by J. S. Miller
“Anyone know how to work this thing?” I asked before remembering I was alone. “Fantastic,” I said to no one and stepped up to the control panel. “Here goes nothing.”
I twisted a knob ever so slightly, and the room pitched to one side. I lost my balance and fell backward onto my ass. On the screens above, every citizen, soldier, and crimson-skinned hellbeast stumbled in unison, like bar patrons standing after too many drinks.
“OK, then,” I said, getting back up. “Let’s try something else.”
Backing away from the controls, I reached out with my senses, searching for any substances I could interact with — and found a massive network of chemicals sloshing in pipes beneath the city, running nearly all the way to the center of the moon. I could even sense vaguely what each set did: Some let the gravity moat expand, while others made it contract. From this room, you could lower the moon farther into its crater or send it flying into space, but delicate manipulation was so complex it boggled the mind. It was like a maze balanced atop another maze resting on a house of cards. Who in the name of all the radios in magic land had thought a system like this would be a good idea?
I didn’t know where to begin. I couldn’t slowly reduce the gravity to lower the smoke to the surface unless I wanted to destroy the city in the process. Playing with gravity has big consequences. It affects everything.
I needed to start with what I knew for sure. This panel allowed the user to control gravity, at least in the area surrounding this moon. What did I know about gravity?
C-Dub would probably quote Newton’s law of universal gravitation at me, but Einstein’s more recent theory of general relativity states that gravity is a byproduct of massive objects bending space-time geometry … creating a distortion, a curvature of space. Maybe, using this equipment, I could direct energy along those curves too.
I began performing the ritual before I could consider the possible ramifications. Drawing energy from myself, from the room, from the surface far above. I could even feel it coming from Elena and Coppersworth — from the tiny jar inside the automaton’s chest. The gravity moat’s instruments were somehow enhancing my control. I could sense everything.
My friends … they were fighting. Protecting me. Making sure I didn’t fail. I didn’t take too much from them, filling in the cracks with my own body’s electrical impulses. But I took from everyone and everything else. It flooded into me like a tide, and my body strained to contain it.
I centered this ocean of energy and reached out through the gravity moat network, pushing my mind and will into the pulsing clouds enshrouding Astoria. And I found what I was looking for: hydrogen and oxygen. H2O in gaseous form, intermingled with the smoke and my own transformative compound. Water vapor.
I focused on as many of these molecules as I could. Sweat broke out on my forehead, and I felt my blood begin to hum, then buzz, then boil. Pain stabbed at my skull from the inside, and my skin felt as though it might ignite and burn away.
Then my head cleared. The pain evaporated. I was a boy again, lost in the woods. I stood in a broken drainage pipe, with blue sky above and black water below. I faced the great serpent. It gazed into my eyes, and I did not look away.
“As above,” I heard myself murmur in the present, standing far beneath a shrine built to honor my father. “So below.”
I tightened my grip on the microscopic droplets, trying to anticipate the moment when I would reach the limits of my range and control. I pulled them closer, compressing their total mass by a single millimeter. And then I visualized the one nearest to me, the cornerstone of the molecular pyramid, the first domino, waiting to fall. Inside my mind, I flicked it.
A cascading shiver spread through the clouds as bits of matter began clacking back and forth like millions of marbles inside a cement mixer. I planted my feet, determined to see this through, no matter how much strength it sapped from my body. I’d never redirected this much energy before, and the effort drenched my clothes in sweat and rattled my bones like castanets during a flamenco marathon. But it didn’t matter. Astoria needed rain.
The clouds trembled, then burst. Glowing raindrops the size of apples fell upon the city. I unclenched, and my body turned into a piece of overcooked pasta. My vision blurred and I collapsed — maybe, perhaps hopefully, for the last time.
My final thought before departing that place was another small hope. A wisp of a thing, ready to be carried off by the wind. It was a hope for lost souls. For Alyana. For Denton. For Victor. For Abigail. And it was a hope for those who could still be saved.
Falling into the dark again, I hoped that the rain I’d shaken from the sky that night would protect and heal those it touched. That maybe, just this once, because I had done something, the evil bastards of this world and all the rest would not be allowed to win.
Chapter 36
My eyes opened on a room filled with soft, amber light. Books were stacked so high around me that every wall had rolling ladders set in brass tracks. The space felt so warm and earthy that the purple wood of the ceiling and shelves nearly passed for brown.
I lay on a couch that had been pushed under one of the electric lamps. Bandages, sutures, and other medical supplies crowded a small table next to me, but they appeared unused, as if my nurses hadn’t known precisely what to do with them.
I moved, and a thousand tiny evil gnomes started skewering my muscles with pitchforks. I forced myself up anyway. Arthur Rundale’s longsword was resting in its scabbard atop my crumpled leather jacket, so I picked up both and put them on. My other belongings were nowhere in sight.
Looking around the room for an exit, I saw a pair of broad double doors under a sign that read “Hall of Alchemy.” OK, maybe leaving could wait. Don’t get me wrong, I was eager to know what was going on outside, but there was no way I wasn’t exploring this place a little first.
I drifted among the books. So much knowledge, right here under their noses, but they had no way to use it. Did alchemist bloodlines only come from Earth? Did these people really have no power of their own? The thought pissed me off. No one group should get to decide which people had a right to progress, to use their abilities to protect themselves and their families. Then again, I’d had this power all my life, and so had Vincent and Abigail Bouclier. Look where it had gotten us.
I instinctively walked toward the section marked M, and soon saw what I’d both hoped for and feared: a small book, leather bound, with golden block letters on the spine that read, “Arn Muller.”
Hands shaking, I pulled it from the shelf and stared at the cover. Time had faded and cracked the brown leather, but the title was still clear: “The Ancestry of Alchemy.” It was a first edition copy.
“What the hell?” I said aloud.
I pulled out the old paperback with the same title, the one Vincent had given me all those years ago, and flipped to the copyright page. Yep, there it was, in tiny print: Arn Muller. How had I never noticed this before?
The book was a beginner’s guide to the history of alchemy, albeit not the kind you’d find at Barnes & Noble, obviously. This was the real stuff. I flipped through both copies quickly to double check; they were nearly identical. On the last page of the first edition, however, a few short lines had been scribbled in my father’s hand.
Son,
I knew you’d find your way to this strange land someday, so I left this note. If you find it, know that you’re on the right track. Keep looking. I’ll be waiting in the land of the nameless king. To find the true source, peel away the flesh of the future. Good luck.
- Dad
My hands were shaking harder now. Who the hell was the nameless king? Peel away the flesh of the future? Jesus, dad, hadn’t I solved enough riddles this week?
The double doors opened, and voices drifted into the room. I ripped out the page with the note and shoved it and my original book back inside my jacket. Coppersworth, Claire, Elena, Glynda and the gargoyles walked over to the empty couch, stopped, and stared at it like new parents
who’d forgotten where they put the baby.
“Some doctors you guys are,” I said, walking over to them and shaking my head. “Literally lost your first patient.”
“Boss!” Cagney nearly shouted. “I knew you was too tough for a dirt nap.”
“We got your gear, Boss,” Brando said, stepping forward and handing me the rune satchel. It felt heavier than normal, so I lifted the flap. The Chemslinger lay inside, resting atop a small mountain of multi-colored vials. “Since you was outta commission for a few days, I may have gone to the trouble of headin’ home and grabbin’ what was left of the ammo stash.”
“And I took the liberty of making a few modifications of my own design,” Coppersworth said. “If all works correctly, you may now choose how it behaves regardless of the magical energy levels around you.”
“Wow,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Hey, ya mooks,” Hanks said. “Aren’t ya forgetting somethin’? I helped too.”
“Course you did,” Cagney said. “We needed that fancy new flashlight you call a wing to find the hole back to the lab.”
Hanks opened his mouth, but I cut in before the argument could start in earnest.
“How’s the war effort going?” I asked.
“The war effort is over,” Coppersworth said.
“Most of the city is in bad shape,” Elena said. “But you stopped the battle. Fen’s army is gone, and so is Arclight.”
“How bad is bad?”
“See for yourself, old boy,” Coppersworth said.
We left the library and walked down a corridor lined with marble pillars and paintings of long dead leaders, all of whom had Astor in front of their name — except for the one nearest the exit. His title came after: Jeremiah Astor, a man with sharp features, hair the color of coal, and fierce, intelligent eyes. The founder of Astoria? Even his painted visage exuded strength, but something about his frozen gaze made me uneasy.
The people milling about outside had not gathered to see me this time. Instead, they were silently attending to the business of rebuilding their city and their lives. Leading unsteady figures into tents with red crosses on the sides. Covering their dead and removing rubble from the road. It was not the happiest ending to Astoria’s war, but it could’ve been a whole hell of a lot worse. And that was something.
“So what’re you gonna do now?” Glynda asked.
“I’m gonna find the guy that did all this,” I said. “Not to mention get my father’s ring back. And I think I know where to go. Fen showed me, back when he still thought he was winning. Speaking of which, where is ol’ Max?”
“We, ahem,” Coppersworth mumbled. “May have lost him.”
“He escaped his bonds and fled while we … engaged my co-workers,” Elena said.
“Oh well,” I said. “With any luck, he’ll run off into the woods never be seen again. That’s likely. Right?”
“It’s certainly optimistic,” Elena said, arching an eyebrow. “Are you the same West we’ve grown to know and love?”
“Aw, you love me?”
“You know what I mean.” She punched my arm.
“Go easy,” I said. “I did just save the world, after all.”
“You had some help,” Glynda grumbled, gazing at the starry tiles of Cobblestone Road. “From us and others.”
“Very true,” I said and started toward the steps that led down to the street. “Thank you. All of you. I’m sure the people here know how much you did for them. But now, well …”
“You have to go,” Elena said.
“Yeah. Someone needs to make sure this doesn’t happen again, on any other worlds.”
“And how exactly are you planning to do that?”
“I’m not sure yet, but something tells me I’ll find answers in the land of the nameless king, wherever the hell that is.”
My friends remained silent. I glanced back at them and saw sadness and disappointment etched into their faces. They thought I was preparing to leave them again. Go off on my own, waging one-man wars I couldn’t hope to win.
I smiled at them and said, “Wouldn’t mind some company.”
We left Astoria during a funeral procession. Citizens carried the covered bodies of their friends and family members across the corkscrew bridge and down to a nearby river, where they performed the same ceremony we had at the farmhouse. My friends and I watched as the lights faded from both the sky and the water, but the mourners kept coming, and we had to move on.
We made good time to the throne on the hill. It was only a week’s trek beyond the rolling hills of the Astorian plains. My friends didn’t ask how I knew where I was going, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure myself, but after the mind meld with Fen, my feet knew the way. It was like going home after a long absence — you may forget the numbers on the curb, but you never forget how to find them.
We stood at the bottom of the hill, looking up at the empty chair, its jagged black edges raking the sky. All the grass was gone, burnt away by the mere presence of an army that had salted whatever earth it walked upon. An army whose soldiers were now ordinary people returning to ordinary lives, kissing loved ones they’d left behind, tending to the homes they had nearly destroyed.
I was so deep in thought I almost didn’t hear the earth and ash shift behind us. We all spun, drawing our weapons — even Claire, who’d demanded a concussion gun after deciding to tag along. She may have also muttered something about us all being dead within a week without her around to patch us up.
The six-legged spidercat who’d guided me out of Newton’s Hollow cowered before us. Its muzzle was still pink from the burns inflicted by the bonfire, and its eyes were round, pleading for something, anything in this world to hold onto. I got down on one knee and waved it over.
“It’s OK,” I said. “You can come, too.”
The animal approached, eyeing my companions with unease, but then rubbed the top of its head against the back of my hand.
“D’aww,” Brando said. “Can we keep ‘im, Boss?”
“I got dibs on namin’ rights!” Cagney said.
“Oh, hell no, I don’t think so, Cagney,” Hanks growled.
They kept arguing as I climbed the hill. Instinct led me on, told me what to do, urged me up the path toward the throne. And there was something else … power, the kind I’d felt from Arthur Rundale’s ring, drawing me closer. I pulled the dark dagger from my pocket. Both blade and chair had been carved from the same shimmering, alien glass.
I slid the blade into the throne, which parted like a pool of still water. Liquid glass undulated out in a wave, and when it split into a purple void that seemed somehow to return my gaze, reality itself trembled. The act felt wrong, as if I’d broken some forgotten footnote of natural law, one they’d put at the bottom because they never thought anyone would be stupid enough to challenge it. But it didn’t matter. I had questions, and this world was fresh out of answers.
So, with my friends at my back and my gun on my hip, I stepped through the throne into the magical realm of who-the-hell-knew-where.