Born of Metal: Rings of the Inconquo Read online

  I felt a vibration through the floor and up my legs. My eyes widened. The bucket shimmered red and gave a bass hum. Its resonance putrefied in my mind’s grip, and it was like holding something rotten. When I squeezed harder, it exploded.

  The blast sent me rolling, and a wave of pressure washed over me, sucking on my inner ears. Glowing shards of metal spun through the air, jamming into the ceiling, walls and floor. In their wake came a tide of grit and dust. The ceramic lining turned sandstorm as it exploded from the annihilated bucket.

  VERY AMUSING.

  Laying on my side, I raised a hand against the stinging wind. A storm of smouldering darkness came striding out of the tumbling dust devils.

  Crawling to my feet, I held my hands out, palms down. With a wave of energy, I sucked the rivets out of the floor. I’d no more called on them, then Kezsarak’s own power took them from me. They tightened away as if drawing back to fire. I did my best baseball dive and slide out of the way, but slivers of metal peppered my right side. The jacket and jeans were some protection, but several hot stings burned across my shoulder and thigh.

  MY TURN.

  A horrible screeching sound filled the air, and I looked up to see a lorry lurch forwards. Flat tyres flapping on mangled rims, the vehicle came for me, an infernal red glow suffusing the whole frame. Rattling and pounding, it picked up speed. I was about to be crushed.

  I reached out to a length of chain on the tracks above. With a jingling hiss, they snaked down but the ceiling was nearly half a dozen metres up. The hellish corona blinding me as the lorry neared, I kept my hand outstretched. The instant the cold steel touched my fingers, I grabbed a hold. I sent a panicked, wordless command, and the chain yanked me up into the air. The lorry tore past, the tips of my trainers skidding across the pitted cab.

  My arm and shoulder screaming, I flew until I was swinging in a nest of chains on the ceiling. Grabbing another handful of chains, I looped my legs through some others, taking the pressure off my shoulder.

  Below, the lorry smashed into the wall, the rusted metal crumpling in on itself. It detonated. A crimson glare flashed. Curls of metal sheeting and hunks of concrete spun through the air. Blasted by another rush of hot air and stinging sparks, I swung there, chains squeaking.

  From my perch, I saw a gaping hole in the side of the building. Girders, I-beams as thick as me, jutted from the crumbling concrete like exposed ribs. Beyond the ragged breach was the tangled, rain-slicked yard, and barely visible, the gnarled line of the fence.

  RUN, TRAITOR.

  I looked down and saw Kezsarak’s burning eyes narrowed in amusement. A huge, scaly arm swept towards the wound, and the girders began to glow and steam. An almost animal-like groan shook the wall, and I watched the portal widen invitingly.

  RUN, SO I MIGHT CHASE YOU.

  I tore my eyes from the temptation and glared at the demon. Behind him stretched the imprints of his footsteps, smoking pits of molten metal. The sludge ran and bubbled, buckling the floor plates. I imagined those same burning footprints following me down the streets of Greenwich, people screaming as the gallu spread ruin in his wake.

  I couldn’t let that happen. Damn it, I was a guardian after all.

  “I’m not done with you yet, big boy,” I shouted and dropped clear, fists wrapped in lengths of chain.

  I dropped, thrilling in the momentary weightlessness. My shoulders screamed with the effort as I drew on the interconnected metal running from the chain to the track. I heard a clank and groan overhead.

  The swing carried me down on a collision course with his face. Kezsarak reached for me from the ashen cloud. At the last second, I mentally yanked the chains backwards. My shoulders popped as I whiplashed away from the gallu’s grip, but the noise was swallowed by the resounding groan as the gear assembly swung free of its track. At first, gravity, then the rings, amplified the fury, shivering up the chains as the massive collection of gears spiralled opposite me. I spun by as the tank-sized hammer crashed into Kezsarak’s chest.

  The sound was a gratifying, bone-deep ‘whump’ as the demon flew backwards, huge body ragdolling across the foundry floor. Head over heels, he pitched into one of the vats, trailing burning streamers of soot.

  I landed heavy, but rolled into it and came up howling. “How’s that for running, you bastard!”

  Like tarry fumes over an imminent eruption, Kezsarak’s cloud roiled above the basin. He was down, but far from out.

  Overhead, more giant buckets swung like mute cathedral bells. One hadn’t been enough, but if at first you don’t succeed …

  I threw my ringed hand out and raked at the chains at the limit of my reach. The weary links gave up their decades-old burdens. The buckets crashed into the basin, scattering soot and cinders. One stomach-fluttering gong after another, they impacted, and I was already looking for something else to hit him with. Something bigger, something harder.

  I never got the chance as a thundering roar rose out of the basin, and I felt for the first time the true extent of Kezsarak’s furious power. He reached out to the girders framing the building, the vast skeletal structure. I wrapped a mental hold around one huge I-beam, then realised he had a hold of all of them, even through layers of metal sheeting and thick concrete. He was tuning them to a single apocalyptic note, and the air vibrated with their response. The overhead lights snapped and sparked off, a sullen red glow suffusing everything.

  Instinctively, I ripped up a swath of floor sheeting and cocooned myself with it, forming a metallic hamster ball. The red glow leaked through the seams, flaring and suddenly winking out. I had half a second to hear my breath rasping in the dark and to brace myself within the metallic egg, before the world erupted.

  Bouncing and spinning, I seemed to be travelling in every direction at once. Impacts across the reshaped sheeting rattled and banged, but I tumbled on. Here and there something sharp and blazing hot would punch through, but whatever they were flew by so fast I didn’t have a chance to think about how close they’d come to skewering me. I was far too busy just holding the perforated shell intact.

  Something which felt like a falling skyscraper came down on the shell, and it exploded. I flew clear, riding the last fragment of sheeting like a saucer. Skittering across the remains of the toppled walls and collapsed ceiling, my metal ride screamed to a halt.

  My body ached like one huge bruise as I climbed off the sheeting, the joints that weren’t painfully locked felt dangerously loose instead. I took in a breath and choked on the clouds of swirling powdered concrete. As I hacked up a throat full of cement dust, I couldn’t hear anything aside from a dull ringing as it rose in volume and pitch. For a few gagging breaths, that perpetual chime was all I knew.

  When I spat out a mouthful of grey sludge, it gave a wet slap on the ruined metal. The first sign my hearing was returning. A humid wind cleared some of the air, and I looked up. A handful of cold stars winked at me between dark banks of cloud. The ruin of the foundry settled with a final dusty sigh. The rain had stopped, I realized randomly.

  The air was still for a beat, then Kezsarak’s roar drove the silence away like a splitting maul.

  I spun, still reeling and horrified, as he pounded towards me, rubble blackening in his wake. One hand trailed swirling ash, as his fist drew jagged spurs of metal from the rubble. Shards rocketed towards him from everywhere, drawn to the enormous magnet of his fist. Three strides from me, and his fist was a spiked wrecking ball. Two strides, and that wrecking ball raised overhead.

  My heart in my throat, I sent the sheeting I’d ridden spinning up into his burning face, then did a panicked dive to the side. A crater opened where I once stood. Screaming as I scrambled up and away, my ankles turned painfully on the treacherous terrain. My mind reached out for metal, but what wasn’t part of Kezsarak was buried under shattered concrete. He was nearly upon me again. Every hair on my neck and forearms stood on end as I anticipated pain and destruction. My throat was screaming with my breath feeling both burned and fro
zen.

  A hunk of rubble rolled under my foot, and I stumbled just as Kezsarak pounced.

  A huge, diagonal blow scythed towards me, and I did my best to twist away, my mind screaming for metal to block him. A spur on his wreckage-swollen fist was going to catch me, heading for my left shoulder. Out of time to react, muscles burning, I winced before the fatal collision.

  Something hot, almost scalding splashed across my arm and shoulder as the swing impossibly whistled by. No. Not by. Through.

  But the hot wetness wasn’t my blood. I gaped at where I should have been split in two, my jaw dropping in disbelief. Molten iron coated my entire arm and shoulder. Its aura, still tainted by Kezsarak, called to me, pleading, and instinctively I responded.

  The metal flowed and moulded itself over my arm and shoulder to form a resilient second skin. I didn’t have time to stare at my new bionic-looking arm. It was immediately put to the test as Kezsarak’s hammering fist came down. I turned my reinforced shoulder into the blow, metal-sheathed arm warding my face. The force of the impact turned all my senses momentarily to static, As I staggered back from the blow, the liquid metal spread, coating more of my body.

  Kezsarak glared, eyes narrowed. His voice came out in that insidious, hair-raising hiss.

  TRAITOR.

  Fresh metal slid across my torso to coat my other arm. I straightened, both iron-shod arms raised in a boxer’s guard.

  INSECT.

  I bared my teeth, feet grinding in the rubble to brace my legs. The liquid metal crawled up my neck and down over my ribcage, lending strength wherever it touched.

  A dark, mocking laugh rumbled as he lunged forwards, fist sweeping down to flatten me. Crossing my arms over my head, I took the blow, wincing and preparing for immense pain, if not death. The incredible blow stopped dead with a thunk, but the shock of it shuddered down my abused shoulders through my body and into my feet.

  Lifting my gaze and seeing my own amazement reflected in his burning eyes, the corners of my mouth lifted in a grim smile.

  “Come on!” I snarled, digging deep even as I felt him leveraging his huge body to crush me. “That all you got?”

  Kezsarak’s eyes narrowed, seething with venomous hate. His malignant intention slithered down towards me, wrapping itself around my body like a constrictor. Goose bumps rose where his mind trailed by. My new metal casing hardened against him, rebellious to his intent.

  FAITHLESS.

  The words bubbled out like blood from a deep wound. I looked up in horror to see shards of metal encasing his fist and giving a deadly red shimmer. An instant later, the metal sheathing soaked my arms with the same fevered glow, its aura giving a mournful chorus. I sank to a knee as I felt his growing influence approaching critical mass. With a cry that was part scream and part wail, I mentally gripped the metal encasing me and threw it sideways. My internal organs and bones compressed as my body flew through the air.

  Kezsarak’s fist descended and the metal seemed to detonate. Not for the first time that night, my world became a spinning kaleidoscope of pain and confused sensation as I tumbled across the broken ground. I pitched up at last against something hard and rough.

  My head still spinning, I placed my hands against my resting place and understood. I lay against a broken boulder of concrete with a few buried deposits of metal I could faintly sense. My mind still sluggish and muddy, I feebly reached out to the metal, not even sure what I was going to do with it.

  FOOL.

  The rebuke came with another flicker of his power. There was a crackle and a screech as something exploded. I covered my face to keep the shrapnel from my eyes. Shrapnel peppered my arms and torso, tinging off my armour. When the eruptions ceased, the thundering of Kezsarak stood over me, eyes narrowed.

  I let out a gasp of despair. I was exhausted and out of ideas. I was surrounded by metals, but Kezsarak’s power over them was stronger than mine.

  AVENGED AT LAST.

  A huge hand reached towards me from the soot.

  Heaving myself into a roll, I narrowly avoided his grasp. A wave of heat washed over me as his huge hand clamped on air. With what felt like my last ounce of adrenaline, I scrambled to my feet. Skirting around the boulder, I slid in the dust, chest heaving. Ducking behind another heap of wreckage, I leaned my back against the rubble, my eyes clenched shut. I needed to think.

  With a gasp, I opened my eyes and made a mad dash for one of the other buckets that had fallen when I broke the chain. Sliding in the dust, I leaned my back against the old vat and squeezed my eyes shut.

  WEAKLING.

  Thunderous footsteps approached. I looked down at the rings where they hugged all four fingers of my right hand. The crack where Lowe had broken them … the crack! They had been broken. Pinching my fingers close together, the two broken halves of the gauntlet of rings came together, almost disappearing entirely. I sucked in an astonished breath.

  Keszarak batted away the old kettle like it was a balloon. My hair whipped around my face in the blast of heat. I didn’t look up, only down at the rings.

  Heat, I directed the metal lining the broken halves. Melt.

  The strange alloy grew shiny along the seam. Little tendrils of steam wisped from my fingers. The metal was hot enough to melt through bone, but did not harm me. Closing my two middle fingers, I pressed the hot sides together.

  Fuse. Weld. Be whole again, the way the first Inconquo made you.

  The two sides of the rings melded. They became one solid gauntlet, a thick bar of supernatural power across my fist.

  I looked up as Keszarak’s heat came over me — heat that could not burn me. He reached for me again. Covering his spreading fingers and stretching arms was a skin, like Dillon’s charred hand, but rough and jagged. I looked up into those red eyes, unafraid. A power throbbed on my hand and through my body, unlike anything I’d felt before.

  Keszarak paused.

  In that stillness, familiar chords reverberated. They were strings I knew. Clear and low, the song of iron sang from deep within that craggy arm. With a soft mental caress, I sang back to it.

  A sharp, crackling sound raced up Kezsarak’s arm, and the engine within gave a grinding snarl. Inches from my face, the fingers curled inwards, the skin thickening. I met the demon’s burning gaze.

  In those hot, hellish eyes. I saw fear, and that filled me with fresh strength.

  The iron within him had answered me.

  Casting into the storm of swirling ash, I discovered other metals, languishing under Kezsarak’s insane will. Tin, mercury, lead, copper, silver and even gold. All had endured the betrayal of Kezsarak, who’d warped them into ruin and cruelty. They cried out for one who knew their ancient tongue, one who could remind them they did not need to serve the treacherous will of a mad demon.

  They cried out for an Inconquo.

  I made a fist with my right hand, lifting the gauntlet. Kezsarak recoiled, staggering back, his movements stiff with the iron’s insurgence.

  Closing my eyes, I let the Inconquo take over.

  As though they were living things, the metals within the beast mourned. Ancient compounds, beautiful and strong, communed with my blood. I could taste them, sense them, hear their music. I whispered to them, reminding them they were beautiful and good. They could be exorcised from the one who controlled them. Haunted metals. They could be free.

  With my ageless will to bolster them, they rose up as one within Kezsarak, rejecting his control. Cinder and soot whirled inwards as the demon twisted in on himself. Mutiny roiled within him as the metals broke free. A pearly stream of metallic liquid oozed from the cracks in his body, seeping from within and draining his power. Bright coppery tendrils curled across the floor, threading their way through the dirt away from Kezsarak.

  The engine of my nightmares shrieked as crank shafts twisted and gears splintered. The cinders were gone, and the ash drifted down in thin ribbons. The malevolent storm slowly cleared, leaving a shadow of the thing he’d been before malice and gr
ief polluted him.

  Tiny streams of silver and gold crawled and flowed, spreading like a star slowly exploding. The metals began to glow, their light increasing as Kezsarak’s dimmed. Darker grey ribbons rolled and tumbled gleefully, drawn to where I stood.

  Kezsarak’s form cleared as the ash and cinders dwindled. Bovine legs of beaten copper supported a wide, muscled belly of sculpted lead. Above this was a man’s powerful chest in burnished tin and two mighty arms of iron. Resplendent above the body was a thoughtful, bearded face of dark gold, which bore silver horns sweeping from proud temples. The eyes, which no longer burned but glimmered, were pools of mercury cupped within golden sockets.

  He was primal and yet somehow refined. Life still glimmered in those quicksilver eyes, sad, bitter and broken.

  END ME, INCONQUO.

  The voice was so small now.

  PLEASE.

  Ancestors from ages past created this monster. In spite of everything that had passed between us, I pitied him.

  “Sleep,” I said softly, and I used my power to press the thought home.

  For an instant, he resisted. His resentment, grief and shame flashed against my mind. Then he surrendered, letting the power of the rings bear him into the depths of himself.

  Smooth and soft, the statued form of Kezsarak shrank and melted. A gentle implosion, until only the cuneiformed bands slid into place. A few moments later, the cask rested on the foundry floor. Still once more.

  I let out a long, low breath. My metallic armour had vanished, whether it had retreated into my body or joined the melted metal on the floor, I didn’t know.

  Looking down, I gave a start. With Keszarak contained within his cube, the only light in the space now came in as either moonlight, through cracks in the faraway ceiling, or from the glowing wet metal, which had curled around my feet. Somehow, the silvers, golds, greys, coppers and reds of those metals had leaked across the floor to make a shape. The shape surrounded me on all sides, laying on the surface around me, like an elaborate metallic sun.