Mike Wild - The Clockwork King of Orl

"That monstrosity on the throne isn't the Clockwork King of Orl, Katherine," Kali persisted, shaking her once more, "it's the Clockwork King of All. Ask yourself, woman — all what?"

Makennon hesitated for what seemed to be an age, regarding Kali with unwavering eyes. Then finally she nodded, flicking her finger at Munch to stand him down. But he didn't move. Makennon instead flicked her finger at the soldiers to stand him down. They didn't move, either.

Munch laughed. "The problem with giving me autonomy to choose people for these missions, Anointed Lord, is that I chose carefully. And the people I chose on your behalf for this mission I did so because I knew you might have second thoughts." He sighed. "Second thoughts I cannot allow."

Makennon looked furious but knew better than to move. The soldiers already had their crossbows trained on her.

"What is this, Konstantin?"

"Destiny. But not, as I led you to believe, the destiny of the Final Faith. No, I simply needed its resources to find my way home."

"Home?"

"Home." Munch looked almost sad as he added, "It was my destiny to come here, Katherine — not yours. I am sorry."

"Pff, I'll bet," Kali said. "You know what, Stan — I had you pegged right from the start. Well, almost."

"Munch, what are you saying?" Makennon asked again.

"He's saying that he's a dwarf," Kali explained. "Or at least as much of a dwarf that the one million millionth drop of dwarvishness he'll have left in his blood after all this time qualifies him to be. And unless I miss my guess, that blood's from the clan responsible for what happened here."

"Quite correct, Miss Hooper. I am the last of Clan Trang — what became Clan M'Ar'Tak."

"Listen, pal," Slowhand interjected. "If I know my history, the dwarves were a noble, advanced race of miners, engineers and warriors, not homicidal bearded shortarses with faces like a mool's arse."

Munch glared at him, but his voice remained calm. "You wish proof of my claim, Mister Slowhand? Then I shall give you proof." He glanced up at the gallery tombs, which as yet remained as they had been. "The last part of the process to activate the Clockwork King of All."

Slowhand winced as, without flinching, Munch suddenly rammed his palm onto the patch of spikes in the centre of the plinth, smiling as his blood formed a pool beneath them.

"That had to hurt."

"Know this," Munch said. "The Clockwork King responds only to those whose veins still flow with the blood of Belatron the Butcher."

Slowhand shot a glance at Kali. "Who in the hells is Belatron the Butcher?"

"Bad guy," Kali answered. "I think."

"With a name like that I'd guess it's a pretty safe bet. Gods, you couldn't make this up," Slowhand added to himself in a whisper.

Neither could he have made up what happened next. Munch's blood seeped away into the plinth, and as it did the Clockwork King began to move again. Only this time, instead of sending out rams, its lower half reconstructed itself into the form of another throne on a circular platform. Except this throne was man-sized — more accurately, dwarf-sized. There was something else, too — it was surrounded by strange cylinder-shaped crystals.

"Oh, look," Slowhand said light-heartedly, though with tension in his voice. "He's built himself a chair."

Munch settled himself into it and the Clockwork King remade itself once more, smaller components from within assembling themselves into some kind of metal ring that moved forwards to encircle Munch's head. More spikes shot out of it and embedded themselves straight into his skull, and as they did the cylindrical crystals began to glow. Munch jolted and spasmed in the throne for a few seconds and then smiled. "Yes, Mister Slowhand, that hurt, too. But not, I am pleased to say, as much as my warriors are going to hurt you."

"Warriors?" Slowhand queried, dubiously.

"Not nice," Kali said. "I've seen them before…"

Munch closed his eyes and concentrated. A deep and rhythmic pounding suddenly reverberated throughout the throne room, and then from each of the spaces behind the statues figures marched before halting, more than one from each, and each of which thrice the size of a man. Standing there with their arms and heads slumped like those of ogur, they filled the galleries now and, like the interior of the Clockwork King itself, they were things of metal, of cogs and pulleys and gears, though they had been assembled in such a way that, like the king, they also superficially resembled dwarves, although grotesquely so. Each wielded a dwarven war hammer in one hand and a double-bladed axe in the other, but while the axe was of relatively normal size the hammer was as grotesquely enlarged as each warrior itself — a vicious-looking slab of iron-ribbed stone that was actually part of the ogur-like arm and would likely shatter walls, let alone bones, with a single blow. The only thing the warriors did not carry was a shield, but the giant hammer made such armour unnecessary, its bulk, used defensively, protection enough.

These were the things of which the manuscripts and all the tales had warned. Let slip once on Twilight, it had taken the combined technologies and sorceries of the elves and the dwarves to stop them. Let slip again, onto a Twilight where such abilities were as yet in their infancy, they would be formidable and unstoppable.

"By all the gods…" Katherine Makennon breathed.

"Don't you mean — ?"

"Slip of the tongue. What are these things?"

"They are M'Ar'Tak," Kali said. "Clan Trang's vengeance for the bloody carnage the elves reaped upon them. Isn't that right, Stan?"

Munch smiled on his throne. And then his face darkened. "History paints the dwarven races as the merciless ones, the warmongers, the roaring, blood-lusted, cold-blooded killers, but in our war with Family Ur'Raney it was they who proved to be merciless. Our war had raged for months, our forces driven back across the western territories we contested, the Ur'Raney seemingly able to summon endless reinforcements and our people falling before them — many to their blasted scythe-stones before they learned better. Before we knew it, our army was devastated, pushed back here, to the edge of the world. We thought they would stop, allow us to lick our wounds and leave, but they did not, instead driving us over the Dragonwing Cliffs, slaughtering us even as we fell, and forcing those who survived that slaughter into the sea. For the first time in the history of our race, dwarves were forced to hide, because there was nothing else they could do. They hid in the caves that permeate these cliffs like floprats because otherwise they — and Clan Trang — would have been exterminated."

"One of those who hid was Belatron, wasn't it?" Kali said. "He's what started all this?"

Munch nodded. "Belatron, our greatest wielder of magics. And within him a simmering hatred of the elves, a thirst for revenge that grew over the months — and then the years — into what you now see before you."

Slowhand spoke up. "You're saying that a small bunch of bloodied survivors burrowed into the sea and built an army of clockwork men to do their fighting for them. Apart from being a little unrealistic, that's not a very dwarven battle ethic, is it?"

"No, not to do their fighting for them," Munch said.

The archer gestured up at the warriors. "Then what do you call — "

"To do their own fighting," Kali said, cutting Slowhand off. "Because they're not clockwork men — at least, not wholly." She peered at the massed ranks and made out what the others had apparently yet not, that within the skeletal structure of each warrior were brains riveted into metal skulls, hearts suspended within metal ribs and, most grotesquely of all, eyeballs set deep within metal sockets. These things were not simply mechanical, they were vessels for the remains of warriors who had been slaughtered by the Ur'Raney.