by Lee Bond
That’s what the King …
The Bolt-Neck tilted It’s head to one side, shrewdly calculating the sudden, minute change in It’s opponent’s stance. If It possessed the power of speech, It supposed It would ask someone quite loudly what the hell was going on, for the weak fleshbag seemed somehow imprinted onto the very air now, somehow more solid and … and more.
***
Garth took a deep breath and waited for maniacal, cackling laughter to erupt out of him. Operating under the assumption that accessing the Kingsblood permanently deposited alongside/into/what-the-fuck-ever the quadronium implants was precisely the same as operating those same implants, he’d just, sort of like, willed himself to be stronger. Pretty much the same sort of thing as he’d experienced his entire life, though this time with the added bonus of the process being self-actuated instead of being driven by his Kin’kithal nature or the crap-shit OS driving the Eye.
And he’d been rewarded almost instantly for his efforts, which was awesome; the agony in his chest disappeared in the first few seconds, quickly followed by a … kind of looseness in the joints and muscles that any advanced super-soldier learned to recognize fairly early on as above average strength.
Fifteen seconds in, and no mad cackling craziness, no resurgence of Specter suggesting it’d be fun to set fire to everything, no spontaneous eruptions of terrible glittering nanotech constructs littering the landscape, nothing like that.
Oh, there were hints here and there in the pathways of his mind that calculated the odds, weighed the actions, picked which journey of mayhem to travel down, but that was it. Specter seemed content to be a spectator.
“Hm.” Garth dropped into a combative pose. He didn’t feel like he was gonna go crazy and start flailing about with comet-sized Kung Fu fists, either. He felt pretty much the same as always.
Obviously, though, evoking speed and strength to augment his survivability against Franky the Free Domain Monster wasn’t anything special. He’d had various forms of both throughout his long life. The real test would come when –if- the situation called for something more … nanotechy.
Garth swept his legs out into a deeper stance, did some fancy Keanu Reeves-Matrix gestures with his hands then motioned to the Bolt-Neck, whose great big matte black eyeballs were full of deep consideration. “Come at me, bro.”
The Bolt-Neck obliged.
***
Agnethea released a long, slow breath she hadn’t known she was holding. “And so the battle begins in earnest.”
Davram watched Garth slap both of Bolty’s cadaverous hands out of the way with lightning-fast jabs, wincing as the man took yet another boot to the midsection, the only difference being this time, their man didn’t go flying backwards. “That is impressive.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Agnethea said pridefully. Davram had never really seen Master Nickels fight. He’d hidden himself away behind the bar while Specter had turned the occupants of Kingspawn Bar into thin gruel. “Master Nickels is a … there, you see?”
Man and monster went at each other, back and forth, fists and feet flying with furious precision, the former doling out merciless fast punches and roundhouse kicks that pushed the latter ever backwards while the latter –though much slower- hammered out titanic kicks and punches that left the latter wishing he’d no doubt thought to wear some kind of protective headgear.
“They do appear to be most evenly matched. Come,” Davram kicked his horse forward a bit, expecting Agnethea to follow, “he’s proven he’s willing to accept that which The Dome hath given him. Our journey to Arcadia shall give him more than enough opportunities to learn how to use it fully and properly.”
Agnethea shook her head. “No, Davram, we cannot. We do not have the time to spare for him to take the easy route. The King pushes Master Nickels for a reason, something I reckon to do with his goals. When we arrive at Arcadia, Garth needs must be his full self. Not only that, but in full control as well, else Barnabas Blake will succeed. Here, now, our Lord doth battle not only against Old Bolty there but any lingering madness.”
Davram pursed his lips. Across the way, Garth and Bolty were hammering away at one another with little real effect. “Do you want Master Nickels dead?”
“On the contrary, Davram.” Agnethea smiled sorrowfully. “I want him to live. More than anything else. But … do you not see it? This is his King’s Gauntlet. His whole life is one endless gauntlet. Only for him, it isn’t about funneling out the darkness and replacing it with light and goodness, it’s about acceptance, about admitting to himself that yes, he is truly a bad man who has been called upon to do dastardly things for good cause. Evil as those actions must seem, even to him, from the outside looking in, they serve a much greater purpose. There is an innate kindness to him, Master Brigadier, one which he seems to think will fail should he embrace who and what he is. He has seen what unlimited power can do, to his own Father, in fact. Our man would rather die than become like his Kin. There is no more important thing for him in the world than this one. He is bad, yes. To destroy the Universe is nigh on unthinkable and he hates himself for it, but it is for the good of all life everywhere that ‘tis done by his loving hand and no one else’s. He needs to realize this himself!”
“This is a terrible gamble, milady.” Davram pulled his horse back along Agnethea. “A terrible gamble.”
Agnethea smiled once more, this time, less sorrowfully. The heat from Garth’s attack a few days ago was flooding through her. She doubted she possessed the words to properly explain to Dave how and why she was suddenly so trusting of Garth’s inner nature, but it had much to do with that heat. It pained her greatly, left savage aches that seemed sometimes to never end, but that was … life.
“No gamble at … ah, good. Old Bolty has pulled out his lightning staff. Things will get interesting now, Master Brigadier.” Agnethea settled in comfortably.
“Good grief.” Dave held his breath.
***
Amidst a furor of steam engine warning sounds and galloping feet, Garth’s trusty and unnamed steed arrived on the scene just in time to arrive between it’s master and the Bolt-Neck’s lightning-wreathed fulgurite staff; too late to change it’s swing, the grim green-skinned fiend’s brutal sand-and-crystal staff gouged a deep groove into the pristine platinum casing of the steamhorse, revealing the complex gearwork of one leg while simultaneously delivering enough amps to rip the steed apart in a blazing blinding light and roughly three tons of slivered metal.
Both Bolt-Neck and Garth were flung away from the center of the blast, the former bellowing like Bela Lugosi and the latter filling the air with a non-stop stream of colorful invectives.
Garth hit the ground on a shoulder and tumbled nastily end over end for another five or six feet before smashing –ass in the air- into what was probably one of the last big oak trees in all of Arcade City. Struggling to right himself as quickly as possible, he somehow managed to boot himself in the head before getting everything where it needed to be to deal with any Frankenstein’s Monsters that might be coming his way.
“Well, this is nice.” Garth scratched at his nose. By squinting, he could just make out Franky, not more than fifteen feet away, trying hilariously to get to it’s feet by using a goddamn lightning staff as a prop; every few seconds, who knew how many joules of lighting sheared through the gaunt steampunk cadaver, eliciting hilarious growls of vexed frustration.
The Kin’kithal mimicked Barnabas’ condescending tone. “’hain’t no thing under The Dome, my son, as has any kind of ranged weapon save them as build a gun or a bomb or summat. Them beasties as the King does allow to live these days, well, they be as normal as normal can be whilst still being monsters.’ I call total, fucking bullshit. This fucking guy has got a fucking lightning staff, Barnabas. You are a dick … oh shit!”
Franky was up and waving his staff around exactly like a goddamn wizard would seconds before launching a fireball or, say, in the instance of bullshit Victorian monsters wieldi
ng non-canonical weaponry, a great big blast of lightning.
Garth wobbled to his feet as quickly as he could and –for lack of a better word- scooted around the back side of the enormous oak tree, ears perking up as the sky filled with growling.
The growling disappeared, replaced by a world of … fuzzy noises that sort of defied normal explanation and then the oak tree erupted into several billion smoking splinters: that which didn’t simply evaporate from the high-gigawatt attack caught fire, filling the area with flickering bright lights and enough smoke to make it goddamn easy for the King to find out where all the shenanigans were being had.
Garth –caught unawares by the concussive blast a second time- peeked over the fugly edge of nothing he’d come skittering to a heart-hammering, ball-shrinking, brain-destroying halt at by literally using his feet as brakes. “This isn’t going to work. Not at fucking all. Shit.”
The Engineer flipped over on his back and watched Bolty’s smoke screen fill the sky with … smoke. He wasn’t having a good time. Allowing the Kingsblood coursing through his veins to increase his speed and strength to the point where he’d become a match for the Bolt-Neck had been easy enough. Just like getting on a bicycle, in fact.
“Except,” Garth hissed, mesmerized by flickering spots of ash kiting higher and faster into the sky, “when you’re fighting a guy who’s wielding fucking lightning, speed and strength don’t really fucking matter.”
The Engineer picked himself up slowly, questing inward to … to … feel the nanotech particulate inhabiting the spaces between everything else already crammed inside, giddily hoping that nothing else would try to take up residence; between the nanotech and the quadronium, Garth was pretty sure that –if his body were a hotel- he was the Dew Drop Inn during Spring Break. One more hyperactive party goer and everything’d be all over everywhere.
For fuck’s sake! He wasn’t even entirely certain what –exactly- was keeping him Garth-shaped!
Oh yes, the Kingsblood was down there, all right, nestled lovingly alongside matter invisible to his questing senses. The quadronium implants? Garth fucking hoped so; in the slightly displaced land of Arcade City, the already nearly impossible to detect quadronium would be that much more difficult to sense. The extra-real matter had to be to down there amidst the rest of the weird shit he was made up of these days.
Just had to. Because near as he could figure, if it wasn’t, he’d’ve been dead a long time ago.
Garth shook his head. He had to keep his eye on the prize. Worrying about the nature of quadronium when you were fighting a fucking Frankenstein’s Monster who wielded lightning like Tesla really wasn’t the best thing to be doing.
Franky was lumbering -stiff-legged just like in those awful old movies- towards him, shying away from the burning oak tree, tragicomically flinging one hand up to shield it’s eyes and growling frightfully at the brilliance. The other hand clutched the sparking and popping fulgurite staff.
“Not long, not long, not long.” Those tenuous, tremulous connections that would let him actual manipulate King’s Will directly were forging ahead quite nicely, just not fast enough.
Time to put a bit of distance between him and Ol’ Franky. Garth moved away from the edge as quickly as he dared; just as he didn’t want to get fried by another billion gigawatt blast of ball lightning, he hated the idea of getting caught by another concussive blast that could flip him over the edge.
The intensity of the burning oak tree had temporarily blinded Franky, giving him an easy chance to gain some distance between the Edge of Nothing and … everything else, but even a blind snake could sense furtive moment.
Garth rolled his shoulders and waved his hands as another layer of connectivity –his peripheral vision swam with a barely-seen endless sea of eager particulate- to the Cloud was made. There was so much power to be found in nanotech that he really was going to have to tread even more carefully than he’d already concluded! It was the scientific flip side to the Harmonic coin, and if he wasn’t careful, every synapse and nerve ending would turn into a very bright, very brief candle.
Then he’d get eaten.
Franky was far enough away from the tree now that it could see more clearly, and from the ghoulish grin crossing it’s necrotic-colored corpse-face, it’d spied a dithering Engineer who struggled with what was growing inside him. It bellowed and started goose-stepping quicker.
There was nothing for it but to risk everything. Ol’ Franky could do him in otherwise. Either merging his intellect with that thing inside capable of manipulating Cloud burned him to a crisp or it didn’t.
Either he kept his head and controlled Specter, or he didn’t.
No choice. It seemed there never had been.
Garth dipped into the burning hot waters of Kingsblood, preparing himself to do valiant battle against his own fear, his own subconscious need to destroy everything, even readied himself for a reappearance of vanquished Specter to find …
Nothing.
Nothing save a burning sensation similar to that first, horrific sip of Kingsblood in that it raged through every part of him at once, a conflagration of vigor that nearly left him breathless. But where that first sip had threatened to drive him mad or extinguish his very soul, this reaching-inward carried no taint, no lingering maleficence left in the nanotech Cloud by a Mad Goth King.
Just a furnace of heat, not unlike standing in front a forge on a hot day.
Following swift on the heels of that evanescent heat was information. Knowledge. Data. Those things anyone surviving their run through King’s Gauntlet to stand triumphant atop the destroyed corpse of the so-called Platinum King would need to know: horse and weapon, shield and armor, food and drink.
“Wicked.” Garth hurried through the design templates before settling on the most obvious choice: armor. Fighting basically bare-ass nekkid against Frankenstein’s Monster and It’s Lightning Staff was right up there with tapping an electrified nanotech Wall with a piece of metal.
So armor, yes, obviously, but where Brigadiers and Kings had held fast and true to whatever they were given, he was The Engineer and there was no fucking way he was going to clank around in silver-plated ancient armor. That shit was so undignified.
Technical specifications for SpecSer Augmented Armor –worn by Deep Strikers lacking the intense body modifications most of them ultimate went for- were offered up to Cloud.
Cloud grabbed hold of the designs and drank deep, signaling through a curious … pressure … that the armor fell just within range of the King’s hardwired protocols of form versus function. Without even needing to ask, Garth knew how long the gear would take to flow over his body.
He grinned that devil-may-care grin that had frightened Galaxies into submission.
King’s Will trembled and shivered mightily. Faint, diaphanous coruscations of rewritten code quaked through the sky around The Engineer, filling the heavens with song and golden gossamer code.
Freddy Mercury had never sounded so good.
Garth quirked his lips at the sudden look of confusion on Bolty’s macabre mug. Damn, that fucker could move when it got to goose-stepping like a madman.
“Hey,” he replied, rolling his shoulders once more, though this time, overlapping matte-black carbon hexagonal-shaped scales clicked and clacked across his flesh until he was covered head-to-toe in Specter armor, “everybody should have their own theme song.”
Bolt-Neck raised it’s fulgurite staff high in the air. The tip started glowing so bright that it was as though a second dawn had come to Arcade City. It hammered the deadly weapon downward, caring little one way or the other that It’s opponent had somehow managed to grow armor across his skin. This was Arcade City. Home to things like Gearmen, Brigadiers and Obsidian Golems.
One stranger thing didn’t matter.
Garth reached upwards with an open hand, grasping towards the glassy staff.
The field, empty save for two mighty combatants, erupted in a blaze of lightning and fire.
“Holy fucking shit!” Dave cried as a cruel, merciless fist smacked him off Planty so hard that he wound up flying through the air. Sir Plantagenet the 15th himself followed suit, twisting and turning comically as he tried to discern a reason why his four mighty hooves should be suddenly off the ground.
Agnethea’s own trajectory was quite similar to Davram’s, though poor Platine wasn’t nearly as ‘lucky’ as the Brigadier’s own noble steed; her horse had taken some large mechanical gear –undoubtedly some internal instrument from the recently detonated Bolt-Neck- in the chest, causing it to shiver into the nothingness from whence it’d come.
Thus, Brigadier and Golem bounced and skipped with terrible lack of ceremony across the grassy field like two unwilling stones sent flicking across the water, though where the latter was happily missing things like large boulders and trees and all else, the ground they traveled across was not; both the Engineer’s traveling companions hit what had to be every goddamn rock and boulder and tree for fifty miles in every direction.
Eventually, they came to a shambled heap more than fifty feet from where they’d started, an inglorious jumble of arms and legs. Sir Plantagenet the 15th was the first to rise to his four mighty feet, and the moment he was certain that something was not, in fact, going to pick him up and hurl him about like a children’s play toy, he nickered angrily and wandered off to be alone for a bit.
“I do …” Agnethea gasped for air, “I do beg … your pardon?” The Queen of the Golems began the arduous task of getting herself sorted.
Davram watched Agnethea try to find her legs. He was more than content to do nothing at all. Had he not been wearing his Brigadier’s armor plating, it was all too likely that the concussive blast alone would’ve turned his insides into jelly. He marveled sideways at Agnethea’s phenomenal resilience: seemingly unarmored in any way, the ancient Golem had taken the brunt of that colossal eruption -not to mention the sad detonation of Monsieur Platine- with little to no outward signs of distress.