Dark Iron King II: Arcadia Falls (Unreal Universe Book 5) Read online

  “Sunlight.” Agnethea raised a bemused eyebrow. “’neath all of The Dome, sunlight bothers you.”

  “Well, yeah.” Garth admitted honestly, pleased that his hostess had finally tired of playing both the role of seductress and would-be murderess. He was worn out by resisting the temptation, so he could only imagine how the Golem felt. “Everything else makes sense, in a roundabout, fucked up sort of way. Even the Kingsblood mutations suffer from follow a kind of logic, if you’re willing to accept that here under The Dome, ‘logic’ is … malleable.”

  The Queen of Ickford shook her head in honest mystification. “I should love nothing more than to sit down properly with you and pick that brain of yours, Master Nickels. The things you take in stride are things that have perplexed me for thousands of years. The things that hang you up, quite the opposite, as is your quest to understand sunlight. It is there when we need it, gone when darkness must fall. What else is there?”

  Garth caught himself in time, but only barely; his lips had been phrasing the return phrase ‘And Light Shall Rise’ without any interaction with his brain. Though he’d only heard it a few times there at the end of his time before climbing into Bravo, the attitude was one that those Elder Harmony soldiers would’ve surely driven into the hearts and minds of the God Army.

  As ominous and portentous as it all sounded, the sentiment was nevertheless very, very true.

  Darkness did need to fall. The Light had to rise.

  He waved a hand. “We digress. I could demand answers for that, and why there’s no rain, and all of that, but we’re here to discuss Obsidian Golems.” Garth added darkly, “We’re here to discuss Young Luther.”

  Agnethea’s snow-driven skin actually succeeded in growing paler still. “The nature of an Obsidian Golem, Master Nickels, is by necessity solitary. Or, mayhap, should be. As I mentioned before, when those of us cursed –or blessed, as too many of my kind see themselves of late- enough to become a Golem first taste Dark Iron, there is no real way to know what has happened. That initial draught of Vicious Elixir fills everyone with unsurpassed rage and a hunger for more, a thirst for battle, a need to destroy. It is all part of the King’s plan, after all. To a single one, every Golem imbibing goes on the Gauntlet, as naturally everyone must.”

  “Naturally.” The Gauntlet had been talked about often on his travels, both by the gearheads they’d met and the few Estate folks that’d lingered while their tools were mended, but always with a twist of scorn and a hint of scorn.

  Nobody did the Gauntlet anymore.

  “Indeed.” Agnethea resumed, the words reluctant to be uttered. “But the next time a Golem tries to drink his or her fill, in the presence of their boon companions after a victorious killing of a King, then it becomes apparent. Bloodily so. Brothers and sisters of the Iron fall on us, Master Nickels, and with savage fury once we are … uncovered.”

  Agnethea shut her eyes for a moment. Her introduction to Golem-life had been bloody.

  “My display for you earlier, when I showed you Dark Iron finds no place to dig?” Agnethea caught the quick grimace and smiled knowingly. Oh yes, her unwilling assassin had definitely been through the Weld, as it’d once been called, long ago and far away. “I … held a detail back, if only for the sake of good storytelling. Dark Iron finds no longer finds purchase, but only after that first time. ‘tis the second time when all is revealed. All the chanting, all the singing the wretched souls get up to when a new brother or sister is being born, it grows still and quiet in the circle as a nascent Golem just … stands there, realizing. Realizing with shock and horror that they have become the very thing they’ve been raised to believe is awful and horrible.

  Then they realize something else; that their friends are coming to the same conclusion. Now, there is one final thing that happens to one of my kind, but it is rarely seen firsthand. The eyes, Master Nickels, the eyes of a Golem change, transforming into the queerly colored lenses you. Then, as I said, boon traveling companions transform into raging beasts. I am certain you know what follows.”

  “A whackload of gearheads get themselves dead.” Questions were slowly forming in his head, small … well, not quite inconsistencies, but there was something he was missing. It’d come to him eventually.

  One thing was obvious, though. Dark Iron had a thing for eyeballs.

  Agnethea’s eyes were a weird maelstrom of crystalline colors, catching and reflecting natural light until they burned with hues never imagined.

  Little wonder she covered them. Used to weird as he was, the anomaly that were Agnethea’s eyes were discomforting. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he felt as though he had seen something similar to this, but there was no time to focus on what felt like one of his very earliest memories.

  If he found them weird, normal people would find the Queen’s eyes terrifying.

  Agnethea smiled. “Indeed, Master Nickels. A … whackload. Some few Golems may begin to suspect sooner rather than later that they are afflicted, but only if they’re unusually observant. They might notice that injuries have become a thing of the past, though in nearly all cases, they just believe they are inordinately skilled. They might display a level of strength not normally associated with Dark Iron. Usually, if this happens, they think nothing of it. There is no manual on what happens to those who drink the crudey-crude. Some display great levels of strength, others, cunning, others still, fantastic speed or flexibility. But when that next sip passes the lips and the eyes change and their world comes crashing down around their ears and a Golem is forced to defend herself against people she’d traveled with for days, months, even years … it is no easy thing, and the ignited rage burning through her … doesn’t diminish. For any Golem. A small percentage retain enough … what ? Civility? Whatever it is, they take themselves away to hide, but most … most exact painful revenge on the rest of Arcade City. For though we become Golem, though we are filled with never-ending anger, we still cannot help but think ‘I am different, I am me, I am no monster, why am I treated this way?’”

  Garth had the distinct feeling that Agnethea’s explanation of what happens to a Golem was torn directly from her own past. There was a certain sorrow to the tale that didn’t come from repetition: this pain had never been spoken aloud. “That’s … terrible.”

  It had to be terrible, waking up one morning, doing for a King in the most valiant of ways, laughing and joking and eager to drink your allotted Dark Iron, only to change into a thing the whole world called abomination, demon, monster. To have that happen, and then to kill those very same friends you imagined spending the rest of your life with. Awful.

  It did not, however, exculpate a fresh Golem from torturing people. From burning them from their homes, from destroying cities, from … all the evil they did. Had done. Would continue to do. Agnethea had made great strides towards redemption with Ickford, and her request to save it from the peerage –assassination and/or outright murder notwithstanding- was about the only reason he was still planted in his chair.

  Agnethea’s heart tingled at the sorrow evident in Garth’s tone. He was continually taking her by surprise. Who was he, outside? That he should find it so easy to be saddened by an origin story that always ended with the blood of innocents being shed by the gallon? It boggled her mind. “And so we come to the burgeoning sorrow that has resulted in the true abomination that is Young Luther.”

  Images of the pale devil-child, clad in pure white clothes, standing in the middle of a thick pile of squirming Dark Iron blood flashed in Garth’s mind. Few things bugged the fuck out of him, but creepy children were one of them. The only horror movies to crawl under his skin in the proto-Reality had been those centered on possessed or otherwise supernaturally tormented kids. Totally fucked up.

  Horror movie aficionado that he was and having a firm grasp on some of the more desperately evil things that happened inside Arcade City on a regular basis, Garth gestured for his hostess to continue, mindful that the things she was talking about were discomf
orting for someone who’d lived eleven thousand years and had been –still was, probably- the central figure in many nightmares and horror stories City-wide.

  So he just knew Young Luther’s origin tale was going to be just fucking awful.

  Agnethea opened her mouth, tried to find some delicate way to reveal this dreadful thing. Instead, she blurted, “Some … quirk … in our second genesis prevents us from having children. The majority of us stay young and beautiful until one day we either grow tired of living and decide to take our own lives, or we are killed in an overwhelmingly violent way. Our lives are long, Master Nickels, and there are some amongst my kind who take the ease with which even gearheads can procreate as a sign that we are, indeed, abomination. That these cruel, twisted caricatures can find joy and happiness, and look with fondness upon the next generation? That drives many Golems past the point of common sense, and this soil where most of the awful things blossom.

  I make no apologies for what I did, nor do I try to excuse the others. I am merely … setting the stage.” Agnethea nodded. Yes, setting the stage, for a most regrettable drama played out behind her back. “My people, men and women I’ve known for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years, are fiendish, Master Nickels. They hate humanity and gearhead-kind with the passion of Dark Iron lust. But some … some …”

  “Grew lonely.” Garth took a low, slow breath. It was as he’d feared. Agnethea put a fluttering, trembling hand to her brow, and he wasn’t entirely certain, but he thought she might be crying. Gallantly –or whatever the proper word would be for a truly Bizarroworld moment like this one- Garth took the reins. “In secret, probably, because you are the oldest and no matter how much regular people hate you, you must’ve made some connections over the years, the people you want me to kill began kidnapping children. Began … testing them. With Iron.”

  The thought of young boys and girls being intentionally subjected to the soul-flaying experience that is Dark Iron had Specter squirming violently. Reticence in wasting time on the Queen’s side quest vanished, replaced by hungry anger. He’d do for this cabal, of that, he was certain.

  The darkness they’d perpetuated might even call for Specter, because some things just needed to be dealt with that way. Their travesties would be met with an equal level of viciousness.

  Garth was unashamed to admit that he’d barely survived the process himself, and he’d already been through atomic-level nanotech grafting, and that had hurt worse than anything he’d previously experienced.

  To put a child through that process was inexcusable.

  To put many children through it?

  Specter yawned wide and Garth’s thoughts echoed red.

  He opened his mouth to resume, but Agnethea had recovered from her moment of morbid regret. “Just so, Master Nickels, just so. The people on this list,” she touched a piece of paper on her desk, hand-written names numbering a half-dozen, “captured children from all over Arcade City. They ranged far and wide, across all levels of our Domed world. They even risked Arcadia itself, thinking that perhaps the progeny of Brigadiers and nobility might be more fertile. In the end, it took, according to reports I heard from someone once loyal to me, ‘astonishingly few’ children to find the right combination of circumstances to tease out the Golem-spirit.”

  Specter squirmed again. Garth reminded himself quite firmly that though these asshole Golems might very well deserve the kind of punishment his own Dark Side might deliver, the fallout from that colossal display of vengeance might destroy half the fucking city. Could he release just a bit? A bit, and remain sane? “Young Luther, then.”

  Agnethea laughed bitterly at the moniker. “He is anything but young now, Master Nickels. The … my … they evaded my gaze until it was well and truly too late, revealing the presence of their twisted little messiah a hundred years after he’d been … molded. Oh, so proud they were, so happy at what they’d given … birth to. You know what Dark Iron does, yes? At base? It’s … primary function?”

  “From what I’ve gathered,” Garth answered slowly, dredging through everything he’d heard anyone he’d spoken to about the stuff, “Dark Iron calls up all the bad inside a person and forces them to work through it. Moving inwards, killing better Kings, is supposed to give you cleaner Dark Iron, and allegedly you eventually slough off all the bitter, dark things until you’re Mr. Clean.”

  Garth kept his lips jammed shut on the nature of his own Dark Iron affliction. There was no need for Agnethea to know or even suspect that he was –on and off- fighting his own literal demon, that wrestling with the hunger and thirst and rage of a Kin’kithal was unlike anything anyone had ever had to deal with before.

  “Now imagine all that summoned rage, all that dark, bitter venom pulsing through the veins of a child. A child, who like all children, is curious. A child who lacks the understanding and wisdom of someone who’s lived a proper span of years before falling under Dark Iron’s grim gauntlet.” Agnethea remembered the day her so-called friends and allies had strolled into Ickford, bearing with them their child-sized progeny, how they’d caroused and jostled, how pleased they’d been that at last, at long last, any Golem who wanted a child could have one.

  She recalled their shock at her displeasure. Agnethea shook her head indignantly. It was beyond her capacity to even imagine how in this world they’d fooled themselves into thinking she would be accepting of a hundred-fifty year old perversion.

  “Children are sociopaths.” Garth declared, drawing a start from Agnethea. “I read or heard that somewhere. Can’t remember. But, yeah. I can see the problem.”

  Boy could he ever. Garth felt he understood enough about the average Golem and his or her mountain­-sized grab bag of psychoses and emotional baggage to sort of get the gist of why they did the things they did. It didn’t excuse them from preying on innocent people, and gearheads did fall into the category of innocent, here; these Golems were most Kith-like in their approach to how they dealt with ‘lesser species’, stomping on everyone around them like they were ants.

  Stuff all that rage and anger and superiority into the body of a five year old, and the whole world would burn before too long.

  Garth nodded. As much as he didn’t relish slipping into the old assassin shoes once more –he’d done it often enough in SpecSer to know that it wasn’t precisely his cuppa- the Kin’kithal knew that this particular bit of incredibly fucked-up-edness needed dealing with. “Now. Tell me how your kind can be killed.”

  DarkEye and Book found this question of enough interest to slow down the handshake protocols. Important data was important.

  Agnethea scratched the back of her neck, a wry grin on her face. The last of their secrets, being given to a man who –when she paused to think about it- could easily become as great, if not greater, a threat to Obsidian Golems than the King himself.

  She pressed her hands flat on the desk, pressing so hard the wood buckled a bit. “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘eyes are the windows into the soul’?”

  ***

  As anticipated, Henrietta was a piss-poor combatant, but the ground lost by the doughy-faced immortal when it came to true fighting style was more than recovered in savage desperation; after the first few tentative feints, Henrietta had abandoned all efforts in the usual ‘kicky-punchy-flippy’ tactics that were the hallmark of any bad fighter, resorting instead to whipping around inside the giant warehouse, using everything she came in contact with to either pummel one world-weary Kin’kithal to the ground or to slow him down until she found something better.

  Which was why, Garth reflected moodily as he dabbed gently at his bruised –almost broken- nose instead of standing over her dead body quoting the Highlander’s speech from the end of that movie, he was taking a bit of a breather; he’d only just been beaned across his handsome beak with a huge cast-iron potbellied stove and was now beginning to perhaps admit that ‘lack of martial skill’ was absolutely fucking not the same thing as ‘easy mode instagib’. Staring at bright red blood –frea
kishly tainted with streaks of ebony iron- on his shiny gauntleted hand, Garth chose to accept he’d fucked up in not treating his opponent with more caution.

  Both of them were more or less just chilling at the moment, having arrived at that rare moment in a fight where both parties are one hundred percent committed to pulling the other person’s lower digestive tract out through an earhole but are also totally interested in, y’know, having a little … nap. Even though his opponent’s body language suggested she was about done, Garth nevertheless kept a crafty eye on old Henrietta all the same.

  Henrietta was hurt. More hurt than she’d ever been in her entire three hundred year span. She was cut and bleeding! Great long gashes carved into once unsullied flesh, thick black treacle was –even still- welling up.

  The Golem couldn’t even remember the last time she’d been injured. Not even this badly. At all! E’en still, e’en worse than being injured, there was one thing that was impossible about all of this.

  She was bleeding. Obsidian Golems didn’t do that!

  They were the only true force in Arcade City! They were unstoppable. Immortal. Unbreakable, unbowed, unstoppable.

  A flare of pain so incandescent it made her retch brought Henrietta out of the spiral she’d been in and got her staring at the source of her improbable agony.

  And that wasn’t all, oh no, not at all, not nearly. The … the … devil staring thoughtfully at his own blood was a maniac, a dervish, a whirling tornado of fists, swords, guns … everything; he’d switched from those buzzing, terrifying swords the moment she’d refused to come within arm’s reach to a small pistol that filled the air with bullets every time he pulled the trigger. Either through accident or some bizarre form of providence on the devil’s behalf, one of those spinning missiles had slammed into her open mouth, tearing into the soft flesh all the way down.