those of us who became Brigadiers…”
“Or Golems.” Agnethea interrupted, seeing instantly where Davram was headed.
Dave dipped his head towards the lady. “And Golems as well, we all come to a conclusion early on, or not at all.”
“What’s that?” Garth asked absentmindedly; there was an itch in the back of his mind, a crawling, scrabbling tiny little … he looked off in the general ‘real world’ direction that corresponded with the niggling feeling in his brain.
There. A tiny nihilistic spark, a small, secretive profusion of manifest Will. He gripped the reins of his horse tightly, felt in the palms of his hands the collision of nanotech machines that formed the leather. Davram’s horse was a weapon, and though he wasn’t a goddamn knight, he was gonna use that weapon.
“Why, that Will, while the King doth have control over it, does what it Will as well.” Dave indicated Agnethea. “You have but to look no further than Queen Agnethea. I can assert with … where the bloody hell is he going?”
Queen Agnethea of Shattered Ickford sighed miserably. “All is not well with Master Nickels. Look there, beyond that clump of broken rock. Do you see aught?”
Davram’s visored helm materialized around his head, and suddenly, he could indeed see what Master Nickels was aiming himself at. “The man is a bloody damned trial, is he not?”
Agnethea’s laughter peeled through the air as Golem and Brigadier hurried onward to save the only man who could save them all.
From himself.
***
Davram seated himself beside Agnethea, courteously ignore the state of her dress. The last encounter with the three lumbering horrors otherwise known as Bolt-Necks had been most harrowing indeed, and the Golem had taken some fairly impressive blows across the body, resulting in the ruination of a bodice.
“Davram. Or do you prefer Dave, Brigadier?” Agnethea worked deftly with needle and thread, repairing what was most certainly the last fine garment she’d ever wear.
“Either one. It can go both ways.” Davram stretched his legs and arms until the muscles trembled. He’d hadn’t been so active … ever, now he realized it. Even as a Brigadier, instances requiring the presence of a noble Brigadier had only ever really required the presence of one for the situation to resolve itself.
Agnethea laughed outright at the unintended double entendre, pricking her hand with the needle. The blasted thing slid right into a fingertip and glinted there in the firelight, a veritable ‘look here’ sign.
“Blazes.” Davram pursed his lips, tilting his head this way and that. “I’ve never seen that happen to one of your kind before now.”
Plucking the threaded needle loose from her fingertip, Agnethea resumed the task of sewing. “Like anything else in this wretched world of ours, Brigadier, not everything is at it seems. That last encounter, and the one before it fell too close together for comfort.” Between stitches, she gestured to her body. “This old thing does need time to rest and repair itself from time to time, don’t you know.”
Since he had no grounds upon which to determine if what Agnethea said was the truth or a lie, Dave nodded. In a world of oddities, the Golems were amongst the oddest. “I must say Queen Agnethea…”
“Queen no more.” Agnethea snapped bitterly. She instantly regretted it. The look on Dave’s face spoke volumes. “Apologies, Davram. It was …”
“I was there, as I said earlier, Agnethea.” Dave closed his eyes and images of the Lady of the Weeping Eye sprang forth. He shuddered a bit. “Drawn to the location based on the disintegration disc that destroyed Blackened Moor Estates, I spent considerable time there, looking for survivors. While you and Master Nickels, er.”
“Hah.” Agnethea held the bodice up to the firelight, inspecting it for holes. Not a bad job, considering the last time she’d used her own two hands to repair something had been very nearly five hundred years ago. “Gallivanting about the countryside, a girl and her giant robot man, crushing the life out of any monsters they found.”
Ludicrous, is what it was, that, and their whole lives. As a quiet barkeep keeping an eye on the steady decline of gearheads and their counterparts, Dave had often had more than enough time to get quite existential on the nature of their lives. Watching maddened men and violent women sporting numerous odd protuberances as they chatted on their latest great kill or last awful failure, Dave the Bartender had come to the realization that none of them were meant to be this way. He had the powers of a godling, yet since that fateful night, he wanted little or nothing to do with the power flowing through his veins. Gearheads and wardogs acted as though they didn’t care how they looked, flaunted the worst of their odd physical attributes, but he remembered.
Remembered the agony, the unquenchable thirst, the thought that –in the midst of Kingsblood rage- you were going so mad that one day you’d wake up be little more than the monsters you hunted. The dark realization that –no matter how hard you tried, how good you got- you might not ever be good enough to make it the next level in, where the stakes were higher, the Kings harder, the monsters that much worse … that you would never be free of fingers that looked like flexible metal tubes, or the eyes that weren’t anything more than weird-looking toothy cogs that somehow let you see anyways.
It wasn’t a life anyone should live.
Agnethea poked Davram in the shoulder. “Penny for your thoughts.”
Dave did as all who lived under The Dome did, which was look skyward, hungrily searching for the apex, wondering what it was the King got up to in his heavenly home. “This whole world, Mistress Agnethea, it hain’t got much longer, does it?”
Struggling into her bodice, Agnethea sighed. That was the one downside, rushing towards apocalypse. It weighed heavily on everyone’s mind. It was their meat and drink, their most faithful companion. “I don’t think so, no, Master Davram. And truthfully, I think it has little to do with the arrival of our man Master Nickels, either.”
“Oh?” Dave looked at Agnethea, pleased she was fully clothed once more. He caught a smile on her face, and he flushed; it hadn’t taken long at all for him to grow accustomed to fighting alongside the Obsidian Golem, and in that time, he’d seen plenty of reason to … perhaps not forgive the woman her excesses. Never that. In her time, Agnethea had been the horror story of many a person’s life, and so forgiving those crimes was impossible. Forget.
Forget was a better word. The Brigadier was under no illusions about the necessity of her presence. If it were just he and Master Nickels, it was a dead certitude that the two of them would’ve been buried under a mountainous pile of corpses long ago. The King’s efforts to do for them was merciless.
Yet, with Agnethea the Vile, the darkest and most violent Obsidian Golem the world had ever seen at their side, they had just enough toughness to make it all the way down the line.
Agnethea nodded her chin towards Garth, who sat on the other side of the fire, either actually asleep or doing such a masterful job of pretending that it was nearly the same thing. He was sat all the way over there from chivalrous pretense, claiming it wasn’t ‘cool’ for him to stare at a half-naked woman. She’d accepted the fib because, quite frankly, it was well obvious that if the man could resist the power and temptation of Kingsblood’s darker song that he was damn well capable of keeping his hands off her.
Infuriating.
“Garth told me many things during our travels, Dave, about the nature of our world, the world outside, and what is going on. What’s going to happen.” Agnethea didn’t want to believe those tall tales, yet –in robot form- Garth had spoken of them with such dispassionate neutrality that his very disinterest in trying to make her believe had done just that.
“What’s going to happen?” Dave was having a small bit of difficulty in coming to grips with the fac
t that very soon now there would be no more Arcade City and very likely no more Davram the Brigadier of Queen Agnethea. If they were tremendously lucky, there would also be no more King Barnabas Blake the One and Only, though Dave felt it was going to take more luck than there was left to be found in the entire world.
There was truthfully very little room left in his brain for anything other than that.
“Have you ever spoken with outsiders, Brigadier?” Agnethea stifled a yawn. None of them could afford the luxury of sleep, not this night, nor any night until they were staring at the gilded walls of Arcadia.
Dave nodded cursorily. “Aye, here and there. Long and long ago, I did travel with one, during my gearhead phase. And a few others, too, once I became Brigadier.”
“Now that is something I would’ve liked to’ve seen.” When Dave gave her a puzzled look, Agnethea explained. “You, Davram the Platinum Brigadier, as a hot-metal wretch, stinking of burning oil and all that.”
Dave colored redly at the memories. “I was no different than any other gearhead, if that’s what you imply, Mistress.”
“I meant no offense, Master Davram.” Agnethea apologized readily. “It’s just that speaking with you reminded me of an old fable that said that the best Brigadiers were, once upon a time, the worst gearheads.”
“Well.” Dave –all the Brigadiers- had heard that rumor, and had laughed; one of the very first things you did when you transformed into the person you were meant to be was forget all the bad you’d done. Some of the Brigadiers had taken it a step beyond willful dismissal of the memories, literally using their newfound abilities to strip away all lingering recollection of the horrid beasts they’d been. “I can’t speak to that, Mistress, and we’ve wandered a bit wide of the mark. You were going to tell me what Master Nickels believes is going to happen.”
“Oh,” Agnethea looked through the fire to Master Nickels’ slumbering form, very certain now that he was wide awake –the man was far too still- and listening to the turn of their conversation, “it is more than belief that drives Master Nickels, Davram, far more. He is beset with terrible certainty.”