Only Broken Things Are Free (A Pygmalion Fail Book 3)

by Casey Matthews

“What’s a greater world?”

  “One with its own wellspring of magic. Lesser worlds can be constructed within greater ones by feeding off that wellspring. To control all greater worlds is to control the multiverse’s magic. Only one greater world has ever resisted the builders.”

  “Rune?” I asked.

  “No. Rune is a lesser world.”

  Eliandra snorted. Clearly to her, there was nothing lesser about Rune.

  “That only means it’s contained within Earth,” Ronin explained.

  Realization dawned as the walls’ images displayed the Pyramids of Giza, Grand Canyon, our oceans, and a familiar moon and constellations. “We’re the last greater world? How?”

  “Earth is neither a Heaven nor a Hell.” Ronin motioned, and at the next flight of stairs I saw humans plunging spears into a screaming mass of tentacles. Elsewhere, a World War II tank rolled over a shelled creature, its nautilus bursting open; the builder appeared quite surprised at this turn of events. “The pure beings of the eleven Heavens had potent magic, but once the builders had cracked their defenses, they’d been swept swiftly aside. But man? Man’s predilection for violence and treachery was the first thing to truly frighten the builders.”

  I did not know how to feel about that.

  “You are impure creatures—you can create as well as the Heavens, destroy as efficiently as the Hells. Wars were fought, most now forgotten or… rewritten. The builders lost them all. At last, they hoped to leverage all their stolen magic against Earth: the power of twelve greater worlds against one. To protect yourselves, Earth laid a powerful enchantment. It nullifies most magic that touches the realm. Even your own.”

  “Like a magical EMP,” Dak muttered. “Throwing us into the mystical equivalent of a stone age. The builders are straight magical beings. They’d have to fight with rocks and sticks…”

  “Except we don’t fight back with rocks and sticks—we have guns,” I said.

  “Is that why Elarr is so filthy?” Dak asked. “They’re trying to tech up. Industrializing so they can fight us on equal footing.”

  “Correct,” Ronin said. “But for now, you are the final bulwark against the builders.”

  We climbed onward, my mind dizzy—perhaps from the way the stairs spiraled, perhaps because of how terrifying the multiverse now seemed. “How does Rune play into this?”

  “One of the Heavens created the mystical technology to engineer world seeds. A world seed feeds off a greater world’s magic, creating a child reality that nurses from its parent. The builders stole that technology.” Now the walls displayed a luminescent orb—a world seed—clutched in a feminine hand. Within the seed, I could see Rune and its moons.

  “Somehow, these world seeds work on Earth?” I asked.

  “They siphon from Earth’s wellspring, but because Rune is contained in a sub-dimensional pocket, the realm is not itself subject to Earth’s null-magic field.”

  “This isn’t Earth’s magical technology, though. How did it get there?”

  Ronin paused at a landing and gazed back at me. “Because I put it there.”

  I stared. “You what? You made Rune? The whole thing?”

  Eliandra, still ahead of us all, stood several steps higher than Ronin and seethed at her adoptive mother. “You should have told me.”

  Ronin turned to meet her daughter’s gaze and, wordlessly, ascended still further. We all followed suit, Eliandra forced to trudge along to keep her position at front, and the images now revealed a filthy Elarrian factory, its endless assembly line producing hundreds of humanoids, each female. On closer look, I startled.

  They were all Ronin. Every last one identical. Her sisters, I remembered.

  “The builders melded technology and magic to create me. Enough to sustain me for short periods of operation on Earth. I was designed to destabilize Earth’s leadership—to infiltrate and assassinate in advance of full-scale invasion.”

  I think I just kissed a Terminator.

  “But I malfunctioned and killed my sisters.”

  “All of them? How?”

  The next image showed the factory in flames. Only Ronin stood among hundreds of chrome-blooded corpses, all sliced to pieces. “With a sword.”

  I shook my head. “There were hundreds.”

  “I was second generation. The first generation failed to fool humans. Their cognitive functions were too limited. I was designed to study, learn, and reflect. I learned to… sympathize. This adaptability led me to hate my own creators, and also to learn the weaknesses of my sisters.”

  Eliandra wheeled on Ronin, stopping our progress. “You’re a bloody machine?” Her eyes were wide with outrage. “You kept it all from me. The builders, your true nature…”

  “Can you imagine if Dracon knew the truth? What if he decided to strike a bargain with the builders—open Rune up to becoming their beachhead against Earth? Only two people knew these secrets: me and the last dreamer.” Ronin closed on Eliandra and set her palm on the Queen’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. But you know now.”

  Eliandra shrugged from Ronin’s touch, eyes flashing with betrayal. “You’re just another one of them. Dreamers. Outsiders. Gods. I’m tired of being a pawn in these damn games.” She fled up the stairs.

  Meanwhile, I stared at all those dead, first-generation Ronins. She preceded Rune—what did that mean? For one, I hadn’t created her. But it was hard to feel elated now that I knew about the cosmic war at Earth’s doorstep. This wasn’t just about Rune anymore. It was about my home. “Is Earth safe?”

  Ronin stared where Eliandra had disappeared around the spiral staircase, then took us cautiously after her. “Never. But the war has stalemated. The Manhattan Project taught the builders humility.”

  Dak’s brow knit. “They know about our nukes?”

  “Firsthand. The builders opened a portal during your Second World War, and you dropped a nuclear device through. An entire battalion of warriors was lost, along with a master builder. That had never happened before. The builders’ master class were assumed, until that moment, to be immortal.”

  My instinct was to pump my fist and chant “U! S! A!” over and over. I glanced at Dak and he shot me a patriotic thumbs-up.

  I looked back at Ronin. “So why did you steal the world seed and create Rune?”

  “I needed a place to be. My lifespan on Earth would be only a few years, since magic sustains me. In the Twelve Hells, the builders would end my life much sooner.”

  “So Rune was your escape after killing your sisters.”

  “Yes. Rune was then a stretch of scorched and jagged land on which green things couldn’t grow, populated from end to end with vicious beasts. Where monsters didn’t live, it was desolate and beautiful.”

  Her gaze went distant as she stared at the walls, nostalgic for a prehistoric world full of dinosaurs bristling with even more bone plates and spikes than they had on Earth—as though an S&M fetishist had cranked things up a notch. The world was volcanic, violent, and its oceans teemed with leviathans so large they triggered my instinctual fear of deep water.

  She glanced over her shoulder to look at us during our climb. “Rune germinated within Earth, and the dreams of your world shaped ours. That is why humans came to live on Rune, why our creatures looked similar to those in your myths and prehistories. But one day, Dracon found the world seed’s hiding place on Earth. From that moment on, Rune stopped following the dreams of mankind and listened, instead, to him.”

  The last images on the stairwell PowerPoint faded from view and I blinked hard, digesting Ronin’s tale. “That’s where Dracon comes in—where he messed it all up.”

  We came to the top of the staircase and double doors, Eliandra waiting for us there with arms folded. “Yes, because the world before him looked so wonderful,” the Queen bit off.

  “It was a dangerous world,” Ronin acknowledged. “But it belonged to no one. Dracon changed that, and I feared destroying him might also harm the humans living here; the population exploded o
nce he arrived. So I waited for another dreamer to find the seed. She happened upon it while rummaging through Dracon’s mortal belongings.”

  “Who’s this other dreamer?” I asked.

  “A former professor at your school. But Dracon bespelled her with poison we couldn’t cure. She built this citadel as her penultimate act, but it wasn’t strong enough to send her home with Dracon controlling the exit portals. At most, from this citadel, we could subtly manipulate Earth. We’d hoped to control who the seed would go to next.”

  “Wait. So I was destined to find it or something? Didn’t you say when we met there were no prophecies?”

  “Nothing is destined. But the last dreamer did set something in motion.” Ronin lifted her sword and the doors parted. Within was a round chamber, the floor recessed at the center. Hovering over that recess was a glowing orb, about a yard in diameter. Luminescent rods the size of rebar projected from its surface as though from a pincushion, revealing from their motion that the orb was lazily rotating. “This is the world seed from within Rune. The Citadel of Light protects it, and is powered by it. This place is the most direct connection to Earth’s wellspring of magic. When Dracon is destroyed, you can use this chamber to change Rune. Or to return home.”

  Dak clutched his head. “Wait, the world seed exists in Rune and on Earth at once? Transposed?”

  “Yes,” Ronin said.

  “Ow… my brain.”

  I stared at the orb’s surface. “I never touched a world seed at home, though.”

  “It took the form of a book,” said Ronin.

  I glanced at her. “The one in my mom and dad’s trunk? With the rune stone on the cover?” I’d filled in Rune’s setting details with that leather-bound notebook. “How did it get there?”

  “The last dreamer used this chamber to manipulate events on Earth. Even I don’t know everything she did—she insisted the burden was hers. That’s why I didn’t recognize you when we met. But I do know a few things.”

  Images ignited along the walls. I recognized the scenes.

  My house. My school. Pictures of my mom and dad before the storm washed their car off the bridge. Aunt Amy holding an icepack over the eye Mandy Craig had blackened. The jerks who made junior high a living hell until Dak hit that growth spurt. Dak was there, standing beside me from kindergarten on forward.

  I turned around and around, taking it all in. “What is this?”

  “The Citadel was the second-to-last thing the dreamer made,” Ronin whispered. I didn’t understand the contrition in her eyes as she watched me.

  I stood there and stupidly waited for someone to explain it to me. But then it crashed into me all at once. “Wait.” I whirled, glancing at Dak, but his expression was slack and he stared like he didn’t believe it either. “Wait,” I stammered again.

  “She made you, Isaac.” Ronin turned away from me, toward the images. “We both did.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “That’s my mom and dad.” I pointed them out.

  Ronin focused on that image and hesitated before finding her voice. “She said they would make ideal birth parents. The last thing I did before she banished me from this room was help her choose them.” She motioned to the images of school. “She explained some of this. Your enemies at school were supposed to make you resent bullies. Except many who are abused—like Dracon, before he came here—learn to love stepping on others once they’re strong. So she gave you heroes to emulate.” Ronin pointed to an image of the Spider-Man comics I’d found at a garage sale when I was eleven.

  “This is weapons-grade messed up,” Dak whispered.

  Ronin nodded at me. “We didn’t leave you unprotected. You weren’t intended as a warrior, since Dracon revels in battle. She wanted you to be compassionate. But to keep you safe, she arranged your friend’s adoption, and for you both to bond in your formative years.”

  “My—” Voice choked off, I tried again. “My parents.” I was trapped in one of those nightmares where I could hardly speak.

  Now the pain in Ronin’s eyes was total. “She insisted you experience loss.”

  My legs had no feeling and my knees hit the floor. Ronin’s lips moved, but there was no more sound other than rain drumming on a canopy of black umbrellas. Cold mud and wet grass stuck to my shins. I tasted the salt in my tears as the pastor droned. Shiny coffins sank into the earth in front of me, side by side, and the sob hitched in my chest.

  Six years of nightmares replayed all at once, not just the images but the feelings—horror at the wadded-up bodies of my parents, bent through the wreckage of their car, made pale by cold river water. No matter how hard I pleaded, no one let me see their bodies after the accident, but… well, my creators had seen fit to give me an imagination. A good one. Probably too good.

  Then I was back in the chamber and stared at Ronin—stared at the woman who’d killed my parents.

  Chapter Seven: Chainsaw Therapy

  Ronin approached me. “We did it to save our world. You were my friend’s last creation.”

  Eliandra’s dark, rolling laughter filled the chamber and Dak ordered her to shut up. “But why?” the Queen asked. “Can’t you see how perfect this is? My creator and I finally have something in common.” She sounded nearly as unhinged as I felt. “We all orbit Ronin. She pretends to give us choices while holding her thumb on the scale.”

  “Stop it,” Ronin whispered. “This is no more amusing for him than it was for you.”

  “I beg to disagree,” she sang. “Turnabout is fair play. He tried his hand at godhood, so pardon if this strikes me as a comeuppance. It’s not as though I didn’t just—”

  “This isn’t about you!” Dak shouted. “This isn’t even about who made who, it’s about my friend’s dead parents. Both of you step the hell away. You broke the guy.”

  “He had to know,” Ronin said.

  “Cool. He knows. Take a walk.”

  “There is more to discuss.”

  “No!” Dak roared. He was in front of me, blocking my line of sight to Ronin. “Your ‘friend’ offed his family so he’d feel the right feelings while painting your world. We are good and goddamn finished ‘discussing.’ ”

  “There is much—”

  “At stake. I get it!” Dak gripped my arm and hauled me to my feet, dragging me toward an exit. I staggered after him into a corridor, leaving the elf and the samurai behind.

  I shook my head while Dak navigated us through clean, icy corridors, grumbling generically about the scale of the place.

  “It’s a trick,” I said, voice froggy. “My mom and dad are probably alive here on Rune. You know? They wouldn’t just kill them.”

  “That’d be great, but if it were the case, they buried the lede back there. So probably not. C’mon.” A door melted and we stood on an exterior balcony overlooking the expansive cavern. Quartz sparked in the black rock overhead. I gazed over the railing and contemplated the vista.

  Dak gripped the rail, staring down at spikes of ice that ringed the foot of the citadel like a spear wall. They glinted, fine needles from this height, though in truth each was the size of a lance.

  We didn’t speak for a while.

  When it was time, Dak broke the silence. “Trying to decide which Terminator death scene to inflict on her. Swinging between the industrial vise and molten steel.” He picked a tooth. “Tilting toward molten steel. You know I have a thing for that movie.”

  I opened my mouth to say it wasn’t Ronin’s fault. I considered the words, listened to them in my head, and shut my mouth.

  “And Eliandra—that was a wicked thing to say.”

  That meant “bitchy.” Dak stopped using that word in reference to women in eleventh grade, favoring “wicked” instead. Later, he called Gabby Sanders wicked in our undergraduate freshman lit class. She said it was gendered language. Dak agreed, but added, “I’ll call a man wicked when I find one who uses words half as hurtful as yours.” She called him a wimp, he told her she was being gendered, and they went on
two dates.

  In the end, they decided they liked fighting more than dating.

  Dak elbowed me. “No response?”

  I’d been lost in a memory that usually made me smile, but now I had nothing. “None needed. What Eliandra said was true. I created her. Ronin and that other dreamer made me.” My voice sounded hollow. “Ronin and I are the same.”

  “We’ve been over this. You made Eliandra as art, before you understood your power. Ronin and that dreamer did something much, much worse.”

  I shook my head. “What the hell do I say to Ronin?”

  “Stick with the classics. ‘Hasta la vista.’ ”

  “She kissed me.”

  “She kissed you and then told you she wrote your tortured backstory? The hell.”

  “Afterward, she seemed apologetic about it.” I realized I was doing that thing—letting Dak beat on my enemies while I halfheartedly defended them. Except I didn’t want to play that game. “Forget it. Screw her. Screw her to infinity. She helped kill my parents.” My hands clenched, then my teeth, and I crouched into a ball, raking my hands through my hair. I couldn’t believe what she’d done—it was something I could feel, but not comprehend; the place where I’d once held affection for Ronin replaced by a bloody wound. Everything in me trembled. I imagined I was a riveted iron shell with airtight seams, and it held in the tears. “Fuck her.” The word boiled out, a word I tried never to use, and it sang from my heart.

  Dak’s oversized hand clasped my shoulder. It was warm. The squeeze felt nearly like a hug. “Want to draw some zombies and kill them with magic chainsaws?”

  Hot tears somehow seeped through those airtight seams. They streaked down my face and I nodded. “Kind of.”

  “Let’s kill some zombies with magic chainsaws, man.”

  “Okay.” Sobbing like a stupid baby, I went for my sketchpad. “Slow zombies, right?”

  “Sure. This time.”

  ***

  I put the illustrated zombie horde face down in a courtyard, breathed on the reverse side to perform a cloned pull, and sprinted away like it was a live grenade. Shambling corpses lurched one by one from the paper, their jaws wired shut and oven mitts strapped to their hands. My notes indicated they were mindless, couldn’t zombify others, and would crumble to death on mention of a “safe word.”