Stormfront

by John Goode

  “What’s he doing?” I asked Caerus.

  “He thinks he is fighting Lord Pyrites.” When she saw I didn’t understand the name or its historic reference, she explained. “He was the king my father overthrew to gain control of the Crystal Court.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Over six thousand years,” she answered, sounding depressed.

  “Perhaps now would be a good time to tell me what is wrong with your father.”

  Before she could answer, the doors of the castle exploded outward, and a giant that made the other giants look like… well, dwarves came charging out.

  “Who dares attack Jack the Slayer?”

  The battle paused like a living thing suddenly brought alert, and all that could be heard was my voice. “Oh, he’s not a giant-slayer. He is a giant that slays. That makes things more difficult.”

  Adamas did not think so.

  “Die, traitorous king!”

  I was certain he was still fighting Lord Pyrites in his head.

  The diamond charged Jack as fast as his magic would carry him. The massive giant backhanded the king and sent him hurling across the cloudscape like a boulder from an onager—I’m sorry; you call it a catapult. The other giants had used the brief lull in the battle to reform their number into something like a defensive square against the rest of the gems.

  “We can’t win this if your father is insane,” I called to Caerus over the thunder of Jack’s boot steps.

  A beam of light came screaming back toward the castle and hit one of the giants directly in the head. The muffled sound of an explosion inside the giant’s head followed Adamas’s trajectory completely through the giant’s skull. Unharmed, trailing pale, sky-blue blood and gore, Adamas roared, “Kill the impostors!” Raging, he tore toward Jack.

  The other gems took the initiative and an all-out battle erupted. Unaware that Adamas had burst through their fellow giant’s head because he was a diamond, the other giants went on the defensive, inadvertently giving the gems much more occasion to defeat them.

  Adamas would not get out of Jack’s face. Instead, he hovered within a matter of inches, which was good since the giant had already shown he could easily swat the diamond away if given the chance. The mega giant also seemed nearly immune to the gem’s magic, shrugging off all but the mightiest of spells Adamas hurled at him.

  “He shouldn’t be using that much magic,” Caerus commented as we watched the fight.

  “What? Why?” I asked, alarmed.

  A clap of thunder echoed and reechoed across the sky as Adamas opened a storm over Jack’s head. Lightning rained down on the giant, and he actually stumbled a step backward from the assault. “Did you think I would allow you to subjugate my people?” the diamond raged as he threw spell after spell at his staggered foe. “You should have killed me when you had the chance, Pyrite!”

  Jack seemed as rattled by the gem’s words as he was by his magic. “I will crush you, little stone.”

  A great light began to form inside Adamas. “I. Am. Not. A. Stone.”

  “Get down!” Caerus warned.

  I threw myself at the cloud as light exploded from the enraged king.

  “I am a gem!”

  A terrified, half-strangled cry from all the giants, including Jack, was silenced by the blanket of power that bathed them. The sound was horrifying, but what drew my attention was the sharp crack from the middle of the battlefield.

  When I peered over the edge of a wisp of cloud, I could see the giants, including Jack, were dead. Well, melted is a more correct word for what had happened to them, but dead will suffice. My eyes were drawn to Adamas, who hovered there, seemingly lost amid his own people. The light on his facets danced as he turned first to one gem and then to another. An amber cautiously approached his king and asked, “Are you well, sire?”

  The amber was rewarded by a beam of pure power.

  “Father!” Caerus screamed as she watched the drops of melted amber fall to the cloud.

  “Heathens!” Adamas cried out, sounding every bit as mad as he was acting. “You seek to tear me down?”

  He shot a beam at the sapphire, but she was more prepared than the poor amber had been. “Bouclier!” The beam struck a violet shield that formed in front of her, but it was breaking under the assault.

  “Lord Adamas! You’re killing her!” I called out to him.

  “Is it you who makes my body ache? Are you why I can’t remember who I am?” His attention turned to me, and I could see my death approaching….

  Caerus intercepted the spell he cast at me, but she had no time to prepare a defense against the beam he threw when he reacted. She fell from the air with a cry and vanished into the cloud cover. If the diamond was worried over the fate of his daughter, he didn’t show it. Instead he sped purposely toward me.

  “You die now.”

  I rolled a spell around in my head and jumped out of the way of his spell. I may not have a blade, but I was still a Blade Dancer, which meant I could keep ahead of him for a little. However, evading his spells didn’t bring me any closer to stopping the insane gem lord.

  The other gems, seeing all was lost, attacked Adamas with their magic. Since all I was doing was dodging him, his attention turned to them instantly. I forced myself not to be sickened by the way he mowed his own people down. Instead I rushed to where I had seen the sapphire fall. Moving aside the top of the cloud cover I found her, barely glowing.

  “Run,” she said weakly.

  I picked her up and scrambled toward the beanstalk. “Good advice.”

  “Why does it hurt so much!” Adamas screamed. “It is you, isn’t it?”

  Any thought that he might not be talking to me was lost when a beam struck me in the back, throwing me forward to the ground. Caerus rolled away as I turned to see Adamas floating above, ready to finish me off.

  “Make this pain stop,” he threatened.

  “I wish I could, sire,” I whispered, meaning it.

  The glow brightened, and I closed my eyes and waited to die.

  The sound of a portal being formed above me opened my eyes again. I saw a swirl of green and purple above Adamas. In a heartbeat it solidified into a hole in the sky. I could feel the air being pushed out, which meant someone was coming here instead of pulling the diamond away. Adamas had begun to pivot to see what was the cause when a form fell from the hole in the sky and on top of him.

  Molly.

  I rolled aside as she tried to hold the diamond down.

  “Molly?” I asked in shock.

  The clockwork girl looked at me, and I saw the red lenses over her eyes as well as the lack of recognition on her face.

  “Unhand me!” Adamas cried from under her hand. “I am….” He halted, clearly not knowing he didn’t know who he was. “I will not be handled like this.”

  He began to glow, and Molly pulled her other arm back. A metal spike slid out from her wrist, and before I could tell her to stop, she plunged it down….

  Shattering the diamond into a dozen pieces.

  The glow inside the gem flashed twice and then vanished.

  Adamas was dead.

  “Molly, what have you done?” I asked, completely shocked.

  She looked over to me, her eyes normal now. “Hawk? Where am I?”

  A better question would have been “Where is Ferra?”

  Act Three: The Curious Case of the Clockwork Girl

  “Things must die. It is the unspoken

  law of life; everything that lives must die.

  What is unspoken, though, is

  ‘That which dies needs to stay dead.’

  Some people have not learned this lesson yet.”

  Father William

  High Priest of Aponiviso

  Chapter Seven

  I AM willing to admit I have spent much of the past year unsure of what was happening around me.

  My people, the Friguses, are an insular tribe, and most of us prefer it that way. Our burden is to awa
it Logos’s return, one we suffer gladly for his grace. So much of what we know of the outside world comes from the Elders. Their tales to be told on harsh winter nights to pass the time and to keep us just frightened enough to never wander out on our own.

  It turns out those old skin bags knew even less than I had thought.

  The worlds are not filled with sinners, we are not the center of the Nine Realms because of our proximity to where Logos journeyed after blessing our people, and what we thought was magic is not even close to the full power that word can mean. In my travels, I have seen things that would cause most of my tribe to prostrate themselves and beg for Logos’s mercy.

  I seem to have grown accustomed to it.

  An example? I look at the mob of mechanical people covered with rotted flesh attacking me as an obstacle rather than a sign of the End Times. Though I might not have an idea what their true purpose is, from the way they staggered slowly toward me, I could tell it wasn’t combat.

  I could have fought them, wasted valuable time, and drawn even more attention to myself, but that was something I didn’t want to do. Instead of fighting, I covered the cobblestone road beneath us in a fine sheen of ice. The results were instantaneous. They wore leather shoes with a smooth sole, so they had no traction at all; the lot of them took half a step and then fell to the ice in a clattering mess.

  Since the ice’s slickness did not affect me, I jumped over their prone bodies and began my search for Molly. My chest tightened with fear when I thought about how long we had been separated. Whatever force had control over her was malevolent, and I needed to help her, no matter what. A year ago, I would have found such feelings distracting at best and sinful at worst, but Molly had changed that in me. She had shown me that love is love and that perhaps what we are told of Logos’s thoughts on the subject is wrong.

  Again, I blame the Elders.

  Turning a corner, I saw more of the machines hobbling toward me. I doubt they were a physical threat, but they could delay me in my search for Molly, which made them a real obstacle. Drawing my ice back to me, I made my way to the three-dimensional base of the massive clock that dominated the city sky. I don’t know how the clockwork-and-flesh things communicated, but almost a hundred of them swarmed in from all around me. With my back to the clock, they had no way to attack me from behind. Drawing every iota of moisture in the air down to me, I formed my armor and waited, making sure no more followed those I faced. I needed to make sure they were all here.

  More left the buildings, while another set pushed aside a metal disk built into the street and climbed out covered in what could only be excrement. If not, then it was some kind of residue that had a stench. A crash startled me; two more had fallen from second- and third-story windows. If an intelligence of some sort controlled these things, it was a pitiful one. They were now a mob of metal and rotted skin, all of them pushing at each other to get to me. The front batch was about to do just that when I formed the first ice wall.

  Predictably they slammed into it and were instantly crushed while the creatures just behind them kept surging forward. The wall started to crack; I braced myself and poured power into it. Their weight was pressing into the wall, but it was infused with my faith in Logos, which meant nothing could tear it down. I counted to thirty, giving the slowest of the machines time to get into the clock-tower square before I moved. I let the wall collapse as I rolled to the side. The mass of tattered flesh covering the clockwork people was disgusting, and I almost retched as I backed away. The whole population of the make-believe city was here, all in one place and all trying to attack me.

  Just the way I wanted it.

  No thinking army would ever do something as ignorant as this, and I planned on punishing them for making such a mistake. Closing my eyes again, I brought the full force of my power down on them, praying to Logos to have mercy on their mechanical souls, if they had any. The sound of crackling filled the square and then nothing else.

  From the waist down, they were encased in ice, all of them.

  The clock-tower square was now one huge ice sculpture of the town’s populace. Their arms swiped at me as I walked past, but I ignored them, trying to find Molly’s trail once more. Since all the buildings were now empty, I could search them without being molested by the unliving occupants of the city.

  I half expected the buildings to be just shells, false fronts for empty buildings to house the clockwork people, but I was wrong. Each building was fully furnished and, judging by the wear on the carpets, lived in. What was this place and why would anyone build it? I had searched through the third house when I saw a figure standing in the road.

  It stood over eight feet tall and looked basically human. I say basically human because it looked like it had been human once in a time that had long passed. Its skin was a mottled yellow with small, transparent patches that would be considered unhealthy on any being. Its skin was pulled tight across its impressive form, so much so that I could actually see the veins in its arms and neck pulsing. Its lips were black, the same lips a corpse would have if it decided to get up and walk around. Its eyes looked watery and dead, and I would think the thing to be blind if it wasn’t peering at me with an intensity that implied intelligence.

  “You are looking for Molly,” it stated rather than asked. Its voice was very precise, impeccably cultured. Its accent was similar to the one Ruber and his clan had. This was no creature; this thing could think on its own.

  “I am,” I answered carefully.

  “Why?”

  It wasn’t the question itself; it was the way the giant creature asked me that made me feel dread. One didn’t ask that question about a living thing. The creature acted as if I’d proposed speaking to a yak I intended to kill. He didn’t think of Molly as alive. She was just another machine to him, another lifeless contraption, easily expendable and replaceable.

  Which meant he would kill her without pause.

  “She is my friend,” I replied, not moving an inch. I didn’t want to appear hostile to it yet. If it wanted to talk, then talk we would. When we stopped talking and started fighting—and fight we would as well—I wanted to dictate terms to it.

  The laugh it brayed came a beat too late and sounded like it had been rehearsed. I thought this thing had heard other people laugh and then practiced in front of a mirror for hours, trying to sound as spontaneous and carefree as the humans it surrounded itself with. I could picture the scene: it standing there, trying it again and again, watching its own face, checking the expression, the tone, attempting to look amused. The timing was off, the sound strange, and the expression wooden, a combination that made the moment menacing.

  “You understand it was using you, correct?”

  I bristled at the use of the pronoun. “No, she wasn’t.”

  The thing smiled at me, looking more like a beast showing its teeth than a human smiling at something humorous. “You have feelings for it, don’t you? It is very good at doing that. In fact its job as a companion is to make people trust and fall in love with it.” It paused and gave me a questioning look. “Did you fall in love with a companion?”

  I’ll admit that at this point I lost my temper.

  Forming a spear, I rushed at it, fully intent on impaling the thing. But I wasn’t ready for how fast it could move. It readily countered my lunging throw and smacked a massive fist to the side of my head. The blow actually cracked my armor, although I rolled away from the impact. The thing was stronger than anything I’d fought before; if that degree of force came from a glancing blow, a direct one would take my head off.

  Which meant it could never land a direct blow on me.

  I rolled to my left and its fist came crashing down into the street. The cobblestones where my head had been moments before cracked like eggshells under its blow. Scrambling to my feet, I formed a shield just as it charged me. Fragments of ice flew everywhere as it tackled me through the wall that was behind me. My breath caught and vision blurred as I fell to the ground with th
e thing over me.

  The only weapon I had left was cold.

  The room was instantly covered in a sheen of ice as the temperature plummeted to subzero. It grabbed my neck, and I knew there was no way I could break its grasp by force. I intensified the cold, only to hear it chuckle.

  “My father chased me to the ends of the earth trying to kill me. We ended up in the north pole, where he died and I was left to the cold’s mercy. I have been cold before, my dear, and I assure you, it won’t save you.”

  My vision dwindled to a pinprick, and I thought a last thought to Logos to have mercy on Molly’s soul and then nothing.

  I was as surprised as anyone to wake up at all, much less wake up in a lavishly decorated room on a bed far too comfortable for my tastes. Obviously the fight had dazed me, because it took me nearly a minute to notice the creature sitting in a chair in the farthest corner. It didn’t move, although I knew it had seen me awaken.

  Because my body wouldn’t obey me immediately, I stayed on my back and closed my eyes, listening all around me, waiting for the creature to strike. I felt tendrils of cold emerging from the walls and wrapped them around me. They were far more familiar than the stuffy heat of the room.

  Finally, I rolled to the side of the bed and pushed myself to my feet. My hand wrapped instinctively around a heavy hunting spear at the same moment I created it. However, when I looked, the creature still sat in the chair, unmoving. “I apologize for what happened earlier. I have an anger problem.” It got up, and I gripped my spear tighter. “I will do you no more harm, that I can promise you. If you want to see Molly, I will take you to it.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  It gave me another animal smile and said, “Because we both know I can kill you anytime I want.”