King Tides Curse

by C J Timms

  Frak, he couldn’t even beat a pile of scrap. He could just stay down, stop fighting. How was he going to be strong enough to get into the University if they were all smug gits like Alisdair? He got socked in the chest by one of the junk men and fell backwards.

  Frak, he was too weak. He wanted strength. He needed strength.

  Something in his core answered. Like a wave breaking onto the shore, something surged through him. He tasted salt on his tongue. A deep cold filled his limbs, and the heavy pressure on his chest spread to the rest of his body. Yet he seemed to move easier, his breathing though hard, didn’t slow him. Gale felt strong.

  Gale punched out at a junkman, and it flew backwards into the ropes. He turned to the next one and ducked under its hand like it was moving in molasses. He kicked it into a swinging anvil. He turned to find the third one coming at him. He grinned, charged...and started coughing. His chest tightened, the wheezing filling his lungs. The junkman caught him a blow with its fist that sent him tumbling to the edge of the ring.

  Gale lay on the edge of the ring, his head pounding, his breath shallow. Above his head, a flickering white sheet floated, tinged with hints of blue.

  ‘Wazz that.’ Gale slurred out, pointing his hand at the flickering sheet.

  Ironchurch laughed, ‘That is the most important thing you need to get into the College, that is the defining feature between a fracturesmith and a flunkie, your greatest resource, your greatest lie.

  That….is your resume.’

  Gale tapped his ears. Maybe he’d been knocked too hard.

  ‘My…resume?’ He asked confusedly.

  Ironfist nodded enthusiastically. ‘Your resume, your life’s script, Script for short. It starts as a vague corona of energy surrounding you. It changes with you. When your power grows, your corona condenses into an external force. Its normally only visible in a coronal spectrum, but for beginners, it often pops into the visible.

  Now let me teach you how to see others.

  Tell me have you ever watched the Australian movie, “The Castle?”’

  Gale nodded. It was a staple. ‘Relax your eyes, what you want to do is feel…the Vibe.’

  Gale looked at Ironchurch. ‘The Vibe?’

  Ironchurch nodded, ‘You know the Vibe, the gist of things, the general feel. Its the magic, the truth of the universe, the feel of things, you know, the Vibe.’

  Gale relaxed his focus and tried to get the ‘Vibe’. He stared at the junkmen and sensed a grey flicker. Then he stared at Ironchurch.

  Ironchurch put his hand up, and a sheet of paper rolled into a bar with weights attached to the end. It floated before him. Two ghostly arms extended out of the weights, flexing. This was Ironchurch’s Script?

  ‘Everyone starts as a blank sheet of paper. What you do, how you train, what deals you strike…these things change the appearance of your resume. You will be judged on your resume’s appearance, your Script. Every time you enter a guarded city, every time you try to buy goods or apply for job. Yours is how you say, a fixer-upper.’

  ‘Couldn’t you just fake it. I mean its magic right?’ Gale asked.

  Ironchurch shook his head. ‘Harder than seems, some people try but get caught, punishable by prison sentence. Like making fake passport or license. We spent a lot of time tracking one con artist in the war…’ Ironfist drifted off.

  Gale noted a cut on Ironchurches arm, some of the junk must have flown off and struck him.

  ‘Bah, what is a little lost blood to a real man.’ Ironchurch grinned as a grey light flared over his wound, sealing it closed. Gale felt the bruises on his own body quite keenly and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Don’t get cocky, magic not make you immortal, you lose a limb, you can’t regrow it. You don’t have infinite power. And then there is burnout…’ Ironchurch looked at one of the bouncers nearby, Liam, he’d called him.

  ‘You must avoid burnout at all costs.

  Now get back in there.’

  Fantasy became routine. Get up, slam down Weetbix, spar in the junk ring and work the junkyard. Rinse and repeat.

  Gale was placed in charge of ringing the bell on the hour. His first ascent up the central tower showed a sturdy foundation, a climbing staircase with an open central area. This part of the building that was far older than the rest. The church that everything had been built around.

  At some point, the bell clapper had broken and been replaced with a barbell tied to a metal chain. It dangled ominously over an open drop to the ground level. Gale reached out with a pool cue that lay on the wall and pushed it back and forth. Leaning out, he noted a symbol on the interior of the bell. The symbol was a wave surrounded by nine weapons facing in. He could make out a sickle, a winged sword and a hammer. The other weapons were faded and hard to guess at. They became another mystery in his routine day.

  He was allowed a small amount of personal time which he tried to use for reading. The Ironchruch had a small library which was more of a pamphlet rack. It was mostly filled with Ironchurch’s self-published inspirational book. The motivational book was titled ‘Lifting Great Weight.’ Ironchurch looked thoughtful on the cover lifting a bus above him.

  Occasionally, Ironchurch would fight him personally. Those were the sessions that wrecked him.

  ‘You don’t need Deep Script for everything,’ Ironchurch slammed a punch into Gale’s side. Gale fell to the ground with the wind knocked from him. ‘Use your raw Script to go faster, to punch harder. Unaligned Script won’t leave you floundering.’

  Gale forced his lungs to breathe deep. He focused on the tidal energy within him, crashing against his core like a wave. Just beneath it, in the centre, was a calmer core. More boring, more stable, like a vanilla milkshake. He pulled on the stable energy, avoiding the tidal flow of his Deep magic. He pushed the unaligned Script into his legs.

  Gale leapt through the air above Ironchurch’s head and came down on his ass. Gale groaned, rubbed his backside and tried again. He pushed upwards and put raw Script into his legs as Ironchurch took another swing at him. Gale dodged to the side, Ironchurch’s blow missing for the first time that morning. His chest wasn’t tight. There was none of the shortness of breath he got with Deep Script. He charged at Ironchurch pushing unaligned Script through his legs to propel himself forwards. He slammed it straight through his fist. Ironchurch caught his fist but was pushed three steps backwards. Gale grinned at his success. Ironchurch grinned back.

  Then he broke Gale’s wrist.

  ‘Motherfrakker!’

  Ironchurch chuckled. ‘Good now heal it.’

  Through the pain, Gale tried to push his base Script to the right arm. It was just his distal radius that felt injured. Sluggishly, the power moved from his core to the arm, and he felt the pain lessen. Then the power dried up. The pain came roaring back, and the Deep Script surged up his arm to fill the gap. The pain dropped away as something popped into place. Then a familiar weight clamped down on his chest like a vice. The Deep Script side effects coming on.

  Ironchurch turned Gale’s wrist over in his hands, examining it. ‘Hmmm, your raw Script is tiny, unpracticed, but you have a truckload of Deep Script. What to do, what to do.

  You need to work on your resume.’

  After Ironchurch was satisfied, Gale wiped himself off with a towel and headed to the junkyard. His muscles already burning, Frank handed him a wrench and jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the mass of scrap.

  ‘See that ship, that washed up here a few years ago. It was so weathered we couldn’t even read the full name on the ship's hull. It was the red something. Get to work breaking it apart.’

  Gale tore into the thing, but the metal plating was really stuck on there. Gale tapped his raw Script and hauled on the crowbar. His muscles strained, the metal creaked, but it stayed on like a belligerent barnacle. His raw Script running dry, Gale felt the Deep wanting to surge into the gap.

  Gale took a deep breath and tried to trickle the Deep Script into his arms, just enough to avoid a co
ughing fit. He pulled on the crowbar and felt the metal on the ship give. He smiled and trickled just a bit more, and the metal shifted further. He opened the channels to the Deep Script, just…a little…more. Then the dam burst.

  Deep Script flooded his arms. He ripped the hull plating from the ship. The Deep Script surged out of his arms into the metal, sinking through it, permeating it. The hull plating from that section and every other section on this side of the ship tore off. Gale dived out of the way. The iron clanged onto the ground, and it shuddered back and forth before coming to rest.

  ‘Good?’ Gale said.

  The metal stopped shuddering back and forth. Then a flake of rust fell away from the side of it. The rust spread and ate into the iron like an infection. The metal broke apart into flakes of rust as the entire ships hull plating rusted.

  ‘Not so good.’ Gale said.

  ‘GALE WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY PROFITS!’ Frank roared. Frank put Gale into a headlock and dragged Gale back into the Iron Church. He threw Gale into the bar, and Gale slid across the floor to land at the feet of Liam, the head bouncer.

  ‘Put him on bar duty. I don’t want to see him again this week.’ Frank said. The door slammed on his way out. Gale rolled over, groaning as the tightness in his chest settled. Liam, his face covered in a hood, looked down at Gale.

  ‘He…he….hehehehe.’ Liam chuckled. Then he reached out a gloved hand and helped Gale up. ‘You must have done a real whopper to piss off Frank that much.’

  Gale dusted himself off. ‘Yeah, you could say that.’

  ‘Come on I’ll show you how the bar works.’

  Gale had thought working the bar was meant to be less physical than the junkyard, but the crowd was a rowdy bunch. Gale started to understand why he needed the physical training so badly after his third unsuccessful attempt to eject a drunk. Liam however was brutally efficient at removing drunken trouble makers from the Iron Church.

  Serve drinks, kick out the drunks, clean the place.

  Rinse and repeat.

  One morning Ironchurch threw the paper to the ground in a fit. ‘Bah, bloody Jacqui Tangerinous. Someone with name like fruit has no business in building airships. Ironchurch could have built for half the cost.’

  Gale picked up the paper.

  Lady Tangerinous, entrepreneur darling of Ionhome, announced the fleet of her new airships at a meeting atop the golden palm this morning. Her ‘Titans’ are proceeding well ahead of schedule. ‘Soon nine Titans will come out of dry-dock to protect Ionhome, letting us push beyond the reefwall.’ We built these above the Lighthouses so that no one would be hurt from falling debris but also so that our workers might stare at the great unconquered ocean and know that with my Titans we will tame it for man.

  ‘Do you even have a workforce that could build a full airship?’ Gale asked.

  ‘I have Ironmonger,’ Ironchurch said.

  ‘One person, to build a fleet?’ Gale asked.

  ‘Yeah, but if he worked double time, that doubles the workforce.’ Ironchurch said.

  Gale snorted.

  ‘What, I would pay him the overtime.’ Ironchurch said. ‘I’m not a monster.’

  Gale chuckled and thumbed through the paper until a smaller article caught his eye

  ‘Prominent merchant Syra Lemo was found in a coma in Tideline. His armour sliced apart, Syra was found white as a ghost, drained of most of his blood. He remains in a stable condition. Police are asking for anyone with information to come forth. At this time they deny any links to the Unbroken terror cell.’

  Hey Church,’ Gale said, ‘What do you make of this? Shouldn’t magic heal him?’

  Ironchurch took the paper and scanned it. His eyes widened, and his hand touch something hanging beneath his shirt. ‘Dark magic, old magic.’

  Ironchurch left in a hurry and tossed the paper back to Gale. Gale scanned the black and white image. He summoned a lens of water over his left eye like a contact lens. The water became semi-solid as it captured ambient light and let him take a photo like image he could review later. Not quite ice and not quite water, he still wasn’t sure what he had created with the hydrolens. He’d nearly frozen his eyeball working it out though. He pulled it from his eye, spun it onto the table and channelled Deep Script into it. An image of Syra Lemo, pale, bruised and battered on the streets of Tideline flared above the table. Gale swept his hand over the image and zoomed in on Syra. On Syra’s chest, there was something, like a set of dog tags. Too fuzzy to make out in full.

  ‘Weird,’ Gale muttered.

  The grimy doors of the Ironchurch bar flew open and the morning light burst into the bar still sodden with last nights drink.

  Jacqui Tangerinous, the shipping magnate, corporate tycoon of Ionhome, swept in, her resplendent cape billowing behind her. Underneath the cape Tangerinous was dressed in activewear. Lulu Lemon tights, lycra top and sneakers. She had a performance pram being pushed in front of her. Streamlined with racing stripes. A sleeping baby sat within.

  She strode up to the bar, deftly maneuvering her chariot like a modern gladiator, her hippodrome cluttered with the obstacles of overturned tables and soggy patches of spilled beer.

  ‘Can I…can I get you something to drink?’ Gale asked,

  Tangerinous snorted. ‘I’m here for something to leave a bitter taste in my mouth and fill me with regret. Get me Ironchurch’.

  Rust - A rusty holden ute

  The battered holden ute shuddered to a stop. The ute had once been a deep blue, like a still sky or a calm sea. Time and the elements had stripped it down to patchy brown, the outer shell more rust than car.

  Rust removed the key, cranked the reluctant handbrake, resisting its change in position and patted the dashboard.

  Rust was a tall man with orange-brown hair streaked with grey flecks. He took his time recording the distance travelled into a logbook. The cars petrol gauge had long since ceased to work. The logbook had become his only guide to how much gas he had left in the tank.

  It wasn’t much most days.

  He creaked open the door of the ute and looked out at a squat grey building. Rust raised a hand in greeting. An elderly man emerged from the side of the squat grey building. The older man used a walking frame and took steps at a rickety pace, glaring grumpily at the ground, as if daring it to be unsteady beneath him. A nurse stood by ready to assist, and the old man flipped him off.

  ‘Bugger off young whippersnapper. I can still get from point A to B. I’m not dead yet.’

  Despite a limping gait the old man, had a rigid grip on a chessboard he carried with him. The old man stared at Rust.

  ‘Now who’s this young fool?’

  ‘Good to see you too, dad.’ Rust said, relieved that the old man was on a good day. Rust tipped the nurse and handed over some worn copies of ‘Awaken the giant within.’

  ‘Did the residents like the copies of ‘How to win friends and influence people’ I left?’ Rust asked.

  The nurse coughed and shrugged, but took the books all the same. Rust helped his father into the ute. Rust pulled out his to-do list and ticked off an item.

  To Do: Pick up dad [ ]

  Rust drove the ute up a winding slope to the top of a hill just outside the rundown, small, seaside community. Parking the ute, he helped his dad out of the ute to a barrage of ‘dag nam its’, and ‘flamin hecks.’ Rust laid out a plate of sandwiches, prepacked, as the old man laid a chessboard onto a picnic table. The table was carved with the life story of the town, generations of people had carved their initials into the beat-up timber, desperately trying to imprint something lasting of themselves on the world.

  The hilltop had a stiff breeze coming in off the ocean, and they were alone apart from some scattered wildlife. Rust carefully arranged the pieces on the chessboard. They were of burnished metal, steel, polished but worn grooves ran down them. The old man looked down at the chess pieces, and a smile came to his face.

  ‘Sit down and play a game with an old man, won’t you, remind m
e of your name?’

  ‘Ah dad, you and your jokes,’ The younger man replied. ‘Now I bet I can at least fight you to a draw this time.’

  The old man began examining the pieces with interest, and his eyes came alive. The old man placed an opening move. The pieces moved back and forth as they talked. His father’s eyes never left the board.

  ‘Did you rescue Laureli’s boy, return him to his people?’ The old man asked.

  Rust grimaced, ‘Spur intervened. I’ve lost him for now. But there are only so many places he can go. And we have her.’

  The old man cuffed his ear. ‘You keep messing up my plan boy. We waited eighteen years for his magic to show. We need him to change the world.’

  The old man’s eyes never left the board, the master of strategy, focused on the game. Rust surveyed the board, having lost a surprising number of pieces.

  ‘I don’t know if I can still save the world. I can feel it coming, dad, and everything fails eventually. I can see the paths to collapse, laid out before me like ash coated roads. This world is a pale shadow of what it was, degraded, betrayed by its own body. Corrosion and decay exist for a reason. The natural order must be allowed to take its course.’ The younger man finished examining his king. He gripped it in his hand, and the king began peeling, small metallic flakes fell from it.

  ‘If the plan fails, this world will be nothing but rust.’

  The older man reached out and flicked him in the forehead. ‘Don’t destroy another chess set. You’re keeping the hobby shop in business on your own. And don’t be so gloomy about victory, history loves a grinning champion.

  I raised you and your brother to change the world. I trained you, built you up then gave you the plan to do it. Stick to the plan. That's what you’re good at…’ The old man snapped his fingers, searching for his name, while staring straight at Rust. Rust’s jaw tightened, things were worsening. Perhaps not such a good day.

  The older man shook his head, unable to find what he was looking for, then used a rook to shield a pawn from the younger man’s queen. His eyes had become dull, and his movements hurried, trying to stave off the inevitable. ‘What will you do now?’