Steampunk Tales, Volume 1

by Ren Cummins

  While his man listed off their current known assets and ordinance, Cousins quickly rummaged through his own satchel and card deck. So long as they maintained the upper hand and the home field advantage, they might do well. A loud explosion rocked the floor from beneath them.

  Cousins sighed. “We just had that lobby redecorated, too.”

  Chapter 13: Every Reunion Deserves a Party

  Rom landed heavily against the wall, sliding to the ground. She was getting tired already. They outnumbered her by more than ten, and she hadn’t managed more than a few lucky hits, but she could feel the bruises already rising up across several solid blows they’d landed. She definitely could not manage this alone. She lifted a finger to her forehead, touching one of the two crystals. A massive purple flash of light filled the room – when the light faded, a large indigo-furred lion stood between her and the sandmen. His wings extended briefly, and his mane shivered as he shook his great head. The horns which rose from his forehead and muzzle shone in the dim light.

  “I am here, Romany,” it said to her, his baritone voice nearly shaking the walls. “I will aid you, as I have given my word.” His tail flicked in anticipation – large barbs rose up along the end of his tail, promising agonizing pain to the people who received their touch.

  “Yu!” Rom smiled. She pointed at the creatures in white. “Bad guys.”

  One of the white-robed sandmen moved first, and the thundering mundaline quickly swatted it in half with a single swing of one of his mighty paws. The cloth rent and filled the room with a grey, sickly cloud of sand; the mask skittered to the ground, pausing near Kari’s workbench. Rom’s eyes followed the mask and noticed with a shock that Kari was no longer there.

  She stood up quickly, looking around the room for her friend, at last spying her up on one of the cranes near the ceiling. Kari was walking along the support, using one hand for balance while gesturing to Rom to be quiet with the other. Rom quickly looked back down at the blue creature, who was already tearing through a third of the sandmen.

  Changing the staff to her great sword, she spotted two of the sandmen trying to close in on the beast’s flank. She swung the sword up and in a fierce arc, letting the momentum of the blade lift her up and off the ground, closing the several meters’ distance between them and finally bringing the sword down, cleaving both sandmen into dust. Each contact with the Sandmen was like striking solid stone, but now that she was prepared for it, Rom noticed that her momentum was picking up, though her hands were beginning to throb with each connection.

  From his perch on a wall, Mulligan watched Rom make her way through the crowd of soldiers. As he thought back to her first meeting with one of these Sandmen, he noticed that she was having increasingly less trouble with them. Her sword swung quickly and heavily through them with superb precision, striking several of them down in the first hit. She’s getting stronger, he observed. From the artificially-imbued memories he had been given, this realization made a connection in his mind. He sighed softly, but resumed watching over her as she fought for her life and for Kari’s.

  Another body flew over her head, forcing Rom to hold her breath as rapidly-disintegrating bits of sandman showered down. It seemed to be going well enough, now that Yu was here; she brought the sword back up in a tremendous circle, taking out another of the soldiers, taking the left arm and leg from another. In spite of her sense of their danger, Rom found herself smiling. After so long of hiding in the city over the wall, it suddenly felt like she’d come home.

  A shadow covered her briefly, causing her to look momentarily above her – she frowned at the sight of another group of the sandmen dropping down through the skylight.

  “Fine,” she growled, “I can call for reinforcements, too.” She touched a finger to her forehead again, drawing out Terenaa and Rickets in double purple flashes of light. Terenaa hissed and instantly attacked the nearest sandman, her long muzzle engulfing his neck.

  Rickets’ response was less aggressive. His fur ruffled, then shimmered until it matched the color of the floor. “I’m…um… going to find a better vantage point,” he said hurriedly, vanishing into the chaos.

  Rom had no time to respond to his lack of enthusiasm; another sandman was closing on her. Her sword rose in a swift arc that began at his left knee and ended at his right forearm. A foul cloud engulfed her as the respective parts of the robe that the sandman had been wearing fell, empty but for handfuls of dust and ash.

  From behind her, one of them got close enough to drive a fist into her back, nearly knocking the wind from her lungs. Her shoulders and arms clenched as lightning bolts of pain shot through them. Twisting the sword hilt in her hands, she brought it around her before following through with the rest of her body and drawing the sword around a second time. On its first pass, it took her attackers arms; on its second, the head. The sword seemed to flow more easily with every strike, as if caught up in the adrenaline of the battle. Soon, Rom was wielding it in one hand, its blade thinning to give it better movement through the air. A thin melody followed the blade, ringing in accent to each strike and parry.

  Above her, Kari looked down at her friend, a whirling angel of destruction. She blinked away a sudden watering in her eyes, focusing on helping and trying not to fall down and break her own neck.

  *****

  This is not how I intended to die, Cousins thought. For starters, I planned on being a good deal older. He didn’t risk looking up again from behind the makeshift barricade of a few chairs and an overturned table. There were too many of them, and they seemed to be waiting him out as much as he was them. His satchel was nearly empty; only a few filled bundles of shells were left, and two of his spellshot pistols had been too damaged by the mysterious invaders to be of any use. He could repair them easily enough, with the right tools and a few minutes straight of not being attacked.

  His deck of cards was getting a bit sparse, as well; most of the remaining ones were of little use in hand-to-hand combat. So much for thinking I was so prepared – clearly, I never considered being attacked by an army of relatively unkillable foes. Oh well, lessons learned.

  He heard a bit of rustling and fired blindly over his shoulder and past the table he hid behind. “Burn! Burn!” He coughed. His voice was getting hoarse, from the dust and the many shots he’d had to fire. He grimaced. If I get out of this, he resolved, I’m going to design a spellshot cartridge that doesn’t need to be screamed at. Not terribly practical, given the circumstances. He shifted his position, in case they were trying to narrow down his precise location behind the wall of furniture. As he did, another of the beings leaped across, throwing a long dagger into the very place he’d just been sitting.

  “Burst!” Cousins shielded his eyes as the creature exploded into countless dry fragments, holding his breath until the cloud dissipated sufficiently. But they were already upon him again, and he coughed out a pair of misfires before another pair of burst-shots sent two more into pieces. The burn spells were the most effective against large numbers, but they’d learned that and had moved into close contact, which meant he was then as much at risk of injury as they were. The downside of the burst spells against their form was that it made it desperately hard to breathe. He’d already gone through several shells before realizing the otherwise effective Death spell had no impact on them. But Cousins prided himself on his adaptability, a facet that was certainly saving his life today. So far, he amended.

  They were moving forward, as many as could fit across the hallway. Smoke filled the top third of the congested corridor, and ash was starting to make the floor slick. And Cousins was running out of shells. He fired off another pair of fire shots and made for the door behind him. This was his fallback location, his last hope. It was also a room that had no other way in or out. If they trapped him here…

  He braced the door after getting in, dropped a large beam which stood beside the door just for this purpose into a pair of metal supports, and wedged a metal bar from a central support hook into a
reinforced slot on the floor. They were already throwing themselves against the door, but it was holding. So far, he repeated.

  Nodding in satisfaction, he moved quickly to a long table in the center of the room. Opening a wooden box, he pulled out the smaller box from his pocket and sat it beside the larger wooden one. From out of the larger box, he drew out a thick stack of card paper, and sat it beside the smaller box. Then, he walked back to a cabinet on the far wall and chose a specific drawer, pulling out a small bottle of ink and a thin brush. These he placed on the table, away from the stack of blank cards.

  Finally, he crossed the room to a bookshelf and selected a particular tome. It was thick and coated in dust. “I’m sorry, Ian,” he whispered. “I don’t think you’d approve of these, but…” The pounding and scratching on the door continued. “I don’t see much of a choice.”

  He placed the book on the table, opened the cover and slid one trembling index finger along the second page’s list of spells. When his finger got to the Ds, he paused. “Oh, this is going to be messy,” he said.

  It normally required at least an hour to infuse a magic spell onto a single card – but, given the circumstances, Cousins intended to have completed several cards in that time. Assuming, of course, that the door was still standing by then.

  *****

  A third detachment had arrived, managing to help the sandmen fill their numbers almost as quickly as Rom and her friends were able to destroy them. It was going better than she might have hoped, but still far worse than she would have liked. For all the vacant robes which lay about the floor and the assorted piles of sand and ash, she, Yu and Terenaa were getting tired, while their enemies were being consistently replenished with new and refreshed numbers.

  Yu’s approach to combat was simple and straightforward – his large mass made him an obvious target, but his slashing claws, stabbing horns and barbed tail also left a large path of ash and ruined white uniforms in his wake. Terenaa, less than half Yu’s size, relied on her speed and agility to move quickly from opponent to opponent, her scaly skin making it virtually impossible for them to harm or hold her. Mulligan remained on her shoulders, using his mental and tactical resources to guide them all and keep them functioning as a unified front.

  Rom didn’t worry about her creature friends – being comprised essentially of energy, any wounds they ever suffered in combat was instantly recovered after returning to the spirit dimension for which her magical gems served as portals. As per their bond to her, they would continue to function as her helpers, determined to atone for the monstrous acts they performed in life. Rom had never thought to ask what would happen when that debt was paid; over-thinking in advance was never the sort of thing she indulged in.

  She then heard Yu bellow out in pain, distracting her enough to miss a fist against her cheek until it was already sending her dizzy to the ground. The clatter of the sword falling from her hand felt distant, like it was happening in a distant room and to someone else. She tasted copper in her mouth.

  Something had her by the neck, but she was having trouble making her eyes work well enough to see what it was. She flailed with her hands, though they felt limp like a doll’s.

  A low rumbling whirr picked up from nowhere, sounding like a hundred small explosions – at once, a wind came up, and she felt the ground take her again. Hissing screams filled her ears and something heavy landed atop her, smothering light and air and everything else.

  A heartbeat, large and steady, filled her ears and dulled the pain.

  *****

  By the time they’d managed to crack open enough of the reinforced door to begin wedging knives through and try to dislodge the crossbeam, Cousins only had five of the rushed cards completed – with no real assurance any of them might work correctly. Even in the best of circumstances, there was always a chance a calligraphy sigil might fail on casting or simply not take at all; and these new spells were untested as metadiagraphical designs; Cousins was utilizing one of the settings on the Looking Glasses to see how he should draw the sigils, but he was rushing it.

  A loud hollow thunk across the room told him his time was up; they were even now pushing through the cracks to move aside the remaining restraints. He flicked one of the first cards he’d drawn up – an amplification of the morning dawn spell that had worked so well upstairs – to strike nearly perfectly in the opening of the door. He averted his gaze just in time, but even through his eyelids the spell burned white against his sheltered eyes.

  Blinking through the blurriness, he saw tatters of ash-caked material hanging through the cracks of the door; but his spell failed to reach far past the door itself. Almost instantly, new hands and bodies collided with the door, breaking it free of its hinges. The white-robed creatures poured into the room.

  Cousins remained on the far side of the table from them, casually picking up his remaining pistol and unloading the full chamber in a quick series of shots, timed with his spell commands: “Melt! Burst! Burn! Break!” repeated twice. He heard the empty clack of the hammer against the spent shells and sat the pistol back on the table, bracing for the next wave of attackers. A pair of cards was flying to meet them as they jumped through the smoldering remains of their fellows.

  The first card struck harmlessly, dropping unspent to the floor. Cousins took mental note of that failure, but a moment later the second card struck the creature and the room lit with a tremendous flash and shockwave, knocking Cousins backwards against the cabinets and making his ears ring.

  He was suddenly alone in the room, the cards, pistol and ink knocked from the table onto the floor. Strangely, there was no trace of his attackers.

  Gathering up his things, he carefully placed them back on the table, and took a moment to more closely examine the room. “I suppose I was right; they were definitely magically created.” The spell that had taken was one to dissolve magical spells that healed or prolonged life. He shuddered to think of the reasons a magician might have had to invent such a spell.

  He holstered the pistol and pocketed the cards. He needed to refresh his provisions, meaning a long and potentially dangerous walk back upstairs. He slipped the Looking Glasses back down over his eyes, changing the lenses to show him the safest route back to his office. A moment passed until it finally showed him a trembling, shivering path leading down the hall and to the right.

  He followed the glasses’ instructions; when the path vanished, he would pause, and when it returned he would follow it. Eventually, he made his way back upstairs without incident. Cousins walked briskly to his storage cabinet and reloaded his gun, stuffing his pockets with a pair of additional cartridges. He even had an extra deck of cards here; he reached for these just as the floorboards in the entryway creaked.

  He turned to see four more of the white-robed intruders. One, however, was dressed differently than the others; his robes, while mostly white, also had rows of runes stitched along the hems. He wore a strangely tattered and worn grey cloak and within that, Cousins could see a sickeningly diverse array of knives attached to an elaborate belt. He, too, wore the similar white mask of the others, but instead of pure white, it was painted with an unusual pattern of black and red curving tendrils, giving it the illusion of life and motion. Two gleaming red eyes were visible within the almond-shaped holes.

  “Ah, at last I appear to have earned sufficient respect to be granted an audience with the leader of this delightful band,” Cousins said, doing his best to conceal his rising fear. His pistol was only in its holster, but felt too far away. He’d seen these things move, and they could well be on him before he could draw a bead on them. The cards in his pocket were likewise too distant, and he wasn’t sure enough about the order on the cards he held to risk a blind draw.

  He drew instead upon the other tool in his skill set.

  “Well, I do know that you aren’t from around here,” he said conversationally. His left hand rose to comb his fingers through his hair, but also slid the dial on his lenses to shift to a more us
eful setting. Through this lens, however, the distinctly-attired being vanished altogether. He forced himself to relax. The three remaining beings were structured just the rest he’d encountered; he knew several of their weaknesses and was less concerned about them. But the fourth one, according to these lenses, had no weakness. At least, it could discern of no way to kill him.

  He lifted the lenses back up onto his forehead, still managing to keep the deck of cards concealed in his right hand, but slipping two random cards free and passing them unnoticed into his left palm.

  “So I have to ask,” the young man continued, “to what I owe this honor?” His question was mostly rhetorical, but the methodical and silent manner in which his attackers engaged was beginning to make him extremely uncomfortable, and the sound of his own voice lessened the gnawing anxiety he was beginning to feel.

  To his surprise, the being answered him. His voice, however, was unnerving in that it sounded less like actual speech as it did like rocks rolling together. “You are not the one our Lady seeks. You have wasted our time and destroyed many of my brethren.”

  “Well, in my defense, they did not have an appointment; I am something of a stickler for manners, you see. Granted, I do not generally consider such offenses to etiquette as warranting such an abrupt response, but one must on occasion make an example, lest others get the wrong impression. It’s business, you see.”

  “You attempt to amuse,” it stated.

  Cousins nodded patiently, the hint of a smile teasing at the corners of his mouth. “Well, this is true. I was simply trying to keep your attention focused on me.”

  “A foolish gambit,” the creature said. “You would have nothing to gain by such a…”