King Tides Curse

by C J Timms

  The forms of the undead rose. Each shuddered to its feet, head jerking in her direction. Swan brought out the slagblade and laid about her. She started tearing through tripwires to make a path. Bugger the subtle approach.

  A harpoon flew through the air and skewered an undead. Gale pointed towards the exit. ‘Run.’ He yelled.

  The undead moved to intercept them, but it was the metal songbirds which targeted her the most. They descended in shrieking flocks that tore at her activewear. Swan battered them off as best she could with the Slagblade.

  The other three had made it to the exit and were hanging right at the edge. Swan charged forwards, slowed by her armour and the relentless songbirds attacks. Within striking distance of the doorway, the songbirds shrieked, and the full flock descended. They clusterflocked her.

  The songbirds swarmed around her, disorienting her, covering her with drapes of gauzy fabric that appeared from the air. The dress like bindings constricted her, slowing her ability to swing her sword. The birds flashed metallic blue in the sunlight. Their chorus vibrated her bones. Their song was the sound of metal on metal, of roaring engines and kickstart motors.

  Images flashed in her mind.

  A forge, of twisting rhodium, platinum and gold spiralling in the sky, a collapsed mess of metal, outside her forge. A blade of slag. The turned back of her father.

  With a roar, Swan swung out with her blade.

  Crack.

  The flock scattered. A single bird lay collapsed on the ground trying to take flight. Somehow Swan knew it was the same one that had started all this. One wing hung loosely by its side, squawking in pain as it tried to move it. It was dragging itself along the floor. The sight triggered a memory from her youth, of her brother, of a mistake.

  ‘Strength over beauty.’ She muttered.

  ‘Come on, Swan.’ Gale called from the exit. His harpoon sailed past to skewer an encroaching undead. Swan stared down at the injured bird, dismally trying to take flight. She reached down awkwardly and took it slowly in her gauntleted hands. She lifted it to a pocket and tucked the songbird inside. It warbled a note and stopped struggling.

  ‘Own your mistakes,’ Swan whispered. ‘This is for you, Sparkles.’

  She charged through the exit.

  Gale - Together tested

  Nothing reveals a student’s character like a healthy dose of competition.

  The journal of Grimace the Heretic.

  ‘You two got anything you need to say. Or are you gonna play nice?’ Gale said to Yip and Swan. Both avoided looking at each other.

  Gale rolled his eyes and touched his copy of Brene Brown’s ‘dare to lead’ in his pocket. ‘Fine, just keep your shit together. Yip, any opportunity was what you told me right? Well she can punch a hole through anything we run into. Swan, whatever has got your knickers in a knot, Yips got a playbook to the bloody exam, so we are going to work together like adults. For self-interest if nothing else.’

  Swan and Yip both grumbled under their breath.

  ‘Don’t suppose he’s got a playbook for this has he?’ Swan asked.

  Three golems, constructed of bones, stood guard in the canyon. Thick metal collars fastened around their necks and threads of light tied them to a central stake on the ground. Salt covered the earth, and the walls were jagged white rock. A soft mist curled around the edges of the canyon.

  Yip shook his head. ‘Another new test, why did I bother doing research. I mean it's fun sure, but its been useless this exam.’

  ‘Bone golems,’ Gale whispered peeking round at rock at the entrance to the canyon. ‘Where’d they capture those.’

  The bone golems stood three times the height of a man, skeletal machinations of bone and Script. They stood still gazing down the canyon, the bones that comprised their faces moved slowly. The different bones reformed constantly, striving for the semblance of life.

  ‘No this seemsrealfair,’ muttered Yip. He shot another dirty look at Gale. Gale patted his Safeguard, whatever Giltynan had done had screwed them over. They were trying to push through the hardest levels rather than a random spread. Gale nodded, he’d never heard of bone golems in the entrance exam. A single blow from a bone golem could crack an airship’s hull. These were the fragments of a broken god. On an entrance exam to University, that he had paid through the nose for. Where had they even got them? There hadn’t been a breakbone fever outbreak for years. At least none they'd told the public.

  Gale eyed the thin mist at the edge of the canyon and the scant cover it provided. He turned back to the branching path they had come down. They would have to backtrack and lose about thirty minutes to go around this. The counter on his chest now read 176.

  ‘What cowardly trick do you have prepared for this test Gale?’ Titus asked. ‘You going to offer them a drink?’

  Gale had once heard an NRL player described as ‘the train without a station.’ Barrelling through the opposition and life’s challenges with sheer force. That was how he would describe Titus Mangrove.

  Swan clipped Titus on the ear. ‘Quiet numbnuts, do you want them to hear us.’

  ‘I don’t think they can get us here.’ Gale said. ‘That chain doesn’t seem to stretch very far.’

  ‘I can take em,’ Titus said. He stretched his biceps and went to stand. Gale grabbed his shoulder and pointed to another entrance. From another entrance to the canyon, a group of students came forward. In their lead was a battered-looking adolescent male with an eye patch and prematurely silver-grey hair. Flint, he’d heard him called during the entrance panel. Flint hefted a war hammer and had a pack of eight bruised but hulking candidates with him, three humans, two wyldkin twins and one komodo.

  Flint grinned like a madman and the group rushed the golems. They fanned out into a crescent moon shape. The students on the flanks threw spears from the side while the front pack engaged. The komodo, who was both flab and muscle crammed in the shape of a barrel, rushed to the front line. The komodo carried a shield twice his height with swirling red and orange on the front.

  The spears struck the golem from the side, and Flint rushed from behind barrel lizard, swinging for the golems knees. Another student leapt out of the shield, teleporting, with a spear aimed at its head.

  The golem didn’t even turn its head. One hand battered aside the spear. Bony spikes shot out of its legs hammering into Flint. Two more golems charged into the spear-throwing students on the flanks, knocking them into the walls of the canyon. They blinked out in flashes of blue.

  The komodo rushed to cover with the shield, planting it hard in the ground. The Script on it extended out, gathering rocks to form a half wall around them. The golems stopped. They turned and walked back to their original positions. The two remaining students, Flint and the komodo, licked their wounds behind the half wall of rock and shield. The wyldkin popped up beside them a moment later, having somehow survived the bony missiles.

  ‘Visual based only,’ muttered Gale. ‘The golems stopped attacking once the students hid from view. We could try to sneak through using the mist as partial cover. We could still turn back. We’re still somewhere near the middle of the pack. Those bone golems could wipe us out with a misstep.’

  Titus was chomping at the bit to have a crack at the bone golems. ‘What a test of manliness. Truly this would prove one's mettle. One swift kick to the nads and they’ll drop like anyone else.’ Titus started to leap forward until Swan grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back. She half sat on him to keep him in place.

  Yip remained silent, running numbers in his head.

  A shaft of sunlight pierced the mists. A single student strode into the canyon, clad in blazing light. Swan placed one hand to her forehead.

  ‘Oh for fucks sake, its Adam’. Swan said.

  With his pointed ears and bronzed skin, Adam was unmistakably a Paramouran. He walked with noble bearing at almost 7 feet tall. He wore robes which bore a lotus upon the front. On his head sat a red and white crown, glowing in the sunlight. Like a gree
k adonis, he had a chiselled jawline, rippling physique and eyes with irises like melted gold. The light shone off all parts of him without flaw, without imperfection.

  The bone golems rose to face him. Adam smashed into the first one with a golden sword, covering fifty metres as though it was nothing. The first bone golem shattered into pieces. He moved straight through it, flowing into a flawless strike against the approaching second golem which fared no better than its colleague. As the third golem struck at him from behind, a golden light obliterated it. Adam vanished into the mists, and Gale cocked an eyebrow at Swan.

  ‘Friend of yours?’

  ‘Never mind that!’ proclaimed Swan, ‘Follow in his wake, before the test resets’.

  ‘Doesn’t seem very manly,’ said Titus.

  ‘You want to fight them or the guy that kicked the snot out of them?’ Swan said.

  Titus’s eyes lit up, and he charged into the canyon, thongs slapping on the rock. Titus threw a glance at the injured four behind the rock shield and threw them a spare waterskin, saluting their courage.

  Gale swirled his drink. Crowds of revellers in clearly cheap Oktoberfest garb belted out drinking songs. Beer wenches brought heaving steins to long tables of customers. The four of them sat at a table, all having been served drinks. Titus had emptied his and filled it with a tinny of VB. Yip had already lapped the room and reported the only way out was a heavy steel door with trolls guarding it. The number one hundred ticked down in glowing red on Gale’s chest.

  Ninety-nine.

  A slim man with well-coiffed hair, a perfectly groomed beard and three quarter length chinos came up to them. ‘Welcome friends, I am Brewd, can I offer you a craft beer, its from a delicious microbrewery in Alexandria? No perhaps a premixed whiskey or a low carb lime spliced ale?’

  They all stared at him. Yip had knives out in his hand, and Swan levelled her sword. Titus pulled his VB well away.

  ‘Everything tastes good here friends, other rooms are harsh, think of this room as your siesta, your save point, your short rest. This room is nothing so low-brow as a fight or a bar-room brawl. No, to pass this room, all you four need to do is drink. Well, that’s not entirely it. The four of you simply need to outdrink me,’ Brewd finished with a twinkle in his eye.

  Gale grimaced. He didn’t drink much, Swan gave him a faint shrug, and Yip looked skittish. Gale eyed off the drinking god and then down at his malfunctioning Safeguard. There was no way this was a siesta room.

  ‘You call this Oktoberfest.’ Titus said. ‘More like dry July, Octsober or no drink November.’ Titus drained another beer. The drinking gods composure froze, and the crowd fell silent.

  ‘I will outdrink you, and I’ll do it by myself!’ Titus stood up and cracked his neck from side to side. ‘On my honour as a man, never to refuse a challenge from an equal’.

  Brewd gestured to a table and chairs on a dais. Titus led the way up to them. Gale went to step up to help the chivalrous bogan, but Swan placed a hand on his arm.

  ‘Wait, knowingly or not, Titus has a point. Better he do this solo, if we’re all drunk while we face the rest of the trials, that's pretty much an auto-fail. Titus is putting his trust in us to get him through the rest of the trials by taking the bullet. Well…that or he’s an idiot.’ Swan said with a flicker of doubt.

  ‘What is this…not so…manuary….ummm…oy….what rhymes with August?’ Titus yelled back to the three of them from the dais opposite Brewd.

  Swan put her head in her hands with a sigh.

  ‘Bore-gust!…I got it guys don’t worry, stop brainstorming.’

  Their counter ticked down to ninety-five.

  The Drinking God clicked his fingers, and a selection of beers, wines and spirits floated from the racks. ‘As the challenger, you may have the honour of choosing your poison,’ Brewd said.

  ‘We will be drinking 4X, the humblest of drinks’ Titus said, picking a cheap set of tinnies from the air. He slammed it down to the table.

  Gale looked over at Yip, ‘I’ll stay here, perhaps you and Swan should get a better view.’

  ‘Yes…’ Yip said, his eyes scouring the ceiling. ‘Come on, Swan.’

  The two of them shuffled off, and Gale surveyed the room. He had read about Brewd in his research. Brewd’s enormous cauldron, stolen from giants, dominated the hall. It floated around pouring freely into the cups of revellers. Gale could see evidence of other deities in the room. By the fire was a portrait of Silenus, the Greek god of wine and to the front was a statue to Radegast, the Slavic god of drinking and hospitality. One reveller even had a striking similarity to Yi-ti the Chinese god said to have created rice wine.

  A female reveller, with an ageless look, sat down next to Gale. She wore a purple gown, and two small horns protruded from her jet black hair. ‘Care to wager on the winner, friend?’

  ‘No, I’ve got little enough money as it is.’ Gale replied.

  ‘Well, I could always mention to Brewd what your friends are up to.’ She said, moving away.

  ‘What are the stakes?’ Gale grabbed her arm. His eyes flicked upwards and back down.

  ‘Merely engaging conversation, call me Siris,’ she said, taking her seat. ‘Did you know beer started in Mesopotamia and spread around the world? There is power in being the first, even if you are forgotten.

  Brewd currently holds the position of power, but we tend to trade, a little game to keep ourselves entertained in this prison. There is so little new to discuss here.’ She swirled her wine and considered it. Siris lapsed into a melancholy, watching the competition.

  Titus and Brewd traded drinks. Brewd’s appearance began to change. His perfectly coiffed hair started to become more lank, his sculpted jawline began to puff out with layers of fat. His nose swelled, crossed with redness and veins. His belly became a bulging gut. If before he had been a fine champagne flute, he was now a keg on legs.

  After seven pints in the space of thirty minutes Titus had started to flag, but he pushed on, and Brewd changed, Titus seemed to take on a faint white glow, his Canuteian marks coaxed to life.

  ‘Ridiculous,’ said Siris. ‘He’s poisoning himself with drink’.

  Sixty-two.

  Gale’s foot started tapping. Titus was reaching his limitations. Somehow he had downed enough to knock out a horse and yet he was pushing on. Although Brewd’s appearance had changed, he had shown no sign of slowing. What was more, Brewd was an angry drunk. The revellers had all paused to watch until one of them called out.

  ‘Hey how come my cups empty?’

  Someone cried out, pointing to the ceiling. Everyone turned their gaze to the Cauldron floating overhead. All the cauldrons outlets were stoppered, the cauldron groaning as though under immense pressure. Yip’s head visible at the top next to Swan. Swan was sealing the lid closed with liquid metal, her Script glowing. Yip grabbed Swan with distaste and vanished in a murky blur. Both of them reappeared next to Gale.

  ‘Move!’ Yip yelled, and the cauldron exploded. Beer came out in a wave crashing through the room. Gale and Swan grabbed Titus, Brewd’s face turned to anger, but a tide of beer struck him. The tide threatened to swamp them.

  Gale tapped his Script and pushed the tide around them, creating a narrow path to the exit. The wave raced around them and slammed into the troll bouncers, knocking them away. Gale felt his chest tighten and fluid cough up from his lungs. Swan kicked the exit open. Gale lost his grip on the tide of beer, and it smashed into them, surging them through the exit.

  On a tide of booze and floating plastic steins, they tumbled into the final challenge. Gale collapsed onto a metallic, sterile pathway. In front of him was the moat at the base of the upper mountain. The path ahead of them climbed through the air, with no regards to the laws of gravity, like an M.C. Escher painting. The way to the peak zigzagged through the air like a pipe, sometimes doubling back on itself for no clear reasons. At other times parts of the path became inscrutable and impossible to comprehend. Floating through the air were dozens of ha
mmers, nails, wires and workbenches. They tumbled in a confusing cacophony of industry. Clouds of floating paper with marks out of a hundred and performance reviews swirled amongst them. Giant rotating platforms flipped between red angry faced emoji’s and smiling happy-faced emoji’s with no particular trigger. Atop the mountain was a shining gate, a fractal gate above which hung the symbol of the university slowly revolving like some high prestige Mcdonald’s sign. The kind of McDonald's sign you see at three in the morning when nothing else is open, and you have to pee real bad. Finally, there was a glowing red number high above the exit.

  Eleven.

  Another group of four dropped beside them, on a tide of milk and honey. The group of four stared, drenched in a viscous fluid, then looked at the groups working their way up the mountain. Then they all stared at the number on their shirts which clocked down.

  Ten.

  Shit.

  Yip leapt away in a murky step. Yip shot up the twisting path ahead, shortcutting the trail by cutting a straight line upwards.

  ‘Traitor’ hissed Swan.

  ‘Don’t break rule number one.’ Titus yelled at Yip. One of the other group flung out a golden web that covered everyone, including his teammates. He took off running, every man for himself. Gale eyed Swan and Titus. Would they turn on him too?

  Titus ripped apart the golden webbing, his Canuteian marking lighting up. Gale felt the net constricting on him, weighing him down. Swan cut her way free with the Slagblade and Titus pulled her out. Swan and Titus looked at Gale still trapped, the countdown on their shirt and back at each other. They nodded in agreement. Swan charged at Gale and brought the Slagblade arcing down.

  It cut Gale free. Swan reached out a hand.

  ‘My word is good as gold.’

  Gale grasped her forearm and was hauled up out of the net. There were easily fifty people ahead of them with a vertical ascent of over a kilometre. There was no way to get there in time. Everything had been stacked against them, and now they would fail at the final hurdle. A single silver spark shot from his Safeguard as if Giltynan was giving him a final ‘frak you.’