Arcanum - Of Steamwork and Magic Ch. 23

I placed my hand upon her shoulder. "You'll go on, Maggie. Your place was to sit upstairs, in the second story of your family home, to just watch the world go on by. You shook that off and kept walking." I grinned at her. "If you can do that, you can do anything -- no matter what this place says about you."

Maggie drew in a slow, shuddering breath, then let it slowly out. Her shoulders tightened underneath my grip and she lifted her head, her eyes growing proud as she looked at the door. She walked forward and drew out the glass key we had been given from the Panarii Temple, and found the lock in the center of the door. The key slid in smooth as butter, clicking and whirring, and the door itself opened with a rasp and clatter, revealing a tunnel leading straight into the mountain, as circular and perfectly straight as if it had bored into the mountain by an immense drill press. We stepped forward together, my light shining from my wrist as my armor whirred and click.

We came into a circular chamber containing a single throne, sized for a dwarf and made of pure, wrought iron. There were three circular glass tubes, each one containing a different object. The first contained a suit of plate armor, constructed for a dwarven warrior -- and sized perfectly for, if I did not miss my guess, Maggie. The next contained a stone of rock covered with dwarven runes. The final contained a kite shaped shield of metal, decorated with the symbol of the Iron Clan.

Maggie walked forward slowly, her feet rasping softly on the floor, carrying Harrower in her hands, the ax crackling and humming with lightning. She reached out, touching the glass tube containing the stone -- which had to be the Stone of Durin. The glass retracted into the ground with a hiss and a chunk and Maggie squeaked, almost leaping backwards. I walked over, smiling at her. "What does it say?"

Maggie gulped, then leaned forward. She read slowly. "Here, upon the Durin Stone, we list the future of the Iron Clan. The time of dwarves is changing -- what once worked will be no more..." She frowned. "The least of us must lead. The secrets of the past must champion the future. A woman's place...can no more be behind her husband." Her eyes widened. "The Iron Clan will be reborn -- not beneath a king...but a queen."

"Queen Margaret Shalefist," I said, dryly. "Sounds intimidating."

"B-By Alberich's sweaty balls!" Maggie exclaimed. "I can't do this!"

I clasped my hands to her shoulder. "You can, Maggie."

Maggie breathed in. Then out. "Well," she said. "We're bloody well going to die in the Void, aren't we?"

"Now, now," I said. "Don't be so pessimistic."

"Who bloody well said anything about pessimism!?" she asked. "That's the best outcome! I don't bloody well want to be a godsdamned King!"

"Queen," I said, cheerfully.

"Ugh."

***

The Ring of Brodgar loomed before us in an incongruously sunny and cheerful June day -- not that a bright and cheerful day in the midst of Summer was particularly odd. But the arrival in Roseborough and the coming entrance into the depths of the Void struck me as a day best suited to the gloomy and the weather beaten. Nasrudin waited for us there, standing beside the ring, his palm resting on the stone. His face was ashen, and he looked as if death itself was standing behind him, a shadow on his shadow. He watched us through sunken eyes, and nodded.

"Are you ready?" he asked -- and he asked, I knew that there was but one thing left to do. I took this journal, the journal you have been reading, filled with my thoughts, with my memories of what had been written, with my time shared among my friends and lovers. I was honest as I could be as I wrote her -- and you must forgive the narrative styling. Not entirely scientific, but I found it easier to scribe it down as a story, to tell it all as I hoped future generations would remember it. It helped me sort out my thoughts, my feelings, and finally assure me of my own truth.

I, Dr. Resh Craig, known publicly as Dr. Rayburn Cog, commit to paper that I truly love Beatrice Brummund. My most steadfast companions were Margret Shalefist and Sally Mead-Mug, Gillian Thelonius Remington the Third, Raven the Elf, and of course, my beloved dog, Dogmeat. All of my schematics and designs are bequeathed to the Half-Orcish Workers Union, headed by Daniel Thresh (also known as Don Throgg.)

If I return from the Void and my battle with Arronax, I will amend these papers.

If not farewell.

-Dr. Resh Craig

Tearing.

Ripping.

Tumbling.

Resh Craig sprawled upon his back, gasping as he skidded a good five yards before coming to a rest against something hard, angular, and deeply cold. He gasped as he looked through the thin stilted visor of his mechanized armor and saw his breath emerging as fog. He sat up, grabbing onto the bascinet helmet he had fashioned and pushed it upwards, allowing him to look upwards into the sky above him. The first image he had in his mind was of the night sky above Tarant, with the electric lights drowning out the heavens. But that paled as he began to realize the depth and blackness of the sky was deeper than even that.

His breath fogged as he pushed himself to his feet and saw that he stood upon what seemed to be an island -- lit by a colorless illumination that came from everywhere and nowhere at once. A single metal pylon sat behind him, curving upwards and ending in a brass sphere of roughly the size of a human head. The pylon hummed faintly and Resh placed his gauntleted hand upon it, feeling it vibrate. He tapped on his light, shining it over the pole as he called out: "Beatrice? Maggie? Anyone?"

His voice did not echo. It simply vanished into the darkness. Unable to determine anything about the make and function of the pylon, he swung the lamp past it and yelped, despite himself. It was an unmanly sound, and he might have noted it in his journal, if he had brought it with him. But he had no journal here -- and his heart hammered as he realized that the land he stood upon terminated five feet away from where he had landed. If the pylon had not terminated his progress, he would have fallen over the edge.

Finding a rock -- made of the same brown-gray material that the floating island was made of -- Resh tossed the rock over the edge and watched as it fell into the same inky blackness that spread above him. He shook his head. "Good heavens," he whispered. Swinging his lamp around, he did get some measure of bounce back from other places -- distant, floating islands in this vast, endless Void. Resh felt a crawling, prickling fear. Had any of his companions arrived? Had they struck islands, or had they fallen infinitely? He shook his head, slowly, then investigated the rest of the island. On closer inspection, he found that there was a flat, bronze platform in the shape of a gear. Tossing a rock on it caused the rock to vanish.

"Either," Resh said, his voice swallowed by the void. "This platform takes me somewhere else via some kind of magick or technological teleportation..." He paused, then drew out his pocketwatch. Holding it near the platform, he found it ticked normally. "A technological transportation, or some kind of disintegration field." He shook his head. "It is either risk that or die slowly here on this island."

With such a choice, Resh easily stepped onto the platform.

When he appeared once more, it was on another island. This one was larger and had life -- but not as Resh knew it. They appeared like mushroom shaped, transparent membranes floating in the air, trailing glowing tendrils that brushed along the ground -- trailing and twitching. They immediately turned a brilliant red and started to float towards Resh, pulsating as they approached. "I come in peace!" Resh said. "I have come to stop the evil Arronax and-"

The closest lashed out with one such tendril. It struck against the electromagnetic field shrouding his body and jerked away. "Very well then!" Resh snarled, his voice tight behind his helmet as he swung his warbringer around. The roaring, ripping sound of the weapon firing dozens of magnetically accelerated bullets -- each charged with a short lived electrical field -- filled the air, swallowed shortly by the Void's oppressive silence. The impact of each bullet caused the electric field to discharge into the target, filling the air with flashes of golden light and causing the strange beasts to jerk backwards, twitch, writhe and fall. Once silence reigned, Resh snapped bullets into his weapon and strode forward -- to find that the creatures had clustered around a narrow stairwell leading into an underground chamber. Resh shone the light and strode down -- finding himself facing two skeletal warriors, clad in shimmering armor made of phantasmal energies in the shape of plate armor. Their swords were massive, serrated, and the hilts were decorated with leering skulls. Wriggling along the corridor in a slithering, curving arc, was a kind of half-transparent snake with a shimmering gemstone planted in the center of its forehead. The gemstone pulsed and with every pulse, a bead of light emerged from the gemstone and shot through the circular doorway that the two skeletal figures guarded.

"Hello," Resh said. "I come seeking Arronax..."

The two skeletal figures regarded him with cold indifference.

Resh stepped down the stairs, his warbringer at the ready.

The skeletal figures did nothing. The snake writhed, but it did not turn its head towards him. Resh ducked, to avoid being struck by the bead of light going through the door. When he entered through the door, he saw that the lights were flowing into a cone of golden white light, surrounding an earthen circle, which itself was banded by a rectangular wall, with a set of stone stairs leading back up out of this place. Seated within the center of the glowing cone of golden white light was a female elf. Her hair reached to her ankles and was colored a brilliant red, complimenting her pale skin. Her eyes were cat-green, and her face showed the epitome of boredom -- a mask of boredom so intense, so all pervasive that it nearly disguised the breathtaking beauty of her face, and the faint echo of familiarity.

Was she related to Raven? No...that was not it, Resh thought.

"Oh, come to gloat?" the girl asked, her voice filled with ennui. "One would think you'd get tired of it."

"No," Resh said. "I've...come seeking Arronax."

The girl-elf looked to him. "Oh?" she asked. "And why is that?"

"I'm here to stop him from-"

"Oh good gods!" The woman flung her head back, cracking it against the crackling, golden field. "That goddamn Tesla couldn't tell a male elf from a female elf if his bloody life depended upon it!"

Resh paused. Then holstered his warbringer in a single jerky movement, the weapon rasping into the leather of the holster. "You are...are..."

The elf stood. Her arms spread, revealing she was clad in a robe of blue and white and black, with a shimmering amulet around her pale neck. She attempted a bow, despite the confined space in which she stood. "Yes, daring adventurer -- before you stands Arronax. Daughter of Nasrudin, destroyer of Vendigroth, and prisoner for these past two thousand years." She sighed, crossing her arms over her petite chest. "I'd apologize, but the very idea chokes in my throat...how could a single word, a dozen words, a library of words even possibly begin to encompass the weight of my guilt." She put her hand over her face, then ducked her head forward. "Gods!"

Resh gaped at her.

"You're Arronax!?" He exclaimed.

Arronax slid her hand away from her face. "Aye! Yes! I said that!" She groaned. "You're not going to begin gibbering about some chauvinist claptrap now, are you?" She groaned.

"But the Panarii-"

"The who?" Arronax asked.

"And the Vendigroth Times!" Resh exclaimed. "They said you were a...and your father-" He stopped, his brow furrowing. "Never...actually specified..."

"Why would he, it's irrelevant...to elves," Arronax said, her voice bitter. "It wasn't until I met a human being that I thought anyone would be so ridiculous as to assume that a wizard and a woman couldn't be the same bloody thing!"

Resh put his hand to his forehead, the metal of his gauntlet pinching against his skin. "I may need to sit down for a moment." He stepped away from the cone, then back towards it. "You're preparing to invade the whole of Arcanum! You have a cult of Dark Elves, seeking to bring you back! There's been a whole...ever...assassins have been trying to murder me! The Molochean Hand! I...that..." he flung up his arms. "If you are not behind this entire mess, the who the bloody hell is!?"

Arronax hung her head forward, then lifted it. Her eyes were dark and her voice dripped with a dramatic, ominous tones -- it seemed that two millennia trapped in this conical prison had not sapped her of her sense of the dramatic. Resh might have been amused, even charmed, had he not been still reeling utterly from the revelation that for the past year and a half, his assumptions of what his enemy was had been totally, completely false. He felt like he had been drawing to a double bluff, played for a fool, and left utterly naked in the gutter beside the casino. But then Arronax's words reached his ears and he realized...

Despite having never known it...

He had still studied for this moment.

He knew his enemy.

"Kerghan," Arronax said. "Kerghan the Necromancer. Kerghan the Terrible. Kerghan the Black. He never ceased his experimentation, Mr. Adventurer. And if he is not stopped, then we will all die."

Resh's mind reeled as he recalled every passing reference he had seen to Kerghan. An ancient human necromancer, the first human and the last human to be allowed into the Elven Council. Banished, by Arronax's order, on the discovery of his terrible, terrible experiments. The founder of the Derian Ka, the Order of the Dead, the organization that had sprouted the Molochean Hand, the order that the Molochean Hand had turned upon when they had discovered Kerghan's terrible purpose. Resh shook his head. "B-But...but how..." he whispered. "How can he still be alive?"

"This place is different," Arronax said. "What matters here is not mind, not sense, but will." She touched her temple. "A place of pure magick. For two thousand years, Kerghan has stayed here -- drawing on the power, exploring, charting his dark paths." She shook her head. "He defeated me the instant I arrived, and imprisoned me here. He says he has imprisoned the others -- the others my father banished here." Her head shook. "He tricked the Dark Elves into bringing some clan of dwarves here...he...he wants to return to Arcanum."

Resh drew up his chin. "Very well then. It seems..." He smirked at her, drawing his faceplate backwards, revealing himself to Arronax. "That we are to work together."

Arronax gaped at him. "Y-You're handsome!" she exclaimed. "And a half-orc!"

Resh blinked slowly, then chuckled. "Handsome, you say?"

Arronax blushed. "I-I did not say that! Y-You're...I..." She spluttered. "I...silence!" She thrust her finger imperiously at me.

Resh grinned, shaking his head. "Now. Lets see about getting you out of here...and finding my friends..." He frowned. "The power source seems evidence."

"Ah, yes, the spirit worm. It is a kind of pseudo-spiritual creature," Arronax said, her voice soft. "I've been studying it for years -- but it is utterly immune to any weapon made by mortal hands. Swords. Spears. Arrows." She shook her head. "Even a bullet reflects away -- the only spell I can think that might work would be a lightning bolt, but I am trapped in, uh, what are you do-" She stopped with the roaring sound of the warbringer and the sound of bones scattering on the ground, the clatter and clunk of dropped swords, the screech and shattering sound of more tearing flesh. The beads of light ceased flowing into the shield, which crackled, whirred, and shrank down to nothingness.

Resh stepped back into the room. He grinned, then slid his faceplate down. "Shall we?"

Arronax reached out, touched the air about her. She burst into tears, collapsing to the ground, rolling from side to side in the newfound freedom that surrounded her. Resh sighed, then reached backwards. He began by undoing the catches on the rear of his armor, then wriggling his hands to draw them back from the armored gauntlets. He slipped from the harness of the T-51b armor and stepped free, dressed in only a loincloth as he knelt beside Arronax. He drew her into his arms, hugging her gently. "There there, there there,' he whispered, quietly. "it's all right."

She clung to him, trembling. "I do not deserve this!" She said, her voice thick with sorrow. "A-All those people I killed, all that arrogance..." She pressed her face to his chest, then drew her head back, her eyes wide as saucers. She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it once more. Closed it. Resh's hand cupped her cheek, tilting her head back. He smiled at her.

"Deserve?" he asked. "I...I don't know. There's no way to undo what has been done, no real way for me to...say whether you deserve forgiveness. But you seek it. You want it. And now, you are about to throw yourself at one of the most dangerous villains that Arcanum has ever made -- Kerghan the Terrible." Resh's voice was soft. "I was a bandit. Beatrice, my lover, was a criminal and thug as well. If we can hope for redemption after our paltry single score of years?" He shook his head. "Then why not you with hundred?"

Arronax breathed in. "I-I cannot tell if it is the isolation or...a-are you really quite beautiful?"

Resh chuckled. "Did you listen to a word I said, you silly girl?"

"N-no," Arronax admitted, her cheeks flushed. "Your mustaches are quite handsome."

"Oh, now, you are merely fishing for compliments," Resh scoffed. He smiled. "Were this any other time, I would take you in a manly fashion. But time is of the utter essence." He caressed her cheek. "But ...maybe once this is all over?" He grinned at her -- but despite his words, his rather impressive, nearly equestrian, endowments were proving some lie to his words. Arronax squirmed, and drew in a quiet breath as she felt what she had not for a hundred score years: The hardness of a male member. Arronax looked aside, then forced herself to her feet, her cheeks as red as the trim of her robes.

"Y-Yes! After!" She proclaimed. "But for now, we have a bloody necromancer to deal with, what what!"

Resh chuckled. "Your vernacular is remarkably Tarantian, old girl," he said, standing, stretching as he took some pleasure in showing off his own muscular body to the clearly quite affection-starved elf. Merely walking across the room to his armor nearly reduced her to drooling, and Resh smirked as he drew himself back into the armor. Closing the hatch behind himself, he reactivated the armor's musculature. Steam chuffed from his back as if he was his own locomotive. Arronax, meanwhile, was blushing.

"Well, the translation cantrip is quite simple," she said. "A mere application of the Mental School."

Resh laughed. "Well, then. Let us go."

Together, the two of them set up the stairs.

Emerging into the dubious light of the Void, Resh and Arronax looked about, Arronax pointing with one pale finger, her hair brushing along the ground behind her. The object she pointed at was a narrow bridge of black stone, reaching from the edge of this part of the island towards a castle that Resh had not see before: A stone and skull edifice, emerging from the darkness like some primeval terror. There were no windows, only the black stone and leering skulls. Resh began towards it, followed by Arronax, his warbringer at the ready. The front door was open and led within -- towards a abattoir. Resh stepped over the bridge and shone his light within and wished he had never seen -- it would be better to have not witnessed such a sight.