Book 4 - Chapter 149 (Patreon)

A door closed in a room of ingenious machines and luxury. A few moments later, a dark shadow darted from a tiny gap in the wall. A rat, famished and skinny.

It scurried up the leg of a table to gaze into the flicker of an abandoned candle. The wick still burned strong. With a chitter of its teeth, it began to push the candle across the wooden table. It struggled with the weight, but little by little the open flame moved.

Far above, a platform rumbled downwards. Wretch stood there silently with his hands in the pockets of his coat. Around him, three porcelain dolls. Their faces had no mouths or eyes. Instead, they were entirely blank and smooth, with blue patterns like an old ceramic teacup. That had made their short speech all the more eerie. A series of clicking sounds imitating words from within their skulls.

“Come, you are expected.”

That was all they had said, and he had not pushed for any more answers. He was, after all, not who he said he was, but an imposter.

Beyond the lip of the platform, the Furnace grew larger by the second. At the time of his arrival in the city, he had peered down onto this maddening construction from far above. He cast a glance upwards. The city coiled above them, all within view. First, the fumes in a perpetual haze of hot air. Above still lay the Cold-Circle, the rim of its quarters marked by blue from ever-settling ice.

Strangely beautiful, I’ll give him that.

He turned his gaze to the machine they were descending towards. It hummed in a symphony of the unnatural, and the heat from its exhaust moved the air as it rushed to warm the city above. Its form was so convoluted with pipes and churning pistons that it reminded him of a bronze heart malformed and mutated by some vile disease. Still, it moved, day after day, year after year, just as Baba had.

And somewhere within that cluttered mess walked his target. His final target. He had seen him, for in the golden halls, several of his spies nestled within corners. The vermin ushered him in with sights of corridors and lights. To get in had proved hard for a rat, and impossible for someone of his size. Gearheads crawled over the surface of their Father’s work, watching every discolored pipe and inspecting every shipment.

Yet, he was about to walk through the front door.

With a tremor, the platform came to a halt. Wordlessly, the Gearheads walked forward, and he followed. He knew the reason for inviting Vasili here, but the visit would have to disappoint.

They marched along a walkway over a thick bronze dome and finally stopped before a gate covered in gears of every size and shape.

The Gearheads, having been quiet up until now, suddenly spoke in unison, “Behold, son of Gulschak... The city we carved for ourselves,”

A rumble, and the gears turned. All simultaneously in different directions like a nest of snakes springing to life. The gate groaned, and steam leaked from the growing gap.

It opened with an almost blinding light. Golden halls.

Wretch licked his lips as the light danced across Vasili’s stolen face, an act that was probably strangely appropriate for the man he was trying to portray.

A set of stairs flanked the domed road forward, two dozen Gearheads to either side standing in formation.

He’s trying to impress me…

They walked forward, and the gate closed behind them, sealing this place once more. So here he was, in the same quarters as Grendel. Finally. He held no illusion that the man was unaware that he might come. But he was going to try and take his life either way.

Two of the dolls broke into a fanfare with instruments so convoluted he couldn’t even describe them, except for perhaps the offspring of a polished steam engine and a trombone.

The Gearheads began their walk, and he had no choice but to follow.

So many of them, this might become an issue. Better push harder, little rat, he thought, and took a quick peek at the rat pushing the candle through the connection to his bound spies. It had almost gotten it to the far side of the table. Right where he wanted it.

They marched through the roads and indoor neighborhoods. The city’s interior was shielded from the world above by the enforced metal roofs and several layers of machinery. Walking through the gleaming streets of gears and pistons, only the hum and low thuds of movement through the walls revealed this dreamlike place to be in the heart of a machine.

The strange inhabitants stared at him with wide eyes. Their sense of fashion stood in stark opposition to his brutal form. A woollen coat draped over his broad shoulders that reached to his knees, revealing two massive boots of polished leather. His hands were marked by wiry hair and claws. And on the other side of the dolls that surrounded him, women in thin dresses marked by filigree of gold and mechanical tools. Children played with toys that moved on their own while the men stroked facial hair shaped into twirls. Delicate. He, on the other hand, was rough, a mountain of a man, and just the same, a fish out of water.

Their eyes carried curiosity, but also a glint of something else. Disdain.

Laughable, as most of them weren’t even marked by the flame but just closely related to the city’s Blessed thinkers. Two hundred lived in these quarters. He had eyes in so many places that he had counted each and every one that called this opulence home. Add to that another hundred gearheads in their midst, and the place was packed.

They moved deeper, Wretch in the center of the formation. Gradually the space inside grew wider, open workshops and strangely overengineered houses to either side. In the distance loomed a courtyard, and a dozen blocks and airlocks beyond lay the gate to the father himself. He would have to act before then.

This little disguise of his seemed to pass for the Gearheads and the other inhabitants, at least for now. But he wouldn’t take any further chances. At any moment, one might peer at him with some unknown power to see his true self. So he’d hatched a plan, and this son, the Father would never meet.

He waited, striding forward with quick steps in the midst of the dolls. Another airlock, and the group stopped, the second one they’d passed through. The gate opened with turning gears, just as a rat a few blocks away finally managed to push a candle left unattended. It had struggled for an hour to place it under the jutting pipe by the wall. The pipe was well maintained, but it let out a low pitch at all times. Flowing gas.

A flash of fire in Wretch’s eyes. Barely visible for a breath of time. The rat several blocks away bulged with a squeal. It grew in size, double, then triple. It roared, and finally its form could not contain it any longer. It exploded. A hail of bones shot across the room. These ones were special, black and hard as steel. A new improvement to his living bomb tactic.

One splinter pierced the bronze pipe, and a loud fizz came from the empty room. Then the rat died, and his shared sense vanished with it.

Wretch walked into the airlock with his many guards just the same. Then the air shifted. A wind of heat fluttered his coat. In the time it took one to blink, the dolls turned their heads in unison, some pivoting 180 degrees to peer over their shoulders. A boom rocked the closed city. The screech of breaking metal and yelps of civilians.

“An accident?” Wretch asked with a raised eyebrow.

“We’ll investigate... proceed,” a doll said through its faceless mask.

The bulk of the dolls ran, shooting forward with inhuman speed and leaving him with just the original three. Without a turn of a lever or command, the airlock began to close. And Wretch’s eyes lingered on a particular section of the interior. An air vent with two beady eyes inside.

Here we go.

He lowered his shoulders, hands to the side, and gaze fixed on the three dolls. The moment the airlock closed, he lunged.

His fist cracked against the back of the porcelain doll in front. Its skull disintegrated under his onslaught, but before even the pieces hit the floor, a screech came from behind.

"Aggression… detected.”

He pivoted, hands reaching for his coat. A flash towards his eyes.

They're fast.

Bone-white hands marked with swirls of blue shot towards his pupils, ready to blind him in an instant. They’d reacted quicker than he’d anticipated. A tilt of his head. A hand passed by his temple to slice his cheek. Then he drew his weapons. Two wicked swords shot from his coat, the tips arching upwards to thrust towards the doll barely two feet away.

The duo of serrated edges cracked through the chest-plate, ripping through its center in a wheeze of released pressure and broken strings. The last doll moved smoothly around its impaled brethren, and a kick blurred towards his side.

He took the strike willingly. The ceramic plate of its shin thudded against his side with enough force to push the air from his lungs. A few ribs cracked into splinters, but he didn’t even flinch.

He let a sword go, and his free hand caught the neck of the remaining doll as the airlock began to open.

The doll suddenly grew limp, a shift in its presence. From deeper in the closed city, a wave of whispers rolled to assault his ears. The doll looked up at him. And he knew something else was watching. The machinery around them hummed. A shiver went down his spine as something peered inside his very being. Something that held a flame that outburned his. He'd been safe from its gaze up in the city, but here, he was right under its nose.

“Vasili, why are...," the doll's speech was smooth and human, yet it made his nerves tense. "you’re not my son—”

Wretch cracked its neck with a twist of his grip, decapitating the construct. The gate, which had been lowered just a few inches, suddenly froze. It shuddered, and with a forceful thud, it slammed shut once more.

Quickly.

He moved as rats flooded down from his coat, then discarded the clothing. He stowed the swords in the hidden sheaths and regenerated the ribs with a flash of flame. His eyes turned to the vent, and he launched a kick against it. It buckled with ease.

A siren blared from outside, and the lights above flickered. The warm orange glow was replaced by a flashing red.

His skin roiled and morphed as he finally discarded Vasili’s appearance for good. Not for something deadlier, but something smaller. A young Gulschak he had no memory of. A man who could be anyone, but more importantly, could squeeze into narrow cracks.

A fizz from above. The red lights casting shadows.

Quickly.

He scrambled inside the vent, lying flat on his stomach. The metal pressed on his shoulders. Even with his smaller stature, he could barely fit, and his brood of smuggled rats didn't sooth the claustrophobia.

“Quite nostalgic,” he chuckled.

A roar from behind. Whatever had been sprayed into the airlock had combusted. Flames burst through the vent to lick his feet. Then the sound of the gates opening once more and wailing sirens.

He quickened his pace, regenerating his feet as best he could. He tumbled into the dark.

His rats had found this space hidden between walls. The Furnace was a machine carrying the mark of ceaseless improvements. And all around the golden halls, crawlspaces, shafts, and abandoned pipes twisted for an eternity.

And now they were his, as he prepared to murder a Pyre under the nose of this half-god called the Father.

He moved deeper, snaking through pipes and squeezing through openings no human should be able to.

Hours later he paused, the brood of a hundred rats around him in a crawlspace by some abandoned engine. Already the Gulschaks were trying to smoke him out, the pipes and machines roaring to life and changing shape by the father’s will.

He cracked a smile on stolen lips. Now the true cat and mouse game began.