Diana Pho - Steampunk World

The sulfurous stench of feces assaulted his nostrils. He turned his gaze skyward. The clicking, black cloud of beetles was descending upon the litter. Akhu snatched back the canopy and stood behind Ra’s Rain . “Fusii…Gahs… now !”

The twin war elephants raised their armored trunks skyward. A column of fire erupted from the nozzles connected to the barding covering each elephant’s eight foot long proboscis.

The Horns of Sekhmet proved effective as the flames engulfed the beetles, roasting hundreds of them and injuring hundreds more. The dead beetles – and their living kindred – fell to the earth, where Gahs and Fusii set about crushing the creatures under foot.

Umat tossed the Steamsword to Akhu with one hand as she pulled a large wheeled crate with the other. She pulled the heavy crate, which was filled with fist-sized steel balls, next to Ra’s Rain .

On the ground, the beetles crawled together with military-like precision, forming a hundred or so patches of blackness upon the grass. Each group of beetles then began to fuse together, writhing and clicking as their bodies became one. After a few moments, a hundred large, chitinous black balls lay upon the field of battle.

The clicking ceased. The balls were still.

Akhu brought his telescope to his eye and studied the balls intensely. “Gahs, please, do us the honors.”

Gahs nodded and then raised his right foreleg. He slammed his foot down, beating a small crater into the grass. The force of the powerful stomp sent a shockwave across the battlefield, sending the beetle-balls bouncing upward.

The balls fell back to the earth and then…no sound…no movement.

“Uh- huh ,” Umat grunted as she rubbed her smooth scalp with the palm of her hand. “So…do we move on? Do we…wait for something to happen? Umm…”

“Perhaps the creatures are displaying a gesture of surrender. I guess we press on,” Akhu said with a shrug. “Brother…sister…please, take us forward and step on those things as you go.”

The balls began to vibrate; to quake. A loud clicking din rose from each ball.

“Or…not,” Akhu sighed.

“I knew this was too easy!” Umat spat.

“One can only hope, Umat. Load up Ra’s Rain , I’m going down for a closer look.” Akhu drew the Steamsword and leapt to the ground. He landed with a dull thud. “Send down a line!”

Umat lowered a thin flexible tube to him. Akhu slid the tube’s open end over a spigot on the sword’s leather-wrapped steel pommel.

“Give it some heat,” he shouted.

Umat turned a lever on the heated barrel that sat on the litter-bridge. A few moments later, the Steamsword ’s blade began to glow with a reddish tint, heated by the hair-thin copper veins running the length of the flat sides of the weapon.

“That’s enough,” Akhu said, pulling the tube from the sword’s pommel.

Umat turned off the heat and drew the line back up.

“Get ready!” Akhu shouted.

Akhu leapt toward a beetle-ball, raising the Steamsword above his head. As he descended, he brought the tip of the sword downward, thrusting it hilt-deep into the ball of fused insects.

The ball burst into flames and the burning beetles separated with a loud series of clicks.

“I thought so,” Akhu shouted to his comrades. “The beetles are metamorphosing into something. We need to kill them now. Something tells me we do not want to be here when the metamorphosis is complete!”

A pulsing sound, like the pounding of an army of djembe drums on the horizon, rose from the field of chitinous spheres. The beetle-balls unfolded in unison. Within seconds, standing before Akhu was a platoon of hulking humanoid creatures with large, wicked-looking mandibles, razor-sharp claws and spiked, black, armored exoskeletons.

“Too late, my Neb,” Umat shouted.

Akhu rolled his eyes. “You think ?”

The beetle-warriors charged forward.

Akhu and the elephants surged forward to meet them.

Akhu slashed fiercely with the Steamsword , setting beetle-warriors ablaze with each strike, as Fusii and Gahs butted, gored and trampled the monsters with abandon. Score after score of beetle-warriors fell under the onslaught of Akhu and his elephant companions.

The creatures suddenly broke engagement and retreated.

Akhu reheated the Steamsword and Umat refueled the Horns of Sekhmet as they watched the beetle-warriors – about an acre away – fuse into each other once more, their carapaces softening and melting into one another until all the surviving beetles had formed one massive ball, which sat taller and wider than Fusii, Gahs and the litter-bridge.

“Oh, no!” Akhu exclaimed. “Brother…Sister…Charge that thing! Destroy it!”

Akhu sprinted across the grass toward the monolithic ball. Fusii and Gahs galloped forward close upon his heels, sending chunks of rent earth flying behind them. Akhu closed within two yards of the massive ball and then exploded into the air, the Steamsword raised above his head.

The ball unfolded into a spiked, black titan, which towered over the party of stunned would-be liberators. The creature stood as tall as an elder eucalyptus tree and twice as wide as the great tree’s trunk.

Akhu thrust his sword into the creature’s foot.

The monstrosity snatched him with a claw and lifted him skyward. He screamed in agony as the crushing pressure of the creature’s claw threatened to shatter his ribcage. Akhu thrust the Steamsword into the giant beetle’s claw. The creature screamed a series of quick clicks and then released its grip, allowing Akhu to plummet toward the ground far below.

Akhu stabbed the Steamsword through the monster’s armored torso and sank the weapon deep into the giant’s chest, halting his descent. The creature clicked loudly, reeling backward from the pain in its chest.

“I pray you’re ready, Umat!” Akhu shouted as he dangled from the hilt of the Steamsword .

“Ready, my Neb!” Umat replied.

Akhu twisted the hilt of the sword.

A hissing sound rose from inside the monster’s chest. The creature roared in anguish and a cloud of steam billowed from its mouth.

“Now, Umat! Now!” Akhu shouted as he released the Steamsword ’s hilt. Akhu’s fall toward the earth resumed.

Umat pulled the release lever on Ra’s Rain and a volley of fist-sized iron balls erupted from the weapon’s barrel. The balls flew into the monster’s mouth. A moment later, holes burst open in the colossus’ neck, chest and belly as the iron balls exploded, releasing hundreds of smaller, exploding balls.

Akhu closed his eyes and whispered a quick prayer as the earth drew closer. A powerful force snatched him out of the air and held him aloft. He opened his eyes. Fusii was holding him in her massive trunk. Akhu leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. “Thank you, big sister!”

Fusii gently lowered Akhu to the ground and patted the top of his head with her trunk.

Gahs raised his thick proboscis toward his sister. Fusii slapped the tip of Gahs’ trunk with her own in the elephantine equivalent of a “high-five”.

Akhu perused his surroundings. The ground was littered with thousands of smoldering beetles.

“Good job, everyone!” He shouted as he jogged off. “Meet me at the tomb. If I have not come out within a half hour, use Ra’s Rain to raze Sa-Seti’s tomb to the ground!”

The interior of Sa-Seti’s tomb was, surprisingly, well-lit by some mystic form of illumination and the monument smelled pleasantly of frankincense and myrrh.

“Strange,” Akhu whispered.