Arcanum - Of Steamwork and Magic Ch. 23

The castle's main chamber was stacked, piled, with corpses.

The dwarves of the Black Mountain Clan -- hundreds of them. They were flayed. They were skinned. They were crucified and disemboweled They were stacked like cord-wood, their brilliant blood spilling across the ground. Due to the timeless nature of the Void, there was no rot, no decay. They simply sprawled in eternal, unlovely death. The stink reached Resh through his visor, and he shook his head slowly.

"They must have tried to rebel," Arronax whispered as they walked past the bodies.

"They sent Stennar through," Resh murmured as they came to a set of stairs. Walking up them, a distant, throbbing feeling began to ache through both of their bones. The ache grew more and more intense, and the stairs wound around and around and around. It seemed almost like an eternity of walking -- the stairs stretched onward and onward and onward, the echoing sound of their footsteps ringing off the black stone. The throbbing sensation began to emanate from their deepest organs, and Resh grew particularly aware of every throb of his heart, the squirm of his stomach, the feel of his roping intestines.

It became impossible to ignore he was merely a bag of flesh and bone and skin and lumping matter -- wrapped in flimsy steel. The decay and the sense of inevitability sank into his mind. But Resh gritted his teeth and thought instead of the simplest thing.

The very thing that began this adventure -- once more, his mind returned to it. He calculated, within his mind, the hydrogen carrying capacity of the long destroyed IFS Zephyr. And merely thinking of the mathematics -- the numbers that always came out exactly the way that they were supposed to do. And merely coming to the answer he had a year before here, in this hideous place, filled him with comfort. The math did not come out different. And so too, a certainty settled in him: Beatrice would be there for him, when he needed her most, emerging from the rubble in robes, with a staff, and excitedly blathering to him about some inane prophecy.

At last, he stepped off the last of the stairs and into a large room. Perched like a vast mechanical spider in the center of the room was a portal. Rings of metal formed from segmented metal, gleaming crystal spheres, hissing steam-pumps, boilers that burned gods knows what for power. All of it focused upon a singular point, creating a slowly growing bubble of white light. And standing beside the machine, his palm resting on the curved, spider-limb of the side...was Kerghan.

If he had been human once...that day was long receded into the past.

Clad in robes of blood red that seemed to be almost a part of his elongated, twisted body, Kerghan's face was snake-like in formation and marble pale in complexion. His eyes were nearly vertical and yellowy. His lips were thin as stencil drawn, ruler-sharp lines. His hood concealed whether or not he had hair, but from what Resh could see, the robe itself seemed to have begun to fuse with his very skin.

"Mr. Kerghan, I presume," Resh said, trying to sound dry.

Kerghan chuckled. His voice rang in Resh's memory -- the self same image proclaiming itself to be none other than Arronax. "Welcome," he said, his voice echoing faintly. "I see you have come -- but you seem to have left your companions behind."

Resh snapped his pistol up. Kerghan waved his hand and a wall of force smashed into Resh and Arronax, flinging them both backwards. Arronax slammed onto the ground, skidding and coming to a halt. She gasped out in shock and pain -- but when she flung out her arm, she threw up a shimmering purple field. It rippled as a salvo of red lights smashed into the energies and Resh stood, snapping up his pistol -- but Kerghan laughed, dropping his arms slowly. "Ah, but before we dance..." he said. "Let us speak, Living One..."

"You could have said that before blasting us," Resh said, shaking his head.

"You drew on me, oh Living One," Kerghan said, his voice amused. Then, softly. "But surely, you wonder...where have your companions gone?"

Resh felt tension grip him. He stepped forward, his armor hissing. "What have you done to them, Kerghan?"

"I?" he asked. "Nothing."

Kerghan turned and pressed his palm to the wall beside him. A glowing, purple rectangle appeared upon it -- and when it resolved, it showed an image...an image of another island. Kerghan's voice dripped with amusement as he spoke: "Let us see what the others have done, Living One."

And Resh watched -- unable to do a thing -- as Beatrice stood in mortal peril: A man, mostly nude, advancing towards her, sword humming with red light. The image shimmered and twisted, then showed Sally, facing a massive pile of green muscle and flesh, thundering towards her, mouth open, jaw drooling with spittle. The image shimmered once more, and showed Maggie in her armor, with Gillian and Raven standing behind her, while a towering fusion of man and dragon advanced towards them. Flames exploded from his maw and Maggie brought her shield up, but the flames consumed the image - which shattered.

Kerghan turned to face Resh. "It seems you were most fortunate, Living One." He shook his head. "I have awaited your arrival for so very long. And while you know my name, I still owe you a proper introduction." His arm swept to his belly and he bowed to Resh - who kept his face impassive and poker still behind the faceplate of his armor, despite his guts roiling with tension. Arronax, her fingers flexed, her forehead beaded with sweat as she focused upon maintaining the magick shield. Resh lifted his hand, then shook his head to her. She looked to him, then lowered the shield.

Kerghan chuckled. "I am Kerghan. First of the Necromancers, voyager in the lands of the dead. And I see you are a more clever man than I thought."

"He attacked us to force you to shield us," Resh said, quietly. "To waste your magick energies upon that, while he spoke with me - but I can tell, Kerghan. You want to talk. So..." He spread his hands. "Talk."

"I see that, with Arronax at your side, she has told you enough of my story to bring you into her confidences, to bring this fight to me," Kerghan said, quietly. "But as a clever man, surely you wish to hear my side of the story."

Resh nodded, his face still. Masklike. Arronax looked to him - confusion on her face, writ clear and loud. What is he doing? she thought. The longer Kerghan speaks, the more power he can draw. And the more deadly danger his friends are in. That was the Bane of Kree! Gorgoth! Kraka-Tur! The worst monsters of Arcanum, all poised to slay his friends!

"My life," Kerghan said, a chair sliding silently from the ground behind him - a chair of bone and steel that formed from the raw stuff of the void, shimmering as it moved. He sat in it and Resh sat as well, a chair formed for him by Kerghan's might. "My life in the world you call Arcanum seems so very distant now. Like that of a child. And a child I was then, probing the darker magicks, given glimpses of the truth yet to come."

"As I have read," Resh said. "And, well, the Council and the Molochean Hand seem to be quite right. Look at you." He gestured to Kerghan, who shook his head mutely.

"Yes. Look at me. And what do you see?" He gestured to himself. "A monster? An abomination? You've no idea what I have discovered. You see with eyes tainted by life, and all which that accursed state embodies. My vision is clear because of those magicks you hold in disdain. And for the Council? For Nasrudin? It is they I have to thank for it."

Resh frowned. "They banished you to the Void, Kerghan."

Kerghan laughed. A deep, echoing laugh, a laugh that sounded like a rock dropped down an infinite and yet narrow well. His eyes closed and his needle sharp teeth glinted in the growing light of the machine that sat behind him. "In your world, in Arcanum, I was powerful. I was, perhaps, the most powerful human magician to walk the lands. But to humans, what is that? A single instant, a spark of a life. Nothing can be learned in such an infinitesimal time. But here? In the Void? I would not die so long as I did not will myself to die. I could go on. I could learn. There are no limits here..."

Resh shook his head. "And then the Dark Elves called to you. K'an Hua - and you let him think you were Arronax..." He frowned. "You convinced him to manipulate the Panarii, into weakening the wards on Arcanum. You used the Dark Elves to send you the Black Mountain Clan - you...you did all of this to return to a world where you would be mortal again? Why? You could stay here, with your studies, forever!"

Kerghan's eyes closed. And, in so much as his face could show it, sorrow filled him. Resh drew back in his seat, stunned to see a single tear etching its way along his cheek. HIs hand went to his face and he said. "Truly...I truly wish that I could stay. My reasons for returning..." He drew in a breath, shuddering and deep, and composed himself. "My reasons are not as you may imagine, Resh. Do you see me, conquering the lands? Laying siege to Tulla? Dueling Simeon Tor and laying waste to Tarant as your foolish companion laid waste to Vendigroth, to lord over the survivors, to chain all that is good in the world?" He shook his head. "No. Those are motivations of the living. I no longer place myself among them."

"Then what?" Resh asked. "What is it that you want, Kerghan?"

Kerghan stood. He looked away and started to speak - and the words flowed like a dark river, sweeping Resh and Arronax away.

"If only I could show you the places I have seen, you might understand the things I say. I have been to the Desolate Lands, wandered by those souls who still see the lands of the living but wear the cloak of the dead. Blind to their own ends, they cry, passing through one another like shadows in the dying light of day. I have traveled to where souls rot in torment, pierced with the jagged shards of life and vision, clinging to memory - regrets of the flesh. I saw that this prison was of their own making, and that the key was in unknowing, in release... and still, I traveled on. And finally, I came to the place where souls go to die. Where the mirrored and worn spirits fall into an endless sea of gray, mirrored glass... and I lowered myself within... and lay among them... and I almost did not return."

His eyes closed and he turned back to Resh. They opened and glowed. "And do you know what I found there? There, among the silent and battered shells of the innumerable? Peace. Enlightenment. Truth. Only then I realized that this place, this "Life", is an abomination, a horrible distortion of the natural order. This "Life", who mothered Pain, and Fear, and Envy - these twisted children who exist only because we are here to feed them, to nourish them. This "Life", this... afterthought - a disturbance, a mere ripple in that great, dead sea, not even the cause, but merely an effect, sending these souls upwards, screaming for release from the day they are torn from their waters! The effect of what? I do not know. Nor do I care."

He shook his head. "Have you ever spoken with the dead? Called to them from this side, pulled them from their silent rest? Do you know what it is that they feel? Pain. Pain, when torn into this wakefulness, this reminder of the chaos from which they had escaped. Pain, at having to live. There will be no more pain. There will be no more chaos. "

Resh sat in stunned silence - remembering the agonized wails of the spirits he had met, the pain of the undead as they were dragged into the world of the living. But more...every factory slave, limping home after being mangled, every destitute beggar waiting for the cold embrace of a winters death, every vicious brute and cruel, callous man, every conniving trickster, every manipulator and abuser. All of them paraded through his head. And more, he could see the terrible point that Kerghan made: If time went on, never ending, then life merely was a momentary flare, a flash that would fade into eternity, and become only the more insignificant as the uncounted eons passed and passed and passed.

"Well," a voice spoke into the room - and bringing with it light and a racing heart, banishing the image from Resh's mind. "It's not quite as bad as all that sir."

***

Beatrice stood upon an island of rock, a chill wind blowing against her chain mail. Her sword -- the magick sword that had been given to her by her love so long before -- hummed against her palm, the hilt pressed to her fingers, the scabbard feeling heavy and ready. Standing across from her on the island was a man. His face was brutal and angular, his hair brilliant blond, his eyes a piercing blue. He was shirtless, and he wore a furred loincloth. A broadsword was strapped to his back, swept into a baldric of leather and bone.

He regarded her with cold, pitiless eyes.

"Are you Arro, oh, no, never mind," Beatrice faded, seeing that the man was human.

The man sneered at her. "Pathetic," he said, his voice dripping with scorn. "This is what Kerghan sends me to whet my appetite." He started to swagger forward, a cold light gleaming in his eyes. Beatrice wasted no time. She drew her sword with a rasp and crackle with magick.

"Oh..." the man chuckled. "You do not know me, do you?"

"I believe not," Beatrice snarled. "Where is Resh?"

"I do not know," he said, shrugging. "And you do not recognize your better, woman."

Beatrice chuckled, her voice quiet. "Ah. One of those. You know, sufferage is right around the corner, Mr..."

The man drew his own sword -- it shone and rippled with a glowing, brilliant red light. The edge seemed to be preternaturally sharp, and he held it with the grace and the poise of a master swordsman. The man spoke, drawling the words with lazy confidence: "My name is of no consequence. A birth name was a title given to a babe by a mewling woman. The true name I have earned, the title I deserve...is the Bane of Kree." His eyes glowed with a fanatics delight.

"The...Bane of Kree," Beatrice whispered. "The man who butchered the city of Kree, who led ten thousand barbarians to ravage the whole of Arcanum!?"

The Bane of Kree spread his hands. "And now, if you wish to surrender to me, I will be sure to make your end painless. Once I am finished with you." His lips skinned back in a shark smile as he advanced, sword at the ready. Beatrice watched him advance, lifting up her sword. The Bane of Kree snorted, lugubriously, and continued his monomaniacal ranting: "No man -- and no woman -- has ever been able to best me in a sword fight."

Beatrice nodded.

"Good thing this isn't a sword fight," she said, then snapped out her palm -- and a wave of concussive force flew out and struck the Bane of Kree's wrist. His sword flipped away from him and he reached for it, his fingers almost catching on the trailing tuft at the base of his hilt. But then another concussive blast struck it and it flipped into the darkness of the void, vanishing forever. Beatrice leaped forward and swept her blade around, and the shocked Bane of Kree watched as the sword finished its arc and came to rest beside her shoulder.

The destroyer of Kree, the greatest city of the Age of Legends, clutched to his throat as red sheeted between his fingers, spilling and bubbling forth, blood emerging from his mouth as his lips opened in a silent scream -- and then toppled backwards, over the edge of the island of the void.

"Pha!" Beatrice spat over the side after him.

***

Sally Mead Mug rubbed her head as she sat up. She had never felt an ache quite like this! She'd been drunk before, but this was something else -- this was drunk. This was druuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunk, in fact. She wobbled as she started to stand up, her head shaking from side to side. She blinked, blearily, seeing the vast strangeness around her. She was standing beside a collection of piled up bones -- picked clean, crunched in half, and sucked clean of their marrow. There was a broad expanse of brown-gray earth, floating in blackness. And at the far end, there was a massive, quadrupedal, bullet shaped hideous green mass of muscle. The maw that gaped at the front of its muzzle opened and shut with a snapping, gurgling sound. Baleful red eyes glowed -- huge and angry.

Sally rubbed her palms together.

Sally had lived her whole life never thinking about the future, never worrying about the past. She had followed Resh cause he was hot and he had a dick that was big enough to get her bits tingly. She didn't really follow the whole...Void thing. But she figured, hey.

Big guy?

She'd hit it really really really hard.

She didn't recognize it was Gorgoth. She didn't recognize it was Gorgoth the unkillable. Gorgoth the insatiable. Gorgoth, who had devoured ten thousand thousand souls in his rampage across Arcanum, devouring halfling villages, human hamlets, dwarven clans, all without care, without stopping. Gorgoth's maw opened and it bellowed. A single, wordless exclamation -- one that needed no translation.

Food.

Sally rolled her shoulder. "All right, all right!" she said, cheerfully, and waited as Gorgoth ran forward. And, without knowing it, Sally had already figured out the nature of the Void. She knew, with utter certainty, that she could beat anything. She could handle anything. She knew it, to the depths of her stolid bones. And so, as Gorgoth thundered forward, sending up clods of dirt and chunks of dirt. Drool dripped from his muzzle and his head shook as he sprinted forward, his muscles bunching and clenching as he moved faster and faster. His tusks gleamed -- looking brilliant white.

Perfect!

Sally grinned, then reached out and grabbed Gorgoth.

On Arcanum, this would have ended with her rapidly sailing down his gullet. Here?

Sally hefted Gorgoth up and over her head, twisted, and released -- and sent him sailing over the edge of the void with a cheerful bellow of: "What do ya do with a drunken sailor! Ho!" She burst out laughing as Gorgoth flailed -- and fell. And fell. And fell. And...was gone.

***

Flames exploded around Maggie's shield, the armor and the craftsmanship of the Iron Dwarves remarkable to behold. As she stepped backwards before the roiling flames of Kraka-Tur, she shouted to Raven. "Do something, you daft elven lassie!"

Raven sprang from around Maggie's defense, sprinting lightly on her feet. Her bow was in her hand and the string twanged again and again and again - arrows thudding into the side of Kraka-Tur's body. His scales, as thick as the armoring on a steamship, sent the arrows rebounding, save those that by sheer good luck or good aim managed to stick into the soft flesh between the scales. But that was far from enough to actually do damage, and it only provoked a great roar from the one eyed dragon. Maggie stepped forward and brought Harrower smashing into Kraka-Tur's knee, then rolled forward to avoid the counter-strike, his claws sending up a furrow of dirt and dust.

She came to her feet, the armor she wore remarkably light. Her shield lifted as Kraka-Tur backhanded, the impact knocking her backwards, rolling away. When she came back to her feet, her head was ringing and she saw that Kraka-Tur was advancing towards Gillian, who was rummaging around in the backpack that she had been carrying. "Lassie!" Maggie shouted. "Look out!"

Kraka-Tur lifted his claw, screeching. "I'll kill you! I'll kill every last one of you! I'm the strongest! I can do it!" His voice was remarkably high and nasal, not exactly the frightening voice out of legends that she had expected. Still, Maggie could not let Gillian - even if she was somewhat stuck up - get herself torn in half. She hurled Harrower and as it flew, it gathered electric energy, crackling and popping, and struck the massive dragon-human hybrid in the shoulder. Kraka-Tur screamed.