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

by Lee Bond

  “I am afraid, milady,” Dave dissipated his helmet, “that I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  Agnethea stretched the kinks out of her back and arms, shivering languidly at the sensation. Off in the distance, the tall grass had turned the Garth’s chosen field of combat into a sea of fire. “Must have been my imagination, then, sirrah. For in the heat of being flung about like a child’s doll, I swear I heard you curse quite colorfully.”

  It was difficult to ignore the vast amusement in Agnethea’s tone, but Davram had been friends with the Poet Brigadier, a man who’d mastered the art of … everything, really, to do with humor and sarcasm and satire. But ignore it he did. “As you are on your feet before me, milady, could you do a poor old Brigadier the aid of assistance?”

  “The aid of assistance?” Agnethea snorted. “You Brigadiers. Mangling the language. Like as to ask for ‘help of help’.” That being said, the Queen turned on a heel and reached out a hand to pull Davram up.

  Dave instinctively looked to the woman’s face, shied away immediately, then found himself looking deep into Agnethea’s eyes, knowing full well that –to a Golem- there was no greater challenge. “By the King, Agnethea! What … what is this?”

  Agnethea’s spare hand stole to her eyes. Damn the luck. In her humor and haste to help Dave up, she’d missed the fact that her ever-present shield of lace had been blown clear. “I … it … it is nothing.”

  Dave planted his feet on the ground and grabbed hold of Agnethea’s chin, once again, certain he was dancing around death. The Golem made no move to tear his head from it’s place atop his shoulders, which was good news. He tilted her head this way and that, uncertain whether he should be marveling at what he saw or terrified.

  “What trickery is this?” The Brigadier could think of no other word. “As with all Golems, your eyes have always been near colorless, dancing wi’ light only when ‘tis bright as day. But this…”

  Agnethea pulled Dave’s hand away from her chin, embarrassed. Before speaking, she recoupled the lace shield. Once certain that the blasted thing would remain in place, the most ancient Obsidian Golem spoke softly, hurriedly; if Master Nickels was still alive, he would be upon them soon enough, and with his recent decision to accept the power he had been given in this place, she couldn’t risk him learning of her … new condition.

  “It … after the two of you were nearly killed dead by the hungry cylinder.” Agnethea swallowed, kept an eye on the burning grass over yonder. Nothing yet. “Master Nickels awoke before you, only … for an instant, he was … different. When he opened his eyes, Davram, it was as the man he hopefully became out there on the field against the Bolt-Neck. Full of acceptance, full of purpose. His one blue eye burned the bluest blue I ever did see, Brigadier, and as I reached down to pull him up as I just did you, he … he did grab hold. And told me things of which I dare not speak. Oh, Davram, our Lord out there in that sea of fire, if he still does live … he was fully aware of his powers the moment he was freed from the Gunboy. He … used it ‘pon me. I am charged with a task and … the changes are a pa…”

  “Woo!” Garth shouted loudly from fifteen feet away. “You guys fucking see that? That motherfucker went up, man!”

  Agnethea looked over her shoulder, saw Garth coming, and turned hurriedly back. “Say nothing. Say nothing on your life, Master Brigadier. He cannot know. He cannot.”

  Dave exhaled noisily. He were caught. If there was one thing he were good at, it were saying and doing nothing. A foreboding feeling in his gut said all would not end well for Queen Agnethea. He whispered, “Aye, it shall be as you ask.”

  Agnethea nearly wept. As it was, a relieved half-sob escaped her lips. She was Queen, though, so she adopted a wry look of bemusement and turned to greet their savior. “Did summat happen? Master Brigadier and I were having a long discussion on the merits of the Poet Brigadier Sonnensfeld’s greatest satirical work, ‘The King’s Posey’s’. Is that not right?”

  Davram nodded assiduously, snapping his fingers for Planty to return. “Aye,” he shouted, “that be the truth of it. Did summat happen?”

  Garth stepped up to his two friends, intentionally still clad in his super badass carbon-fiber weave ultra-armor so they could see how cool he looked. When they looked suitably impressed, he let the impenetrable stuff flicker back to whence it’d come.

  The sensation was one of the weirdest feelings in the world: fully clad, the weight was precisely the same as it’d ever been, but the moment the carbon-fiber leaves started flickering away into nothingness, the density vanished instantly.

  He grinned. “Nah. Just stuff. Got into a bit of a scrap. You know how it is.”

  Dave was quite impressed with the form of Master Nickels’ armor. It was far and away entirely different than anything he’d ever seen manifested by a Brigadier. He said as much, asking, “And what is that … I assume it was a song? What is the name of that song that so filled the air as you did valiant battle with Old Bolty?”

  Garth rolled his eyes at Dave’s burdensome speech, eliciting a soft laugh from Agnethea. He clapped a hand on the Brigadier’s shoulder. “You know, pal, you don’t have to be so flowery, man. Let your hair down, bro. Talk like a normal guy. We totally won’t judge. Well, I won’t. Agnethea might. She’s eleven thousand years old.” He ducked a swat from the insulted and continued on with a grin. “My armor is different from yours for a number of reasons. One, no Gauntlet. I arrived at my abilities by a very different route.”

  “Aye,” Agnethea interjected, excited at the prospect, “he is the … ebony …” She flushed when Garth started cackling, “he is the Onyx Brigadier to your Platinum status.”

  Davram nodded slowly, wondering just what sort of things an ‘Onyx Brigadier’ would be capable of. “And the other, Master Nickels?”

  “I have … previous experience with this kind of thing.” Garth admitted this reluctantly. When Dave gave him nothing but a blank look, he shrugged. “The systems by which The King does use to bend Will to his demands are known to me ‘ere now, and though I have not had the opportunity ‘til this moment to peruse them, it is indeed like remember how, to, uh, do something you learned a long time ago but totally haven’t, uhhhh, done in a long time. Like … riding a horse?”

  Agnethea chimed in. “Swimming. ‘tis like swimming.”

  “I know not where you could have come in contact with King’s Will before coming to our darkened land,” Davram said judiciously, “but if you say it is thus, then it must be thus.”

  “And here we all are, at last on the same page! Comment merveilleux!” Agnethea laid a gentle hand on Garth’s shoulder. No flinches. “And you do seem fine for all that. No ravening monster, you.”

  He ached to point out the vast and numerous reasons how forging armor capable of withstanding the deadly Bolt-Neck’s lightning attacks and what he’d require from Will when he clashed with the King for first and only time were roughly the difference between asking a wardog to mow your lawn and greyskin to weed your garden.

  So rather than bring everyone down, he put on that rakish grin of his and said, “You bet! I’m totally stoked.”

  “You still did not tell me the name of the song.” Dave couldn’t get it out of his mind. Some … sound of it seemed to hammer at him from all sides, seemed to fill him with all manner of hope and pride and … and … joy.

  “Hm?” Garth shook his head. “Oh, yeah. The song. One of my all-time favorites. It’s called ‘Princes of the Universe’.”

  “Well,” Dave said slowly, remembering the lyrics as though they’d been engraved onto his bones with fire, “you do certainly have inside you Blood of Kings, hey?”

  “Yep.” Garth said, staring up at The Dome, trying to imagine what Barnabas was thinking. “Yes I do. Sooooo, let’s boogie on towards Arcadia, yeah? Before King Barnabas Blake sends more monsters after us? Kind of like a chance to get used to this new ability. Y’know, practice around the old campfire sort of thing?”

  �
��I rather think,” Agnethea whispered hoarsely, pointing off in the distance with a trembling hand, “that the King has a different idea in mind.”

  Davram and Garth both turned their eyes towards where Agnethea pointed, wondering what could have the Eldest Golem so raw with emotion. Each man cursed loudly as individual details of what they were looking at became clear.

  Madness. They gazed upon madness.

  Boiling up from the sides of The Edge of Nothing were monsters. Dozens and dozens of them, ranging from those that hadn’t been seen in centuries, like trolls and ogres, to those more recent beasts like Widows’ Peaks and Shaggy Men.

  “Uh.” Garth concurred. “Yeah. Yeah, looks like it.”

  Sir Plantagenet the 15th finally decided to quit sulking. Davram climbed aboard, held out a hand for both Garth and Agnethea, saying, “It shall be a tight fit, lads and lasses, but I do not have time for to summon fresh mounts for you both.”

  Garth stepped aside gracefully, murmuring, “Ladies first, my … uh … lady.”

  Agnethea grabbed hold of Davram’s strong hand and allowed herself to be lifted up onto the high horse. When she saw Master Nickels wasn’t following suit, she looked down. Their man was staring absentmindedly into the dirt. “We have no time, Master Nickels, for whatever it is you plan.”

  Garth looked over his shoulder at Dave and Agnethea. “There is always time to ride in style, Queen Agnethea. And lo! Even as monsters of all kinds did leap and caper and jiggle and slither, The Engineer did say ‘let there be a fucking hog for me to ride, because fuck horses’ and yea verily, one did arise and our dark hero did ride to Destiny’s door in style’.”

  The earth beneath their feet began to break apart.

  20 Bloody Black Road

  “How can the King keep on like this?” Agnethea demanded angrily, flinging a hand bitterly behind them. Just fifteen feet away, Davram the Brigadier was doing valiant battle against what seemed to be an eternal tide of Shaggy Men, laying about with a broadsword easily three times his height. The furry men-monsters were decapitated and de-limbed with every long sweep of that glistening platinum sword, yet there were ever more coming at their staunch cohort.

  “Way I see it,” Garth rolled his neck around, listening to the pops and creaks and wondering if spending so much time in Arcade City hadn’t turned him into Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, “Kingy-wingy fucked up somehow, and is herding us towards Arcadia.”

  “And why,” Agnethea winced as a particularly virile Shaggy Man specimen flicked razor sharp, grimy-looking claws across Davram’s gleaming helm, leaving behind four long gashes that exposed one pensive eye, “would he want to do that?”

  Garth took a sip of water from a fur-lined water bottle and offered it to the Queen. She shook her head distantly; Agnethea’s eyes were trained so fiercely on the Shaggy Men that it spoke volumes about her loathing. Shrugging, the Engineer used what remained to rinse the gritty remnants of a giant mechanical spider from his hair. Drips and drops of Dark Iron stained water rained down to the dusty ground and Garth permitted himself a brief, victorious smile.

  Whatever else he was, he was more like a Golem than Agnethea’s vision of a Onyx Brigadier, and that’d been proven during the MechaSpider Fisticuff Experience; battling that giant Wild, Wild West spider-clone had been fretful to the say the least, requiring considerable skill and tenacious application of bloody-minded violence, but that’d been the least concerning about the fight!

  Severing the arachnid’s servomech brain stalk from the primary motivators had sent the fucking thing into a cascading explosion rippling outwards from it’s cast-iron belly, resulting in –as seemed to be the raison detre of Arcade City- one bad ass motherfucker being drenched –again- in Vicious Elixir.

  Thankfully, most of the deluge of rotten ichor had struck –and slid off of- his SpecSer battle armor. That being said, some of the goop had slapped him in the face, but the gross stuff hadn’t stuck to him. Not a drop.

  For better or worse, for good or ill, he was at long last officially immune to Kingsblood.

  Technically, the King was to thank for that, but there was no way in hell Barnabas Blake was getting thanked for anything.

  Garth blinked sheepishly when he realized Agnethea was staring at him through her lacy eye-shield. “Uh. Right. Uh. Revenge? Mostly? There’s you, who, uh, he’s kind of hated for a really, really long time. Gotta say that’s some impressive hate-mongering, right there. So he wants to do for you personally, and I’m certain his new and improved matter disintegrators will do that trick just nicely.”

  Agnethea smiled sourly. “Gee, thanks.” Ever since the painful warmth creeping through her veins and muscles and all else within her immaculate form had proven itself to be anything but deadly, Agnethea had found herself more and more preoccupied with her impending demise. She was no fool. The thirty thousand year story would come to a close with but a single person left standing, and it would not be her, or Davram. She jerked her chin at the Brigadier, who had finally uncovered the location of the packmaster, a gaunt, ascetically thin Shaggy Man and was chasing him to and fro across the field of battle. “And our Master Brigadier? What is the King’s desire with Dave?”

  Garth handed Agnethea some bread. When she pushed his hand away, he shoved it into the side of her head until she broke down laughing and took the proffered food. Chewing on his own hunk of freshly-created nourishment –he was getting pretty good at making simple things, unlike his steampunk Harley, which broke down more often than not and required some ball-shriveling on-the-fly adjustments- Garth spoke, “Ol’ Dave out there is the last of the old guard, one of the preeminent and totally pure dudes, right? Ran away a hundred years ago when Barnie flew down from his secret hideaway and did for the whole, uh, regiment, right? Managed to … shitballs, these Shaggy Men are vicious. You guys should’ve come up with something more … scary. Shaggy Men? Sounds like a bunch of hairy hippies coming around to eat all your food and sleep on your couch and, like, hold absurdly long bongo drum sessions in the middle of the night and doesn’t in any way indicate how fucking terrible they are in real fucking life. Anyways. What was I saying?”

  Agnethea cheered loudly as the packmaster’s head went sailing through the air, dripping bloody black gore on those Shaggy Men who remained. The combat would be over soon enough. Deprived of their alpha, those wolfish men lost some internal spark that drove their frenzy. “You were discussing what Dave managed to do.”

  Garth watched Dave fight in silence for a long thirty seconds, not sure if he should be impressed or merely … complacent before deciding it didn’t really matter; Dave was nigh on invulnerable when clad in his gleaming platinum armor, so what if he was off his game here and there? Thus far, the Brigadier’s kill count was higher than anyone else’s. “Mmm, right. Managed to stay hidden in plain sight for a whole century, and the first thing he does when shit goes weird is throw his hat in the ring with yours truly. You know the King. He takes damn near everything that happens under The Dome personally. A lot like a twelve year girl, really. Only thing that crusty old fuck didn’t do while we traveled together was toss himself to the ground and kick his feet in the dirt, or, like, hold his breath until he turned blue.”

  Agnethea laughed again at the mental image of their immortal monarch, wearing a frilly little dress, on the ground, kicking and screaming until he got his way, enjoying the pure sensation of actual happiness. “What I don’t understand, Master Nickels, is how you traveled with the man for over a month and never once copped wise, nor can I quite figure out what it is he plans for you.”

  A faint smile passed fleetly across Garth’s lips. He pointed at Dave then clapped. “Bravo, Master Brigadier, another cadre of foul villains done for!”

  Davram bowed deeply from the waist at both his companions. “Milady, milord, the Shaggy Men shall bother us no longer.” He gestured at their various … rides. “Shall we? The time betwixt now and our next … swarm will undoubtedly be sooner than we should like, and I m
ust confess, I am winded.”

  Agnethea picked herself up and deftly mounted Platine Princesse, saying, “Fear not, Master Brigadier, either myself or Master Nickels will meet with the next threat.”

  Dave tilted his head to Garth. “Indeed?”

  “Oh yeah, buddy.” Garth hopped on his chopper and gave it the steampunk nanotech version of gas and just … grinned. Like an idiot, he knew, and he could tell from the sideways glances that Dave and Agnethea exchanged that they had no clue how awesome the brassy sounds of a monster engine like the one he’d willed into being really was. Which was fine. They had their frankly terrifying steamhorses to gallop around the dwindling countryside on. “Yeah, no, we got the next one. Now, kids, daddy wants to get at least twenty miles in before we gotta stop for monster break, okay? No fucking around now.”

  Agnethea shot Garth a look that spoke volumes about how unhappy she was with his masterful bypassing of such an important question. All she got for her troubles was a flat, blank stare, so with a tad of gentlemanly assistance from Davram, she climbed atop Horse the Second.

  Slender eddies of heat washed through her as she readied herself to ride, momentarily taking her breath away and forcing her to shut her eyes.

  What was it that Garth in his guise as Engineer needed her to do that he himself could not?

  ***

  “We cannot go on like this.” Davram announced suddenly. Even in his previous life, as one of the vaunted Brigadiers, he had never fought so long or so hard. The … well, Master Nickels called it ‘nanotech’, but he had always would think of it as magic until the day he died … his magic was failing. Here and there, not long and not often, but it’d begun with the lucky swipe from that quick Shaggy Men several hours ago.

  Never had so base a monster been able to dig through his armor.