Wrath of the Risen God: Arcane Renaissance Book Three

by Tim Paulson

  “Looks like a government office. This must be a nightmare,” she said.

  “Hmmph,” the man replied, standing up.

  His clothes were prim but well tailored by someone with exceptional skill. Did a workhouse manager get that much money? What kind of workhouse was this?

  “This doll was found on your person,” the man said, holding up Vex. The goliath doll hung limply in the man's hand.

  Had the green stone been lost? Was he only pretending to be asleep? Had the stone cracked? Oh God... he'd said he was running out... had he gone completely silent?

  The blue eyes studied her. “This means something to you.”

  She looked away. “It's my daughter's.”

  “I doubt that,” the man replied, twisting the end of his mustache as he put the doll down on his desk. “Why are you here?”

  “I was looking for somewhere warm to stay,” she said. “There was a lot of warm air coming out of your vent.”

  The man stared at her. “I might believe you, were it not for the fact that we have no ladders or stairs on the outside of the building that one can ascend. Nor are we close enough to another building for any human to jump. This is by design. So tell me, how did you get up there?”

  “I'm a good climber,” she said. This was true, at least.

  “So you climbed up there?” he asked.

  Celia nodded. It was odd, the whining of the machinery in the background had an unsettling quality to it. The longer she heard it, the more disturbing it was. It was like a fiddle played by an amateur mixed with broken highland bagpipes. There was something else too, a smell. Acrid and sharp, almost metallic. Veil powder.

  She tried to pull on the bonds but they were too tight. Her body seemed to have lost the squishy thing that Vex had done. Rats.

  The man sighed. “I'm trying to help you girl. Company policy says that you should already have been put into the machines. That's what we do with interlopers here, with uninvited guests. They become grist for the mill.” He came around the desk and leaned back to sit his blade-like backside against the front of it. “Tell me how you survived a fall from such a height without single broken bone, or even a scratch.”

  “So this is a Veil Company building?” she asked.

  “Of course it is, don't insult my intelligence by denying you knew that. I know you're from one of our competitors. We get two or three of you here every month. Why do you think I keep guards on top of the building?”

  Celia shrugged.

  “Because that vent is meant for you to enter. It's just that usually we find a ladder or something. Who is your accomplice? Where is he?”

  “Can't help you,” she replied.

  He sighed. “Look... I have a lot of leeway here. If you tell me what I want to know, I can make it worth your while.”

  “Sorry,” she replied.

  He shook his head. The waggling of the ends of his mustache made her smile in spite of herself.

  “You will not be smiling soon,” he said and picked up a small tube of brass which he used to hit a bell on his desk. The sound was loud and sharp, it hung in the air of the small room like a threat.

  The door behind her opened and a large man's head peeked through.

  “Yessir?” the man said.

  “Put her in a machine,” the mustache man said.

  “Red or blue sir?” the head replied.

  “Red.”

  “Yessir.”

  The man, who was a real brute, truly huge, came into the room and picked her up bodily. The worst part though wasn't the manhandling, there were situations where Celia quite liked that sort of thing, no, it was the sound. As soon as the door opened the whining increased in volume and intensity, enough that she was starting to understand that it wasn't the gears of some monstrous contraption at all.

  It was people. Screaming.

  “Come my love,” the big man said.

  She started to try to fight, to kick, as he stepped up onto a metal stairway and the voices became louder. Her eyes widened as she saw them. Great expanses of cells, like a honeycomb, reaching off into the distance. Above her, lines of veil lights hung from a ceiling so high up it was impossible to see or judge how far away it was. Atop each of the cells before her was blue paint and inside, shackled to the side of the cell, was a person. Young and old, women and men, they were all harnessed and before each, was a glass canister lined with veil stones. Though without goggles she could not see what was within, she knew what it had to be. She'd seen those containers before in Aerdyfeld. They held veil spirits, the demons in the core of goliaths.

  What was this place? What was Veil doing to these people?

  These people weren't screaming, however. Their eyes were closed. They all appeared to be in a deep slumber.

  “I see you understand more than most,” said the man with the mustache from behind her. “How interesting. Surely invalidates your story that you simply stumbled upon this building. Would you like to... adjust it?”

  She scowled at him, wishing she had enough liquid in her mouth to spit but it was gone. Her mouth was dry. The screaming kept getting louder.

  “These people are being used to create blue veil powder,” the man with the mustache said. “When you move a veil spirit close enough to possess a human body, but prevent it from entering completely the process proceeds slowly, creating a certain amount of the veil liquid in the veins. We then drain that liquid, separate it from the blood, and dry it.”

  Celia had flirted with many a goliath knight in Aeyrdfeld. All had spoken of the risks of working with veil spirits, of the possibility of becoming horror. It was common knowledge that the blood became polluted.

  “Powder... this is how you make it?” She asked. The screaming was getting louder.

  The mustached man nodded. “It's sad. Now that you know, I can never let you leave here alive. However...” he pointed at her forehead. “I can permit you a quick death if you tell me how you knew to come here and who sent you.”

  Celia tried to kick her legs, to twist, but the man that held her was a monster, nothing but meat. His strength was simply too much. She was still weak also, and her hands were tied.

  What could she do? What could she even possibly try?

  “I do have information for you,” Celia said. “But you won't like hearing it.”

  The man frowned. “You are stalling, trying to make me stop. I appreciate your 'machismo' as they say in Pyrolia but I'm afraid it's wasted on me.”

  “Are you sure? It involves tulip breeding.”

  The man looked shocked. “Wait... Jeremy.”

  The large man paused, surprised, just as Celia had hoped. In that second, when he wasn't sure what to do, she felt his grip loosen and she thrashed her body as hard as possible. Then, when he tried to readjust his grip, she sunk her teeth into his thick neck, biting as hard as she could. The taste of blood filled her mouth as the heavy man shrieked and flailed his arms.

  She fell, slamming to the floor.

  It hurt, a lot. Stars swam before her eyes, but this was life or death.

  No excuses.

  Celia rolled onto her knees and jumped to her feet. The two other men were fumbling at each other.

  “You're fine you idiot! Get the girl!”

  “Yessir,” the other man replied, his voice strained.

  Celia was on a raised platform, above thousands of containers, all painted blue, all with people in them. Heavy silver needles had been inserted in their arms, draining the blood. They were going to do that to her.

  No, she thought. She'd rather die.

  She ran from her captors. Men were shouting behind her, yelling at her. Then she saw them ahead as well. The gantrys crossed every once in a while and she was caught between them. So she jumped from the raised platform, aiming for the bars atop the containers, hoping her feet wouldn't slip.

  They almost did, she hit the bars and teetered for a second, thinking back to balancing a hundred times upon the branches of trees. They'd call
ed her a squirrel. If only she was.

  Below her, an old woman slept with a needle in her arm. The front of her chest looked burned, it was slowly being turned black by the invisible entity in the cage before her. As Celia tried to gain enough balance with her hands behind her back, she heard a series of clicks as the mechanism moved, pulling the needle from the woman's arm and advancing the cage by some small amount. No wonder they always needed more people, they had to keep moving it closer... until the person finally changed. That's why the bars were so thick, the cages weren't just for the person, but also the horror they would become.

  Celia jumped away, nimbly moving from cage to cage.

  “Stop her!” the mustache man yelled, spittle flinging from his mouth like streamers.

  Men were climbing over the railings all around her. She tried to pick her way forward, stepping over sleeping men and women, even one dried out husk of a young man whose dead eyes hung open. The needle was still jammed into his arm but it received nothing.

  Celia wished for a place where she could sit and work the rope from her hands but there was no space. Everything was packed together so tightly, so efficiently, she had nowhere to go. Her only chance was a long jump, past two approaching company employees. If she was fast enough she could make it.

  There was no choice. She took a deep breath and leaped, or tried to. Her right foot slipped on a slick bit of carved wood, twisting, and Celia tumbled, landing hard on her shin.

  When she hit the bars below there was an audible crack as her leg snapped.

  The pain was delayed... but she knew it would come... only seconds away.

  It wasn't long before she'd been surrounded, arms grabbed her from behind and she was dragged back over the railing. The man with the mustache stood before her. Next to him stood the large man, Jeremy he'd called him, who was currently holding a folded kerchief to his neck.

  His face looked impassive though. He didn't hate her. He understood.

  “I'm sorry,” she said to him, biting back tears from the quickly growing pain in her leg.

  He nodded but said nothing.

  “You may hit her now Jeremy.”

  Jeremy did not move.

  “As you wish. To the red with her, now.”

  “What's the red?” she asked, knowing that soon the pain in her leg would be intolerable. There would be no asking questions then.

  The men holding her laughed as they dragged her forward.

  “It's amazing how we discover things, isn't it? We try and try for decades upon decades and nothing, then we employ a sadist at one of our facilities and a miracle occurs,” the man with the mustache said.

  “What do-” she tried to say, but she was hit in the stomach, causing her to wheeze.

  “As I was saying... decades of powder production. We refined it year by year, making small improvements. I haven't done anything myself, as you guessed, my study at the institute dealt with tulips, it's truly remarkable what can be accomplished when you introduce minute amounts of veil powder into the soil, but I digress. You see... the process naturally causes a person to sleep. The closer the spirit becomes, the more impossible it is for the subject to stay awake. They dream constantly and we believe the dreams are not unhappy. It is as if they welcome their union with the veil spirit. Most interesting don't you think?”

  The sounds of screaming people were getting louder again, much louder. It wasn't one voice, but a chorus. It made sense to her now why she'd thought they were machines. The voices were hoarse, their throats raw. Some could only hiss. Celia felt she was being pulled toward the very threshold of hell.

  In the distance she saw a cart and workers in overalls, pulling bodies from the machines and stacking them on the cart. They were thin, very thin. Did they not feed these people?

  “However, one gentleman, a Doctor Blutstein I believe, discovered quite by accident that when you force the people to stay awake through the application of pain, the resulting veil powder is quite different. When it's dried it comes out a lovely burgundy color. It's more powerful too, but also more volatile. Isn't that fascinating?” he asked her. Then he leaned in, pulling his mustache. “Now... you'll wish you'd cooperated. Oh yes.”

  The cells ahead were painted red. On the end of the line, several were open. The men untied her hands. Celia tried to swing a fist at them but they hit her again, so hard her vision blackened. It felt like only a second but when she opened her eyes they'd already strapped her in. The metal and wooden components were clanking as she was being lowered down into a cell. There was no spirit container before her though, not yet. Not that she'd be able to see the spirit anyway. The pain in her leg had now grown by leaps and bounds, becoming a mountain in her mind. A cliff she was being smashed upon.

  She could see the men above chuckling as they stood over her.

  What use to scream? Would they even hear her over the others?

  A technician wearing thick green veil goggles ran up. “Here sir. It's fresh and lively, just as you ordered.”

  The mustache man pulled a green veil monocle from his pocket and held it to his eye, peering at the glass-walled veil container before him.

  “Oh yes! This will do nicely!”

  Chapter 14

  "I will not speak of her, except to say that she is an abominable cretin with no taste what-so-ever."

  -Fenasian designer Anton De Poisson, on Margaret Dipple, 1619

  Mia's breath puffed as she pushed through the frozen wood, leaving short-lived miniature clouds in a trail behind her. Sticks snapped beneath Giselle's feet. The girl was shaking uncontrollably now. Jumping into the water hadn't been Mia's best idea. Her power had warmed her skin, drying her clothes, but not Giselle's, so she was wet and cold, and pregnant as well.

  “Try not to drag your feet so much,” Mia said.

  “J-j-just leave m-m-me,” Giselle replied, her eyes cast down.

  Mia's arm was around her waist, with Giselle's arm over her shoulder. Essentially she was dragging her forward. Her newfound power and resilience were useful, but even she couldn't carry someone of greater weight forever.

  “Don't be a fool,” Mia replied. “I won't leave you behind.”

  “W-w-why?” Giselle replied. As she looked up Mia saw the hurt in her eyes, the tears brimming. “I'm useless... A-a-a-aron is... gone.”

  “Hush,” Mia said. “Just keep going.”

  “I should... die,” Giselle said. Her eyes looked forward now, into the trees, as if she went to walk off into the brush like a tragic princess from one of her stories. Only Giselle wasn't a princess and Mia would not allow her to die.

  “I said hush,” Mia replied, casting her eyes around.

  Where had that damned weaselman gone? She'd sent him off to scout around, hoping he'd find an abandoned camp or a farmhouse or something. She'd lived in Aeyrdfeld for more than a decade but in all that time hadn't spent hardly any time in the countryside directly surrounding the walls. The goliath drills had always taken place in the rolling fields to the west in the direction of Ganex.

  Giselle's teeth were clacking together like a dozen dice on a metal plate. If they didn't stop soon and warm her up, the repercussions could be serious. At least she could easily start a fire with her sword flames. It was unfortunate that she couldn't use it to warm up Giselle, not without setting the poor girl on fire.

  Giselle stumbled over a rock, nearly dragging the both of them down.

  “S-s-sorry,” she mumbled.

  “Alright, we're stopping.” It might be stupid, but it was an idea.

  First, she set Giselle down in the snow, then she pulled her veil rapier. Blue flame erupted from the blade, casting an eerie halo of light through the wood. Mia felt the fire within, the rage at their situation, at Christine's terrible treatment of those she had the audacity to describe as family, and the flame grew. Mia used its heat to burn away the snow and the top layers of leaves beneath.

  Once she'd burned enough space for both of them, she brushed the charred remnan
ts of leaves away leaving a blackened, roughly circular, area of the forest floor.

  “W-w-what... doing?” Giselle asked.

  Mia shook her head. “We're getting changed. Take off your clothes.”

  Giselle's eyes widened. “W-w-w-why?” she asked.

  Mia could see it was pointless to ask, the girl's fingers could barely move.

  “Because mine are dry,” she replied, pulling Giselle into the dirt circle where she helped remove her dress and swapped it for her own warm, dry leathers and cloak.

  As soon as Mia put on Giselle's dress, steam began to rise from her body as it naturally worked to fight off the cold. It was odd too because it seemed that every day Mia had a little more. Using her sword, protecting herself with whatever had happened before, and drying two sets of clothes hadn't even dented her reserves, she could feel it. She hoped she would have the chance to speak to Kiag again. Perhaps he had more answers.

  She stood, turning around. The next order of business would be a fire if she could gather up some...

  “Hey black hair girl,” Piotr said from behind her, causing Mia to start.

  She rounded on him, furious. “Don't do that! I can't fully control these... these powers... I might just set you on fire!”

  The weaselman shrugged, his whiskers twitching. “I'm sure fried weaselman is delicacy somewhere.”

  Mia frowned, pointing a finger at him. “You... are a weird one.”

  Piotr shrugged. “I heard something in woods. North. I'm thinking you're not liking.”

  “What?”

  “Sounds big, like troll.”

  Mia sighed, rolling her eyes. Exactly what she needed. Trolls hated fire though, so there was a good chance it would... there was a crack from the woods.

  “Hmmm, getting closer.”

  “Stay with the girl,” Mia said. “Build a fire if you can. I'm going to check it out.”

  “Are you sure you not want backup? I am good with knife,” the weaselman said.

  “I want you to stay here and try to get Giselle warm... wait... did you see us change clothes?”