by Billy Wright
Stewart charged with a roar of triumph, the sound resonating in his mind with the bellow of the gorilla-beast he’d once become in a horrible dream. In an instant, Stewart’s fists crashed down onto the elf’s breastplate. Rather than a solid blow, however, it felt as if his fists had been turned aside, like the repulsion of two magnets. Nevertheless, the blow drove the elf an inch into the earth.
The sensation of it sent a pulse of Dark magic surging through Stewart, coming up through the ground as if drawn by a sudden vacuum. The influx burned like fire in his chest and turned his arms into pile-drivers. He slammed his fists into the elf again, this time solidly.
The elf’s eyes bulged. Dark liquid flecked his lips.
“You!”
Smash.
“Killed!”
Smash.
“My!”
Smash.
“Family!”
Then he kicked the elf in the side, sending him crashing against a piece of machinery butting from the earth thirty yards away.
The elf lay still.
Stewart snatched up his axe. Why had he dropped it? One blow from it would have ended this fight long ago. Then he stalked toward the elf.
The elf flopped onto his side, limbs broken, but his eyes were open and aware. Dark blood poured from his nose and mouth. He spat broken teeth. He struggled to sit upright, crying out in agony with every movement.
Stewart’s increasingly tuned magic sense detected a rush of Dark essence pouring into the elf.
He raised his axe for a finishing blow.
The elf’s beaten, bloodshot eyes blazed with terror and hate.
Stewart swung the axe.
The dark elf dissolved into a figure of black smoke.
The axe swept through the smoke, meeting no resistance.
The smoke dissipated in the wind.
The dark elf was gone.
Stewart buried his gleaming axe head in the machinery as if it were an aluminum can, and roared with frustration.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Jorath lay gasping and broken in the pool of black water. His armor was deformed and smashed, compressing his flesh and bones. He couldn’t breathe. He flailed with broken limbs at the buckles of his breastplate, finally freeing it so he might breathe again with shattered ribs. Every intake of breath ripped like fire through his chest. His breath burbled in his throat.
The vaulted ceiling of the Master’s palace stretched into darkness above him. He sensed movement around him, curiosity at his sudden appearance in the Master’s Hall of Triumphs, the place where the Baron Tyrus’s greatest victories were enshrined in sculpture and paintings, where the heads of his greatest enemies were preserved and mounted on the installations throughout the hall.
So battered by desperation and the power of Stewart’s fists, Jorath could only remember this place as a pool of Dark Source to be the target of his displacement spell.
He was broken inside, shattered by the power of Stewart’s blows. Dark elves could heal far better than humans, but one more blow might have finished him. And now he lay in an open pool of Dark Source, drawing it into him like breath to mend his broken body.
As he lay there, feeling his splintered bones realigning, his pulped internal organs reconstituting, a shadow loomed over him.
The Master’s voice echoed in the Hall of Triumphs. “So, Jorath El-Thrim, you have returned.” The menace sizzling beneath the Master’s words turned Jorath’s flesh to ice.
He heaved himself upright out of the water. “The human is here, Master. But he is powerful.” The shame of it cracked his voice. “He defeated me.”
The admission gave the Master pause. A human defeating a dark elf in single combat was unthinkable. It had never happened before, ever, in any realm.
Jorath stood there, calf deep in Dark Source, trembling with the desire to flee, but there was nowhere in any realm the Master’s minions could not find him. Better to die by his own hand than in the Machine. Better to die and spare the House of Thrim the shame of having one of its own suffer the stain of defeat by a human.
“Do you know where he is?” the Master said.
“Yes, Master,” Jorath said. “I can take you straight to him.” All around them, dark elves gathered. The pressure of his kinsmen’s eyes upon him was like a physical force, crushing his already bruised body. There was no mercy in their gaze, no compassion, nor did he expect any. He had failed, and failure they would not stand. Centuries ago, the House of Thrim had welcomed him, a bitter, young bright elf fallen from the Light Realm, full of directionless rage and bloodlust. Anytime a Light Realm creature descended to the Dark was cause for a celebration, a victory.
The House of Chaheris had cast him out upon discovering his experiments. How else could they have known how much physical damage a goblin could withstand unless they tested its limits? He had experimented on only twenty human prisoners in the Penumbra in the days when Rome was at its pinnacle. After he had joined the Dark Realm, his proclivities had been right at home among the House of Thrim, except there, he’d been allowed to experiment on Penumbral animals and humans. His treatises on live human dissection were studied by younglings fresh from the crèche.
“Do that, and you shall be given your release. Your time in the Machine will be brief.”
Jorath knelt in the black water at his master’s feet.
***
Stewart had to find the Princess, and fast. That dark elf knew where he was and could be bringing the Dark Lord himself down on Stewart’s head.
He pulled out his compass. It looked tarnished now, timeworn. Only a sliver of distance remained between the needle and the full Moon.
His closeness to the abyss of Darkness freed him to do whatever he needed to do without fear. And so he would. There was no going home.
He set off running for the distant Metropolis, knowing that any physical fatigue he might come to feel was only an illusion, something his human mind would tell him he should be feeling. He was no longer certain breath was truly necessary here. He could breathe in magical essence, and it would fuel him.
He could see now that his first impression of the city being a volcano was also correct. The Metropolis had been built upon a volcanic cone. A wisp of smoke rose from the crater at the pinnacle. Orange threads of lava trickled down through canals and lava-falls from the great heights.
But there was no visible cover between him and the distant city. In his approach, he would stand out like a hammered thumb.
Some instinct told him he had to change his appearance again or else find some sort of fast-moving conveyance. No doubt, the Dark Lord might have the magical wherewithal to detect him, wherever he might be hiding. No, he had to vacate this area as quickly as possible.
But how?
He tried listening to the quiet voices of his instincts, but the urgency of fear would not let his mind go still.
His eyes could not leave the Metropolis. He kept expecting a swarm of nasty somethings to burst forth and streak toward him.
But then he felt the earth shudder underfoot with the passage of some subterranean leviathan, as had often happened since coming out of the canyon.
Did that mean there were tunnels under there? In such a place, he might stay hidden long enough to reach the city.
But how to get down into the tunnels? He had no way of knowing how deep the tunnels ran, or even if he could reach one.
What about one of those conglomerations of derelict machinery scattered across the plain? Might they reach down into the earth with some sort of access hatch?
He gauged about two hundred yards distance to the nearest one, next to a copse of black thorny trees, much like the clumps of thorny brambles in the canyon. Running toward it, however, he could see thorns on the branches long and thick enough to impale a human, easily as long as his forearm and thick as his thumb.
When he arrived at the clump of dark, quiescent machinery about the size of a two-story house, he looked for a hatch or opening. Glancing up at
the city for signs of pursuit, he noticed that the dark, winged flying things had stopped circulating and had fallen into a V-formation. Four of them. The V pointed straight toward him.
Redoubling his search, he scoured the tubes and enclosures for openings. He scratched the parched earth away, hoping to find a hatch or removable panel. But to no avail.
The V-formation of flying things had wings of enormous span, perhaps as broad as a passenger airliner.
The machinery’s interior was a nest of tubes of various diameters and directions, elbows and spirals. But some of them reached down into the earth.
There were no openings, but he could certainly make one. He touched the cold, dead metal, and felt no vibration, no heat, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t filled with high-pressure acid or toxic gas or whatever else the Dark Realm felt necessary to pipe all through the barren landscape.
He had no time for testing. Trust your intuition.
He channeled magic energy into his axe until the head glowed crimson, then he chose a pipe that would be thick enough for him to traverse. Raising the axe, he cleaved a side of the pipe wide open, bracing himself to run to safety from what might come out. But there was nothing. Only black emptiness.
The creatures in the V-formation proved to be what he could only describe as dragons, except that they appeared to be made of metal. Their claws and the veins of membranous wings glinted in the ruddy light. Wisps of smoke trailed behind them like exhaust. And they were the size of an airliner.
After two more hearty axe chops, he’d opened the pipe sufficiently for him to crawl through. Inside was a vertical shaft about three feet in diameter. Bracing his feet on riveted lips of the pipe sections, he pulled his makeshift door closed as tight as the gap would allow. The jagged metal edges cut his fingers, but there was no time to worry about that.
The shaft below him was pitch black and bottomless.
With a deep breath, he hooked his axe into his belt and braced his hands and feet against the sides. With continual outward pressure, he was able to inch down the shaft until he reached the lip of the next pipe section.
From directly overhead, the thundering screech of the flying beasts echoed through the metal of the shaft walls.
Twice more, he was able to accomplish this, until fatigue weakened his hands and cost him his grip.
He fell.
Down and down and down, bouncing and scrabbling at the sides, ripping out fingernails on metal flanges.
And then, a bend in the pipe caught his plummeting fall and bounced him into unconsciousness.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Stewart awoke in darkness so complete, he couldn’t tell if his eyes were open until he rubbed them. Half-nauseated, dizzy from the bumps to the head, he lay like a limp T-bone on the concave floor of a horizontal pipe. When he could manage control of them again, his questing fingers found the upward curve of the shaft down which he’d fallen. How far, he had no idea.
Composing himself, orientating himself with up and down, took time. When he tried to sit up, he slammed his pate into the roof of the pipe, sending multicolored bursts through his vision. He lay on his back and groaned.
Get up, babe. You got to keep going.
It was as if he heard Liz’s voice in his ears, just as clear as if she were next to him.
Tears came into his eyes that weren’t from physical pain.
But he slowly, painfully righted himself, doubled around and pointed himself in the only direction he could go. Before he went far, however, he gathered enough Dark essence to create a globe of dull reddish light that led the way before him.
Through endless tunnels he crawled, twisting, turning, branching, dropping. At times, the pipe would shake and shudder in the aftershocks of some massive creature rumbling through the earth. This gave him hope, as a main tunnel had to be somewhere nearby. He only hoped he didn’t encounter whatever was moving through those tunnels. The deeper he went, the warmer the air became, until it became uncomfortably hot. Sweat slicked his hands, lessening the surety of his grip.
Eventually a horizontal pipe ended in a cast-iron grate. Beyond the grate lay a vast open cavern. As best he could see, the floor was smooth and well worn, with a pair of fat, parallel rails set too far apart for any earthly train.
With his waning strength, he kicked the grate with both feet, over and over again, until it finally gave way and burst outward.
The clang of the grate echoed untold distances in both directions. The only other sounds were his own breathing and a subsonic rumble that rose and fell. The air smelled of brimstone, steam, and an acrid stench he could not identify.
Checking his compass, he headed in the direction of the needle, his fist-sized, floating globule of illumination pacing him as he ran. The tunnel was so wide that his light would not reach the far side until he moved into the center between the rails.
The rails stood perhaps a foot high and just as thick, with a distance between them of perhaps twelve feet.
The heat made breathing difficult as he ran, but he was growing used to the sensation of the Dark essence as it infused him, like being raked through fishhooks for a split second before it infused him with warmth and power.
But then the ground underfoot began to tremble.
The rails rang like tuning forks.
He charged for the side of the tunnel and threw himself as flat as he could against the wall.
What came thundering down the rails an instant later was not a train, but a thing of segmented, black-iron carapace, flexing like a millipede, with a hundred eyes gleaming like furnace windows, so fat and bulbous that it almost ground him to paste against the wall of the tunnel. It blasted past him going at least sixty miles per hour. The hot wind left in its wake scorched Stewart’s exposed flesh and made his clothes feel fresh from an over-heated dryer. He smelled singed hair.
Whether it was some kind of transport machine or a living creature he could not fathom, but he ran after it toward the city with all the speed he could sustain.
After a while, the dull throb of noise ahead became the sound of machinery at work, gears grinding, pistons churning, the breath of steam and internal combustion. The stench of brimstone became so strong, he removed his shirt and used it for a mask. The diamond mail shirt gleamed like purity itself, catching the dimmest light like a cascade of tiny mirrors. At the next protrusion of machinery along the wall, he scraped handfuls of old grease from the unmoving joints and rubbed it into every square inch of the mail shirt, dulling its gleam.
The tunnel widened into a cavern of immense proportions. Lights gleaming in the distant depths, reflecting from haphazard planes and edges, suggested construction, but whether they were buildings or more machines, he couldn’t tell.
The caustic air burned his throat. Without the filter of his shirt, he would hardly be able to breathe now.
He worked his way along one cavern wall, compass in hand leading him ever onward, keeping a lookout for any kind of smithy or foundry. He had been trusting his intuition that he might find such a place, or else how would he make the key he needed to free the Princess? He didn’t know if he could forge such a thing with magic alone.
He was always on the lookout for entities that might raise an alarm against him, but the tunnels were strangely deserted.
That is, until after what must have been hours of following the compass and moving toward the Metropolis, he spotted an open doorway glowing orange from within. Creeping to the opening, he peeked inside.
His heart leaped for the good fortune of it.
Industrious little creatures filled the room with activity, banging on orange metal with hammers, quenching strange bits in dark water or oil baths, grinding with spinning wheels, sending showers of sparks in all directions. An immense, pot-bellied furnace dominated one wall, heat waves boiling from it. The room looked like a cavern hollowed from dark rock. The smell of hot iron made him feel right at home.
He was half-expecting goblins, but these creatures were not.
They looked more like Bob’s larger cousins, little men with smudged features, pale, sallow skin that had never seen the light of a sun, and hair singed to short curlicues. They stood about as high as his waist. They might have been cute had there been any humor or humanity in their eyes. Their faces were cruel, their eyes cold. He thought he’d read once that leprechauns were master cobblers. These fellows looked like master smiths, with thick arms, barrel chests, and gnarled, calloused fists.
This smithy was exactly what he needed.
He walked in, shut the thick steel door behind him, threw the latch, grabbed a piece of something resembling iron re-bar, and bent it around the bolt, freezing it in place. With the door locked, he turned to face the dozen or so dwarfish creatures who were all looking at him, first quizzically, then with growing alarm at the sight of his glowing axe.
Within himself, he unlocked a cage.
He threw their corpses unceremoniously into the huge furnace, trying to ignore the stench they made.
Now, he had his workspace to build the key. How long he would remain undetected, he could not guess, so there was no time to waste.
Searching the smithy, he found all sorts of raw ingots and assorted bits of abandoned, flawed pieces. As soon as he examined the metals closely, however, he felt the Dark essence inherent in each bar, each fragment. None of them would be suitable for the kind of key he needed.
The Queen had said his key must be infused with love. The Princess was bound to her cage, not just physically but magically, and only a key forged in love could destroy her prison. The Queen had burned the key’s image into his memory. If somehow, he lived to be a thousand years old, he doubted he would ever be able to forget a single contour or barb of the jagged, spiny, wrought-iron thing. It had to not only fit the lock, but also destroy the cage itself.