Reloading, he tore apart another three rotmen, then his heart skipped a beat. Out of the largest of the makeshift houses emerged a huge figure, nearly twice as tall as the rotmen. As it approached the edge of the light, the remaining rotmen fell back, as if they feared to be in the path of the figure.
Eight of the slimy-skinned monsters lay ripped apart on the ground, one of them crawling along the floor trailing guts. As the figure reached the wounded monster, it picked the rotman up in its misshapened, ginormous hands. The figure silenced the rotman's pained moan by biting off its head.
Then it tossed the mangled headless body aside like it weighed nothing. Sanya dropped his most recent kill and came and stood beside Minard. Erinie came to stand next to them and all three watched as the figure moved into the light, still crunching on the skull of the rotman.
Minard's legs started to shake, and he struggled not to topple over. "Ibilirith..." His prayer died before it began.
The beast towered over them, all sinewy muscle covered in pink emaciated skin, with purple pulsing veins. Bones protruded from its flesh at odd angles, cracking and popping as it moved. But its eyes, bulging and milky white, froze Minard in place.
It crunched on the head in its mouth, then gulped it down. At last it came to a stop twenty feet in front of them. A deep, tormented moan spilled from its mouth. "You." It pointed at them with a long, sharpened claw, dripping with viscera. "You come. Carry with you, the evil of the past." It lifted its head and mewled like an animal. "Empty. The madness of want. Born hungry."
A pitted golden crown rested on the monster's head. Skin had grown over it, grafting it to the creature's skull. It faced them again. "King, I am. Ruling in the dark. Once nothing." Saliva began dripping from its blood-caked mouth, its teeth clicking together. "Now I feed. Empty. Hollow inside."
Minard tensed, gripping his weapon tight as the rotman king widened its arms, as if to embrace them. Then he found the will to speak. "Look out," he screamed as the creature suddenly lunged toward them.
He dove out of the way. Landing on his stomach, the air exploded from his chest and the gun slipped from his grip. The beast's feet thumped toward him. Spinning onto his back, Minard wrenched his staff free and thrust it at the monster bearing down on him. It slammed into the staff, driving the end of the weapon into the stone beside him.
It roared into his face, its breath as foul as a latrine, and grasped his weapon with its long claws. Minard slid away, trying to keep beyond its reach, but it lifted the staff in the air, taking Minard with it. As it tossed him around, he held onto his weapon with all his might.
The staff was all that stood between him and the malformed king.
Minard roared in agony as one of the monster's flailing claws tore across his stomach. Suddenly, its face erupted into a spray of blood and flesh. It wailed in pain, dropping him. He smacked into the ground and saw sparks across his vision. Rolling away, he hit one of the houses and watched as the beast covered its face with its forearms.
Erinie had just saved him.
He gritted his teeth against the pain in his stomach, his ears ringing with the ceaseless barrage of gunfire. Erinie dropped one gun and opened up on the beast with the next. It still remained standing, covering its face with its arms. The bullets seemed to do little damage to the rotman king. Its arms were plated with thick bone that acted like armor. Erinie quickly began to reload.
The beast lowered its arms and snarled. "Belly, empty. Always empty. Mother Ryhana made me this way."
Before it could leap at her, she reloaded and fired. A bullet hit the king in the face before it sheltered behind its armored arms. Erinie let out a few more shots, then crept forward until she stood right in front of the beast. What is she doing?
Minard started to stand. He had to get to her before she ran out of bullets.
Erinie stopped firing and screamed, "Look at me, you monster!"
The beast roared and lowered its arms, its mouth opening wide, teeth dripping orange ichor. Erinie rammed the barrel into its maw and held down the trigger. The beast's body jerked as bullets exploded out of the back of its head. It vomited blood and the contents of its stomach all over her, its arms reaching around to impale her with its claws.
Then it went limp and slid to the ground, its mangled head lolling to the side and releasing a gush of shredded brain and shattered bone.
Erinie breathed heavily, staring down at her saturated clothes. Sanya raced over to her and lifted her in his vine-arms and pulled her away from the thrashing corpse of the fallen rotman king.
The surviving rotmen watched them from inside the huts and from the passages leading from the chamber. Minard staggered after Sanya. If the rotmen decided to launch another attack, he didn't want to risk becoming separated from his companions.
Regaining her senses, Erinie fought her way out of the flower-man's arms. "Thank you." She peered down several passages and her eyes fell on a narrow one to their left. A rotman stood just inside it, the creature's eyes glittering with menace in the torchlight.
"That's the one we need." Erinie reloaded her weapon.
When she aimed at the rotman blocking their path, it quickly fell back and disappeared. The other rotmen had not moved since the fall of their leader. Perhaps they were afraid, or perhaps without leadership, they didn't know what to do.
Minard thanked Ibilirith for their fortune. They were going to get out of there alive after all.
CHAPTER 32
AEMON
Aemon walked past the two warrior monks guarding the temple's Hall of Records. They remained motionless as he went by, but their eyes followed him. No one had questioned him on anything since he had arrived at the temple five days earlier. Some of the Order must have recognized him from when he had been there with Kara. Back then, they would never have let him walk into the room with their sacred computers and tomes.
But now he was beloved of Divine Ibilirith and none dared raise their hand to stop him.
It had been a long few days for Aemon. After Imogen attacked him two days earlier, her machine-man had carried Aemon to his room and left him there. His leg throbbed again, and he had bruises everywhere. The pain had kept him almost bedridden, and he had barely slept. Between pain and his growing sense of desperation, it was hard to get any rest.
Something big was coming. He could feel it in the air. And it was more than the slow evacuation taking place around him as the monks gathered their machines, computers and other accumulations of centuries to take with them when they fled to the Gate of Lydan.
Imogen was up to something, and it would happen soon.
Aemon felt so alone. Isolated. But most of all, afraid. Not so much for himself—but for the future of humanity.
Radashan had helped spread Imogen's madness to the Order. Now they believed humanity's future lay in a mix of metal and flesh, all in the service of their Divine Ibilirith.
How could any of them believe in Imogen's plan when the hideous Secondborn walked among them? How could any of them see a future in that? Even if the life-infused machines were the most beautiful things in existence, why would anyone want to lose what made them human and replace it with artificial metal parts? Parts that could be controlled by someone else, taking away all self-determination.
Aemon could already see such a future ending in slavery. Either to people like Imogen or in addiction to replacing parts of oneself in a neverending pursuit toward power and perfection.
These dark thoughts filled his mind as he walked through the boxes of books and equipment the acolytes were packing. As he limped among them, Aemon searched for what he had come here for.
Then he saw one. A sacred computer.
Without looking to see if anyone would stop him, Aemon sat on the chair in front of it. He had only used a computer once, back at the bank, so he hoped he would have no problem using this one. Set into the table were the controls for the ancient machine. Taking a deep breath, he typed the word Imogen.
The machine w
hirred as a whole list of files appeared on the monitor hanging from the wall before him. He opened one and found a document written in the ancient language of Ibilirith. He scrolled down and found something he could read.
"Translation by Sister Dhami."
Below that was a long document about things Aemon could not understand. In the end, he browsed through it until he saw the name Imogen. "Imogen Vrana signed off on the project." Aemon skim-read the next bit and concluded the project involved computers and putting people inside them.
Nothing that would help him right now.
Aemon read some more files, some translated, others partially translated, most still in one ancient language or another and completely unreadable. He searched for genkey, Dressen, for harvesters, for Annbar, the scion and life-infused machines. Anything he could think of. And none of it gave him new ideas on ways to fight Imogen. Most of the information seemed mundane, useless anecdotes or simply had no relevance. After a two-hour-long fruitless search, he had started to develop a bad headache.
"There you are," a voice said from behind him.
A chill ran through Aemon's veins. He swiveled the chair around and found Radashan standing right in front of him. How could a man made of metal walk so silently? "I was just looking at—"
"I came to speak to you. Now listen." The pupils in Radashan's strange orb-like eyes shrank until they were pinheads in size. "I love Imogen. I have always loved her."
Aemon leaned against the desk. What was this about? "All right..."
Radashan dragged over another chair, the metallic body under his cloak whirring. He took a seat. "I expected... a different reaction from you."
"What do you mean?"
"You love her too, do you not?"
"No." The word was out before Aemon even thought to say it. "I loved Kara, and I could never love the woman who stole her from me."
Radashan nodded, then watched a monk packing a box on the other side of the room. "I think I understand."
There was an awkward silence. Aemon sucked his teeth. In front of him sat the Founder of Stelemia, a man who would know many things—including the history of the ancient world. The temple records might not have anything useful on them, but perhaps Radashan did. If Aemon was careful, he could ply the Founder for information.
But where to begin?
Luckily, Radashan made it easy. "I want to tell you my tale. It will help you understand why I have done the things I have, and it will act as a cautionary tale for your own future." He turned back to Aemon. "I've never shared this with anyone. But I will share it now because once you hear what I have to say, you will leave Imogen to me."
Aemon frowned. "Leave?"
"Yes. Leave. Imogen and I are meant to be together." He studied Aemon. "You complicate things."
She will never let me leave. Aemon licked his lips. The metal man had presented an opening and now he had to find a way to exploit it for information. "Go on."
Radashan rubbed his collarbone, as if it pained him. Could a man of metal feel pain?
One of his eyes flickered constantly as he began to speak. "Imogen and I were once great lovers and were powerful people in our own right. She stood as the greatest engineer to ever live, while I was the mouthpiece of the One God, as he spoke through me to vast audiences all over the world."
The Founder started tapping his right foot, over and over again, the dull metallic thud quickly irritating Aemon. But he remained silent and listened.
"After the war on the surface came and we were driven underground, Imogen and I continued to be close. She worked to find a way to seize back the surface, while I kept the fabric of society together. Long years did we toil, deep within Annbar, but no solution came to us, and as the number of people dwindled, we became desperate."
"Never had I loved anyone the way I did her. I protected her when the masses blamed her for what happened, I sheltered her when they pounded on her door, and I ordered their ringleaders executed." His foot thankfully stopped tapping. "Oh, she was beautiful. So soft, tender, her hair like strands of white gold."
A smile formed on his metallic lips, shifting the coating of metal skin so it sat a little out of place. "I would have held onto those strands of hair forever. But a poisonous darkness got into me. A darkness that whispered into my ear and made me turn against the woman I loved." His voice became soft. "Its name was Dressen."
"Dwaycar."
"Yes, the Betrayer. The dark sin. The one cast from the light of the One God."
"And what happened?" Imogen had said Radashan killed her.
"Dressen could always convince people to his point of view. It was his gift, and he used it against me." The Founder shifted the skin on his face until it sat properly. The flesh itself moved like old leather, and had began to fray in places. The color tone reminded Aemon of Imogen's mummified remains.
It made his stomach churn.
"We were desperate, down to our last, facing certain extinction," Radashan went on. "This is when he persuaded me that if Imogen died, the enemy would go away. By killing her, our lives would be spared." The flickering intensity of his eyes increased. "By then, she had unleashed her harvesters upon the people of Annbar and had begun to make her Secondborn."
Aemon leaned closer, making sure to keep the excitement from his voice. "How did you kill her?"
The Founder's eyes dimmed, the flickering gone. "I kept her distracted while Dressen saved who he could from the harvesters. I stood beside Imogen in the manufactory as she watched the fighting on the monitors." He held his hands up before him, as if studying them. "Then I came up behind her and slit her throat. As she fell, I held her in my arms and watched her slip away, her body dying, her spirit passing into the system memory of her genkey. After, I carried her out into the blood-drenched city and hid her body where no one would find it."
His long sigh sounded like a death rattle. "I give him this. Dressen was partially right. The Firstborn stopped attacking us after she was gone. But they were always there, sleeping, dreaming their dreams, waiting for her return, preventing us from going back to the surface."
So if Imogen died, the Firstborn would go back to sleep. Another reason she had to die.
Radashan made a fist. "My love trusted me, and I betrayed her. Her harvesters were wreaking havoc in Annbar, and we would have had enough life-infused children to retake the surface, but..." He slammed the fist on the table next to him, breaking one of its metal legs and causing it to collapse. When the monks on the other side of the room saw what happened, they fled. "Without her presence, her Secondborn shut down, her harvesters returning to the manufactory. Dressen made me ruin her chance of victory—he made me kill my beloved. He is the betrayer, not I."
"What happened to him after you came here to Stelemia?"
"I murdered him, just like he made me murder Imogen." Radashan waved dismissively. "Then I had his remains cast out into the darkness."
"Then who created the Knives of Dwaycar?"
"His sycophantic lovers created them after he died. I should have crushed them when I first heard of their existence, but they were few and not a threat to the society I had built. Then the Black Out War happened, and they attacked the Power Station, and I had to act. Leading the Order of Ibilirith, I drove his followers out into the darkness where they belong."
"So you really were the First Patriarch of the Order?"
"Yes. I made this place, and the Order, to maintain the technologies we brought with us from Annbar, and to worship my beloved and protect her holy remains." He began rubbing at his shoulder again. "You see, I excelled at leading people, turning them to worship and setting their moral compass. We lived in a world of elites and those who served them, and I maintained that societal order down here. Instead of technocrats and oligarchs, we have the Priest King, lords and ladies."
Aemon grinned. "And you founded the bank, knowing coin would rule them all. Without coin, they are nothing."
"That is why Rubin always liked you, and wrote fond
ly of you in his reports. You see through the murk clouding the eyes of most, and hone in on the truth."
"Rubin... I never knew. I thought he hated me."
"He intended to groom you as his successor. But that has not stopped him from sending assassins after you."
Aemon sat up. "What?"
"Have you forgotten the gold you were taking to Deep Cave?"
Heart sinking, Aemon said, "No. I just thought..." What did he think? The war would have softened Rubin's heart? That the Senior Banker would be too distracted by it to threaten him?
Rubin never forgot, and he never forgave. With Imogen's protection, Aemon might be safe—without it... "What do I do?"
Radashan shrugged. "Leave here and make yourself hard to find."
Little good that would do. Hopefully when Rubin found out Aemon walked beside Divine Ibilirith, he would recall the assassins for fear of offending a god. He was a shrewd old man, after all...
"Now let me tell you about all I have sacrificed for Imogen, and the pain I have endured while waiting for her return." Radashan paused. "After I founded Stelemia and after I had retrieved her remains, I set out on a journey into the Great Dark. I needed to live long enough to see her return, so I had to turn myself into metal so I could endure all these years." His eyes dimmed. "I would find no help in Annbar, so I went to another city. A place long silent, the people vanished without a trace. Within this dead ruin, I spent years developing the body I now inhabit, using Imogen's research notes on the computers there."
"Is any part of you still human? How do you survive without a heart and brain?" Aemon struggled to picture how one could turn oneself into a machine.
"I need neither. My genkey, hidden inside me, contains my very being. Without it, I would quickly wither and die."
Aemon's heart raced. "So Imogen is bound to her genkey like you? What if someone stole it from her?" He feigned distress. "Would she die?"
Radashan's eyes flashed. "Indeed. I will ensure that never happens."
Finally, Aemon had confirmation Imogen could be neutralized without the genkey. Now all he had to do was find a way to remove it from her.
The Lost Sun Series Box Set 1: Books 1 and 2 (Lost Sun Box Set) Page 67