“Faster, Whiskers, faster!” screeched Faisal.
Behind them the machine-mind’s spidery sentinels ran on needle-sharp legs. They lunged, over and over, three of the creatures ripping at Whiskers’ fur. Finally they came to an opening of sorts. Within it burned a furnace, bright and hot, and within the furnace was a block of metal alloy too hard to melt.
“STOP – crdzt.”
The voice rang out all about them with the clicking and hammering of gears. The Central Intelligence’s spiders stopped and so did the mouse.
“Leave – drrtz – my mind.”
Faisal regained control of his invention and peered at the furnace in front of him.
“Krddz – please.” This time when the machine spoke, it was almost in a whisper.
“Don’t be frightened. I’m here to help you,” squeaked the mouse. Behind its back its tail wagged, and then it jumped headlong, right into the fire.
The Eastern Tower
p Alice soared, her wings beating wildly, till they were over the battlefield in clouds of burning smoke. Above, below, to their left and right, the air exploded with the firing of shells.
“Hold on!” roared Benissimo, and Ned clutched at the elephant’s harness till the bones in his fingers throbbed.
Two wyverns had spotted Alice and were tearing towards her when, from nowhere, one of the Viceroy’s armoured owls flew at their sides. In a burst of leathery wing and feather, owl and wyvern fell from the air, still fighting and clawing even as they struck the ground. The second wyvern screeched, launching a torrent of spittle-heavy fire. Alice dropped fast but not without a painful scorching at the tips of her wing. The wyvern was joined now by three others and they pursued her with venom as she desperately tried to reach the eastern tower.
“ZEUS’S BEARD! LUCY, NED – DO SOME-THING!” roared Benissimo.
They both turned, the air rushing by so fast that they were nearly thrown from the elephant’s back, when all of a sudden, the wyverns stopped, hovering in mid-air like dragonflies.
Down below, from all across the battlefield, the fair-folk cheered. Ned looked down to see tanks and soldiers joining the ranks of Antlor’s stag-men and on the other side, the colossi, having broken through the forest, laying waste to Darklings with the heels of their feet. But that in and of itself was not the reason for their howls of joy. Ned could see George and Mr Fox rushing forward with Rocky the troll and Monsieur Couteau and a full squad of the BBB at their backs – and the Guardians didn’t try to stop them. On the contrary, they parted to let them by!
“Ned?”
Ned couldn’t answer.
“THEY’VE DONE IT, NED! THEY’VE DONE IT!” yelled Lucy.
“Barking dogs,” he whispered.
“Barking dogs indeed, pup. I knew they’d do it!”
Almost as one, Barbarossa’s metal army stopped their ceaseless surge as new directives were fed into their code. Above and below, the flow of fighting changed – wyverns now dived in straight lines to aid their Darkling kin and their Demon masters. Owls unfettered from their tearing claws descended on the Daedali’s crews while the Viceroy’s guns turned to the forest’s edge and pointed at the horde within its branches. Ned watched George, pounding on all fours, his great muscles heaving him towards the fortress. His parents, his tiny mouse and the Tinker had beaten the Central Intelligence!
“They’re alive!” he exclaimed. “They’re blooming well ALIVE!”
Behind him, within the shadows of Alice’s harness, came a satisfied “Arr”, but beneath them all poor Alice was rapidly losing control from the burns on her wing, and try as she might, she couldn’t steady her path.
“Come on, girl! Hold it together!” yelled Benissimo.
She approached the top of the eastern tower like a burst balloon, skidding along its short metal roof and collapsing in a heap of weary grey limbs. Dazed and confused, her passengers clambered down from her back, Lucy quickly using her Amplification-Engine to tend to Alice’s wounds.
“There’s no time for that,” spat Benissimo, his whip curled and cutlass drawn.
“Oh, go to hell!” seethed Lucy, her eyes misting even as she worked her ring. “You’ll be fine, Alice – I’ll have you fixed up and good as new in no time.”
The great elephant’s eyes were mournful and red, and her trunk hanging limp to the ground.
The Ringmaster fumed. “Don’t you understand, Lucy? Our troupe, all of them, will die if this monster rises!”
“He’s right, child,” said a voice behind them. “There’s no time for any of us.”
Ned spun round to see Sar-adin approaching. On the ground by his feet were two felled Demons, their faces cruel and wicked even in death. Ned studied the Demon – in his belly was a blade, no doubt put there by one of the Demons at his feet.
“My master is expecting you.”
And with that, Sar-adin, murderer and Demon, fell to the ground and breathed his last breath.
Ned raised his eyes to see a door in the wall waiting and open, and just as he saw it, the tower was shaken by the booming of a voice.
“NeDdD.”
Together
ith the Heart Stone still at her back, Lucy ran with Benissimo and Ned into the fortress, Gorrn trailing behind. The entire structure was a mixture of angular metal and black marble, its corridors cold and quiet. Down a spiral staircase and through corridor after corridor they ran, till Lucy paused, her face suddenly as white as snow. The fortress shook once more then along the floor ink-like fluid started to rise up the walls.
“I don’t understand. I can feel its hatred as though it were mine, but I can’t get a fix on where it’s coming from.”
The fortress shook so hard this time that Ned stumbled.
“Please, child, focus!” urged Benissimo.
As Ned looked at the liquid, it changed form, as though it somehow sensed him. And then Ned realised. He pulled the perometer from his pocket and it spun this way and that, from one strand of fluid to the next. The forest surrounding the fortress had had the same oily slickness at its branches and boughs. But it wasn’t, as he’d thought, an illness at all. The Darkening King had reached into the wood to feed and the oily liquid it had used to do so was the Darkening King unformed.
“It can’t be!” he murmured. “It’s in the walls, in the forest … It’s—”
“EveRryWhHere.”
Ahead of them two metal doors swung open. The perometer’s needle spun one last time and then stuck, like an arrow pointing to the opened doors. Finally its glass casing cracked and the Tinker’s device shattered in Ned’s hand.
As suddenly as it had started, the fortress’s shaking stopped.
Lucy, still ashen-faced, peered ahead through the open doors. “We’ve got time.”
Benissimo turned to them both. “Ned, Lucy – I wish I could do this without you. I wish I’d had the strength to break the curse before you were even born, but I didn’t and I’m sorry – for us all.”
Ned looked at the Ringmaster. There were a thousand things he wanted to say, and a thousand ways to say them. But in the end he took Lucy’s hand and Benissimo’s and simply said, “Together.”
Accompanied by a sometimes brave familiar, an Engineer and a Medic walked hand in hand with a Ringmaster, to face a butcher and his king.
Barba and the King
eyond the doors lay a large chamber. On one side was a vast window that arched at its top, looking out over the battlefield. A burning hearth faced a grey granite table that had been carefully prepared with a banquet of roasted meats, wine and fruit. Two men were seated there. Atticus Fife, the tin-skin and would-be leader of the Twelve, and a man who Ned had never seen before. He was dressed from head to toe in gold. Their faces were planted unceremoniously in their plates because, like Sar-adin before them, Barbarossa’s guests were now entirely dead.
In front of the window was a circular opening in the floor the size of a swimming pool. Ned could see that it ran all the way down to the base of
Barbarossa’s fortress. Up its sides, reaching to the top, more strands of oozing darkness flowed.
Standing in front of it was the pirate-butcher himself. Even as his Guardians turned outside, he smiled as only a madman could.
“You came alone? But I prepared a little welcoming committee! Never mind, at least you’re here now. Tell me, are you hungry? I sent the staff away so I could enjoy this in peace. There’s a wonderful view and it would be such a shame to let Sar-adin’s hard work go to waste, especially as he’s become such a good friend of yours.”
So Barba had known! That at least explained the Demons at Sar-adin’s feet outside and the dagger in his belly. Ned could see the knuckles in Benissimo’s hand turn white and his whip was wagging now, like the tail of a lion before a lunge.
“Stop this! Stop this madness before it’s too late!”
Barbarossa’s eyes were wild and dark, his bowler hat was missing and his clothes torn.
“Madness? You’re as bad as these two. Atticus, aren’t you going to say anything to our guests? My brother and the children have had an exhausting journey.”
Ned realised that Benissimo was right – Barbarossa had quite clearly lost his mind.
“He’s dead, you fool, and no doubt by your own hand!”
Barbarossa looked at his brother and squinted, then back to the battlefield.
“Dead? Dead, dead, dead. Oh yes, that’s right, though Fife put up quite the fight before I finished him. We had a difference of opinion if I recall rightly – it’s been quite a day. You see, dear brother, everyone wants something. The Shar there wanted wealth – he saw this whole operation as a business opportunity. As for Fife, well … he thought he might walk away from it all with Europe – imagine that? I suppose in hindsight that is what they were promised, but in the end, you see, we couldn’t escape one rather important issue.”
As he spoke, Lucy took the bag from her shoulder and Benissimo edged forward. By the hole in the ground Ned could see more of the ink-like fluid seeping up and over its edge.
“Which is?” asked Benissimo.
“I WANT IT ALL!”
Benissimo looked to the window. Outside, two of the Daedali were burning and one was crashing to the ground. The Central Intelligence’s Guardians had initially been designed to fight Demons and they were doing so now to great effect as the fair-folk charged the fortress.
“The Guardians have turned, your Demons are losing and your ships have been knocked from the sky,” tried Benissimo, hoping even now that his brother might see sense.
“Look again, fratello.”
Ned saw it first. Along the ground at the forest’s edge and on their side of the fortress the same oily darkness was spreading, creeping through the mud and up metal ramparts. Benissimo, the Viceroy and Mr Fox’s forces were too engaged in the battle to see, for what little good it would have done them.
Bene recoiled in horror. “You’re going to kill them all?!”
“I don’t want to really, but our friend has a terrible hunger,” Barbarossa said, and looked to his hole in the floor and the darkness forming at its edges.
“Now, Lucy, NOW!” barked Benissimo, and his arm ripped forward, striking at Barbarossa with his whip.
The butcher took the lashing with an ugly grin and launched himself at his brother. In a second they were on the floor and rolling, arms flailing and eyes locked.
Lucy almost tore the bag apart as she pulled out the Heart Stone.
“Lucy, the Source back in Annapurna,” said Ned, thinking fast, “it’s connected, literally, to magic, to everything. If the Tinker’s right and it was designed to work like the Heart Stone, then we have to connect to it, the way we did before.”
The Darkening King’s inky fluid bubbled up from the chamber’s hole and began to flow more freely now, on to the ground and towards Ned and Lucy.
“Well, whatever we do – we have to do it now!”
Ned got down on his knees next to Lucy. Even as he took her hand and they placed their other hands on the stone’s cool surface, he could feel the Amplification-Engine at his finger stir. Beneath the skin its tiny tendrils came alive, connecting to his every nerve, and in there, in that brief moment, he felt Lucy with him. The stone warmed, either from Ned and Lucy’s touch or with a power all of its own.
“I think it’s working,” gasped Lucy.
Around them the oozing darkness rose, till Ned heard his familiar quaking behind him.
“Unt!” it whimpered. “Unt, unt, unt.”
“NOT NOW, GORRN!”
“ChHillLdDrrENn.”
Ned could feel a building power, not in the stone itself, but connected to it. Like the Source, it was a conduit for magic itself, and like the Darkening King it had a voice, but a voice without words. How could Ned speak to it? He tried in the same way he used his ring – to bring it under his control, to tell it what he wanted it to do …
“Ned? Ned, we’re losing it – the connection’s fading!”
From the great hole a gush of black fluid tore upwards, striking at Ned and Lucy, while the Heart Stone was sent skittering across the ground. To his right, Lucy lay howling in pain.
As soon as the creature touched his skin, Ned felt all the light and joy of the world being drawn out of him; his every happy thought, of his mum and dad, of dear old Gummy and Arch, of Lucy and George, suddenly distant and dark. There was nothing but an empty void, an endless darkness, and it called his name.
“NnEedD.”
The End of Everything
he room was split. To one side the two brothers fought; on the other Ned stood watching as Lucy desperately searched for the Heart Stone. Between them all was the Darkening King.
Ned’s mouth hung open. Every hair on his neck and arms prickled and his mouth ran dry. He’d thought he knew what fear was, what the face of terror looked like. He’d thought he had faced it before, but in front of him, here and now, the end of everything was becoming all too real, grotesque and black and seemingly without end.
The Darkening King rose higher, not as a single creature but as a dripping half-formed thing. Its surface billowed and bubbled, rearing up then falling away again as it clung to its first moments of new life.
On his feet now, Barbarossa took his dear Bessy and hurled the cleaver at his brother with all his might. Benissimo ducked and it struck the pillar behind him, lodging noisily in its stone. Benissimo returned in kind with a flame-tipped lashing of his whip, and again the butcher took the lashing and grinned. The pupils of his eyes were so large now that there was almost no white in them at all and his mouth was locked in a smile full of hunger and hate.
“You know, I tried to turn the boy. I came to his tent last night, but he wouldn’t listen. No one controls the Heart Stone, Bene – not the Fey, nor Tiamat before them. Do you see now? Do you understand how futile all this is?”
The Ringmaster breathed, his chest heaving, eyes and arms burning to fight. “And what if he had fallen? Dear old Barba would have let them all live?”
“The Darkening King needed a battle to rise, just enough killing to bring him back. If Ned had listened and your army had knelt, I could have stopped it before it came to this.”
Bene’s arm pointed to the battlefield and the encroaching darkness outside. “How can you not see it? We’re the Darkening King’s pawns, both of us. Hundreds of years we’ve fought and it’s all led to this, to that horror behind you. It’s going to feed on them and it’s going to feed on everything till there’s nothing left.”
The butcher stopped and turned to see that the Darkening King almost filled the arched window behind him.
“You’re wrong. A Demon’s word is binding. He will give me the world.” But even as he said it, Benissimo could hear the cracking in his brother’s voice.
“Sar-adin betrayed you – he was bound by his word, wasn’t he? Our father made a deal with the Darkening King, without even knowing, but he didn’t get what he wanted, did he? What are you really going to rule, Barba, wh
en this monster kills everything? It will just be you and I and bones, till the end of time.”
As Benissimo pleaded, Barbarossa looked slow and listless, as though waking from a dream. He turned to the beast, watching it grow and grow, and seemed to finally understand.
“Kills everything?”
“We have to stop it.”
“Our curse – our lifeblood – is his. It cannot be stopped, unless …”
Barbarossa’s eyes grew wide. He knew now what Benissimo already understood. To end the Darkening King they would both have to die, here and now.
“StToP!”
The room shook and the Darkening King lashed out. This time it struck both brothers to the floor violently.
“The Heart Stone, Lucy, FIND IT!” yelled Ned.
“STtTopP!”
As it bellowed, the great wall of blackness formed and reformed. First a row of gnashing teeth, then clawed limbs and horned heads. As he watched the beast desperately trying to find its form, Ned realised something as incredible as it was unlikely – the Darkening King was scared.
“Stop?” Ned screamed. “And what will happen to them? What will happen to the BBB, to the fair-folk, to the rest of the world?”
“THheYy aRre FfoOoD.”
The beast filled one half of the room now. All round it great arms rose up like snakes ready to pounce, and within its centre two eyes of burning black light peered down on him.
“You’re wrong,” said Ned. “They’re living, breathing men, women and wonders, who care and feel, and they’re dying in their thousands to stop you, because everything you are is wrong!”
“THhEy’Re wWeEakK.”
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