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

  “Still and all,” Blake clapped his hands slowly, watching as a metal pipe as big around as a thousand year old oak tree turned translucent from the power moving through it, “not a bad lifetime’s work.”

  Somewhere in the hidden catacombs of King’s Will, Erg whispered agreement.

  Blake could feel the disembodied being’s curiosity, but Erg said nothing.

  “Blather away all you like, you floating smidgeon of insanity,” Blake announced aloud as he walked back towards his great planning desk, a huge monstrosity he’d summoned up out of boredom, “you hain’t got that much time left anyways. So have your fun, Erg, whisper in my ears and natter on about things as make no true difference.”

  “So,” Erg’s voice whispered through a tiny speaker set into one of the many devices built by and then quickly abandoned by the King throughout the millennia, “then you have plans to leave Ickford, Agnethea and Garth N’Chalez to their own maneuvers as well? If, as you say, things are moving along now and nothing can stop you, surely letting them live will cause no harm no anyone.”

  “Well,” Erg continued before the King could speak, laughing so hard the small speaker cut in and out, “no harm to anyone that matters.”

  Blake plopped himself down in the comfortable leather chair and swung his feet up onto the desk and he stared at his feet for some time before answering. “I thought about that, aye, in truth I did indeed. Just leaving the blasted Kin’kithal warrior alone, of letting that devilish she-bitch Agnethea watch her city crumble under the pressure of those she once called friends, true enough. ‘twould be as simple as doing nothing.”

  Erg’s voice bounced around the room a bit before settling into a speaker better equipped to handle the stresses of his weird, ‘Priestly electro-tones. “There is a but, there, is there not, My King, the One and Only Barnabas Blake?”

  Blake twiddled his feet. Just past them, over where the Enforcer Suits bristled like so many fuses in a gigantic box, another huge distribution pipe began throbbing with a low, slow trickle of power. It was all well and good. Everything was in hand.

  Even were Garth to swell to sudden strengths and abilities never before dreamed of, even were Agnethea to push past the fiendish psychopathy that drove her accursed people firmly enough to truly aid the Kin’kithal in his quest –be it removal of Kingsblood or destruction of The Dome, it wouldn’t –didn’t- matter; the only way to stop the process now was to destroy The Dome itself, and the only way to do that was to find the control room in which the King Himself was presently sat.

  And The Dome was vast. Gigantic. Unless you knew right where to go straight off, you’d spend thousands of lifetimes skulking about, rats in a steampunk maze.

  ”So what if there is?” King Barnabas Blake demanded irately, shooting Erg’s speaker a dirty look.

  “You intend, then, on raining your Kingly might down upon their heads after all.” Erg did not sound surprised in the slightest.

  Blake swung his feet down and gestured at the desk. A computer monitor grew swiftly out of the woodwork, quick as a wink. The monarch quirked a smile at the ticking oaken gears that blossomed across the frame. As much as he oftentimes regretted the nearly obsessive way he’d latched on to this whole steampunk thing that’d been ripped from Chadsik’s mind, there was a wonderful elegance to the whole of it that never failed to lift an old, weary King’s heart.

  “Of course I do, Erg. I am King. Never forget that.” Blake waited for King’s Will to attach the monitor to the ring of cameras and scanners and what-all he’d caused to be formed high above Ickford, oh, decades ago. Slowly but surely, the static on the large VDU was replaced by thumbnail images of the land surrounding Agnethea’s wretched municipality. “And unlike the festering bit of malaise that is a certain floating voice in my ear, them two are veritable thorns in my backside.”

  As always, as ever, as infuriatingly ever, whenever the cameras floating high in the sky –and therefore unseen and unknown by anyone- were turned to point at the land surrounding Ickford, all was clear as day. With a thought, any of the devices set to spy on the area could magnify a single blade of grass and beyond; if Blake so willed it, those selfsame cameras could reveal unto him the atomic structure of that hypothetical stalk of grass.

  “Yet Ickford remains shrouded behind a veil of anti-Will.” Erg’s electronic voice was heavy with amusement.

  Blake snapped his fingers and the speaker Erg occupied fell to grainy bits of broken Will, each tiny particle quickly reabsorbed by the surrounding matter. The King turned his attention back to the screen, directing the equipment floating above the city to move closer, to see what –if anything- could be seen.

  Static. Monochrome and multicolored hash erupted everywhere. Behind that wash of pixelated noise, the merest hints of structures, of people, of Ickford. It was a maddening thing, this … immunity to King’s Will, and it was a major thorn in Blake’s side. Upon discovering Agnethea’s existence some two hundred years after she’d first been spawned by some sort of replication error, he’d descended from the sky to spend time with the as-then-unnamed Golem, to see just what sort of strange new thing King’s Will had gifted him; it happened from time to time out in the wilds of the world he’d crafted and it were up to him to decide yay or nay.

  What a catastrophe that had been. Just two hundred years old and filled with the black-hearted rage that only one of those earliest gearheads could’ve felt –oh that first batch of Dark Iron had been crudey-crude at it’s absolute worst, a grimy, foul concoction that still made Blake’s skin crawl-, Agnethea had been quick enough on the spot to see through his sham almost instantly.

  Enraged that she should be forced to endure the misery of the Gauntlet without having the chance to free herself by moving inward, she’d fell upon him with those iron-hard limbs of hers in a flash, intent on killing him.

  Blake was not ashamed to admit that he’d panicked, forgetting in that instant that he was stuffed full of nanotech particulate and the only true immortal in all of Arcade City. He’d lashed out with the full fury of his Will, intent on erasing the upstart from the face of the world.

  Nothing. Agnethea had remained standing there, looking as nonplussed as her King.

  Erg chuckled that reedy laugh of his again. “And you did as you did to her, hoping the fall would kill her. When it didn’t, she ran, yes she did, and you went and hid, and spent the next thousand years trying to kill her in different ways. And failed, time and again, hey? Lucky for your precious goal that the abomination called Agnethea took control of her appetites, unleashed her particular form of rage out in limited form, else there would be nothing beneath your Dome save you, her, and N’Chalez.”

  Blake had long since grown … accustomed … to the Golems. As Erg pointed out, they usually found new ways to whet their appetites, to satiate their hunger for violence enough so that his pro tem rulers, the Matrons, had no cause to worry.

  “That ends today, though, my fine, electronically disembodied friend.” Blake gestured with a fanciful sweep of the hand, and some fifteen feet away, a towering form rose up out of the metal. It remained unfinished, a blocky representation only of that which he planned on unleashing on Ickford and his foes.

  “You think a King will do for N’Chalez?” Erg demanded mockingly. “You forget, milord, I read Trinity’s files on him. Saw him in action. He’s done for worse a hundred times over. And Agnethea And don’t forget, my liege, Ickford is home, not only to tinkerers and artificers and smiths of legendary renown, there are greyskins down there, men and women who should’ve … could’ve … become Brigadiers within days. All scuttling ‘neath Ickford proper. Drop your kings on the borders of that city and they’ll ruse up! Beyond that…”

  “Golems.” Blake hissed the word out, so … so … frustrated that he could barely think straight. How had he forgotten about all the other Golems down there? Most of the Golem Nation was ‘tween them walls as well, bolstering and boosting Agnethea’s formidable taint with their own until the
whole damn city was nowt but a smog-shrouded wisp. “Dammit.”

  Erg’s voice washed out of half a dozen speakers this time, filling the King’s senses with surround sound. “You could leave them all be, King Barnabas Blake the One and Only. Leave them to their petty squabbles and whatever else they choose. By your own calculations, The Dome will be powered in a week or less. Then all will end. All will end. What harm in letting those foul monsters live out their last in quietude?”

  “I am King.” Blake hammered a hand against the desk. Across the way, the proto-King splashed to the metal floor, inky cubes dissolving into the Will from which it had sprung. “I am King.” He seethed.

  “Then, my Lord, you will need bigger guns than your Big Kings.” Erg said this matter-of-factly.

  Blake was about to decry the incorporeal CyberPriest’s words once more, suddenly pausing when he realized that –for all the entity’s aggravating habits- Erg was right. He was going to need bigger guns than his Kings. He looked to Erg’s speakers, suddenly –and rightfully- suspicious.

  “I wonder summat, all of a sudden.” The King said casually.

  “What is that, milord?”

  “Why is it you seem all afluster to help a King, where before now, you fairly burned the air with joyous revenge.” Blake gestured at his surroundings. “For in truth, my predicament can be laid square at your feet, hey? The threat N’Chalez is to me now is all your doing. Had you not distracted me so, aided him somehow in his learning the art, he would be just a man in that city. Why should I find it within me to trust you?”

  Erg’s voice buzzed and clicked through the speakers. “You shouldn’t, Watt, not at all, not really.” The CyberPriest waited for the King –who had his head tilted back and was laughing so uproariously his voice echoed off the far walls- to allow him to speak in relative quiet. “Only consider the truth of my words and you’ll seem I’m not wrong, vengeance had or not. It is a fact you seek to move against the legendary Kin’kithal Garth N’Chalez, shaper of the current Universe we live in and designer of its eventual destruction. He is cloistered in with virtually all the Obsidian Golems, monstrous beings immune to Your Will and the equal of any Brigadier. There are…”

  “Enough!” Barnabas bellowed furiously. “I know well enough what’s in Ickford. You only just said!”

  “Apologies.” If a voice could bow, Erg’s did so most humbly. “I merely…”

  “You merely nowt.” The King snarled. “And aye, before you needle me again, you are also not wrong about things.”

  “And so” Erg buzzed wonderingly.

  “And so, you incorporeal inconsistency, I do know where to find a solution to my conundrum!” Blake shouted enthusiastically. He snapped his fingers. The wooden monitor’s display instantly lurched to where his wayward son, the erstwhile Chadsik al-Taryin, languished. “There you are, my bonny lad, my brave boy, my …”

  Erg’s chuckle lapped at the walls. “Source of all your proper inspiration lo these many, many years. Did he ever figure it all out?”

  Blake looked sharply over his shoulder, though where he intended on directing his anger countenance he did not know.

  Blasted Erg and his blasted digitized existence!

  “Silence, you. And no.” Blake replied, turning back to the monitor. “Chadsik never figured any of the truth out. I am not incompetent.”

  On-screen, the Universe’s most deadly assassin slept fitfully, his face drawn and haggard, made that way by the stress of summoning up those last few recycled iterations of his own selves.

  “Hard work makes a man strong, isn’t that what you told your … son?” Erg asked slyly, skirting the issue which Blake had forbidden him from talking about. “He doesn’t look strong enough to fight his way out of a paper bag, much less assist you in creating some new menace.”

  Blake stroked his beard thoughtfully. That were the truth of it all, right. Chadsik looked a thousand years old or more, a mummified King’s Son laying there in his fitful repose. Like as not, it were unlikely the lad would survive to see the end. “He put himself right back to where he left.” Blake shrugged, dismissing any potential guilt or shame he might feel at what Chad was enduring. “It has naught to do with me and besides all that, I haven’t been back to Arcadia since … I left.”

  “Such innocuous phrasing, One and Only King.” Erg tsked. “You did more than just leave.”

  Memories of that fateful, horrid night threatened to rise up out of the murky darkness, a place within himself where he buried all the memories he didn’t like, and so Blake turned his mind to the far more pressing problem; the only way Chad would be of any assistance –even peripherally- was if some of the power that’d been leeched out of him was returned.

  The problem with that was obvious: too much revivification and the lad might very well bounce right out of Arcade City a second time, and Blake wanted his First Son by his side when the Unreal Universe disappeared like a soap bubble, wanted Chadsik to ride through the Spheres of Existence to witness the destruction of everything.

  The King reckoned he could tease enough power back to the lad to ensure his survival, but not so much the worst happened.

  But first, a quick dip inside the lad’s mind, see if there was anything worth the effort –and the tremendous risk- of returning any power whatsoever.

  It didn’t take long. Blake pursed his lips thoughtfully. Thirty thousand years old, and it seemed, even with all that time under his crown, he was still capable of feeling both surprise and terror. The Outside World was full of terrible wonder.

  “Well.” Erg muttered, nonplussed. “That does seem unlikely.”

  The King stared at Chad’s memories, watching the display over and over again on the off chance that these were hallucinations or indications of some otherwise undocumented malady. “Aye.”

  “How d’you reckon summat like this could happen?” Erg wondered.

  “Wellll.” The King pursed his lips. “A few ways, I do suppose. First and foremost, the Unreal Universe is how it is, hey? Takes little to imagine summat big and monstrous, and here at the far end of things, well. If you’re in power now, you should have the resources to give life to your nightmares.”

  “And the other possibility?” Erg asked teasingly.

  Distracted by the violence on-screen, the King answered without insult or dismissive tone. “Back in the day, well before my temper tantrum, I used to send lads and lasses into the Outside, hey? As part o’ the agreement ‘twixt the old machine mind and meself. It promised to keep all manner of disagreeables from hammering on the doors if I were to provide It wi’ Suits. It sweetened the pot wi’ promises to stop It’s own efforts were I to provide the Outside with a certain percentage of them as washed out here.”

  “So them calling themselves wardogs? Not a coincidence?” Erg paused to digest the news.

  “No. Leastways, not in the beginning. Can’t speak to now. Hain’t sent none out since … my … disagreeableness. Hundred years now. Them as call themselves wardogs now are most certainly plain old FrancoBrits. Wi’out proper ‘sblood keeping them alive, they’d all be dead ‘ere now. Gods these things are fearsome, are they not?”

  Erg’s intellect focused on the display. “They certainly are, milord. When I was on Hospitalis, the news channels were abuzz with the devastation. One would do for Ickford quite nicely.”

  “I don’t plan on unleashing just one, Erg, you floating irritation.” King Barnabas Blake the One and Only, the Dark Iron King, smiled from ear to ear. “Not just one, oh no, I shall be rid of Ickford, Agnethea, the other Golems, all the damned fools who flocked to the false Queen and the Kin’kithal in one fell swoop and any other dam thing as catches my displeasure from here until there. One? Hardly. Four. Four of these monsters, Erg.”

  Erg considered his King’s plan in studious silence. Then, “I reckon you shall be rid of more than just that.”

  Blake flitted an absentminded hand over his shoulder at Erg; he was too busy designing a way to reroute power i
nto Chadsik’s nearly depleted body without giving him proper access to that same energy.

  Ickford was doomed. Garth was doomed. Agnethea was doomed.

  And then, oh and then, all he would need to do was sit back and wait for The Dome to reach full power.

  It was good to be the King, wasn’t it just?

  ***

  Chad awoke with a violent, spluttery snort, heart hammering in his chest, wild flashes of violence shredding away into puffs of nothingness. Rubbing his eyes free of sleep goop that always accumulated in corners of his eyes when he slept too deeply, the ex-assassin looked blearily around the workshop.

  Everything –including him- was where it belonged. In the workshop. Always and forever more, especially if Mistress Taint had her way with things. Chad absentmindedly fingered the fresh scars on his withered old chest. That beating, that, last, final, wretched beating when he’d tried vainly to do for the mad Nanny AI, well, that’d been that, hadn’t it just.

  No regrets, though. Oh no, none at all.

  Chad looked at the prancing figure on his right shoulder. Wee Miss Bliss, with him as always, and as always, trying to make him smile.

  The ex-assassin rather feared he didn’t have much left to smile about; he was finding it next to impossible to pull any of the hims up through the chaotic swirl of previous Universes now. Where before it’d been like hooking fish in a barrel, now it was like trying to catch one single fish in a vast, nearly empty ocean and Taint –that miserable, infected cunt- was bein’ merciless as all get out over his failures. Shreikin’ in his ears, howlin’ at him every time ‘e needed a quick fag…

  “Bleedin’ ‘ell,” Chad stopped tracing the network of lash-scars across his bare chest –he’d taken off his shirt some time ago because the damned Nanny kept the shop hot as blazes- to rub his temples, “wot were I dreamin’ about, my bonny lass?”