by A. J. Markam
I nodded and ran over to the secret door Orlo had disappeared through. I blasted it with a Darkbolt –
Nothing.
I tried Darkfire, Soul Suck, even Hellstorm –
Nothing.
I searched for hidden catches on the sides. Nope.
I attacked the hinges. No go.
I pushed and pulled the panels, slammed my fist on them – nada.
I went over to the nearest console full of blinking lights and pressed a button at random.
A siren began screeching, and colored lights turned the entire room into a blood-red scene from the Ninth Circle of Hell.
“Okay, not that one,” I muttered, then pressed the button again.
The siren stopped and the lights went back to normal.
I turned to Alaria. “I can’t open this thing up, and I don’t want to go pushing buttons at random in case it does something to your body – ”
“Stand out of the way!” she roared, and threw up her hand like she was casting another fireball.
This time I saw it: the metal lines of her palm retracted like the iris of a camera, and another violet flash of energy shot out like one of Iron Man’s repulsor rays.
The beam slammed into the camouflaged door and made a massive dent, like an invisible giant had swung a sledgehammer into the metal.
Enraged that the first blast hadn’t done the job, Alaria fired again, and the second ray tore through the metal like a Ginsu knife through a Coke can.
“Holy shit…” I muttered.
There might actually be a few pluses to her being a robot.
“Let’s go after them!” she cried out, and started towards the opening.
“Boss?” Stig called out from his cage in the ceiling.
“Wait,” I said to Alaria, “we have to get Stig down first.”
In answer, Alaria swung around and aimed her hand at the ceiling.
“AAAAAH!” Stig screeched as he dove to the floor of his cage.
“What are you doing?!” I yelled at her.
A violet ray disintegrated the chain dangling from the ceiling, and the metal cage plummeted to the floor where it burst apart and sent Stig tumbling out ass over teakettle.
“Ugh,” he groaned. The impact had shaved off a fifth of his hit points.
“Hey,” I snapped at her, “be more careful! You could have killed him!”
Robot Alaria turned to me in a fury. “Did HE just get transported into a different body against his will?! No. Did YOU?! No. Are both of you still alive? Yes. So until you’re both in my shoes, quit your BITCHING and let’s go get that ASSHOLE!”
I stepped back, taken off guard. “Uh… okay…”
As Alaria raced over to the fake door in the wall, I re-upped Stig’s hit points with Self-Sacrifice.
“Sorry about that, buddy,” I whispered.
“Thanks, boss,” he grumped as he threw a dirty look Alaria’s way. “CHILL, B– ”
I clamped a hand over his mouth. “Probably not the best time to say that, dude.”
Alaria reached the fake door, grabbed the ragged edges of the façade she’d blown up, and pulled.
The metal ripped apart like tinfoil.
Stig and I stood there in shock. Alaria in her regular body was strong – superhumanly strong – but this was some Hulk-type shit.
“Whoa,” I muttered.
Alaria turned and glared at us.
“Well?! Let’s GO!” she yelled, and disappeared into the dark hole.
Stig and I raced through the open passageway after her.
The tunnel was tall enough for me to run in, but extremely narrow – maybe three feet across. On the ground was the metal track for Orlo’s chair, and I had to be careful not to stumble across it.
Everything was also incredibly dark. There weren’t any overhead lights like back in the regular tunnels, so after five feet we were running blind.
Or at least Stig and I were. Alaria was already somewhere up ahead in the darkness, her high-heeled shoes click click clicking on the stone ground.
“Stig, give us some light!” I yelled.
He summoned a fireball in his palm, and we at least had a minimal amount of illumination.
Up ahead of us, I heard click click SNAP, followed by, “Goddess DAMN these things!”
When Stig and I reached her, she was leaning up against the tunnel wall and pulling off her shoes. I was guessing they weren’t magical like her stiletto boots, because she’d snapped the heel on one of them.
As soon as she was barefoot, she snarled, “Let’s go!”
We started down the tunnel again, and this time her feet clanked on the stone ground like metal bricks on concrete. Not exactly the most graceful of sounds.
“Are you okay?” I asked in concern as we ran.
“I just got transformed into some weird bimbo robot body! NO, I’m not okay!”
“No, I mean, is it painful?”
She looked over at me like she hadn’t considered the question and frowned. “No… it’s weird, but it’s not really painful.”
“Weird in what way?”
“I don’t know how to explain it… I still have all my regular feelings and thoughts, but I don’t FEEL right. My body is all jittery and things keep happening that I don’t understand.”
“Like what?”
“Like I can see in the dark perfectly. Stig’s fireball looks like the sun, it’s so bright.”
“Wow,” I said in awe. “You must have a bunch of special robot powers.”
“Like what?” she snarled. “The ability to sexually pleasure gnomes?”
“No, Orlo mentioned right before he disappeared that he shouldn’t have made you into a personal bodyguard.”
She looked surprised. “You think I have some sort of special abilities?”
“Well, we know you have those hand blasters, and you have super strength.”
“I do?”
“You ripped apart that secret door! That was CRAZY!”
She frowned again. “I just assumed it was really easy to open…”
“I’m betting that wasn’t the case.”
“Goddess, how long is this damn tunnel?!”
Seconds after she said it, we reached a fork in the road – although this particular fork had four tines.
The tunnel split off into four smaller passageways, each with its own track. We stood there at a loss, trying to figure out which way Orlo might have gone.
“Can you see anything with your robot eyes?”
Alaria squinted in the darkness. “Not a trace of Orlo or Soraiya.”
I put my hand down on each of the four tracks, hoping that one might be warmer than the others from the friction as Orlo’s chair passed.
No such luck.
“Which way do you want to go?” I asked.
Alaria just stood there, staring off into the darkness.
“Alaria?”
“I don’t know!” she wailed, and broke down into tears. Or what would have been tears, if she had been able to –
What the hell?
“Alaria, stop,” I commanded.
She sniffled and looked up at me. “What?”
A bead of clear moisture was running down her cheek from the corner of her eye. I dabbed at it with my finger and sniffed it.
It smelled like coconuts.
Then I tasted it.
I don’t know if OtherWorld actually had coconuts or not, but whatever the stuff was, it sure tasted like coconut oil to me.
“What are you doing?!” Alaria exclaimed.
“Checking out your tears. You’re able to cry!”
“So?!” she asked belligerently.
“Don’t you find it a little odd that you have a metal body, but you’re able to cry tears? It’s some sort of vegetable oil. He must’ve put it in specifically so you could cry!”
“That little asshole,” she muttered. “He always WAS a sadist…”
Interesting design issues aside, we had a choice to make.<
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“Which way do you want to go?”
She looked incredibly unhappy. “I don’t know… you choose.”
I looked at our four options. “We can cover more ground if we each take a tunnel. I’ll go left. Stig, you take that one, and Alaria, you go down the third. If you find out Orlo went that way, don’t attack him – just come back here and we’ll all meet together.”
“Shouldn’t we stay together?” Alaria asked fearfully.
“Under ordinary circumstances I would say yes – but we need to narrow down our choices before he can get away.”
She nodded reluctantly.
I pulled a torch out of my bag and held it out to Stig. “Before you go, give me a light, will you?”
Once I had my light source, each of us set down our respective tunnels.
I ran for what seemed like forever, although it was probably closer to ten minutes. When I finally reached the end of my tunnel, though, it was to some backdoor escape hatch barred by a metal lock. There were so many spiderwebs over it that I knew Orlo hadn’t come this way, so I headed back to the meeting point. It would’ve been incredibly nice to summon Balrog and use him, but the tunnel was far too small.
When I got back to ‘Little Five Points,’ Alaria and Stig were already waiting for me. Stig was huffing and puffing, although Alaria didn’t seem visibly affected all – probably because robots don’t breathe.
“Anything?” I asked, huffing and puffing myself.
“Mine went to some kind of unfinished tunnel,” Alaria said. “All I saw was a bunch of mining equipment.”
“Stig?”
“Kitchen,” he said in between gasping breaths.
“Then we know where he went,” I said, and led the way down the rightmost tunnel.
We ran for another ten minutes, although this time Stig and I had to stop for a break.
Alaria watched us, visibly agitated. “Come on, he’s getting away!”
“Stig – hhh – has to – hhh – rest,” I choked out between huffs.
Stig gave me the stink-eye, but was too winded to reply.
“Oh, it’s just Stig, is it?” she snapped sarcastically, then picked him up. “Come on!”
My manliness at stake, I did my best to keep up. Stig just grinned at me from the crook of Alaria’s arm as she sprinted on ahead.
The track dead-ended in what I recognized as the hangar where I’d died – except now it was completely empty. I could tell nothing was inside because there was a lot more light than before.
Thirty-foot-tall sliding doors were open at the far end of the hangar, revealing the grassy plains and the first rays of dawn.
The war golems were gone – and Orlo and Soraiya along with them.
“Crap,” I muttered as we ran to the far end of the hangar and looked out.
I could see for several miles, but there was nothing on the horizon. I knew the robots had gone that way, though, because a path had been flattened through the grass by all those gigantic metal feet.
“Well,” I sighed, “they’ve left tracks for us to follow, so at least it will be easy to follow them. It would’ve been nice, though, to know how long ago they left.”
“SHORTLY AFTER THEY CAPTURED YOU,” a voice spoke up from the shadows.
The three of us whirled around, ready for an attack – although nothing happened.
“Who’s there?!” I called out, hands ready to cast a spell.
“JUST ME,” the voice said feebly from the shadows.
The voice was robotic like Alaria’s, but slightly deeper. I wouldn’t call it masculine, though. More like a young teenage boy’s voice without the cracking.
“And who are you?”
“GRUNG.”
“I’m Ian, that’s Alaria, and that’s Stig. Come out where we can see you, Grung.”
There was whirring and scraping in the dark corner of the hangar, and suddenly a massive shape emerged from the shadows.
Holy shit…
It was a war golem, about 20 feet tall. It looked like the others, with iron plating and a barrel-sized cylinder for a left forearm – but there was something forlorn about its facial expressions. Like whoever had created the head had given the eyes a quizzical look so it seemed like they were perpetually going Whaaaa?
“You said that the war golems left after I died?”
“YES.”
“They departed hours ago… did Orlo leave just a few minutes ago?”
“ABOUT HALF AN HOUR AGO, YES.”
While we were still futzing around in the tunnels, trying to find the right way.
“On horseback?”
“HE HAS A FLYING CARPET.”
Of course he did. He was a high-level Warlock, after all.
“He went to go join the war golems?”
“YES.”
“Are you a war golem, too?” I asked, which was stupid, since he obviously was.
The machine nodded its head, and I could hear the whir of gears and hydraulic pumps.
“Were you also a demon?”
“YES,” the metallic monster said dejectedly.
“And Orlo took your soul out and put it in this body?”
“YES.”
He sounded so sad I wanted to hug him.
“Why did you stay behind when the others left?”
“I DIDN’T WANT TO GO.”
“Did Orlo give you a choice?” I asked, puzzled.
“NO.”
“But you have a collar, right? Or your demon body does, anyway.”
Nod.
“If you were bound to Orlo, how were you able to choose not to go?”
The robot pointed at a small panel in his chest. “I BECAME FRIENDS WITH A MOUSE, AND I WOULD LET HIM SLEEP IN HERE. WHEN ORLO GAVE THE ORDER TO MOVE OUT, SOMETHING HAPPENED. THERE WERE SOME SPARKS INSIDE ME, AND I DIDN’T HAVE TO GO WITH THE OTHERS.” The voice became even sadder. “I THINK MY MOUSE IS DEAD, THOUGH.”
Leaving aside the slightly gruesome image of a fried mouse lost somewhere in his metallic chassis, what the robot was saying was absolutely astounding.
“He somehow short-circuited his collar!” I said to Alaria.
“Sounds like it,” she agreed.
“I know you didn’t have to go with the others,” I asked the war golem, “but didn’t you want to?”
He shook his head ‘no,’ and I could hear the gears and hydraulic pumps again.
“Why not?”
“THEY ARE GOING TO GO KILL A BUNCH OF PEOPLE.”
My blood ran cold. It shouldn’t have – they were war golems, not peace golems, after all. And they were probably just going to kill computer-generated NPCs. But the realization that we had seen an armada of war machines just before they left to commit a massacre was chilling.
“I DON’T WANT TO KILL ANYBODY,” the robot said mournfully.
“I understand. Look, Alaria here didn’t belong to Orlo, but he still changed her into a robot. I’m trying to capture him and force him to put her soul back in her body. If you help us, and we win, I’ll make him do the same for you.”
The robot shrugged. “I DON’T MIND MY BODY. I KIND OF LIKE IT.”
O-kayyy…
From his earlier comments about not wanting to kill anybody, I was getting a definite Iron Giant ‘I am not a gun’ vibe, so I tried to capitalize on that.
“If we don’t stop them, Orlo and the others are going to kill a lot of people. I know you don’t want that to happen, so will you help us?”
The robot shrugged again. “I DON’T REALLY MIND IF PEOPLE DIE. I JUST DON’T WANT TO KILL THEM MYSELF.”
Okay, I had a pacifist… war hawk… something or other on my hands.
But he had a soft spot for animals.
“A lot of mice are probably going to die,” I pointed out.
“I DON’T KNOW THOSE MICE.”
Jesus, it was like reasoning with a toddler.
“Is there anything I can say that will get you to help us?” I asked in exasperation.
Grung leaned over slightly, like he was looking out at the fields. “DO WE GET TO GO OUTSIDE?”
That was an odd question.
I stifled the urge to be sarcastic and simply said, “Yes.”
The robot’s shoulders heaved up a couple of inches, then relaxed. I swear to God he’d just sighed.
“I’VE NEVER BEEN OUTSIDE…”
“Never?” I asked in amazement.
He shook his head sadly.
“Not even back before Orlo enslaved you?”
“WELL, I GOT TO GO OUTSIDE WHEN I LIVED IN HELL… JUST NEVER HERE.” He looked longingly at the open hangar doors. “IT LOOKS PRETTY.”
“It is,” I assured him. “And here’s your chance to go see it.”
“IS IT SCARY OUT THERE?”
I thought about that for a second.
Yeah, it actually is sometimes, but not…
“Not if you have friends,” I said, and smiled at both Alaria and Stig.
Alaria didn’t smile back. She just seemed pissed we hadn’t got the show on the road yet.
And Stig… Stig just scratched his butt.
I sighed.
So much for friends.
“WILL YOU BE MY FRIENDS?”
The request pierced my heart. Partly because it was so innocent…
…and partly because it reminded me of another demon I’d known once that only wanted to be my friend, and was crushed to find out I wasn’t.
That I was just using him.
“Yes, we will,” I said, “but I have to warn you… it will be dangerous out there. We’ll be walking into a bad situation. If you really want to stay safe, then… then you should probably stay here.”
Alaria looked at me in disbelief.
I didn’t care. My conscience had nearly eaten me alive after what I’d done to Dorp. I wasn’t going to treat another innocent badly. We could take on Orlo and the war golems without him.
The robot seemed to consider, then nodded. “THAT’S OKAY. I MISS MY MOUSE. IT’LL BE NICE TO HAVE FRIENDS AGAIN.”
Alright. Score one for honesty.
“Do you know where they went?”
The robot pointed out the door.
“I can see that,” I said, trying to keep my sarcasm in check. “I mean, did Orlo say where they were headed?”
“SOMEPLACE CALLED THE PLAINS OF MOR-EL.”
It sounded like More El.
“I wonder if Kal-El and Jor-El used to vacation there,” I joked.