The Romulus Equation

by Darren Craske

  ‘Not at all,’ said Destine. ‘Although now I am not so sure.’

  Prometheus scowled. ‘What’s that supposed to—?’

  ‘Hush!’ hissed Destine. ‘Just watch.’

  Closing her eyes, Sirona placed her hand onto Renard’s wound. She began to temper her breathing, soft and shallow and then with deep inhalations, her withered old frame rising and falling – and then something occurred. Her hand began to glow and Renard suddenly screamed. In pain, in joy – it was hard to tell. Like a thing alive, the light seeped into the Frenchman’s wound like golden water and flooded it completely, leaving golden sparkles across the surface of the skin. Sirona was incandescent, the energy flowing all around her body as if she was lit from within. Beneath her paper-thin skin, her veins throbbed. With a gasp, the light quickly faded away and she flopped back into her wheelchair, sweating profusely. Renard broke away too, crashing to the floor. As the last vestiges of the light faded away, his hands darted to his guts. When he removed them, there was no blood. His wound had been healed in its totality, taking all the pain with it.

  ‘You are injured also, I see,’ Sirona said, pointing a crooked finger at Prometheus.

  Prometheus had yet to make sense of what his eyes had seen. He was woefully out of his depth and he knew it. He was useless in these situations, preferring to exert his brawn rather than his brain. He looked down at his mangled fingers. Although the pain was still there, with all the excitement around him, he had almost forgotten about it. ‘You… you can fix me up? Mend my bones, I mean?’

  ‘Bring him to me,’ Sirona said, and the guards guided Prometheus to her side, with the Irishman reluctantly obeying. He could do little but watch as tiny sparks flowed from Sirona’s fingers and into his. In only a moment, where there were once broken bones, now they were healed. He felt no pain – only utter astonishment.

  ‘But… how did—?’ he gasped.

  Sirona smiled. ‘I thought you were supposed to be Cornelius’s friend. Have you never seen magic before?’ She didn’t wait for a reply. ‘Antoine, now that you are recuperated, if you would be so kind as to escort our friends to the prison level. See to it that they are restrained securely until I have need of them.’

  ‘As you wish, my Lady,’ bowed Renard, fully healed and back to his murderous old self. ‘I hope the accommodation will be to your liking, Mother. And just so there are no other distractions.’ He smashed his metal hand across the back of Prometheus’s neck and he crashed unconscious to the floor. ‘Guards, take them down to hell.’

  Chapter XXVIII

  The Moth to the Flame

  Soon Destine’s ankles were chained to the wall in an iron-barred cell and she contemplated her fate – and moreover, what more of it there was to come. Prometheus was still unconscious in a cell next door to her, and the guards had chained not just his wrists but they had also fixed an iron collar around his neck, fastened to the wall like a dog on a lead.

  ‘Je suis désolée, mon cher ami,’ she whispered, ‘for getting you into this mess. I was a fool to believe that I could save Cornelius… and now we are in desperate need of salvation ourselves… whilst he is nowhere to be seen.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he’ll turn up…’ sneered Renard, entering the prison with a grin on his face, ‘… in pieces, if Baron Remus has his way.’

  ‘I see that you are still skulking in shadows like the monster you are,’ Destine said to him, her eyes flooded with tears, her words coated with hatred.

  Renard approached Destine’s cell, with a smirk on his face. ‘I should thank Cornelius when we next meet, for were it not for him I would be without my little accoutrement here.’ He grabbed hold of one of the bars to Destine’s cell and, wth the slightest of flexes, his metal fingers bent the bar with ease. ‘Think what this hand could do to him, Mother. It would be such exquisite torture. I think I’ll start with his ankles, breaking the bones so he cannot run… and then his hands, his ribs, his spine… and then when I run out of bones to break, perhaps I might take my hand to his lungs, or squeeze the juices from his heart. Not even Lady Sirona would be able to put him back together once I am finished.’

  ‘Why do you call her that?’ snapped Destine. ‘You know who she is!’

  ‘And so do you, it seems.’

  ‘What is the reason for this deception, Antoine?’ asked Destine. ‘The Hades Consortium has poisoned her mind, just as it poisoned yours!’

  ‘That shows how little you know, Mother,’ sniggered Renard, enjoying the look of distaste on his mother’s face. ‘I was always a vicious bastard… my father’s blood flowed within my veins… all the Hades Consortium did was cultivate it. They embraced it! That is what they do! They even took in a monster like Remus, for god’s sake. Poor Cornelius… he really has no idea what hunts him.’

  Destine felt a lump rise in her throat. ‘What are you talking about? According to your mistress, Cornelius is not even in this place!’

  ‘That may well be true, but we’ve heard from an impeccable source that he will be very soon,’ said Renard.

  ‘Source? What source?’ demanded Destine.

  ‘Why… you, dear Mother,’ said Renard. ‘Your clairvoyance has confirmed that Cornelius will come. So all we need do is wait.’

  Destine felt her body compress. ‘You knew… all this time, you knew.’

  ‘Why else do you think I made it so easy for you? Or did you really think you had that strong a grip on my mind? I led you here because had I not, I would have died from my injuries. Only Sirona could save me, and that is why getting to the Hive was exactly what I wanted. I allowed you to think that I was under your spell. Honestly, Mother… you are so naïve. Just because you have good intentions, it doesn’t mean that you stand a better chance of survival… as poor old Cornelius will soon discover.’

  ‘Wh-what do you mean?’ mumbled Destine.

  ‘He picked a very bad night to mess with the Baron,’ said Renard. ‘And he will pay the price for it.’

  Chapter XXIX

  The Hot Pursuit

  Oblivious to events occurring high above their position, Quaint, Viktor, Romulus and the remaining members of his band, made their way through the tunnels deep beneath the foundry. Quaint’s nerves were on fire. This deep inside the Hive, their progress should not be this easy. He had expected guards at every corner. Not that he was complaining. Every so often the tunnels branched off with steps leading above and below, but the band kept to the main tunnels, following Romulus’s lupine senses.

  ‘Remus is on the move,’ he said, raising his hand to halt the group. ‘We must head deeper.’

  ‘Deeper?’ asked Viktor, sweating profusely under the intense heat of the tunnels. ‘How much further do these tunnels go? And why is it so damned hot down here?’

  ‘The Hive is aptly named, Viktor, for it is a nest… deep below the earth,’ explained Romulus, wiping sweat from his own brow. ‘When the creators of this foundry discovered a dormant volcano on this spot, they constructed this place around it, and used its churning fires to power their machinery… before the Hades Consortium took it over.’

  ‘When you say “dormant”, how dormant are we talking?’ Quaint asked. ‘We’ve got enough on our plate as it is without worrying about an erupting volcano!’

  ‘Relax, my friend… we are quite safe,’ Romulus said. ‘We would get plenty of warning if the volcano were about to erupt. Right now we must concentrate on tracking down Remus. He is constantly moving, changing his location with every minute.’

  ‘Do you think it’s possible that he senses you?’ asked Quaint.

  ‘I cannot tell. But we must be cautious from here on,’ replied Romulus. ‘If my brother really is aware of my presence here, he will not announce himself until he knows why I have come. Otherwise, he will always be one step ahead of us.’

  In silence, Quaint and Viktor followed Romulus deeper into the tunnels, and they guessed they were heading closer to the volcano too, as the heat was stifling, making it difficult to brea
the. Spying a small squad of guards up ahead, they clung to the tunnel’s wall.

  ‘Cornelius, this stress is too much for me at my age!’ whispered Viktor. ‘The next time your ex-governess asks me to keep an eye on you, I will hastily refuse!’

  ‘And miss out on all this fun?’ asked Quaint. ‘Where else would you get the chance to crouch in shadows, hide from guards, accompany werewolves and fight to the death in the belly of an extinct volcano?’

  ‘I do not know, but if I ever find out I will do my utmost to see that I avoid it!’

  Quaint opened his mouth, just about to speak to Romulus, when he noticed the look of pain on the Italian’s dirt-smeared face. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I… I am ashamed of myself,’ he whispered. ‘Those guards… I lost control.’

  ‘Momentarily,’ said Quaint.

  ‘You saw me back there, Cornelius… a moment is all it takes.’

  ‘Yes, but now you’re back!’ grinned the conjuror. ‘And they worked for the Hades Consortium, so it’s not like it really matters, is it?’

  Romulus glared at him. ‘It matters to me! And it should matter to you too! Just because I look like a monster, it does not mean that I must become one. Those guards were men… human beings… and I took their lives.’

  ‘So did I! So did all of us!’ said Quaint. ‘more than half our men. Those guards knew what they were getting into when they signed up for the Hades Consortium, so don’t you waste an ounce of pity on them. The more of them we kill on our way in, the less we’ll have to kill on our way back out!’ He nodded at the small group of guards up ahead. ‘Shall we?’

  The band leapt out of the tunnel and crashed into the red-clad guards. Even though the guilt was eating away at him, Romulus was no easy target. His claws cut as easily through flesh as they did the robes of the guards, but he stopped as he saw the last of his men fall to the ground. Quaint and Viktor were still fighting their foes, but there were two guards left. Romulus leapt, grabbing hold of one guard around the neck. He twisted his torso and the guard’s neck snapped. Romulus side-stepped the swing of a sword and slashed with his own weapons, dragging his claws across the guard’s neck, and he too fell. Meanwhile, Quaint was trading punches with one guard, and Viktor was flat on his back trying to stop his guard from strangling him. The German glared at Romulus.

  ‘Any time you wish to lend a hand, ja?’

  Lend a hand Romulus did, grabbing Viktor’s enemy under the armpits. Viktor got to his feet and unleashed a barrage of punches into the guard’s stomach, with Romulus holding him upright. With one last punch, the guard slumped to the ground.

  ‘I’m doing fine, if anyone’s asking,’ said Quaint, as he brought his knee up into a guard’s groin. As the man’s hands darted to his wounded privates, Quaint struck his fist across his jaw, breaking it with a loud crack!

  ‘We must keep going,’ said Romulus, watching Quaint and Viktor panting for breath as if they’d just run a mile. ‘Remus is on the move again. This way!’

  The tunnel that Romulus indicated led them to the edge of a gigantic pit. It could almost have been mistaken for a hole in the ground, but the thick, acrid plumes of black smoke said otherwise. The heat from within the vast chasm was unbearable. All around the circumference were indented alcoves, caves and passageways; leading to where was anyone’s guess. Quaint had no idea how deep underground they truly were by this time, but they had at least found the source of the intense heat. He peered over the edge of the pit. It seemed endless. A blanket of charcoal smoke covered the entire mouth, with tendrils of black plumes escaping, rising up to the cave’s roof. A low rumble emanated from below, as though a great beast slumbered within the cloud.

  ‘This must be the volcano,’ Romulus said. ‘It looks as if it served some sort of function for the foundry before the Hades Consortium took it in residence, do you see?’ He pointed to a wooden platform erected on the far side that looked like a set of gallows extended across the mouth of the pit, with a thick chain attached to the arm, leading down into the thick smoke. ‘Perhaps it was used to mine the iron ore used for manufacturing.’

  Quaint peered over the edge. ‘It’s like staring down into the bowels of hell.’

  ‘Can we get out of here?’ added Viktor. ‘This place makes me nervous.’

  ‘And so it should,’ echoed a loud voice around the cave.

  Romulus, Quaint and Viktor spun around, hearing the shuffling of feet behind them.

  ‘Adolfo,’ Romulus said, his lips taut against his bared fangs.

  ‘Belisarius,’ said Remus. ‘It has been a long time.’

  Quaint stared at his foe. This was Remus? This… thing? He was in a lot more wolf-like state than Romulus, and it shocked the conjuror to his core. He had shed his humanity to become one with the wolf. His white shirt was stained and torn, marred with sweat, and his hair was swept close to his scalp. He was easily in his sixties, Quaint assumed, but he carried himself with the confidence of a far younger man. His form was broad, his taut muscles visible beneath the tattered shirt. His features were drawn tight against his skull, and his low brow held his red-rimmed eyes in shadow. If Quaint had any scepticism about the existence of werewolves, the sight before him promptly quashed them.

  As Remus walked slowly down a flight of stone steps formed from the rock-face, he surveyed the company before him with interest. One he knew only too well, his brother Romulus, whereas the other two were unknown to him.

  ‘I see you are still fighting the transformation, Belisarius. You are a fool. We have been endowed with such power… how can you forsake it? Look upon me! I am a reflection of what you might become if only you would let go.’

  ‘And become a monster like you?’ said Romulus. ‘Never!’

  ‘You may choose to hide your true self, brother, but it is still there… just beneath the surface. And it will only take one scratch to set it free,’ Remus said, flexing his clawed fingers. ‘Not even God can save you from the demons inside you… despite you spending so much time in his company.’ Remus watched the glimmer of surprise upon his brother’s face. ‘I know all about your little exploits these past few years, il mio fratello. In fact, you have me to thank for making the name Romulus one synonymous with crime. Your reputation is ideal to mask my own exploits.’

  He walked closer to Romulus, Quaint and Viktor, each footstep grinding deeply into the ashen gravel on the cave floor. As he stepped into the torchlight, Quaint could not take his eyes off him. Since learning of his name in China some months before, the conjuror had been intoxicated by him, obsessed even. For most of his adult life he had suspected Hades Consortium’s involvement in his parents’ deaths, but it was not until this was confirmed by Cho-zen Li that he had known for sure. Up until that point it had just been an unanswered question. In truth, Quaint had not expected to get this far, and now that he was standing ten feet away from his parents’ murderer, he had no idea what he was supposed to do, how he was supposed to feel. He had thought that his anger would dictate his actions, but all he felt upon seeing Remus was fear.

  He had not anticipated it… and he did not like it.

  He took a step forwards, but Romulus snatched him back.

  ‘Not yet, Cornelius,’ he warned.

  ‘Cornelius?’ glared Remus, measuring the conjuror. ‘Well, well, well… you do have some interesting new friends, Belisarius! I was sorry to have missed you in Egypt, Signor Quaint… but now here we are.’ Remus folded his muscular arms across his chest, superior in his confidence. ‘I cannot imagine how you two pathetic waifs found yourselves in each other’s company. Was it you, Cornelius? Seeking Belisarius’s aid in your quest for… quest for what exactly? Revenge?’

  ‘That’s a start,’ said Quaint.

  ‘So you know the truth,’ said Remus, ‘about how I gutted your pathetic excuse for a father? Augustus was a fool. Just like my spineless brother, he chose to deny his legacy, deny who he truly was… and what he was capable of. The Hades Consortium offered him greatne
ss and he threw it back in our faces!’

  ‘What happened?’ Quaint demanded. ‘Tell me the truth, damn you!’

  Remus picked between his fangs with his claw, plucking a morsel of bloodied flesh from them. ‘Is that why you have come all this way? For the truth?’ He strolled casually over to the edge of the pit, wafting his hand into the black smoke rising from the dormant volcano below, taking a deep inhalation as if it was a fine wine. ‘The truth for some can sometimes be hard to accept… but for you, Cornelius Quaint… it will be the death of you!

  Remus lunged and Romulus just managed to push Quaint out of his way, taking the full brunt of Remus’s attack. The Baron sunk his fangs into Romulus’s shoulder, spraying blood from the punctures. Like enraged animals they began to fight as Quaint stood on the sidelines, his fists itching to get involved.

  ‘Nein, Cornelius!’ Viktor yelled, dragging him back. His feet slipped in the gravel, trying to gain purchase as he pushed the conjuror back against the rock wall. ‘Look at them! They are wild beasts! They will tear you to bits!’

  ‘I have to know!’ Quaint snapped. ‘I’m close to learning the truth, I know it!’

  ‘You are close to nothing, Cornelius, he was just toying with you!’

  ‘No! He was about to tell me why he killed them.’

  ‘Actually, he was about to kill you,’ said Viktor. ‘You seek to honour your parents, mein Freund, but surely not at the cost of your own life!’

  ‘I don’t seek to honour them!’ hissed Quaint. ‘I seek to avenge them!’

  ‘By sacrificing your life? That is not vengeance. That is suicide.’

  ‘Let me go, Viktor! Let me finish this!’

  ‘If I let you go, you will die.’

  ‘Then let me damn well die!’ Quaint was strong, considerably so for a man of his age – the wondrous elixir that had extended his lifespan had renewed his muscles with youthful vigour – but the German was bulkier, heavier. He was like a lead weight attached to Quaint’s ankles, dragging both of them to the ground. Quaint clawed at the gravel madly, dragging himself closer to the fray, but all the while, Viktor was desperately trying to pull him away from it.