by Lee Bond
Since then…
“Too many years to dig through.” Barnabas rubbed at his nose. “Too many errors. Too many calamities. Which is more likely? I am plagued by the nonsensical whimsy of an uncaring and perverse Unreal Universe as my brothers were, or that it is simply all down to the length of my years? Of all our years? Thirty thousand years, Erg.”
It is a long time indeed. Erg nodded assiduously. Taken as a whole, the scope of even a single one of our nearly immortal lives could surely be seen as nothing but mistakes.
“But you and yours were different, hey?” Barnabas grinned. “All manner of broken and degenerate, each one of you successively, what, poorer than the one before, drawn further and further away from that improperly Man-spawned Harmony? With you being worst of all, so improper that even my awe-inspiring machinery could not digest you, hey?”
King Barnabas Blake the One and Only liked the sound of that. He liked it very much. He rubbed his hands together excitedly. It didn’t matter now. The damage done to his wonderful world, his own amazing playground for long and long, had thrown him for a loop, pushed him into doubting himself. “It were sorrowful and shameful what the Brigadier had done when that platinum-coated buffoon should’ve remained loyal to that which had given him life in the first place, but what’s done is done. I’m over it.”
What do you plan, my King?
Barnabas gestured to the devastated ruin around him, at the twisted machines all bent and broken and smoking, and the vast empty places were some vital equipment had literally flashed back into atoms from the pressure of the Brigadier’s blast. He pointed at the charred and ashen Enforcer Suits, either entirely depleted of Chadsik’s spiritual energy or so nearly empty it made no never mind. In his broad sweep of magisterial arms, Barnabas even included the ravaged land down below, so lethal now to Will that Will itself was shredded.
“As you said, Erg, you idiotic hobgoblin, N’Chalez and his wench will surely arrive at Arcadia sooner or later, hey?” The King couldn’t wait for the final showdown. Now each party knew who the other truly was when they were at home, it’d be the kind of brawl that’d persist through the ages. “I go down!”
Barnabas Blake snapped his fingers as he always had when asking Will to shift him from one place to the other.
Nothing happened.
He snapped his fingers again. Still nothing. He could feel Erg staring at him from somewhere, and he clenched his jaw to keep from shouting abuses.
“Seriously?” King Barnabas Blake closed his eyes and shook his head miserably. Damn that Brigadier.
What now? Erg whispered craftily.
“There is always a way, you dissipated spot of … of … thing.” Barnabas started off towards the East Hangar, where the ancient steamship Flying Monkey lay in peaceful repose ever since he denied Arcadians the luxury of powered flight.
He hadn’t visited the large airship in well over a thousand years, and though the journey from the apex of The Dome to Arcadia would take time –several hours at the least- the King found himself quite excited: flying down to do courageous battle with the usurper in his most favorite ship seemed … fitting.
My Lord King, Erg broke in hesitantly, I do hate to be a pest, especially since you are full of excitement and joy at the prospect of conquering N’Chalez and all, but, ah … the flight will take many hours.
“Already thought of that.” The King rolled a hand. “It is nothing. A proper Royal descent and all. One N’Chalez will appreciate, him with his fantastic stories all full of heroism and ‘wicked awesome’ visuals.”
Ah, yes, of course, but there is the small matter of your, er, your Son being down there in the center of the City. Erg pressed on even though the King’s face grew sullen and frosty. And while I hesitate to quote, milord, ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. Chad and Nickels have history together, but in this instance, I wager they shall overcome their differences quite easily to mount a joint attack. Thus it would be First Golem, First Brigadier and your Son, and is the Black Brigadier, all ‘gainst you.
The answer to that problem leaped to mind almost on it’s own.
King Barnabas Blake rooted through the mindset connected directly to King’s Will first to see if the link was still operational. It was thin, tenuous to say the least, but it was there, and as he focused, the connection surged as the entity on the other end of the line returned that attention.
***
The Platinum King in Arcadia, free from bondage on a permanent basis, looked up into it’s mind and saw the King lurking there. It genuflected grandly, bowing deep and sweeping it’s arms wide. “How now, my King?”
Barnabas found it queer that the machine in Arcadia and Erg in The Dome should mirror each other’s speech, but dismissed it. They were both odd ducks, and that were all. Didn’t matter. “I see freedom has done little to lighten your mood.”
The Platinum King sneered. “They came and looked at us, King, and mocked our presence. Did the Matrons not prevent them, your pack of inbred mongrel-nobles would’ve stooped to throwing rotten fruit and their own soiled underpants at us.” The metallic monarch gestured. “We have done you a favor by emptying out this cesspool of weak-willed idiots and slack-jawed buffoons and … to what do We owe the honor of your presence here this day?”
Well, now, referring to itself in the Royal ‘We’ were getting on a true King’s tits a bit, but Barnabas opted for ignorance once more over dealing wi’ summat that were truly insignificant. It weren’t worth it and besides all that, the ‘favor’ he was getting ready to ask would almost certainly cause an end to the construct’s delusions of grandeur.
“An enemy,” Barnabas began. “Comes to the gates of Arcadia. I seek to deal with him myself, but I cannot greet him personally at the time of his arrival.”
A wry quirk of knowing passed the Platinum King’s lips. “And you would have Us do so?”
The King snorted derisively. “Lackwit, you’ve never seen nowt like this before, not in a single one of your iterations. You have never met a man like Garth N’Chalez. He is unlike anything you can imagine. ‘sideswise, were you e’en capable, I would not allow it. He is mine and mine alone.”
“Then, what?” The monster wearing the King’s face demanded.
“This: my Son has ret…”
“Obviously.”
“Silence!” Barnabas Blake snapped this so loudly that the Platinum King’s mental space trembled under the fury. “The two of them have history on the Outside. They may hate each other, but they have common cause to dislike me more. An alliance, e’en a temporary one, ‘tween these two men is something I cannot countenance. Outsider and whore will make a beeline for the Armory. ‘tis up to you to delay ‘em with my own Menagerie.”
The liquid platinum simulacrum made a huge show of yawning with boredom and checking under it’s fingernails for dried blood. “To what end should We do such a thing? Your imprisoned coterie of Kingsblood-twisted nightmares always struck Us as an ill-advised venture. Were We to free them to prove as distraction to this Outsider and this Golemic whore … any one of them may turn against Us. They, like Us, have been imprisoned for overlong but unlike Us, they lack intelligence. They may look upon Us freeing them as reason enough to lash out. We are at risk if we dally with the Outsider and if We use your plan.”
Barnabas was not at all pleased with this incarnation. Not at all. It were his fault, of course; previous versions of the Final King had never been left alive for so long and he’d never been interested in detailing the effects of longevity on what was supposed to be a short-lived summonable beast. This one bore too many hallmarks of self-awareness for his own liking.
Self-preservation, now, that’d always been at the forefront of all his Will-spawned beasts, but never had one possessed the internal wherewithal to barter for it’s own survival.
The repercussions of that moment! Would they never stop multiplying?
“We await your new offer, milord.”
Barnabas Blake ground
his teeth. “If all goes well and you are successful in waylaying Master N’Chalez and his diminutive doxy long enough for me to dispatch him, I … We …” The One and Only smiled toothily at his joke, “We shall let you live to be witness to Our Grand Plan.”
The Platinum King nodded slowly. “To be on point, We and the Menagerie seek to delay the Outsider. We presume if the opportunity to kill his counterpart, you will not be of a mind to strike Us down?” They continued when the King nodded brusquely. “And that by keeping … N’Chalez from the Armory and your Son, We are permitted life after the fact?”
The King ran the paraphrasing through his mind. Didn’t seem as if there were anything out of place…
“Milord?” The Final King demanded quizzically, breaking Arcade City’s ruler from his reverie once more. “Is this what you would have of Us?”
Blake nodded once, firmly, snow white hair shaking. “Aye. Spend the Menagerie’s lives as you will. Ensure the Golem dies. Prevent N’Chalez from e’en clapping proper eyes on The Armory. Do these things, and live you shall.”
Platinum King mirrored The One and Only’s decisive nod with one of their own. “Agreed, then. ‘pon your honor.”
Barnabas Blake the One and Only removed himself from the Platinum King’s mindspace, bristling at the jab only a bit; he were well pleased with how things were gone and was quite confident things would go his way.
***
The King of Arcade City snapped his fingers. A heavy crack of thunder echoed hollowly through his vast workshop.
Down below, in nearly empty Arcadia, the Platinum King turned their head skyward and smiled a long, slow smile of victory.
21 Le Roi de Platine
Fair Arcadia.
Upon a time not too long ago, it was the one place in all of their microscopic universe that every man and woman dreamed of one day seeing. From butchers to bakers and candlestick makers to lookers and leaders and thumpers and crushers, and bombers besides, no other place in all of Arcade City had held the dreams or captured the imagination, save, perhaps, they mysteries that lay within The Dome itself.
With it’s tall, opalescent Gates and towering structures seen nearly from every point in Arcade City, men and women living in the Estates could go for days –weeks, even- without giving the home of the King and the Matrons even the slightest bit of thought, but then, suddenly, without warning, their eyes would fall on it, and while they could hardly see anything worth seeing at all, their minds would race, their hearts would pound in their chests.
Arcadia was where they lived, the bold and brave Platinum Brigadiers, those bad boys and girls who’d fought and struggled, not just against their own dark inner nature brought to light by the Kingsblood raging red hot through cast iron bones, but against Kings and Shaggy Men and Bolt-Necks to finally, at long, long last, stand in the central square of that fabled city. And around them on all sides, fluttering pinions flicking and snapping in the high winds and the roaring, cheering sounds of the true elite of their Domed-in world, the best and brightest of them all, providing moral support and congratulations and all sorts of well-wishing, for the journey through the Gauntlet was hard and chewed up more than it spat out.
Them as made the passage did stand in that square as was their right, and they put their hands on the final Kingspawn point, and up out of the ground, the final step would rise, a shimmering liquid Platinum King, stronger, faster, smarter than anything anyone could imagine. Lookers and leaders found their wits lost to them as the King shot this way and that, too fast for all but the truly best to anticipate. Thumpers watched the mightiest of their blows bounce off or slide through the ever-moving liquid skin. Shooters found their bullets to be of little effort. Bombers, the same.
For killing the Platinum King wasn’t just about killing the King, but forcing yourself into a greater frame of reference, of reaching down inside yourself at the very last minute and discovering, nestling deep, deep, oh so deep that some valiant warriors couldn’t find the bottom, a wellspring of courage, a tiny surge of power, some bit of themselves that they’d never known to exist before that very moment.
That was what it was all about. Many thought that doing for the Platinum King was what gave those nascent Platinum Brigadiers the ability to control the world around them, and to an extent, they were right; as with all done for Kings, there was a prize to be had, and just as the size of that triumphant victory gift diminished in size but increased in value, that which was given for killing the liquid metal monarch hardly seemed worth anything at all. A single dollop, a mercurial blob pooling gently in an outstretched hand, the Kingsblood waiting for each victorious gearhead bestowed no power, offered no greater gift.
It was a stabilizing agent. A complex bit of nanotech code and other odds and ends that swarmed through the body, cementing and firming up, bolstering and fostering internally forged connections made by the host, hardwiring protocols into place to prevent the freshly forged Platinum Brigadier from developing new, fresh attachments to King’s Will, for in those first minutes during that savage confrontation –that often saw mortal lives lost and the destruction of property far and wide- new Brigadiers were just as the First, and King Barnabas Blake the One and Only had never had need –nor wanted- anyone to supplant Chadsik al-Taryin the First in any way.
Newly forged, freshly minted, it took Brigadiers decades to learn the ins and outs of their powers, to understand the scope of their duties, to take to heart what they’d become, for like as not, they’d spent –at bare minimum- a solid hundred years toiling through the various, hellish levels of King’s Gauntlet. With most of that time being at the furthest, outermost rings, that also meant that the longest portion of their lives had been spent under the withering, crippling onslaught of the crudest crude, the blackest Kingsblood, the most Vicious of Elixirs. Ironing out the behaviors of fifty or sixty long, bitter years took doing, it did, oh yes, and more often than not, those fresh-faced Brigadiers found themselves squaring off against one another in darkened alleys of fair Arcadia, beating each other senseless over imagined –or real, it made no matter- slights because for the longest time, that was how disagreements were settled.
For thousands of years, those disagreements had either been settled by the firm and roughly mad hand of the Dark Iron King himself, King Barnabas Blake the One and Only, and them as were chastised by their monarch were often quite lucky to still draw breath. If the King were too busy –as he almost always was, up there in The Dome’s guts, tinkering and hammering and making adjustments to his great, celestial machine- the Matrons would allow Chadsik al-Taryin to ride forth from his Armory in the sky, and that cracked, blindingly bright boy would pull the fractious brothers and sisters aside and he would, by hook or by crook –and sometimes by beating the absolute bloody shit out of them- show them a better way to be. Then they would all venture out to a local pub and drink themselves stupid, whereupon they would pass through Arcadia’s giant gates in search of some strange new monster to terrorize before the King or the Matrons summoned the First Brigadier back to his work.
And that had been the way of things for the longest of times. The elite citizens of Arcadia, born of the first men and women trapped under The Dome thirty thousand years ago had grown and flourished under the lavish and rich attention of the King, had grown wealthy and powerful and so, so wise. Even as other cities rose and fell –with or without King’s permission- and those citizens enjoyed their spot in the light, true Arcadians knew –had always known- that they were the best of the best. Their city was the first to have lamp posts that lit themselves, and lights in their homes, and talking brass heads that whispered news of things happening in all corners of the world. Their city had been the first to bear witness to the Gearmen astride their massive steamhorses with the glittering black eyes. Their city had been brightly lit from the Armorer’s glittering diamond chip workplace, and as they’d stood ‘neath it’s impressive, free-floating structure, listening to the strange sounds emanating from within, someti
mes so loud it drowned out all other noises, they would wonder what it was Chadsik al-Taryin, First Brigadier, made for their King that the King himself could not forge from Will alone.
But then, one night, the Armorer’s light had gone out. And the King had descended from his aerie in a wroth, slaying the Brigadiers and disappearing just as the Armorer had, leaving the governance –not just of Arcadia- but the whole of Arcade City, to the Matrons themselves. The Matrons, The Nannies, The Mistresses, never more than a backup system for a King too distracted by the greatness that was his deadly machine to keep a steady eye on all things, found themselves almost immediately overburdened. Very nearly from the beginning, they made ill choice atop poor decision.
Fair Arcadia, once a shimmering light of hope and wisdom, a beacon of delight, promising bright wonders and fantasy made real, began to tarnish after that night.
It was known Citywide that in Arcadia, a Platinum King roamed the streets. Summoned up on that ill-fated night a hundred years in the past right as the King Himself was busy slaughtering his Brigadiers, that shimmering liquid monarch proved to be the better of the very last gaggle of gearheads to ever make the long, dreadful journey inwards. As the last of the gearheads fell to the Platinum King’s artful hand, the last of the Platinum Brigadiers –and the only one capable of matching the silvery-skinned brute’s power ounce for ounce- was busy turning tail and running for the hills instead of doing for that shimmery monochromatic monster as he’d ought to’ve.
Woefully unprepared for the disappearance of both their King, Barnabas Blake and his First Son, him who they all thought of as a Prince and the legion of Brigadiers protecting their fair city from all harm by the beasts outside their iridescent walls and terrified of the quicksilver King, Arcadians everywhere panicked, and with good reason: without the King, without Chad Sikkmund, without the Brigadiers, that Platinum King didn’t dissipate.