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

by Lee Bond

  Sooner or later their captor would find the right combination to one of them and that’d be that.

  Something sharp and unbreakable slammed against the indestructible shield surrounding Babel’s psyche. The conman turned Specter basked in the green-tinged rage bathing his disembodied soul, grinning despite the torment; their captor was losing patience once again.

  Lady Ha would spend the next hour or so trying to physically batter her way inside using an ever-increasingly desperate array of brute force tactics, literally trying to drill her own warped mind into the Soul-HUD before quitting. Then, before you knew it, they’d be up and shambling through Ha’s immense warship, swabbing decks or peeling potatoes or –as he’d personally seen but not been a part of, not yet- bizarre passion plays with captors playing the parts of Rugged, Dashing Mercenary Captain and Young, Innocent Hacker. Or Fleeing, Cowardly Handsome Traitor and Vengeful, Sexy Hacker.

  Ha tried again. And again. And again.

  Babel laughed and started whispering to himself. Wrapped in the cocoon of his own grandiloquence, the refracting harmonics of his words echoed and shivered deeper and deeper into his soul.

  Risky? Yes. All life was a risk.

  But the Sleeper had to waken, had to rise up out through the murky automatic controls Ha plugged them into every morning, had to open his eyes in the real world. He was the only one who could do it.

  When he woke, Babel would do the second best thing he was good at, which was running like crazy.

  Only, this time, when he got far enough, he’d do the first thing he was good at, which was convincing everyone he could find to come back with him. He would push the limits of his convincer ability past redline if needed, burn his own mind to ash and cinder, leave himself an imbecile if needed, to bring an army of his own down on Lady Ha.

  The army he’d bring would be the dark, the desperate, the criminals and the savages and the madmen that hid in the dark places of the Universe, because if there was one fucking thing Specters could smell a mile off, it was their brothers and sisters.

  His friends would not be made to suffer. He would free them. He would. He w…

  Lady Ha hammered and hammered and hammered.

  Babel whispered some more. The words caught fire, changed color, the echoes grew louder. It was working. It would work.

  He would free himself. He would save them.

  He would.

  He…

  Someone’s at the Door

  Kith Antal watched the Kin’kithal Griffin Jones most thoughtfully, heavy eyes tainted now for thousands of years with the thick crystalline accumulation that happened with direct and continued exposure to the extra-dimensionality.

  If only he had known better, had seen how dangerous their collusion would become, but the snare of encountering a son that was not yet your son, a son capable of not only holding his own but defeating the legendary Kith Antal with absurd ease … already full of doubts and misgiving about the Heshii and their ultimate goal, the arrival of Garth N’Chalez, adult version of his impossible and unborn son –instantly recognized as such once the battle had ended- had been too great a lure.

  The story woven by Garth, back then in the beginning … amazing. A proto-Reality, somewhere out there in the impossible to imagine depths of the Universe, a tiny pocket cosmos where some kind of intellect arranged and arrayed men and women and history and all of those things into a better version of the world they lived in now. A world with music never heard, books never read, movies never seen. A world still corrupt, still filled with violence and mayhem and all sorts of things for those were human appetites that would never be dissipated, only diminished, only for a short time.

  But most of all, this proto-Reality, this weird plane of existence his unborn son had escaped from in the guise of a man was free of the M’Zahdi Hesh. Men and women torn apart by endless strife and a surfeit of war –all artificially produced by the Kith and Kin- on this side had been given a proper chance at their real destinies.

  Those stories. Ah, those stories.

  Antal grinned. Coming from Garth, they’d been more than stories, they’d been passion tales, heated words digging through the impassive armor wrapped around his soul by the callous embrace of the Heshii overlords. Freed, he’d listened on to what N’Chalez planned on doing, barely even blinking when the totality of his plans for birthing a generation of children to select Kith and Kin were revealed; Antal remembered hearing the phrase ‘telekinetic manipulation of both male and female donor to ensure maximum viability for gestation’ and just … nodding.

  Using the tactics of your enemy against your enemy was the best kind of sense.

  The last of the Kith and Kin had spent many a decade wondering on that moment, trying to see if there could’ve been any other possible outcome from that initial encounter. The evidence of N’Chalez’ parentage had been undeniable, which was, perhaps, the only reason that Kith Antal had gone along with the plan in the first place.

  But … could he have said no?

  How could you prevent something from happening when it’d happened already? Garth N’Chalez existed, he would always exist. He had been born, he had been instrumental in his birth. He had planned for the destruction of the Unreality and had set the plans in motion. He was the exemplar of Paradox. He was. Therefore, he had to be. Thus, ‘yes’. To everything. Not just manipulation of the Kith and Kin to assure birth of a super-powered army of Kith’kin and Kin’kith, but also to the … lie.

  Already hooked, already battened down, Antal saw he couldn’t’ve said no to the audacious plan even if he’d known it to be a lie from the start; his future son, so fresh from the vigorous proto-Reality, had been most convincing.

  Traveling ever outwards, fleeing the painful, vicious effects of the Universal shield protecting the bulk of Humanity from the Dark Ages and the M’Zahdi Hesh, Antal had driven himself mad in an attempt to comprehend the nature of paradox. Undoing a thing that’d been done before that thing had been done…

  Madness.

  And, Antal admitted quite readily, looking upon a young, vibrant being calling himself Kin’kithal, a being with powers any foot soldier in the service of the Hesh would be jealous of, had been … intoxicating. Used to the concept of never siring his own children after the first thousand years of progeny-less existence, Antal had …

  Fallen in love with his child. As nature intended. And thus the two of them had begun the immense task of not only readying Humanity for a proper war against the Hesh, but securing the births of his son’s comrades and subtle manipulation of the M’Zahdi Hesh themselves.

  The scope of it had sometimes taken the Kith’s breath away. For no matter how well planned and executed everything seemed to go, always and forever in the back of Antal’s mind had been one thunderous thought: they were fighting Gods.

  When those doubts surfaced, there his son had appeared, all wry grins and sarcastic comments, and those qualms disappeared.

  Kin’kithal Griffin Jones tried to scream, but the only thing that escaped him were phosphorescent shards of light that turned his skin translucent. Antal liked to imagine that the boy’s mighty cargo groaned like a massive ship on a storm-torn sea, but he knew it wasn’t so. They were in a true void between stars now, a manufactured emptiness caused by the tremendous shield surrounding ‘Trinityspace’; entire solar systems had been shredded into nothingness by the final expansion of the shield, all that matter consumed by those ingenious Cordon nodes.

  Antal wondered frequently if the destruction had been intentional or accidental.

  Given what he knew about Kin’kithal Garth N’Chalez now, the mighty Kith knew in his crystal bones that it was intentional.

  The Ushbet M’Tai-driven Garth N’Chalez was the sort of being who looked at everything and everyone as an integer. Were you promising? Could you be of benefit? Would you be of benefit? Would your death be of greater benefit?

  Were you a one, or a zero?

  That was the way of things, Antal knew
now. The burdens and trials those called upon to envision destruction of an Unreality were immense, uncompromising. Lose a few thousand solar systems, a measly deca-trillion lives, and in return, a bounty unimaginable.

  Griffin unconsciously tried shifting in the painful harness he’d been forced into after a regrettable incident where he’d tried breaking free, motion that only served to dig the barbs deeper into his flesh. The skin around these fresh new wounds –already hovering on the border of translucence- went clearer still, revealing flesh, bone, sinew, the thin, reedy pulse of blood through glassy veins.

  Antal envied Griffin’s accelerated transformation, wished he’d seen the end of the road before stepping onto the path altogether; where he had been slowly but surely transformed into a man of crystalline flesh –and all thanks to the never-ending ocean of energy that was the extra-dimensionality- over thirty thousand long, terrible years, his unwanted grandson was being given the opportunity to experience the true, final gift of the M’Zahdi Hesh in a meager handful of years.

  Yes, the burden of a Universal Destroyer was great, the pain greater, the rewards greater still, and once the stubborn Kin’kithal Griffin Jones opened his eyes and was transformed into the thing that all of them could be under the right circumstances, he would understand.

  Did he have the resources to move his Galactic vessel through the stars towards Trinityspace? Of course, and not to put too fine a point on it, the mechanics for moving something as big as a galaxy was only difficult when starting up and winding down. Everything else was just preparation for encountering other galaxies, or rogue black holes, or other strange things that the Unreality popped into being every now and then.

  Griffin knew this, and believed –as became evident during his escape attempt- that the role of ‘engine’ he’d been cast in to was punishment, punishment for being a Kin’kithal, for being Garth’s son, for being.

  “Not so.” Antal rumbled, his voice so deep that the air seemed to quaver. “It is undeniable the Kin’kith genetic template is purer, more concentrated than even my own majestic frame. No, Griffin, my grandchild, my goal is to transform you into the fiery equivalent of Lisa Laughlin, the so-called Starlight Lady. Imagine it! She could read the minds of every sentient being in the Unreality, and all from a measly talent at intuition. Who knows what devastation and destruction you will be able to cause when you lose the pathetic association with your flesh?”

  Antal grinned slyly. “Who knows? Perhaps we won’t even need to wait for my irredeemable son to turn off the shield! Perhaps you will be able to burn right through it. And then you’ll get what you always wanted, Griffin. You’ll get to burn bright across the heavens in truth, destroying everything and everyone who ever made you feel strange, unwanted, unloved, different. The children of the Armies of Man are out there in the deep. They have to be. They are all related to those bastard scientists and soldiers, and under your vengeful eye, they will wither and burn.”

  Griffin shifted again, almost as if he’d heard his grandfather’s cajoling promise of mayhem and vengeance against the genetic descendants of his original torturers.

  Naturally. If there was one thing all the children of the Hesh could count on, it was their need for vengeance. It was a raw, aching hunger, a saw-toothed predator waiting to rip and rend into the flesh of those who’d done you wrong. And in the Kin’kithal, it was refined, compounded, compacted, made … stronger.

  An entombed Hesh, little more than a floating wisp of shredded, tattered intellect, batted very nearly mindlessly against Kith Antal’s insides. It was Shorek. Always Shorek. The ‘eldest’ of the M’Zahdi Hesh and therefore ‘most powerful’ within the strange hierarchy of Reality-destroying aliens drained the tiniest bit of energy from his brothers and sisters every now and then, giving him enough impetus to rise up out of the depths of their incarceration.

  Antal laughed at the plaintive pleas, the bribes, the offers. He saw them for what they were and wanted no part of them. The Heshii knew that if they were still trapped within their seneschal’s flesh when the Unreality burned into nothing this last time, they would be reduced to nothing more than pure energy, a canapé before the main meal. They would be gone forever.

  Then Shorek asked something that Antal had never bothered truly considering before that very second.

  If these bastardized and corrupt entities are elevated forms of the more pristine and divine beings we once permitted to sup at our table, Kith Antal, if their powers are truly more infinite, if their hungers are that much more precise, if your so-called grandchild’s desire for revenge and violence possesses the capacity to remain unfulfilled no matter how often or how deeply he gorges himself, what then, does your son seek vengeance against? It cannot be us, I do not think. The geas placed upon him by the proto-Realistic copies of ourselves makes our eradication and the destruction of this Unreality by his means a task, a chore, a job. Who does he hate, Kith Antal? Who does he hate, and what is in store for them? Against all odds, he is our equal for scheming. More so than you.

  Antal flicked a hand and Shorek’s bitter consciousness disappeared back down the rabbit hole. The Hesh’s implication was clear.

  If Garth envisioned the destruction of the Unreality to make way for the so-called Reality 2.0 as nothing more than a job, then it was he, his father, who was the focus of vengeance.

  The entity calling himself Kith Antal, he whose immaculate flesh –as Shorek himself had called it from time to time- had absorbed all the conscious minds of his betters, turned his thoughts to the possibility that the agony he’d endured, the pain he’d suffered, the madness and doubt and yes, even fear …

  Was it possible his own son had done this to him on purpose?

  For what purpose?

  Antal tilted his head back and laughed until his hilarity began echoing through the whole of his nearly eternal vessel.

  A fine joke indeed.

  Kin’kithal Garth N’Chalez would get his comeuppance, yes he would.

  Run, Runner

  The loss of his facility, all of the machines, all of the organics … the loss of everything he’d spent so long building, organizing, learning … it was a blow Andros was finding hard to ignore. Yes, the skin he wore and the personality he played at were fabrications designed to fit into a Universe where nothing and no one properly knew what a Bruush was and so he should be more accepting of the destruction –especially in light of the fact that Trinity was hunting him- and yet…

  It was painful all the same.

  When he’d fallen through the wormhole mysteriously connecting the Shattered Dominion of the Bruush with that strange, weak little world, he’d been alone. No gene witches, no foot soldiers, nothing save his own considerable intellect and a formidable will to survive. And, for a time, survive he had, as a monster in the woods and mountains, feeding on men and women and children and every other thing that took to wandering in the lonely places but in that time, he had also practiced the art of recombination.

  It hadn’t been easy. Not at all. He was a Tr’ss. His mind ran to martial things. Troop formation, manipulation of a population –as was evident in the Scaly Eye tales that’d gripped that world-, other, more practical things. Learning how to fold weaker flesh into new things hadn’t come easy, had taken to delving deep into long lost and honestly near-forgotten memories of those times when the gene witches at his disposal had run long in the mouth, had gone on and on about how they were the ones who deserved adulation and praise for conquests gone perfectly, for without them, there would be no such thing as the black flying troop carriers with their thick black carapaces, or the weird, thinking weapons, or even such simple things as the sewage pipes and water filtration systems.

  How those gene witches had loved the sounds of their own creaking voices, and how … grateful a displaced Tr’ss had been for that self-adulation, for over time, with inscrutable diligence and ironclad patience, the scaly beast that was a Bruushian Overlord had finally managed to cloak himself in the skin of anoth
er, giving birth to that which called himself Andros Medellos.

  From there … from there things had been easy. Trinity had done It’s people a tremendous disservice by allowing them such luxuries as freedom and privilege. Though they were the most dominant species in the entire Universe, that was solely at It’s behest and through It’s application of weapons and soldiers powerful enough to conquer galaxies. Those It left behind –save a precious few, here and there- were unflinchingly accepting of strangers that had more of his kind come through the wormhole, Andros was certain the entire Universe would’ve fallen under his armored boot heel in a handful of decades.

  It’d taken surprisingly little time to cement himself in the local medical scene, and even shorter time to begin unveiling small but impressive discoveries; an unguent that healed cuts faster, a scanner that detected cancers particular to the solar system that much more accurately, tiny optical implants for the eyes that provided better access to local AI nets. Nothing big, nothing flashy, but enough to begin earning enough money to purchase tools and equipment allowing him the luxury of pursuing an even deeper understanding of how to melt human flesh into whatever was needed.

  Andros laughed at his relative naiveté from so long ago; in discussion with the humans around him, he’d often heard mention of Trinity, had even understood on some level that a singular machine mind was in control of the entire population of Humanity. But what he’d failed to apprehend was the nearly Bruushian-style of governance it managed it’s charges with. That failure was what had led him to the absurdly lucrative mobile workshop called ‘Black Clinic’, his association with those traitorous buffoons in the Dark Age Cabal and his implausible friendship with Jordan Bishop.

  “Quantum Tunnel within range.”

  The vessel’s voice brought Andros out of his reverie. “Hold.” He commanded.

  The ship’s forward engines burst into fitful life, expelling matter to slow itself down until the stabilizers could be brought on to keep it locked in place.