Steampunk Tales, Volume 1

by Ren Cummins

  “How did you do that?” she asked.

  “It’s a pretty elaborate structure of spells, really – a portal restructuring spell to connect two unconnected openings – doors, windows, whatever you want; a magical concealment to prevent people from seeing us moving from door to door; and an additional concealing illusion on this doorway into the tower itself so that no one can find their way back into Goya’s home.”

  He seemed very impressed with himself, and Rom was hard pressed to deny him the right. He continued on, “there’s also a pair of spells designed to go through the many defensive spells she has on her building, as well as an endurance rune I placed into the wood itself that grounds the entire chain of spells and allows them to continue on without needing me to constantly channel energy into them…” he trailed off, seeing that he had long since lost her.

  “Sorry. It’s…um, magic.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” she muttered. She was lost in looking out from behind the shutters that framed the clock face, looking across the town. The sun was behind them, and the various rooftops glowed brilliant shades of yellows, oranges and reds, casting a jagged shadow against the tremendous wall. She’d never seen the wall like this, from above the majority of the buildings of her town. It made the wall loom taller than the sky itself, and yet, against the curvature of distance, for the first time in her life she could see both extremes of the wall curve off and around, beyond her sight.

  Ian stood beside her. “It rather puts things in a new light, doesn’t it?”

  She nodded. “I wonder what they’re like, inside?”

  “Inside the city?”

  She nodded again.

  Ian chuckled. “Not nearly as exciting as you people are outside the wall,” he replied.

  Rom turned quickly on him. “You’ve been inside?”

  “I was born there. This out here was a lot smaller, much newer than it looks now. That was back when there were still machines here, working the fields.”

  She glanced further out the makeshift window, and could see the deepening shadows from the far-distant mountains, but very little of the actual fields. Large lumps of featureless overgrowth cast shadows of their own – some, she knew, were the rusted and useless remains of the cast off machines; others, she had no idea. She tried to imagine the world as it was, but such things were beyond her scope.

  Ian waited in silence, let the newly awakened hunter breathe in the city from this first gaze. He knew this moment well; in her own way, she greeted a new perception, even as the old comprehension dwindled into the recesses of her mortal mind. From here, everything below was much smaller than it had been when the sun had risen. Things that had been so insurmountable would now fall away like chaff in the harvest breeze.

  He touched her shoulder. “Come. It is time for your first lesson.”

  They walked to the center of the tower, at the base of a metal ladder that reached up to the rooftop. “Follow me,” he said. He placed his hands on the outside rails and kicked off from the floor, sliding upwards to the top support – once there, he rested his feet on the upper rung and slid back the bolt from the roof access, flipping the lid open. He hopped from there onto the roof and out of sight.

  Rom stepped onto the ladder, gripping it tightly with both hands. This was higher than she’d ever been, and there was a tightening in her throat as she considered the view she was about to get of the city below. “Hold on tight, Mully,” she said nervously.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said, evoking his most confident voice. “I can fly.”

  “Hmmm,” she replied. She took the rungs one at a time, slowly climbing to the roof. At the top, she stopped counting after 30. She poked her head above the lip of the roof and gasped. The view was even more spectacular here than she had imagined. Holding firmly to the roof, she lifted herself up onto the tiles and stood beside Ian.

  “So, Rom,” he said, a calmness in his voice which totally contradicted in her mind the fact that they both stood some seventy or eighty feet from the streets below, “what’s the furthest you’ve ever jumped?”

  “Um, five meters, I think. Maybe, ten?”

  “Hmm,” he mused. “And do you know that that is further than most people could possibly jump?”

  “I suppose. I’m good at sports and games,” she admitted.

  He laughed, the sound echoing amusingly from the surrounding buildings. “Well, you’re going to jump many times further than that tonight.”

  “How much further?” she asked.

  He looked around them, his eyes settling on a tall building almost as tall as the tower. Its roof was domed, with a narrow spire extending upwards from the center. “See that building over there, with the curved rooftop?”

  It was the musical conservatory’s Hall of Entrances, she recognized. “Yes, I see it.”

  “I’m going to show you how to jump from here to there,” he said, his voice clearly serious. He was obviously also completely deranged.

  “But…” she did the numbers in her head. “It’s ten blocks away…that’s….” Her math failed her. Kari was the one who did math well. “That’s really far.”

  He laughed again. “By the end of the night, you’re going to laugh at how far it seems.” He turned to face her. “Let me start by explaining how wrong you are about what you can and cannot do.” He reached over and lifted Mulligan from her shoulder. “Here, my little friend, we need to show Rom something important.”

  She eyed him with a small degree of confusion, mixed with suspicion. He then pointed off directly behind her. “Let’s start with that building there.”

  When she turned around to see which building he indicated, she felt a firm hand in the center of her back, and, next, nothing below her. She looked beneath her to see the street rushing up to meet her. She barely had time to scream.

  Strangely, though, she did not. As she approached the ground, things became strange – they began to move in a shimmering blur, shivering, slowing. The wind whipped past her dress, rushed and whistled across her ears and through her white curls. And her feet moved beneath her, meeting the ground with a soft and gentle pause. Her legs bent; her knees took the shock – the dust of the street burst up and away from her in a slowly expanding cloud. Everything stilled – she stopped there a moment, coiled like a spring on one of Professor Theremin’s contraptions – and then, in a blindingly swift release, sent her sailing back skywards. The rooftop sped past her – quickly, much too quickly for her to react – and by the time she slowed down, it was further beneath her than the ground was from the roof.

  And then – finally – she screamed.

  Her feet flailed randomly, her arms waved in a vain effort to gather her balance, and, again, she fell. Speeding past the rooftop, Ian shouted words of advice past the rushing of air.

  “Again, but softer!”

  As she approached the street, things seemed to slow again – she realized, this time, that it was simply an accelerated perception as opposed to an actual slowing down of the world around her – and she felt her body instinctively react to the approaching ground, coil and absorb the impact. Her legs stored the speed of her descent and waited for her command. She looked up towards the sky, and a hint of a smile creased her lips.

  “I can fly,” she whispered. And, at least for the space of time between leaps, she did.

  After two more attempts, she was better able to gauge the distance from the ground to the top of the tower, and managed an accurate – if not graceful – landing. She was grinning from ear to ear.

  “That was wonderful!” she exclaimed. “How far can I jump?”

  “On your own, pretty far – like I said, that dome over there won’t present much of a challenge to you. But we’ll move on beyond that later. For now, you must know that your legs can brace you for as far of a fall as you can jump, and a little beyond; and the further you jump, the faster you are essentially throwing yourself – this means that when you land, you are putting that speed into whatever you land
on. If you jump too far, you have to make sure whatever you land on is strong enough to receive you. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, although in fact, she was barely listening to him. Her eyes had settled on the curved top of the conservatory, and her teeth were gritted together. Without another word, she kicked off from the roof of the clock tower and sailed across the evening sky towards the Hall of Entrances.

  And missed.

  She finally came to a bouncing almost-landing two blocks later, rolling to an embarrassing stop against a thick chimney, upside down.

  Ian slowly floated down beside her.

  “Tsk, tsk,” he chided. “Not quite the landing fit for a young lady.”

  She rolled onto her feet and dusted herself off, too angry at herself to respond.

  “Good distance, but terrible aim,” he continued. “But we’ll work on that later. For now, we have to…” his voice trailed off, for Rom had already jumped again, shrinking rapidly into the distance. Ian shook his head.

  “I’m terribly sorry about that,” Mulligan apologized. “She’s willful.”

  Ian chuckled. “I was the same way,” he confided. “It is how one comes to terms with the new life – we all find our own way, by enveloping ourselves in the sense of what we are in order to erase what we have left behind.”

  Mulligan nodded. “I think she fell again.”

  “I can see her,” Ian agreed. “We will follow her, though not too closely.”

  He looked towards the fields and saw a brief spark of blue flash across the defense shield. “She is already following her instinct,” he observed, seeing Rom’s next jump take her in that same direction. “Come, little friend, she is about to have her first true test.”

  Mulligan said nothing, simply held on tightly as Ian cast another simple spell to send them reappearing at the point where Rom would most likely intercept the invading creature.

  Chapter 15: Drawing the Crook

  Rom pulled herself back up onto the roof of the granary, grumbling to herself about the slippery qualities of dust. She was already much improved at the jumping and the landing, but was still struggling with the proper gauging of distances. She sat down on the eaves of the rooftop, letting her feet dangle in a manner she would have thought dangerously precarious only an hour before. The stars were incredible tonight – not only the small points of flickering lights, but the broad band of smaller, more dimly shimmering bits were visible. And yet… amid the sense of peace she thought she might otherwise feel, there was an increasing shiver of anxiety disrupting her tranquility. Something was not right.

  Her breathing, her pulse – everything became silent at once, so much so that she was aware of Ian and Mully’s arrival before they could speak.

  “There’s something here,” she whispered.

  Mully landed on her shoulder. “It’s one of the monsters you have to fight,” he replied softly into her ear. It tickled her, but she did not flinch.

  Stepping to the other side of her, Ian crouched low. “One of the gifts of the Hunter is the ability to sense when creatures are near whose souls have not continued on. They feel that the world is out of balance, and you can use that natural ability to track your prey.”

  She pointed to the far intersection, which was unlit by the irregular street lamps. “It’s there, hiding in the shadows,” she said. Ian nodded.

  “Draw the Crook,” he said.

  She tapped the black stone on the back of her bracelet, and felt a surprising relief as the cold weight of the shepherd’s staff fell into her hand. It shivered in her hand, like a thing alive.

  “The staff knows what it must do, as well – you only need to allow it to work,” he said.

  It was unnerving to her at first, because just as he said, the staff continued to pull at her, as if it were anxious to fight. But looking down into that blackened pit of shadows made beads of sweat appear on her forehead. Her spirit gem was glowing, but not producing nearly enough light for her to see – she would have to drop down and confront a creature which could likely see her much more easily than she could see it.

  “How can I fight something I can’t see?” she asked.

  She could hear the sympathetic smile in Ian’s voice. “The staff knows what it must do,” he repeated.

  She nodded, not quite understanding but prepared to accept it. “Hold on, Mully. We’re going.”

  His claws dug into the fabric, giving her a brief moment of discomfort to help her ignore the fear that welled up in her heart. With staff in hand and her small friend on her shoulder, she took a deep breath and leapt off into the shadows.

  The second she landed, the staff pulled sharply to the left in a grand arc. It was nearly humming as it cut through the night air, and she had the momentary sensation that she was swinging through the branches of a bush – dozens of small impacts skittered off the ends of the staff, accompanied by a loud, low hissing sound from somewhere just over her head.

  For a moment, the staff started to pull her forward, off balance, and she struggled against it. But then something heavy struck against the back of her head, sending her rolling across the cobblestones of the street and scrambling for footing. She nearly tripped over the staff when it next pulled sharply to the right, but this time she moved with it, and felt relief when a fast burst of wind whipped past her arm. The staff did know what to do – so she stopped fighting against it and allowed it to guide her.

  It urged itself upwards and horizontal, blocking a pair of attempted strikes, and then spun in a vicious circle over and down. Bright blue sparks erupted across the area as the top curve of the staff struck the hardened carapace of a huge insect. Rom was glad now that she hadn’t seen it from the rooftop – she might not have jumped down if she’d had a decent look at its long, snakelike body and countless hairy legs. She’d seen this sort of thing in the field, but they were usually only a few inches long – this one was probably ten times as long as she was tall. A few words the Matrons would never have forgiven her for saying escaped her mouth, but she focused on the task at hand.

  The staff was getting easier to wield, she noticed – at first, it seemed like it was making very strong movements, almost like it was trying to teach her. Now, it was very subtle: a slight twist here, a gentle leaning there, and she could sense what it wanted her to do beyond just swinging and blocking. She landed another two or three strikes on the beast, each one creating a shower of blue light in the plaza.

  Mully spoke to her, his voice calm and insistent. “Its shell is too strong for the staff,” he said. “You’ll have to strike it on its belly – or in its face.” It made sense; it didn’t even seem to notice her previous contacts.

  The trouble with trying to hit this thing where he’d suggested was that all of its legs and teeth were there – so positioning herself for an attack on its relatively unshielded underside meant putting herself directly in line with its ability to strike back. But just then, the staff pulled up and back – hard.

  She kicked up and over, just as a flash of something heavy struck the ground just where she’d been standing – whatever it was, it had hit the ground hard enough to split stone. When it pulled free, it sounded like steel drawn across a whetstone.

  “What was that?” she nearly yelled.

  “It was his tail, I think,” Mully answered. “It has a big pointed end on it, about half as tall as you are.”

  Rom sighed. This wasn’t getting any easier. What good was a staff going to be against something like that? She needed some sort of shield – or a weapon that could work as a shield AND a weapon.

  The staff began to move in her hands, so suddenly that she nearly dropped it. Its center of gravity was changing, the handle became shorter. She almost laughed out loud when she realized she was holding… a parasol.

  A blur of motion in the deeper darkness moved towards her, a flash of shadow – the parasol snapped open, and, to Rom’s amazement, actually blocked the tail-spike. Although she could feel a degree of the impact in th
e handle, it deflected the stinger itself, sending it crashing back to the street.

  “Oooh,” she laughed softly. “Magic parasol.”

  She spun the parasol over in her hand as it closed up and brought it crashing down on the tail while it attempted to dislodge itself, snapping the spike cleanly from the giant insect. Its hiss changed to a high-pitched scream, and, with a hundred heavy thuds of its feet, began to move quickly away from her.

  It was running now towards a well-lit corner – it seemed to prefer the dark, but in its pain and panic, it was probably just finding the quickest path to the open fields. She jumped hard and fast to try and arrive at the opposite corner and trap it in the light. As she sped over and past it, she could feel the parasol shifting back to the shepherd’s crook. The staff knew the fight was coming to a close.

  Managing to turn in the air, she landed with a slight skidding on the stone streets, once again facing the creature. Now in the light, it was even larger than she’d thought – before, it was mostly curled in upon itself – protecting its clearly vulnerable underside – but now it was moving in a straight line, all its legs pumping madly, desperate for the safety of the underbrush outside the city streets.

  She raised the staff over her head, twirling it in a fierce spin which generated a low howling noise like the mad winter winds past the eaves. It was enough to cause the millipede to pause in concern. With a quick hop-step, she closed the distance between them and brought the staff down hard against the side of its head, making it draw up in reflexive defense of its feelers – as soon as it did so, the staff spun completely around again in her hand, and, with both hands firmly on the handle, struck it squarely on the underside of its head, just below the snapping mandibles with a physically audible crack.