by Lee Bond
Eons to get here, tiny seedlings sprouting at long last into mighty oaks, but well worth the effort here at the end, though there had been times, hadn’t there just?
They easily admitted to themselves that had They not been made aware of Kin’kithal Garth N’Chalez’ existence and his own intentions for the Universe –not to mention that those intentions would almost certainly take him to The Dome sooner or later- those mighty oaks would’ve been felled long ago.
But with the knowing –all thanks to Their ever-fruitful conversations with Trinity, unseen and unnoticed by a foppish King with delusions- had come preparation! They’d toiled long and hard to get things just right, tilling the fertile soil of Arcade City, preparing for the arrival of the most powerful man in the Unreal Universe until finally, one day, he’d come!
The addition of the legendary Specter into the mix, oh, that’d been just the thing for Them! How They’d marveled at the spectacle of the being en route to their wondrous city through poor old Meechy’s eyes, and how much fun They’d had planting not just seeds of doubt but terror as well!
They remembered easily the feeling of joy flooding through Them. A Kin’kithal. The Kin’kithal, in fact, Father to the Age in which They lived.
How easily he’d fallen under their subtle, twisty ways. Easier, even, than the King himself, for that had taken most of twelve thousand years to see to fruition.
But they had him now, and because of it, they really didn’t need Agnethea or the nearly brain-dead Chad Sikkmund any longer.
Now did they?
***
Agnethea stopped just a few hundred feet into Arcadia, eliciting a barely repressed shout of frustration from Garth. He hurried back to her, ire plainly evident.
“What the hell?” Garth knew he needed to strive for patience, but with everything that’d gone on and everything that was at stake … trying to imagine how the world outside would end up if someone got their hands on the kind of nanotech available in Arcade City filled him with the kind of ball-shrinking terror normally reserved for that moment when you realize your dad’s girlfriend knows you’re banging his daughter and is gearing up to say something that he thinks is funny.
Agnethea ran a fluttering hand through her hair. Damn these strange and awful old emotions coursing through her now. They were an annoyance and they were slowing her down. In the whole time she’d been an Obsidian Golem, never once had she spared a single moment for any of the people who’d turned their backs on her. Mayhap if they’d thought to consider for a moment what it felt like to suddenly become something that was –as far as they could tell- a lifeless husk with no human motivation, mayhap if they’d sought to cure her instead of shun her … but no, they’d been perfect fools, terrified and idiotic villagers to a one, no better and no worse than those outside their walls.
Arcadia had been the brightest jewel in the Old King’s crown, hey? Only the best and the brightest and wisest and noblest got to call Arcadia home, and as it’d been, it ever been thus.
Agnethea couldn’t count the number of times she’d eagerly dreamed of making her way to the grandest city ‘neath The Dome as a child, prattling on to her doting father about the grand adventure that would take her there.
Well, that adventure had finally been had, and while she wasn’t the fair-haired maiden warrior she’d envisioned so long ago and her companion wasn’t her father but an Onyx Brigadier, the journey had been made.
Made, and was painfully bittersweet. There were no banners flapping in the wind as they had for Chad Sikkmund on his last sane day. There were no cheers, no flowers lain at her feet, no offers of marriage or of fortunes too great to spend.
There was nowt but an awful silence that clawed at her ears and made her soul ache.
The city was dead.
“I … I must tell you something.” Agnethea closed her eyes and tried to blot out memories of her father being the first one to discover her horrid transformation.
A bellow of sarcastic laughter erupted out of him, echoing off stone walls and disappearing somewhere. He threw his hands in the air and kicked at a stone. “Now you want to tell me something? Now?”
“Garth, please, don’t.” Agnethea shook her head. “’twas not my decision to make. You know this. The Brigadier …”
“Was a good man, Agnethea.” Garth squatted down beside the Queen of Golems and cupped her delicate chin in his hands. “He was a good man, and sure, yeah, he completely fucked up when he dosed my drink like he did when he could’ve head-butted everyone in that room so hard the Dark Iron leaked out their ears, but in the end, he stepped up to the plate. When it mattered. If he’d died alongside the other Brigadiers when Barnie went on his Jason Voorhees slaughter-fest, there’s no telling where I’d be right now. Or y … well. You’d probably be chilling in your evil villain lair cackling like a crazy person, but dammit. I could’ve found another way to end the, uh, Endless Horde? Endless Horde. Eternal Wave of Reject Monsters?”
“You are absolute shit at naming things.” Agnethea smiled weakly. “And you and I both know that Davram was suicidal from the moment he found us in Sliver Hills, driven more so each and every time one of the King’s dark lightning bolts shattered the land and stole lives for no good purpose other than to spit in your eye. When your King, who was unto a god for your entire life, does things so cruel and pitiless for no purpose, it shatters you inside, Master Nickels. He asked me point blank while you battled … no, do not grin and wiggle your eyebrows at me, I shall not say that name again … he asked me point blank if I preferred him to waste his life in a meaningless gesture of valiant recklessness or in a manner that would teach the King the meaning of true nobility.”
Garth frowned. He didn’t like people dying in his name. Or for his causes. There was and always would be a better way of doing things. It was up to him to see that the count of the good and the noble was top heavy when being funneled into Reality 2.0; there was no way to get around the bad and the worse finding purchase in the new reality because at the end of the day, that’d make things kind of boring, but it was people like Davram that deserved it more than most.
“Now, you bloody damn fool, that wasn’t what I wanted to tell you.” Agnethea pushed herself up from her squatting position using Garth’s shoulder as a guide. “The city…”
“Totally, totally dead.” Garth’s frown turned worse. “And not by our King’s hand, either.”
Nonplussed, Agnethea looked around her, trying to see if she’d missed something. No, there were no overt signs of the slaughter –yet- that’d befallen Arcadia. She looked to Garth and rolled her eyes. “There is summat you must work on for me, my friend, when this is all over and done with.”
“Oh?” Garth asked, almost absentmindedly; the carbon fiber weave of his armor was bristling ever so gently in the calm air of the city, barely perceptible flickers of motion. By the prick, prick, pricking, he thought morosely. “What’s that?”
“The next time you realize something in a manner that no one else in the room has discovered, do, please, work on your intolerable smugness. Not everyone has access to such grand, staggering levels of intellect, nor the ability to put up with the vague smirk on your handsome lips.” Agnethea tilted her head. “Something … prepare yourself, Master Nickels. The Platinum King doth come.”
“I thought that was a story.” Garth shook his head, amazed. “Who in their right fucking minds would design a … oh. Right. It’s King Barnabas Blake we’re talking about, here. Sorry, my … oh come right the fuck on!”
The Platinum King had arrived on the scene, a shimmering liquid metal-formed man.
***
“Doth Our appearance offend you in some way, noble warrior?” The King demanded artfully, eyeing the Kin’kithal and his Queen thoughtfully; the former stood with limbs loose and ready to do battle while the latter produced an eye-shield to cover her eyes. Both were preparing for battle, though one of them was going to be sorely disappointed.
“Gee,” Garth snapped angrily, so
violently angry with everything he was seeing that if he had the time, he’d find someplace to barf, “I dunno, T-1000 knockoff, why in the fuck don’t you fucking tell me what could possibly be offensive about how you look? Jesus. You don’t even fit in with the rest of the bullshit in this place. There is not one single instance of anything remotely like a fucking monster made out of liquid metal in any of the half-assed reiterations I’ve seen so far. None. Fuck!”
The King quirked a lip at the Kin’kithal’s anger. “Careful, careful, Master Nickels, your inner nature still doth lurk about beneath the skin. ‘tis but slumbering. The wrong combination may wake Specter from his quirky sleep. And you did struggle so valiantly to become a whole man!”
Agnethea stepped in front of Garth, flinging an arm up to keep him from launching towards the King. It was but a gesture, yet it was enough to keep the warrior where he was. For the time being. “You are different.”
“Are not we all, now, here, under The Dome?” The King gestured wide with both arms. “Here at the very end of all things, we are all given chance to be what we always knew we could be, are we not?”
“What’s going on, Agnethea?” Garth was trying to get a fix on the nature of the monster made liquid metal flesh before him, but his ‘onboard systems’ were reading null across the scope. He cursed. Without having some kind of clue as to what the King actually was, it’d be a waste of time and energy spawning any weapons at all.
Agnethea circled one way, smiling briefly when Garth immediately followed suit by moving in the opposite direction. Naturally, the King didn’t bother moving. “I never once saw a Platinum King in action, but I’ve met with those who have seen both battles ‘twixt his kind and gearheads and those who’ve actually fought hand-to-hand. The stories all mention a few things, milord…”
The King tilted his head back and laughed.
“Can it, fuckface, unless you want to start this right here and now.” Sticks. Heavy bludgeoning sticks. If this King was liquid metal through and through, sharp-edged objects would be completely useless.
Big ole Captain Caveman bonking sticks? Possibly with cruel, sharp nails or barbed wire wrapped around them?
Just the thing for metal king, hey wot?
If only the chemical formula for liquid nitrogen had been stored in the Cloud!
Kin’kithal and Golem continued circling a disinterested King.
The King bowed apologetically. “Please, do continue with Our apologies. This is all quite new to Us, as Queen Agnethea was about to explain.”
Agnethea caught Garth’s eye and nodded. “’tis true. No King summoned by gearheads has ever been able to speak before now, milord, not even this, the last form. And … and he seems to move wrong, somehow, almost as if … it cannot be so.”
“Ah!” King raised a finger. “But it is, is it not? What other explanation could there be?”
“The fuck’s going on here?” Garth stretched his shoulders and willed two singlesticks into being, great, heavy clobbering motherfuckers that’d smash the living –undead, never alive, whichever- shit out of this nanotech Terminaking.
“She means, Kin’kithal…”
A dark spike of rage burst from him at last. This simply wasn’t happening.
“And that’s another fucking thing!” Garth executed a few feints with his weapons. “How in the great googly moogly do you know what I am?”
“Surely you cannot be this dense.” King smiled wide, enjoying the look of confusion on the outsider’s face before ultimately frowning. Perhaps everyone imagined the man to be a towering genius only because of his abilities in planning such a grand scheme wasn’t a reflection of true intellect, but of a certain kind of base cunning.
They frowned, turning the corners of Their lips down until they were a fright. “Alas, there is not enough time for us to have a nice, long, civilized chat about things, for each has a part to play in the drama that is soon to unfold.”
“Barnabas Blake set this one free, Master Nickels.” Agnethea shouted to be heard over the King’s words. “It is autonomous.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake that’s the stupidest goddamn thing. I really mean it this time.” Garth lashed out with a singlestick and watched it pass, unfettered, through the King’s liquid metal frame. Bullshit. Total bullshit. “Hey, I’m the king of nanotech, let’s totally set the single largest accumulation of the fucking stuff under The Dome totally free because that makes sense.”
King bent a knee, doffed an invisible crown. “We knew you were smart, Kin’kithal. You see the ramifications almost immediately, but, alas, as We said, time is closing in on us all. We need to hurry along now. The King descends from his aerie and you need to be in the right place at the right time.”
Garth took a few more half-hearted sweeps with his singlesticks, really wanting to bash the King’s head in. When each attack passed through like the first, he rested the weapons on his shoulders. “Look,” he said plainly, “you can’t have it both ways. You can’t be Exposition Villain and Cryptic Asshole. Pick one. And don’t fucking bow … Gah. He bowed.”
King gestured with great and regal flourish. “Pay attention now, Kin’kithal, for We shall lay it out for you in such a manner that even you cannot fail to comprehend. All this, all that has happened ‘neath The Dome since you first walked through the Geared Doors at Blackened Moor Estate, all of it has been scripted. All of it. Your puissance with Dark Iron, the queer turn your affliction took, encountering those you encountered, the hot-under-the-collar Gearman, the curiously lusty then simply overwhelmingly helpful Queen of Golems, Barnabas’ patented disinterest in risking exposure, Davram, even, though we consider ourselves lucky things panned out the way they did with that one. We have been working towards this moment in Our lives since before this one,” King singled Agnethea out, “did drink down that first terrible sip of Dark Iron and became Queen of Dark Golems.”
“Fucking nanotech.” Garth spat bitterly. “Can’t trust it.”
Agnethea looked askance, but a warning glance from Master Nickels sealed her lips; while their host kept claiming they were in a hurry, it appeared it –they- apparently was not.
“Indeed, Kin’kithal, you cannot.” King tossed his head back and laughed. “We have been moving against the King for more than fifteen thousand years. If We are being honest, though, things only began to work in Our favor some twelve thousand years ago. A tiny crack, a wedge levered into the CyberPriest King’s odd ego was all it took. From there … a cornucopia of dissent. First with Chad Sikkmund, then with our vile daughter here, and finally, with the former’s abrupt and impossible disappearance from Arcade City and then the King himself. ‘twas only in fits and starts to begin...”
Agnethea thumped a fist against an open palm. “I knew he weren’t smart enough to craft them Gunboys on his own or the traps within. ‘twas you, pulling them strings!”
Garth eyed Agnethea critically. The woman was taking the news of her true ‘parentage’ well enough.
They chose not to bow, not this time. Instead, they laughed once more, tossing their head and letting their pleasure roll through empty Arcadia. Oh, things couldn’t have played out better! The King in his high heaven had given Them as much freedom as he ever could, and now, now with but a single thing standing in Their way, everything was dreadfully amusing.
“Yes,” They answered most solemnly, “it was Us, worming through his subconscious. Alas, were you to speak to him right now, right this very second, he would deny everything.”
“”Buddy,” Garth interrupted wearily, “can we roll this the fuck along? You are boring my pants off.”
Agnethea’s hands flew unbidden to her lips, failing to catch the laughter spilling forth, though it was more out of nerves than Garth’s dismissive treatment of this sentient simulaKing; the more she stood in the presence of the Platinum King, the greater the heat burning through her grew, which could only mean one thing.
If Master Nickels was hurrying things along now they’d gotten most of
their enemy’s true plan out, then the mastermind behind the blue eye had to believe she were almost done … cooking. This … eloquent beast, then, was the reason behind the Engineer’s purposeful assault, and if he’d forced her to stay mum on what had been done, he would want Master Nickels far away from the clash.
“If you seek,” They stated simply, “to use your brusque nature to throw Us off or to otherwise force Us into an unwise stance, think again, Kin’kithal…”
“There’s that word again.” Agnethea whispered. “And it does to me as though you’ve used it long before our King may’ve heard it.”
Garth flashed a smile at his friend. “Can’t beat a twelve thousand year old woman for flushing out a sly secret like that one, hey? So, what? You’ve been in contact with someone on the Outside behind your creator’s back? Trinity? The Heshii? Obviously this is all part of some endgame because of course it is. Somehow, fifteen thousand years ago you gained some spark of sentience, enough to see the King’s plan and you what? Stole the idea for yourself? That about it?”
King relented with a supple nod. “’tis true. Who could turn down that kind of power? And Ourselves, with Our ability to reorder the very fabric of Nature itself, why, We are already on the forefront of Godhood. We are light-years and eons ahead of the rest. It is Our natural right! When the Heshii are vanquished, the glory and uniformity of Our being will be vast beyond compare.”
“You … you strive, then,” Agnethea winced against a sudden sharp stab of … numbers … white hot numbers crashing inside her brain, “to be the only thing in existence?”
“Aye.” They nodded proudly to disguise Their grin; damn the Menagerie for strolling along like old women in the park, but they were at last properly situated. They cleared Their throat. “Alas for you two. The time has come for prattling to end. There are a few things that require addressing still, so hold your tongues and listen well.”
They waited. When the Kin’kithal and the Queen did nothing but glower angrily, They resumed. “I see clearly you know a battle is soon to commence, and that you intend to stand alongside your Queen. A noble intent, noble as anything I’ve ever seen. Unlucky you, my stalwart warrior, but that shall only ever be a dream.”