The Fallen (The Sublime Electricity Book #3)
Page 1
The Fallen
a novel
by Pavel Kornev
The Sublime Electricity
Book #3
Magic Dome Books
The Fallen
(The Sublime Electricity Book #3)
Copyright © Pavel Kornev 2017
Cover Art © Vladimir Manyukhin 2017
Translator © Andrew Schmitt 2017
Published by Magic Dome Books, 2017
All Rights Reserved
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is entirely a work of fiction.
Any correlation with real people or events is coincidental.
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Table of Contents:
Prologue, or a Dirigible and a Bit of Fire
Chapter One, or Dances with Snakes and a Bit of Poison
Chapter Two or Old Friends and a Bit of a Riddle
Chapter Three, or a Bit of Death, a Bit of Love
Chapter Four or Spiritualist Seance and a Bit of Mysticism
Chapter Five, or the Amphitheater and a Bit of a Clue
Chapter Six, or Long-Awaited Answers and a Bit of Darkness
Chapter Seven or Iron Cage and Too Much Power
About the Author
IN THIS WORLD, steam and electricity are the favored sources of power. Science has taken the place of religion, while magic is unknown by all but peculiar outcasts. But the border between reality and the underworld here is extremely thin. Thankfully, the adepts of scientific knowledge have found success holding back the onslaught of infernal creatures. Electricity is stronger than magic, but even it is not all powerful.
A former detective constable for the New Babylon Criminal Investigative Police, Leopold Orso is illustrious. He has inherited a morbid talent allowing him to manifest other peoples’ fears and phobias with the force of his imagination. Dealing with his own nightmares turned out to be not nearly as simple, though. Eventually, Leopold got free of them, but someone clever and very powerful has now drawn him into a dangerous game where the puppet cannot be distinguished from the puppet master. Winning is not in the cards. Defeat will end with a descent into the abyss of hell. Run? The snare is already drawn too tight…
"HEAVEN! NO LOSERS ALLOWED!"
Steamphonia (Russian Steampunk Band)
Song title: Golem
Prologue, or a Dirigible and a Bit of Fire
SMOKE AND MIRRORS are an illusionist's most trusted assistants. They are the precise factor that allows those deceivers to remake reality and force their audience to believe in the nonexistent. By no stretch of the imagination do they use unlawful magic or wizardry, so reviled by our enlightened society. You see, smoke and mirrors are the simplest of tools. They merely create the necessary atmosphere and give the honorable public an excuse to exercise their sense of imagination.
Yes! The crux of the matter is imagination. It is the conscious mind's very ability to fill in the missing details that allows illusionists to entertain and bewilder their mouth-breathing patrons. After all, we are often glad to be deceived, having mistaken our wishes for reality...
The girl was wearing a shamelessly short blouse, not even reaching the knee. Slender and red-headed, she was spinning in a wordless dance on the backdrop of a gray sky. Not far away, there was a raging sea; I could even smell its salty air. But none of those extraneous details could hold me – not the beam of sunlight rippling off a wave, nor the marble of the ancient ruins –my attention was entirely wrapped up in the dancer.
Her eccentric dance was making my blood run hot; the lady was conto
rting like a sapling in a wind storm. Sometimes, in a feigned fall, she leaned low over the ground, but she quickly straightened back up, just before the urge go to her aid reached its peak. Time and again, I missed the chance to announce myself, and that was a torment to my heart, tearing it to pieces.
The dancer's uneven movements hypnotized me, driving me mad; I would have lost all control over myself long ago, if it weren't for the silence draped over my body like a down comforter. It was as if I had wax plugs stuffed into my ears: there was no music playing, no wind rustling, no sound from the waves splashing off the seaside rocks. All I could hear was a bizarre, measured chirping reaching out to me from an unfathomable distance.
Just chirp, chirp, chirp. And the smell of char.
Smoke and mirrors...
I coughed from the acrid smoke. My fingers clenched convulsively. Just then, a mass of delicate glass hit a cup, spilling my lemonade. I lurched forward and flew out of my armchair onto a thick Persian rug. Spread-eagled and unable to move, I felt the floor giving a slight buzz and only then remembered who I was and where.
I am the illustrious Leopold Orso, the Viscount Cruce. And now, I am lying in the middle of the state room of my very own dirigible, like a hop-head who just got his hands on some first-class dope.
Smoke and mirrors? Curses!
Smoke was gathering under the ceiling, but there was still plenty of fresh air where I had just landed, so I managed to catch my breath and chase off the delirium clouding up my muddled mind.
With a hoarse cough, I flicked the tears from my eyes and discovered something sticky on my face. Blood. It was blood. I remembered cuts on my palm, left by broken glass. Though the blood had yet to fully dry, the lacerations had already healed over and disappeared without a trace.
No matter! I got up on an elbow and took a look around. There was more smoke in the state room than you could shake a stick at. Smoke, but no mirrors. Where the beguiling dancer had once been, there was now a wordless image of Isadora Duncan, a famous dancer, spinning on a linen screen on the far wall to the measured chirping of a projector. She bore no resemblance whatever to the girl from my visions.
As soon as I glanced up at the screen, snippets of the distant melody started reaching me again. The power of my imagination and my illustrious talent filled in the black and white image with bright colors, giving it depth, and luring me in with all the forbidden draw of a mirage in the desert. Just close your eyes and you'll be at the shore of a distant sea. There, you can take your beloved by the hand and squeeze her tight. And there you will remain, forever...
Damn it! I don't want to live in an illusion!
Devil take this cursed cinematographer and the intoxicating smoke!
My teeth clenched in a wave of sudden rage. I gathered my strength and got up on all fours, but didn't manage to stay up, and collapsed to the floor. My arms and legs felt full of cast lead. In the end, I crawled to the door out of the state room.
In the hallway, I propped myself up on the wall, breaking out a porthole with my elbow. Fresh air immediately rushed in, washing over me like ice water. It became easier to breathe. My presence of mind returned.
What the devil is going on here?! Where were the captain, navigator and steward? Why wasn't the crew extinguishing the flare-up? Perhaps the smoke wasn't caused by a fire, but some technical problem?
I covered my face with my coattails and walked over to the control room, stopping and leaning on the bulkhead to catch my breath from time to time. My legs were quite loath to obey me, and the flames licking my face were starting to really sting. But I had nowhere to retreat to. I could only go forward...
Before me, unfortunately, there was nothing but scorching flames. To realize that, I just had to peek into the cracked door of the deckhouse.
The greater part of the room was engulfed in flame. The stomach-churning stench of burnt flesh mingled with the acrid smell of burning rubber. The navigator was lying chest-first on the instrument panel, flames hugging his body. The captain was sitting back lifelessly in his chair, also not moving. He was dead, too.
What bullshit!
Suddenly, a sharp gust of wind sent a long lash of flame in my direction. I heard a crackling sound as a few hairs caught fire; I took a step back and saw that smoke was rushing out the flung-wide door of the gondola. And what was worse, it hadn't been opened by the wind...
"Halt!" I shouted, but the last of the dirigible crew, the steward, was already stepping out into the fresh air. On his back, I saw the voluminous hump of a bulging backpack.
I couldn't bite back a strong word:
"Devil!"
Devil! Devil! Devil!
The flame, nourished by the current of air, roared up. I ran over to the door, immediately slammed it and hurried to the storeroom where the experimental Kotelnikov parachutes were kept. A gift from Alexander Dyak, they had been acquired in the Russian provinces. But I was met there by stinging disappointment: all the silken domes had been removed from their packs and sliced up with a knife.
The steward! What a bastard! All that remained for me now was to burn alive!
Not getting lost in guesses why, I returned to the internal door. There, I clipped my round dark glasses onto my nose and reached out for my illustrious talent. My ability to embody the fears of those around me was not capable of giving a man wings, just as my imagination was lacked the power to put out a fire, but I wasn't planning to overcome the concept of gravity, or stop the physical and chemical process known as burning. I only needed to overcome my own fear – a fear of falling, a fear of heights. That was both simple and unbelievably difficult at the same time.
Preparing for the inevitable, I unfolded my pocket knife, squeezed the titanium blade between my teeth and opened the cabin door. Down below, very far below, I saw a flickering mountain ridge and the grayish blue mirror of a lake. Uncertainty rolled over me. My knees started shaking. But I overcame my second of weakness and jumped out after the steward.
Outside. Without a parachute. A freefall.
As it turned out, however, the fall was a good deal less free than I imagined. A strong gust immediately flew up to greet me, tearing my unbuttoned jacket, and spinning me in a vortex. My glasses flew off my face. My eyes were instantly filled with tears, but I had already seen the parachute dome, a white spot bloating away on the backdrop of the mountain lake below.
I spread out my arms and legs, managing to stop my spinning and turned toward the absconder, who was hanging from the straps of his backpack. I pressed my arms to my body and sped downward, but not like a stone, more like an airframe – at an angle. The speed of my fall sharply increased. The wind whistled in my ears. My face burned from the chill, and my clothes started tearing.
I slammed into my victim like a hawk after a pigeon, racing towards my target like a loosed arrow. My body started spasming. Holding a true course took a truly massive amount of effort. Even so, I didn't manage to drop right through the hole in the middle of the parachute. Having realized that I'd hit the parachute at an angle, I grabbed the knife from my teeth and found myself immediately spinning like a corkscrew. A moment later, my blade slid through the silk, and I flew free of it, racing toward earth.
The collision with the parachute had only intensified my spinning. At a certain point, I was turned onto my back, and saw a person flicker by above me, feverishly fiddling with straps. With a few sharp swipes, I regained my composure and spread out my arms and legs like an air vane. The whistling of the wind grew slightly quieter. My fall lost its extreme speed, and I was quickly overtaken by the steward, who was now shooting down like a stone. The remnants of his parachute, shredded by my knife, were dragging behind him, slack and tangled.
"Go to hell, jackass!" I shouted, looking at the lake below me. Unfortunately, I was reminded that, when falling from a great height, water can be hard as concrete. But I threw that little physics-class fun-fact from my mind and forced myself to calm down. No fear remained; there was no longer any call for i
t.
I was soaring, simply soaring through the sky. Then, the smooth surface of the lake suddenly flew up to meet me. Just before striking the ripples of gray water, a question formulated itself in my mind, which had been nagging at me since this whole episode began: why the devil was there a recording of Isadora Duncan among my reels of film? I mean, I wasn’t even a fan!
And immediately after that – impact and darkness...
Chapter One, or Dances with Snakes and a Bit of Poison
THERE'S NO such thing as time.
Time is a fiction, invented by naive romantics and high-minded men of science. People like that are the source of the belief, held earnestly by most simpletons, that time is a set of hands running in a circle around the face of a clock. Something endless, unshakable and unchanging. Eternal.
A dangerous confusion.
Time doesn't exist at all. All that exists is a sequence of events that can be broken at any moment. In the space of an instant, that which took years to build can fall to dust, disappear, and cease to exist entirely.
Life? Yes, life too. Mine certainly. At the very least, life in the sense of the sequential sort of existence we’re all accustomed to.
Sitting on the rocky beach of a tiny island in the middle of a mountain lake, I was feeling bad. But not because my dirigible had just burnt up, not at all. And not even because I hadn't managed to reach the New World. No! I wanted to howl at the top of my lungs because I'd lost the illusion of my personal safety.