Omega Point (8 page)

  The cavalier handled a silver blade with an ease that belied its unwieldiness, shaped as it was like a huge feather. In and out it went, turning away the weapons of his adversaries. Yet his movements were slowing, flickering a semaphore of desperation.

  His opponents were iron homunculi a metre and a half tall. Stooped and misshapen, they moved with an ugly grace.

  "Hee hee! Hee hee! Kill him! Kill him! Eat his eyes! Stab his heart!"

  "Ha ha! Break his bones! Smash his skull! Strip his meat! Take him apart!"

  Each was the colour of ancient rust. Their faces were intricate masks. Clanking mechanical noises issued from them, a ratcheting hum underlying the swordplay.

  "Hoo hoo hoo!" chittered a third. "Take his blood! Eat! Eat! Eat!"

  "Bloody Hell, clockwork goblins," said Richards. "This place gets weirder by the minute." The bear was watching with an expression approaching enjoyment. Richards elbowed the toy in its gut. "Go on then, help him," he said.

  Bear shrugged. "Not my problem."

  Richards scowled. "Some soldier you are. Well, I can't just stand here." He stepped out into plain sight. "Oi!" he shouted, his plan running out with that.

  One of the haemites turned from the fight. "What's this? What's this? Fresh meat! Fresh meat!" A whistle on its shoulder tooted. It whirred towards Richards.

  "Run, you fool! Flee!" shouted the cavalier. "Be away swiftly before they are upon you!" And he redoubled his efforts to drive back the haemites besetting him, but to no avail, and they tooted as they pressed him harder. "For the love of god! Don't let it touch you!"

  The creature came closer to Richards. It smelt of furnaces and stale water. "Hee hee, hee hee hee!" it gibbered. "Slow we'll go, slow and nice. Best for me!"

  Richards scooped up a house brick and bounced it off the haemite to no effect. "Ah, balls," he said.

  "Oh, for the… Ahem!" shouted the bear. "Hands off my prisoner!"

  "A bear!" the machine screeched.

  "A bear?" queried a second.

  "Where?" cried the third.

  "There!" hollered the fourth.

  "More, more!" cried the creature approaching Richards. "Oh, joy joy! Iron and meat for us to eat! Plenty!" It whistled, jaws clacking together. "You later!" It giggled. "Kill the bear!"

  "I wouldn't be so sure about that if I were you, matey," said Bear, flexing his claws.

  "Skreeeeeeee!" shrieked Richards' assailant. It charged the toy. Bear batted its first strikes away, sending the goblin-thing staggering with the force of his paws. It recovered with alarming alacrity. Bear snarled and swiped, missing. The creature ducked and lunged. There was a soft rip as sword connected with fabric.

  The creature's blade sunk up to the hilt in Bear's belly, and it screamed in triumph. The fight by the barn slowed, the man looking on in horror. The other creatures joined the call, a keening whistle.

  Bear looked at the sword, then at the haemite. Bear raised his eyebrows. Bear did not look very happy.

  The creature wrenched its sword from Bear's gut and stabbed again. Bear grimaced.

  "Ouch," said Bear. "Ooh, ow, oh, really, aiee! Stop it." He scowled, and spoke with leaden menace. "Oh, do stop it. Do."

  The creature stopped and drew the sword out. A thin wisp of stuffing snagged on the blade's nicked edge. Bear poked at the hole in his tummy, and fixed the mechanical monster with a doleful glare. "Now you're just annoying me," he said.

  There was a noise like a beanbag travelling at mach three hitting a sack of spanners, and the haemite hurtled into a wall. It exploded with a gout of steam and hot coals. Tiny gears rained down over Richards.

  "Aha!" yelled the cavalier. He swung his blade, cleaving one of the creatures in two. The remaining pair faltered, the energy gone from their assault. Bear roared and they turned tail and fled.

  The cavalier planted his sword in the ground and leaned upon his knees. "A thousand thanks," he panted. His face was florid and running with sweat. "Rarely have I seen such valour in battle. Indeed." He caught his breath, stood straight and smiled. "I had come to a sorry pass with those devils, and feared my days were done. Were it not for your timely intervention I believe done they would have been."

  "No problem, bud," said Bear with a shrug, beans rattling. "Just doing the decent thing." He looked at Richards. "How are you, Mr Richards, OK?"

  "Just Richards," said Richards.

  "You were most fortunate, sir," said the stranger. "The preferred delicacy of the haemite is the iron found within the human organism. Three moments more and you, sir, would currently resemble the poor wretches of this place." He spun on Cuban heels, staring up at Bear. "And how fare you, my mighty friend? What says your steely gut? I have seen such blows disembowel an elephant, yet you stand unscratched."

  Bear shrugged and scratched his hole. "I'll stitch."

  "Stitch?" said the man. "Aha. Stitch!" he bellowed with pantomime laughter that stopped as abruptly as it had begun. "I am forgetting my manners. I, Percival Del Piccolo, poet swordsman of wit, cavalier, debonair liberator of ladies' virtues, pirate king and all round irritant…"

  "Yeah," butted in Bear.

  "Ahahaha," said Piccolo, laughing, "all round irritant to tyrants, evil Maharajahs and Grand Viziers with ideas above their station." He held up his sword, which only now Richards realised was shaped like a quill, with a silver nib for a hilt. "I also appear to be overly fond of glib cliché." He let the weapon fall to his side again.

  "What are you?" Richards looked him up and down. "You're not a historical, nor educational. An old game character? A composite of old game characters?"

  "This place is full of them," said Bear. "Wankers. Always asking you to do pointless shit. Over. And over. Again." He growled.

  "I know not," rejoined the cavalier. "I only know that I am, and that I possess only one set of clothes." Piccolo's face turned from frown to grin as he took in the gold trim and lace cuffs. "And that is not a welcome state of affairs."

  "Does this chap ever shut up?" said Bear to no one in particular.

  "Rarely, I admit," said Piccolo.

  "That it? I'm Bear," said Bear.

  "He's a toy, even though he looks like a bear," added Richards. "And I'm Richards."

  "And he's an idiot, even though he looks like a fool," added Bear drily.

  "A toy like a bear and an idiot fool, eh? Ohohoho. What a gay pass."

  "Ra-ight," said Bear. "Well, I think we'll be on our way now, if you don't mind. No need to worry about the rescue and all."

  "In that case, strangers, I assume you do not wish to be made aware of what occurred in this place?" inquired Piccolo.

  Bear huffed. "No."

  "Yes," said Richards.

  "I shall perforce forgive your hirsute companion, sir, for he is but a rude beast, with manners to match. Indeed who would expect more –" he laughed "– from a bear? 'Tis fortune indeed for him for that he is naught more. Mayhap, were he a man, honour would compel me to slice the blaggard from gizzard to crotch."

  "Just you try it," muttered Bear.

  "This land you presently stand in," began Piccolo, "was once the happy YamaYama nation of Optimizja. Ah!" he projected, bouncing his voice off the surrounding buildings. "Ah! Optimizja! The very name is sweet mead on the tongue! A veritable salve to any misery was a week in Optimizja! A panacea to the ills of the soul! A joyous place, where the YamaYama folk were happy with never a care, all times willing to see the best in things, always hopeful for tomorrow, forever…"

  "They'd be optimistic, then?" said Bear. "Hurry it on."

  "I suppose one could ineloquently put it like that, if one had to, or were one rushed for time," said the cavalier. "May I, with your leave, Sir Bear, continue?"

  "Be my guest," said Bear, settling down on the floor. "Sit down, sunshine," he said to Richards. "This may take a while."

  "They were always well fed and industrious, the people of Optimizja. The eternal light that would never dim providing them both with vittles and joy, fuelling their sunny dispositions. They worked hard and laughed long, the people of Optimizja, always illumined by glorious gold until…"

  "Let me guess," said Bear. "The sun set one day."

  "Will you be silent, please? I am mid-narrative," snapped Piccolo.

  Richards dug Bear in the ribs. "Sorr-ee," said Bear.

  "Then, one awful eve, the unconscionable occurred. The folk of this joyous place were overcome with horror when the sun unexpectedly set," said Piccolo.

  "See?" whispered Bear to Richards.

  "After marvelling at such a thing, for many of them had never travelled to the lands where the lamp of Sol is extinguished, borne through Hades by the chariot of glorious Apollo ere close of every day, only to be hauled forth again the next –" he paused to draw breath "– the people were terrified, yet, in their terror, they were hopeful that the sun would return, the elders reassuring the youngsters that this was what passed ordinarily in foreign parts, and that even here the sun required to rest from one age to the next. Thus they went about their business in the unfamiliar night with smiles upon their faces."

  Bear put a paw up.

  "Yes?"

  "Was that because they were optimistic?"

  "But little did they know!" shouted Piccolo. "Little did they know that this was merely the precursor to the Great Terror about to engulf their land in perpetual gloom! They kenned nought of it, the dark that sweeps the land, consuming all in its path, the armies of vile creatures that are its van, and Lord Penumbra! The evil beast who is its master, the shadow who controls it all! For why should they? The people of Optimizja never ventured forth from their happy land, for they had no need. Everything required was here for them. An enchanted, blessed place was this."

  "Hmph. Sounds like they needed a reality check to me," said Bear. "Ooh, look! A ladybird."

  "But woe unto them!" bellowed Piccolo, making Richards jump. "For when the armies of darkness descended upon Optimizja its folk were caught unawares, rousted from their beds by horrors far beyond their cheerful imaginings. Scattered and slaughtered were they, reaped as easily as the wheat they harvested. Bucks, does and kittens, their essences drained by haemites. Their crops and homes burnt.

  "But that, that, dear gentlefolk, is not the end of it. Oh, precious life of ours, no. Soon the very land upon which this village stands will be consumed by the Great Terror, the terrible vortex that follows in the wake of Penumbra's depravities, leaving nothing, not one grain of sand but, in the stead of life, a terrible void. As it is now for thousands of leagues to the east, and as all will be when the dark finally reaches the sea to the west." Piccolo bowed his head.

  "So," said Richards, "you're telling me there is a, for want of a better word, 'shadow lord', and the entire world is being eaten alive by some terrible darkness?"

  "A little imprecise, but yes. Some fragments persist, here and there in the dark – those places which hold the soul of a land remain for a while dotted in the starless night, until they, too, fade."

  "Hmmm," said Richards. "Tell me, do you know of an entity such as myself, one called k52?"

  "That I know not, good Richards," said Piccolo regretfully. "I am a fragment of a world gone, a world where I had no more will than a blade of grass. Only the Flower King gave me form, and in truth this life is no more real. We will all die eventually from this war. Best to flee to the west, as I was attempting to do before my ship threw a wheel, costing me my crew, lost to those iron devils. Oh! They were a bitter tax levied that I may live the longer! Woe is Piccolo! Woe! It makes me wish to weep when I think of the fine day we set out across land. It was seven weeks past, I remember it well, a glorious morning full of promise…"

  "Thanks," said Bear, hauling Richards upright. "I think that'll do."

  "It may seem trite to you, my friend," said Piccolo, fixing Bear with a sorry eye. "But our world is dying." He seemed diminished, crumpled.

  "Yeah. I know," said Bear, tapping his helm with a claw. "Helmet see? Me brave soldier, fighting armies of darkness? I understand entirely. That's why we're sooooooo out of here." He began to walk away. "If the Terror has come this far in," he confided to Richards, "we'll need to get Geoff. This place won't be here for much longer." He thought for a second, then added halfheartedly, "You should come with us, Piccolo."

  "Aha!" cried Piccolo, once more a dashing figure. "I cannot, for, before the end of it all, I must chase down my arch-adversary, the Punning Pastry Chef!"

  "Puh-lease," said the bear, and grabbed Richards by the shoulder.

  "Who?" called Richards, as Bear dragged him away.

  "He bakes pies and tells lies, with not a good rhyme between them. He will taste my steel before the world is done! I will slice his final cake with glee! Farewell, my friends!" called Piccolo through cupped hands. "Keep well, and remember, head west. Always to the west!"

  And with that they turned a corner and the cavalier was lost to sight.

  "Good riddance," said Bear.

 

Richards stopped. Bear tried to pull him on, but he resisted.

  "What's he doing here?" said Richards. "Very interesting."

  "What?"

  "Him, there," Richards pointed to a corpse. From a distance it looked like a YamaYama, shrivelled by haemite touch, but closer they could see it had once been a man. "East Asian?" said Richards as he approached. He squatted down and poked at the woody corpse with a piece of charred lath. "Chinese. Could be, but hard to tell in here, could be anything." And then, something, something he'd not felt since he'd arrived. His head snapped round, and he practically jumped up. A stream of information, a tug of numbers, the weft of the place he was in, snagged at his mind. "Hang on a minute," he said eagerly. He scanned the village, turning his head slowly left to right: that way the flow diminished, fading back into a world of broken homes and dead toys, but this way he sensed it again, a flicker in the world, a crackle in his head. "Bingo!" said Richards. "I knew he wasn't from in here!" He set off toward the church.