by Lee Bond
Something heavy and hard hit their little borrowed chalet so hard that the rafters creaked and dust fell freely to the ground. Whatever beast Master Nickels did battle with outside groaned loudly enough to kick off a second round of dust falling from the beams. All fell silent, then swells of music soared through the darkened night.
Agnethea risked a peek out the window. Master Nickels, clad in his scaly black armor from head to toe, wielding dual swords that hardly looked like they could do aught at all, battling a many-limbed tentacular horror with a gigantic beak and furious red eyes. “I do like this song. He calls it ‘More Human than Human’. This music he listens to as he fights is mesmerizing, though I do often wonder at the time from which it came. Who would permit the sounds of a woman enjoying herself so fully to be heard by anyone?”
Dave rose and looked out his own window. Master Nickels and his deadly Vorpal blades that gleamed dully against the dark sky, spilling sour inky blood from the nightmare monster he fought with such skill. Huge chunks of twitching, juddering flesh mingled with the more standard fare of gear and cog surrounded him on all sides.
Were enough to cause a man’s heart to soar in his chest!
“Did you hear what I said?”
Agnethea nodded sadly. The Brigadier was correct, of course, as men like him almost always were when they climbed down off their high horses and looked at things head on. Their man outside was not yet fully committed to the powers he held, but he grew in puissance every passing moment. She knew why Garth had evaded answering her rather pointed question concerning the King’s desires for one overpowered Outsider so clumsily.
The King did not want Garth Nickels dead any longer. Or, if that were still on the table, then dead in a very specific manner that had perishingly little to do with being overrun by swarm after swarm of monsters.
A hell-spawned shriek of purest outrage, followed by a triple thump-thump-thump against the stony walls of the long-lost cottage they’d happened upon during their mad dash, caused Brigadier and Queen to be thoughtfully silent for a long moment; one of those calamitous thumps had sounded less mighty limbs slamming ‘gainst stone and more like their hero being bounced around like a play toy.
Muffled shouts reached their ears. The edges of Agnethea’s lips curled. “That man can curse like no one else I’ve ever met.”
Dave nodded in agreement. “Aye, he even outdoes Sonnensfeld in his epithets.”
“Fine.” Garth was barely audible through the walls, but he did sound ‘fine’. “It’s okay, I’m good. Fucker has feet! He kicked me. Who gives something tentacles and feet? You’re scraping the barrel, you …”
“The man has a point.” Agnethea winced as something … squishy … slapped against her window, filling it with crazy cracks. “That monstrosity out there has never been seen in eleven thousand years, and even were something like to’ve been birthed, it lacks all grace and style.”
Dave went to whip up some food, then thought the better of it; he wasn’t truly hungry –quite the opposite, in fact- and realized he needed to conserve what little power he held. There was a plan he had in mind. It would work to everyone’s benefit, of that he was certain. He just needed time to accept how the plan would end. So … better to hold on to what coursed in him for that moment, to make things … count.
Dave sat back down. “Master Nickels explained summat whilst you were doing battle with that Widow’s Peak and his coven.”
Agnethea had never understood precisely what Barnabas had been thinking with the arrival of those … salacious, mesmerizing creeps; them with their artfully done hair, carefully manicured fingers, those soft eyes and those fleshy, far too inviting lips, they were the epitome of a kind of … dirty salaciousness that you could only find in the dankest of hard or soft palaces.
The accent, too, now she was making mock. Hardly anyone sounded like that any longer, and them Peaks mangled that old twang fairly mercilessly. Beyond that, their ability to first enthrall then transform folk –mostly women, though some men had fallen under their hypnotic gaze- into lesser versions of themselves was a thing that struck her as unfair, because Widows Peaks targeted Estates… Twisted dark madness of the worst kind!
Well, now they would never know what Barnabas had been thinking, and Agnethea was okay with that. She drew up a chair and sat next to Davram. “Oh?”
Dave thought back to the conversation he’d had while Agnethea had skewered the Peak and his women. Too much of it had been the complex ramblings of a man with a brain the size of their whole world, but he’d understood enough of it to give Agnethea the highlights. “Aye, well, in a roundabout way, but … aye. I did wonder about the time you severed that sorry-looking redhead’s skull from neck as to why there had been no appearances of them Gunboys or even summat less terrifying, like a Full King.”
Outside, Garth’s external soundtrack skipped and shifted to something extremely fast and filled with strange chirping sounds. To those inside the cottage, it was little more than noise, and so they did their best to ignore it.
“Now you bring it up, Master Brigadier,” Agnethea wanted to peek out the windows once more, to see how many more beasts the King was throwing at them, “I did have that same thought, earlier this morning, but then you were called to battle. And did Master Nickels explain?”
Dave laughed sarcastically, then smiled at Agnethea’s knowing nod. “He did. He did. Used words with more syllables than I have years, ‘til he realized what he were doing, then he went back and used smaller and smaller words until at long last he fell upon a …” A scream like no other ripped the relative silence of their safe zone to shreds, “bloody hell that sounded awful.”
The two waited in pensive silence for the music to stop. When it did not, Dave resumed.
“As I were saying.” Dave cleared his throat. Sonnensfeld was better at this sort of thing. “Them monsters the King has been throwing at us cost lest to summon. When I pressed on the matter of ‘cost’, well, that began a lengthy lecture on the system called King’s Will which is in truth summat called nanotech. Boiled down to it’s basic bits, our King –and myself included, as well as Master Nickels- all have access to a kind of … shop, wherein we, ahhh, purchase, say, a Widow’s Peak, for fourteen gallons of Kingsblood. The shop, which is King’s Will, produces said toothy, goggle-eyed man, and away we go. When the Peak is dispatched, it is reabsorbed, with a small loss of ‘sblood.”
Agnethea opened her mouth to say something but it was lost beneath a sudden, triumphant blast of joy so loud and powerful that the previously cracked window shattered beneath the pressure, followed quickly by a loud thump-thump-thump on the roof.
The Queen of the Golems and the Last of the Brigadiers turned their eyes roofwards, listening once again to Garth cursing a blue streak.
“I wonder…” Dave began, leaping backwards just in time to avoid being squashed flat by their friend and confidant, Master Nickels, who arrived inside the cottage via a very large hole.
Surrounded by splinters and large chunks of wood, Garth sat there for a brief second, shaking his head miserably. Rising unsteadily to his feet –the legged land-octopus-thing packed a really fucking powerful wallop- the Engineer turned to his two friends. “Hey, how’s it going?” he asked casually, wishing for a countertop to lean on.
Agnethea gestured nonchalantly. “We are fine, Master Nickels. Are we not, Davram?”
Dave hid a smile. “Indeed, we two are thick as thieves this night. Our conversation ranges the gamut from the meaning of life to the time Sonnensfeld welded Neddard into his bed. And you?”
Garth glowered through the walls at the land-o-pus. “I’m totally rad. That thing, on the other hand, is the exact opposite.” He hoisted his two swords and looked at them long and hard. “These aren’t good enough.”
“Do you require assistance, milord, in dispatching this beast?” Agnethea inquired, her voice all sunshine and light.
The truth was, Garth wouldn’t mind help, because … because. The s
ole remaining people –probably- under The Dome, talking together about everything that had happened and that was about to happen made him distinctly uncomfortable. If he’d seen to the end of the story –as it were- then they, too, had done the same, and that ending wasn’t really the best for seventy-five percent of the people in the cabin.
Hell, for all he knew, it was entirely fucking likely that the King would win out the day and the whole Universe would pop like a soap bubble, but Dave and Agnethea had to know that Barnabas was doing his level best to get rid of his allies.
“What, pray tell,” Dave asked, peering out his window at the many-tentacled, growling monster made of blubber and metal, “do you call this thing? I have never seen aught like it anywhere in Arcade City.”
“I’ll have you know,” Garth said, willing the swords to change into something more suited towards killing something that weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of forty berjillion pounds, “that I call it Blubberpuss. In my head. Because saying … stop laughing.”
“Whatever you did,” Dave continued, working to stifle his laughter while Agnethea just kept right on, “to cause it to react so cowardly as to use you as a battering ram,” Agnethea howled with laughter and promptly covered her mouth, “seems to’ve given it the idea to the same thing you are doing at this very moment.”
The matte-black swords flickered along the edges. Lines and circuits began etching themselves across the surface, liquid white light piercing the dim edges of the cabin. Garth felt eyes on him but he ignored Dave and Agnethea; the most complicated thing he’d created since the Harley was the armor, and that only counted because it was full of moving parts. Now … now he was playing around with stuff directly embedded into King’s Will; the deadly weapons were now deadlier still, engraved with the same rune-like symbols that’d been on Bolty Mcbolterson’s unfair lightning staff.
“And what,” the Engineer asked, nodding with satisfaction at the edge of lightning flickering up and down each blade, “do you think I’m doing?”
“Why, is it not obvious?” Agnethea demanded sweetly, though her heart –and she suspected Dave’s as well- hammered fit to bash it’s way loose from it’s bony prison. In fits and starts, their Engineer was working towards accepting himself. A rare thing to see, she suspected. “You are killing time, milord.”
“I so am not ‘killing time’, Queen Agnethea.” Garth shouted the words indignantly. “In Special Services, moments like this are called ‘regrouping’ and ‘tactical pauses’. Killing time. Hah. You’ll know when I’m killing time, because I won’t have any pants on and there will be large amounts of potato chips and alcohol. Killing time.”
Blubberpuss’ mighty, suckered tentacles hammered at the sturdy walls, popping out another window and shaking loose a thick support beam from the roof.
Dave pointed at the damage. “Perhaps, milord, it is time for you to finish the job, then? Are you all tactically paused out?”
Garth shot Davram a dirty look, bowed regally to Queen Agnethea, then launched up through the roof, lightning swords trailing almost-painful to behold streamers of electricity. A shriek pierced the night. Music followed quickly after, this time, something low and heavy with bass that rattled the walls.
Agnethea booted the fallen support beam out of the way and sat opposite Dave. “We will be gone from here soon enough now, I believe.”
“I think you are right.” Dave nodded. He’d hoped to work his way up to the … Great Plan … through natural discussion, and Agnethea’s interest in the type of monster their perfidious King sent their way had been the most perfect of avenues, but alas, Master Nickels’ freshly forged lightning swords would no doubt dispatch Blubberpuss too quickly.
Agnethea caught sight of Davram’s pensive expression. To her keen eyes, the emotion behind them spoke volumes. “There is summat on your mind that you wish to tell me, Master Brigadier, and it is a thing you do not want Garth to hear. Why?”
Dave squirmed a bit, then fessed up. “We cannot go on like this, as I said. I am certain you have seen the end, how it will most likely be?”
Agnethea dipped her head once. “Aye. I have. And you are … not wrong.”
“I have a plan, my Queen. One that Master Nickels will disapprove of so greatly that were he to learn the truth of it, I guarantee he would move heaven and earth to prevent it.” Dave took a deep breath. “One that will sign my death warrant, but one that will also give you and he the time you need to reach Arcadia without further pestering. Here. Sit still and say nowt and I shall whisper to thee how an old coward shall redeem himself…”
Bitter tears sprung to Agnethea’s eyes as the totality of Davram’s gesture was understood. He sat there, squirming in his chair, clearly worried she’d say summat to try and convince him otherwise. He prepared to stand his ground come hell or high water and … it humbled her in way she’d never imagined.
One of the most powerful men in the world, ground down by the relentless onslaught, willing to give his life. For them.
The Queen was thankful her eye-shield was in place, else Davram would either stop weeping or make some offhanded joke about his startling offer. Still, her answer, when it came was reluctant. “I see. You have thought this through, have you not?”
Dave nodded, an unwanted smile crossing his face. If -as Master Nickels maintained- then his flight from Arcadia so long ago had been instrumental in bringing everything to where it was right that moment.
By that logic, it wasn’t that singular flight from a doomed city, but everything. Everything in the man’s life ‘neath The Dome had been guided, and if that were the case, then it seemed to him that what remained of Ickford remained to further guarantee Master Nickels’ eventual meeting with the King.
Davram nodded again, intent on fleshing out the plan before Garth returned. “I have, my Queen. And it involves your city…”
***
“I am sorry about your … chopper, milord.” Dave shouted to be heard over the noise of Garth’s new ride, a steamhorse dark as blackest midnight with glowing silver eyes.
“Don’t wanna talk about it.” Garth tried to shout sullenly, but that emotion was best expressed when you were sitting at the dinner table, miserably kicking a table leg while refusing to look your parents in the eye.
“Men and their toys!” Agnethea galloped alongside Garth’s right, the speed of their passage through what remained of Arcade City’s once wondrous landscape kicking her hair loose until it sprayed behind her, a numinous halo.
“Hey!” Garth tried shouting indignantly, and it worked just fine. “Hey! I ain’t the one with a secret basement full of stuff that’s all … stuff! If you were a man, that’d be a man-cave for sure!”
“Incoming!” Davram hollered, sending Planty swerving off to the left while Garth and Agnethea took off right at a nearly ninety degree angle, their titanic steeds tearing great chunks out of the earth.
A few seconds later, a boulder large enough to flatten all three of them bounced off the spot where the trio of fleeing heroes would’ve been, then rolled off for another hundred or so feet. Quickly thereafter, a smattering of smaller rocks hailed downwards.
Eyeing Agnethea, wondering how she was going to react when they arrived at Ickford –which was probably less than fifteen, twenty minutes at the rate they were traveling-, Garth then took a peek over his shoulder. Just to see if maybe the King had decided to give up on … give up.
The single largest swarm of monsters and mad things called up from the dirt and stone and everything else hurried after them, easily a thousand evil things drawn from the mind of a thirty thousand year old monarch desperate to destroy the Universe. Bolt-Necks astride skeletal steamhorses that spat lightning from the eyes, Widows Peaks carried aloft on the backs of bamboozled Shaggy Men.
Giant snakes provided passage to Water Ladies who bore their infamous and deadly swords, thin slivers of eldritch-wreathed poison glinting fiercely against darkened skies. And there were more things than that, strange be
asts like Blubberpuss, and others too, weird animals made fresh in the past few days that neither Agnethea nor Dave had ever seen in their lives.
It was a yammering, yowling, seething wall of Dark Iron villains and King’s outraged Will made manifest, and for the life of him, Garth couldn’t recall having more fun. This was when he was at his best. When his balls were to the wall, when all the chips were on the table and it looked like the other guy had pocket aces.
Music started thumping out of his dreaded steed –made to look very similar to something Batman would build if he were trapped in an alternate steampunk universe because why in the fuck not, right- and Garth smiled. Agnethea chose that moment to seek him out; she saw the brilliant smile on his face and there was no other recourse than to laugh.
“You are a madman, Master Nickels.” She flashed him a smile of her own.
“I am the product of my environment, my Queen.” Garth sketched a half-bow, lost balance and nearly tumbled ass-over-teakettle over the side of his galumphing dinosaur-sized super-horse. Scrabbling hastily at the reins, he managed to right himself just before one of the damn thing’s ginormous cloven hoofs split his wig. “Hey. Listen…”
Agnethea caught sight of Davram making his way back to them, so she spoke hastily. “Think nothing of it, milord. ‘twas nothing more than a side project that grew out of proportion.”
Garth slapped his horse on a shoulder. The steamhorse whinnied but kept on huffing and puffing. “No, dammit, no. I was there. What you asked me to do, to save Ickford … even in it’s last hours, you still…”
Agnethea slowed her horse a bit so their repartee would not be carried to Dave on wings of wind. Once she was evenly matched with Garth, she spoke again. “’twas nothing. Nothing at all. A thumb in in the eye of our King, a sore on his land so that when he looked down from his heavenly hideaway miles and miles above us, all he could see were the blight. I do feel sorrow for them as were living there. That is a burden I shall carry …” the Queen stopped short.
She’d almost said ‘for only a short while longer’ but held her tongue. Sadly, from the dry look on her partner’s face, it was clear as water he’d heard the sentiment many times in his life.