King Tides Curse

by C J Timms

  The Infinity Bazaar sat on a growth plate fracture, an old fracture that joined all the known realms. It was the crossroads, the trading post of the realms. Ionhome held the central hub of the Bazaar, but entry points from every realm led here. Even the Deep.

  Swan steered them to the Food Court, a cacophony of smells and sounds. Sizzle and slice, squelch and smoke, saute and simmer. The smell, oh the smell, heavily salted food, fried chicken, spicy tacos, delicious soups. Not a squishburger in sight. They passed a pie wagon with all you can eat for thirty dollars.

  ‘Now easy Titus,’ Swan said. Titus was already gone.

  ‘Well you can’t play frisbee, but you seem to be surviving.’ Jean called out to them, cutting through the crowd. ‘Jack and Gabriel couldn’t make it. So you can order twice as much for me.’ She wore a loose white shirt and brown pants, her hair hanging down to her shoulders. Jean unbuckled her belt a notch and rubbed her belly. A woman after Swan’s own heart.

  ‘You sure that athlete’s figure can take it?’ Swan asked. ‘Wouldn’t want you to sink in your next match.’

  Jean chuckled. ‘I think it’ll be fine…perhaps it will put hairs on my chin.’

  Swan pursed her lips very fine. The boys snickered behind her.

  ‘Well, go ahead.’ Jean said, sinking into a chair and loosening her belt again. ‘I’ve been fasting all morning.’

  Sterling pulled Swan and Gale aside. ‘Look I know we’re tight on money…but I wouldn’t mind looking like a big shot here.’ Sterling said, eyes flicking back to Jean the Lioness.

  ‘Maybe you should have held on to, I don’t know, the sword made of gold you had.’ Swan said back.

  Gale smiled, ‘I have an idea.’

  They pooled their meagre pile of coin, and Gale went to one of the vendors. He came back to the group with a big tray of broth. ‘Everyone, meet pho.’

  Pho was a salty beef broth. It had salt, glorious salt. Titus came back last and slammed down a tray laden with pies and sausage rolls. Yip poked at the pho and then brought out a standardised nutrition bar. Gale just raised an eyebrow.

  ‘This food is a mess. I know exactly what I’m eating with this bar, every kilojoule.’ Yip said.

  Titus snatched the Pho from Yip, dunked a pie in it, crammed the soggy mess in his mouth and swallowed in one gulp. Everyone stared at him.

  ‘Softens it up…’ Titus said, tapping his temple with one hand, reaching for another pie with the other. ‘I’ve got to get as many down as possible before my stomach catches up and my stomach is right cunning. Nearly as clever as me.’

  Sterling looked like he was about to have a stroke. Jean slapped the table, laughing so hard her eyes watered. Then she swiped a pie and downed it in one bite. Titus gave her two thumbs up.

  Swan cleared her throat. ‘So we wanted your advice if we could Jean?’

  Gale slid a hydrolens across the table and flicked some Script energy into it. An image of the University’s ultimate frisbee harbour flickered into view. The watery image showed House Baxtro getting absolutely wrecked. Baxtro had three players already passed out on the sidelines. Alisdair was toying with the final two. Alisdair sat up high, scorching them with heatwaves, purple flickering from his hands. Alisdair’s teammates kept scoring points with the frisbee.

  Jean leaned back in her seat, put her hands behind her head and whistled. ‘He’s a mean bastard, isn’t he. That’s who you want to beat.’

  Gale’s phone chimed. He checked it and blushed. ‘Swan, Sterling you okay to talk strategy with Jean? I’ve got to meet someone.’ Gale said.

  Yip also motioned to Titus, ‘Come on Titus I need some help carrying things, just wash your hands first.’

  Gale rehearsed lines in his head. He’d frakked up last time he’d seen her. He needed an award-winning compliment. You look great today…no, too generic. It looks like things are going swimmingly, no, Ash hated his puns. Great top you’re wearing? But what if she wore a dress instead?

  ‘Damn. A beard looks good on you.’ Ash said, a cocky grin on her face.

  ‘Ash…you’re looking swimmingly…’ Gale got out. Ash quirked an eyebrow.

  Gale coughed, noted she was wearing a nice floral top. Compliment the top, he thought, compliment the top. Come on you’re crashing, you’re bottoming out.

  ‘Err…and that is a lovely bottom you’re wearing.’

  Frak. His cheeks went bright red. Ash burst into laughter.

  ‘Oh Gale you crack me up. ’ She punched him in the arm. ‘You’re such a good mate.’

  Gale internally shrieked. Some day he would get good at this, someday things would go to plan.

  ‘Err…thanks for coming anyway. After everything.’ Gale said.

  Ash shrugged, ‘I’ve known you a long time. I wouldn’t let one thing get in the way of our friendship.’ Gale went even redder.

  Ash dragged him around the shops. She checked on his progress with Pancakes. Gale was getting much better at managing the seahound. He followed most basic commands.

  ‘You there, young man, want to impress your lady friend?’ said a man atop a gaudy stage. Bright and cheap curtains framed a transparent glass wall, a massive clear glass barrier, the height and width of three men. Flashy neon writing read ‘See the Deep’.

  A man in a worn suit with golden trim gestured from behind a ticket booth. ‘Step right up, young fellow? Ten dollars to touch the Deep.’ He said in a boisterous voice.

  ‘This is wrong,’ Ash whispered. ‘The Deep is not something you can cage or put on display.’

  ‘Perfectly safe,’ said the man on stage tapping on the glass. ‘Ten feet of Locomotyr made glass.’

  Gale stared at the empty ocean in front of him, feeling a pull towards it. He slowly reached out a hand to the glass barrier. He could feel something behind it. Behind a membrane so thin it strained at the seams. Trace blue smoke flickered around his hand. He felt…something…ripple out into it.

  ‘We should go, Gale,’ Ash said and pulled on his arm. Gale shrugged her off. He could almost feel the water beneath his fingers, the tang of salt in the air, the weight of it bearing down.

  A massive tentacle slammed into the glass. It filled the whole viewing screen, rocky skin blurred with squelching suction cups. It strained against the barrier, pushing towards Gale. Ash threw him backwards, and an extra wall slammed into place, blocking off the viewing platform. Alarms went off around the display case, the attendant fainting. The man atop the stage jumped down at them, ‘what did you do? Three years of operating and not so much as a peep, what the frak did you do?’

  Gale let Ashely lead him away, muttering apologies. The tentacle slowly slid along the glass, unable to break through.

  ‘I can’t take you anywhere.’ Ash said.

  Gale grinned at her. ‘And I didn’t even have to pay the ten bucks.’ His grin covered up an internal chaos. He felt something resonating inside him, like the tide surging back and forth. He stepped into one of the side avenues to get away from the crowds.

  Ash put a hand on his shoulder and leaned in close. ‘Gale what did you feel. What happened?’

  Gale met her eyes, only inches from his. In the soft lighting of the side avenue, he felt his heart start pounding. His eyes flicked down to her lips.

  Then he saw them, ducking around the corner, dusters trailing behind them.

  The Unbroken.

  ‘You think that’s bad? You should have seen the time Swan got coated in chocolate cake at high tea.’ Sterling winked at Swan and grinned at Jean. Sterling had a lot of good Swan stories. He knew he was a brilliant storyteller.

  Damn trouble with his family that, did nothing but tell stories about others. They were never the heroes, not even the sidekick.

  Swan narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Not as bad as that pager call out where we used you as bait Sterling. Had to cover you in honey and molasses. One of Gale’s better ideas. How many times did that giant bee sting your butt?’

  Sterling coughed loudly, his hand twitching
to his backside reflexively. Jean banged the table with her fists and wiped a tear from her eye. She dislodged the piles of food wrappers next to her. The girl just kept on eating. Not that Sterling minded, his wallet might though.

  Sterling went to kick Swan in the shins. A flash of silver caught his eye. A toy soldier, the size of his thumb perched on Jean’s shoulder sword drawn in a black robe. Like a lego character made of silver. The only other colour was a dark black fringe of hair that covered one eye. The toy soldier carried a tiny sword.

  The toy soldier fell into a one kneed pose, driving her tiny sword into the centre of a pie that Titus had left behind. No one else seemed to notice. Faint blue traces of Penumbra trailed off her.

  The toy soldier looked up at Sterling then pointed to the left.

 

  It was a harsh voice, but feminine, when she spoke in his head. The toy soldier started carving occult symbols on the surface of the pie. No one else at the table seemed to react. Well, maybe Swan, she looked distracted. Like she was listening to something else. Sterling kept a smile on his face. He was pretty sure this was no hallucination. Still, there was his grandfathers madness, supposed to run in the family.

  Stirling said in his head.

  The toy soldier stared at him, then rolled her eyes. She marched across the table to his hand. The toy soldier thrust its sword out and poked him in the knuckles. Sterling gasped.

  ‘Is something wrong Sterling, you look like you just…’ Jean asked.

  ‘It's all fine,’ Sterling said.

  The toy soldier ran off the side of the table, disappearing in a swirl of black and silver. She reappeared in front of one of the five elevators in the centre of the food court. She scaled the walls using a series of daggers as pitons. She leapt and jammed her sword into the top floor button. She then waited patiently till the doors opened and strutted into the empty elevator. The doors went to close, and the up arrow illuminated, the little warrior turned back to face him.

 

  ‘Sterling, what is it?’ asked Jean. Sterling however was still watching the elevator door. He heard Swan twist in her chair sharply and summon the slagblade.

  The elevator re-opened, filled with armed men in brown duster jackets. Their faces covered with metal helmets and they had metal chest plates like the Australian bushranger Ned Kelly. They had drawn rifles and were aiming into the crowded food court.

  One of them limped from the elevator, hand on his hip and threw a circular pad out into the food court. The pad expanded into a glowing sphere and flared white. A bubble of colourlessness flashed outwards. Sterling felt something reach into him and yank at his Script. He dived to the floor, dragging Jean with him. Swan tackled them both at the same time.

  The world inverted.

  Everything went black and white, a monochrome madness. His Script was gone, his magic absent. For the first time in his life, there was a void where the very core of him should be. Sterling pushed himself to his knees, and he trembled, his knees shaking.

  The men in dusters spread out throughout the food court. Shots rang out. One charged straight at him.

  Sterling reached out for power and found nothing. The man clocked him in the jaw, and he hit the ground. Sterling felt empty. A hole ripped in his chest where his power should be. He had never felt so barren, so lacking. His chest was heavy, and his heart pounded.

  ‘All right listen up’ roared a voice. A one-armed man stood atop an overturned crepe cart. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, unlike the others, a brown duster and a copper locket around his neck. ‘Everybody stay down, and we’ll have no trouble. My name is Admetus.

  We are Unbroken…and we alone remember.’

  Yip looked over at the tabletop gaming store then back to the donation box. The box was for Volkstorm, an appeal for the orphanage there. A layer of dust covered the box.

  Titus pulled his pockets out and grimaced. They were running near on empty even with the pager call outs. They’d only paid for Jean’s lunch because they needed a favour. Yip looked at the piled tabletop figurines he’d picked out, then back at the charity box for Volkstorm. He sighed and put his last few coins in.

  Yip felt the world shift.

  Everything went black and white. Yip’s body went weak even as his mind whirred with calculations. Yip’s books collapsed around him, he scrabbled, picking them up and jamming them in his bag. He tried to summon his Script and felt nothing. His magic was gone. He held up a hand and watched as murky brown shifted over his palm then flickered away.

  Titus sagged beside him. ‘The world….lost its manliness.’ Titus held a hand to his head.

  In black and white, crowds of people panicked and fled in all directions. Gunfire rang out in the distance. The platform shops became chaotic. Some ground to a halt, some accelerated or careened off on wild trajectories. A platform crashed past their heads and ignited a shop beside them. Even the flame was a dull grey.

  Yip pulled Titus into a now stationary store. Titus and Yip ducked low beneath the shop window. Outside two Unbroken moved down the street, firing off their weapons into the air. Two of the Unbroken grabbed a straggler, a kid holding a gun to him. The kid couldn’t have been more than six.

  ‘Leave the kid. We need to move the gold.’ The first said.

  The man with the gun looked at the kid. ‘Another hostage doesn’t hurt.’ They stepped onto a shaking but still moving platform. Yip put a hand to Titus’s shoulder and shook his head. They had to be very careful here. Magic wasn’t working, which meant those guns probably would.

  ‘No magic Titus. We need to hide.’ Yip said.

  Titus winked and flexed his biceps. ‘I don’t need magic to take out these knobs. I brought two guns of my own.’

  Titus launched himself out the window. He tackled the two Unbroken off their moving platform into the street. Titus’s first blow snapped into a belly knocking the wind from the first man. He shoved the Unbroken away then grabbed the second kneeing him in the balls, dropping him to the ground.

  Titus turned back to the first to see he’d drawn a gun.

  ‘Lights out big fella.’ The first man said.

  A streak of murky black struck the Unbroken slamming him into the wall. Yip approached, flickers of Script surrounding a small miniature figurine in his hand.

  ‘Idiot, I was saving that.’ Yip said. Yip kicked the gun away from the second guard and tied him up, taking his radio.

  ‘Did you just use magic?’ Titus said. ‘How?’

  Yip held up a small Warhammer troll figurine. ‘I always store a small amount of Script in a shielded device. I can’t store much, though. That was a one-off.’

  Titus cracked his knuckles. ‘Wanna see if we can’t surprise a few more of these guys?’

  Yip grinned. ‘Sure, but first.’ Yip put a crossbow in the second man’s face. ‘Tell us about this gold.’

  Swan crouched on the ground having tackled Jean to the floor. Jean winked with a dumb grin, concussion setting in. Swan’s casted arm screamed at her, pain rippling up her body. Swan rolled over and put her back to an overturned table. She felt her muscles balk. The slagblade felt so heavy in her one working hand.

  ‘Why do their guns work, where’s my frakking strength? Where’s my Script?’ Swan said.

  Sterling spat to the side. ‘That device, it's suppressing the natural Script of the area. Frakking Unbroken.’

  Swan glanced out the side of the table. The Unbroken were forming a ring, herding people into the centre of the room. The dusters had a patch on the breast pocket, a continuous circular wall surrounding planet Earth. Their leader, Admetus, stood atop a crepe van gesturing wildly with his one arm.

  ‘We alone remember, we alone remain unbroken!’ Admetus roared. ‘For Glenrowan.’

  ‘For Glenrowan’ his men yelled back.

  ‘For Sadie,’ the leader said.

  ‘For Sadie.’ His men bellowed back

  Just her and Sterling to fix
this, Jean still concussed. Sterling looked rough as guts, and Swan wasn’t much better.

  ‘The Unbroken, what do they want?’ Swan hissed at Sterling.

  ‘They’re anti-immigration,’ Sterling said, watching for the approaching gunmen. ‘They want to seal up all the growth plate fractures leading to Earth so that no monsters can get in from the Deep.’

  ‘But that would block offFfracturesmiths too?’ Swan said.

  Sterling grimaced. ‘They say they can seal all the fractures, even the growth plates. They call themselves "Unbroken" because they want walls all around the realms. They want each world healed. One unbroken world.’

  Swan’s eyes bugged out, ‘Who would be dumb enough to think that would work?’

  ‘They’re composed of people without Script who know about all, well, this.’ Sterling gestured around them.

  ‘But I thought the Penumbra wiped memories of those without Script?’ Swan said.

  ‘Usually but if someone has repeated exposure to it, memories start resurfacing over time. Some people seem to have a more natural resistance to it as well. Or they can retain those memories with a particularly powerful trigger.’

  ‘Like a missing arm.. ‘ Swan muttered.

  A gun clicked beside them.

  ‘Oy you three, walk very slowly, into the centre of the room. Hey boss, I found us a couple of smiths.’

  Spur nursed his instant coffee like a mother, her newborn. He tenderly rocked it back and forth. He had a hell of a headache. His Script was dull, and he could barely sense it. Everything was black and white. Grace rocked her son in a pram nearby, and their intern was panicking in the centre of the briefing room.

  ‘What's this all about anyway?’ Spur rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

  ‘The Unbroken,’ said Grace. ‘They’ve taken hostages. Everyone else is out on patrol looking for the Blood Knight. It's you, me and the big man over here.’ Grace pointed at the intern, Jaz, who had dropped his long nails onto the floor.

  ‘That dome they’ve thrown up is blocking anyone else from getting to us. Hell, we were lucky we were on the inside of it, or there’d be no-one.’