Spoiler (click to show/hide):
Steam Chapter Three
By: axmanjack
Weightless clouds of cold mist float with all the tinkling brilliance of ice cracked by midmorning sunbeams. Impossible birds flutter in the deep periphery, scalding whiteness clear with every nervous wing beat. Their chirps are the deep bass thrum of rubber hammers on steel-plate bulkheads, filtering cold through the gravegrass at the pond’s edge and eddying the water. Light flicks in warm fractals off the pond and carves away warmly at the shadows marring Pram’s face. Nothing smells like motor oil. Everything tastes like rain.
Her unshod feet press down the angel-hair flowers, their thin, wavering petals sitting still on the air. They would beg had they throats to scream but she passes unperturbed, walking further and further till she meets her reflection at the water’s edge. Wind whispered words lick at the corners of her ears but find no purchase. The heat dream around her glows with the oil slick brilliance of a dying coal lantern. Mt. Granger corkscrew-curls its way into the sky at the far edge of the pond.
Windswept quandaries of the unseen voice far beyond the pale edge of Dementia beg for palaver and she ignores them with quiet, maternal patience. Fingernails at her back, dragging gently down supple flesh sans any foul ideation. Fever cracked and crumbling from the ship rot, they find no purchase and fall away into the reedy stillness of the dreamscape.
At the edge of the pond, she finds a single, fat flower, one score and nine petals finding equal footing in gold about the circumference. Pram plucks the flower and it twirls with ballerina grace in her fingers. It grows heavy on the third turn and flattens and thickens until all the green and gold fall away, leaving only the thick, burnished copper of a gear. It slides from her palm, fitting flush into the loamy earth beside her feet. It turns.
The dream shatters, twisting out of focus as some godless machine roars to life beneath her feet. Dirt explodes upward as the clockwork floor roars to life, greedily crunching away at the forest floor. The pond bubbles into steam and puckers as it’s sucked away into the depths of the machine. Fire bursts from the floor and all is consumed. It burns away her thin, cotton dress, leaving her naked. The flames invigorate her.
Where once the forest stood now rises around her a clockwork cathedral. Garish red light glows from the furnace mouths set into the walls. Gears and clockwork and pistons fire and screech and whirr around her in obscene cadence. Sulfur stink fills her nose, bites at the end of her tongue. Glyphs of dried blood wind their ways up her arms and legs. A throne waits before her. She steps forward.
“For some,” speaks the crone, the windswept voice no longer bound to silence by the rules of Dementia. “This world is a nursery, a playground to leave before conquering the world.” The crone hovers alongside Pram, her toe tips brushing along the hot, flat steel floor. The path they follow is coal black and inlaid with gold sigil work. Along either side, rails buried flush with the floor. “Be the babe, or the bottle.”
Black smoke coughs out from vents beside the path. Specters, half-seen, wander aimlessly through the choking fog. Some draw close, close enough for Pram to see.
A black-haired man carries a silver-haired baby swaddled in the smoldering remnants of a red cloak. A tarnished blue covers one of his eyes, the other eye stares grimly forward.
A hooded man drags Bennett’s corpse along the ground by a noose. Bennett’s eyes are white, his mouth, toothless. The noose is woven from ivy, and the hand holding the rope is tattooed in blood. Pram catches the figure’s attention, and he shrugs and moves away into the smoke.
A face, gaunt and pale as death rests above the smoke. It watches them pass, saying nothing. Pram can feel the crone shuddering.
The path ends before a massive throne of carved rock. Stars shine down through the roof, bathing the occupant in starlight. A demon sits before her, staring beyond her into the darkness. He is glorious. Massive. Pram’s body aches at the sight of his cock, resting like a tired snake on the seat between his thighs, clad in the same polished copper scales as the rest of his skin.
“Wake the beast, magus,” the crone whispers. “It is your duty.”
Pram ascends the gilded stairs and stands before him. Even asleep, his body radiates heat like a furnace. She runs a hand down his abs, over the deep ridges of his leg muscles. Her mouth waters and she kneels, pulling his cock to her face. He stiffens in her hand, his erection brushing her cheek as he hardens fully.
Pram twists her face, running her jawbone along the shaft until her lips meet it. She parts her mouth slightly, kissing its flank. The demon shudders. It draws in a long, sucking breath. She moves up his cock, kissing and sucking her way to the tip. Her tongue snakes out from her lips and she licks up the other side of it, stopping at the tip to swirl her tongue in long, slow strokes around the head. One of his hands clenches, unclenches. His wicked, talon-like fingernails scratch channels into the armrest.
She takes his dick into her mouth as far as she can go, her soft brown lips pressing against the shaft with every long, slow suck to the top. He is hot and thick in her mouth, a bar of sun-heated steel in the back of her throat. She moves her hands to his thighs, massaging them and then grabbing on to his hips to keep her rhythm. The demon’s buttocks clench, pushing his erection harder into her mouth.
His hand finds its way off the armrest and onto her back. Heavy and smooth, it moves down to her butt and squeezes hard at her ass cheek. Pram moans with his cock in her mouth, arching her back to give him better access to her bottom. His finger, twice the width of a normal man’s, finds her pussy and pushes against it. She gasps, stopping for a moment to breathe with a muffled “mph” around his dick. His fingernail, not sharp enough to hurt her, slides inside of her easily, the rest of his finger following.
Pram pulls her mouth away from his cock, it’s too much. She wraps her arms around his lower torso and squeezes, pulling her breasts up the length of his member and letting him finger her deeper. He obliges, pushing his finger the rest of the way in and curling it to push against her special spot. Pram moans and pushes up on her tiptoes in response. She can feel him chuckling through his chest.
His other hand curls around her chin and turns her face up to his. The demon is insanely handsome, with the carved face of some ancient general and the full lips of a sneering playboy. He picks her up easily and pulls her mouth to his. They kiss deeply, his long tongue slipping into her mouth. She knows what’s coming as he shifts down in his seat and her body screams for it. In a second, her pussy is resting just over the tip of his cock.
The demon presses against her without pushing in, teasing her. Her ass rests cheek-by-cheek in his wide, strong hands. Her hands grip his arms just above his elbows. She begs with her eyes. He obliges.
His cock, terrible and hot, fills her to bursting as he slowly, slowly slides her down on top of it. Pram’s head falls forward and she gasps. The runes of dried blood on her skin crackle and burn with white fire. Sparks build and fall away from the sigil work, bouncing over the demon’s chest and thighs. He slams her down the rest of the way onto his cock and she leans back and screams in ecstasy.
Pram’s legs go numb but move in time regardless with the demon’s arms as he pulls her body up and down. Her skin glows with white fire. His hand massages her left breast hard. It hurts in the best way possible and she covers his hand with her own, placing her free hand on his shoulder to steady her. She closes her eyes and loses herself to the rhythm. She feels his hand wrap around her neck. His thumb presses against her throat. She gasps. He growls.
The demon spins her around on his lap, entwining his fingers in her hair and pulling with his elbow buried in her back. She gasps and opens her eyes. White fire pours from her face like water, scorching the ground and filling the air with wisps of smoke. It crawls along the path, burning along the runes, up the walls and on to the mad geometry of the ceiling. Pram sees the Flower of Life bloom in radiant circles above her as she comes all over the demon’s cock, her thighs buckling under the pressure of the orgasm.
He stands, feet splayed apart and, holding her by her stomach and throat, begins fucking her harder. Air-starved tears run down Pram’s face as his grip tightens, but she doesn’t want him to stop. One last, hard pump comes and she feels his cock flex against the walls of her pussy, and then the molten steel pouring of his seed inside of her. He doesn’t stop fucking her and she comes again, the white fire of the runes spreading to her entire body in a single brilliant explosion.
In the sudden burst of light, she can see the floor of the chamber is littered with the rotting dead. His cock goes slack inside her and falls out. She feels hot, viscous fluid running down the inside of her thigh. He drops her to the floor and she falls through it and into the darkness beyond Dementia. A voice in the black. Then nothing.
Pram coughed and sat up too fast, smacking her forehead against the ceiling of the drive chamber. It rang with a loud bong that resonated into her own skull.
“Ahh, fuck,” she said, laying back and rubbing her forehead with her palm. Soft grey light from the runes’ afterglow lit the inside of the drive chamber just enough to see. Pram scooted down and booted open the hatch with her feet, trying to blink the sleep out of her eyes. Brilliant yellow light pierced the shadowy interior of the chamber. She must have finished the overcharge early.
Pram climbed out of the chamber and stretched, trying to shake off the bizarre remnants of the caster’s dream. Dreams and visions were common during long, demanding casting sessions, but it had been a long time since she had had one so bizarre and out of her control. Her face flushed with guilt at how good she had felt and her hand found its way between her legs. She bit her lip and sighed. She shook her head to clear it.
What in the fuck am I doing? She asked herself.
Pram decided to bury the memory by getting to work, pulling a reel of hose from a compartment on the wall and spraying down the compartment. Blow off from Steam Training heat filled the compartment with ash, and it was her job to spray it down after each session in the tank. A few minutes later, the job was done and she was halfway finished forgetting the bizarre dream. Her stomach growled.
“May as well get something to eat,” she said to herself, rubbing her stomach. Pram popped the hatch on her storage locker and dressed. The feel of her watch against her wrist wasn’t as calming as usual. She frowned and got ready to leave the compartment.
Something about the ticking, she thought.
“…and a bedroll,” said the supply worker, dropping the heavy, wet-feeling mat onto the makeshift table in front of Sylvia. She pawed over top the gear, trying to look as though she had any idea what she was looking at. The dented silver mess kit, hanging off a ring on the side of the pack was the only bit she honestly recognized, though bedroll seemed self-explanatory.
She had never camped as a child, she thought, running her palm over the moldy stitching of her new sleeping gear. The moment of pride she had felt telling Foucault she would rather be a janitor than turn her arms against her people had begun to fade as her life became steadily more awful. She cursed her pride, and then thought better of it, puffing out her chest and slinging the load over her shoulder.
“You need to sign for this,” said the supply officer. He set a steel clipboard on the desk in front of her. Sylvia had to lean awkwardly to the side to scrawl her name on the correct line.
“Thanks, new blood,” he said, pulling back the board and double-checking it. “You can go.”
Sylvia smiled and turned to file into the ranks of red cloaks beginning the day’s march out of the castle. That was her rank now, new blood. Inductee. Low man on the totem pole. She hadn’t exactly been royalty on the Turandot, but being a Steam Trainer could hardly be considered roughing it.
One of the other inductees, some other girl, had been called up after she turned down Foucault. Sylvia had caught a glimpse of her, essentially glowing in her new clothing, sitting on her own horse in the front third of the formation. Prestige and rank carried the privilege of walking toward the front of the formation, where the ground hadn’t yet been torn up by the ambling horde.
Sylvia’s foot hit a rock embedded in the thick mud. Her ankle twisted over it and she fell, hip first into the cold mud. Her face hit with a smack. She could feel it creeping into her mouth, taste the grit of the little bits of sand and rock. Soldiers chuckled around her and kept walking. Maybe, she thought, she could just lay there forever until she passed away from starvation and embarrassment.
Somebody pulled her roughly to her feet and palmed the mud on the right side of her face off of her eye. Through the muddy gauze of tears in her eye, she could see it was one of the other survivors, a sandy-haired man. He pulled hard on the straps of her pack, tightening it against her shoulders until it hurt, then turned her around completely.
Her torso jerked back and forth as he rearranged and tightened and torqued up on whatever miscellaneous fasteners he could find. She stared out into the snow-capped horizon, mortified, trying to blink her eyelashes free.
“There,” he said, turning her back around to face him. Bluish eyes… northern?
“Thanks,” she muttered.
“Yeah,” he replied curtly. “Keep your pack high and tight on your back, and walk through the mushy stuff with your legs apart a bit. Stay balanced, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said, but he was already off. She looked around. Only the empty, broken castle was left behind her. A fat mound of snow sat atop the fire pit. The very back of the formation, she thought.
The walking was easy enough, save for the slippery bits. The army followed a long, sloping spiral down the side of the mountain. Through the buildup of mud and ice, Sylvia could sometimes see the flat grid work of heavy stone cobbles, the same color and cut as the ruined castle. A road, more ancient than she could imagine, carved from the side of the mountain. Without it, they would have surely had to climb.
The icy road wound its muddy way through the mountains, dipping down the side of one and curling round the waist of another. It was an intricate, stony ribbon twinning effortlessly through the pass. Going uphill would be harder, Sylvia though, but not by too much. The grade was almost nonexistent, though getting through the thick ice without a pyromagus would be nearly impossible.
All of what she could see was a jagged vista of mountaintops, stretching out into the grey mists of the horizon. Sunlight reflected in diffused golds and reds from the snowcaps, leaving the gray rocks beneath painted in blue and shadow. The army of Caan was a red snake, sliding its way down the mountain path.
Sylvia pushed forward to catch up with the blond-haired survivor. They had been walking for hours, and talking could keep her mind off the growing numbness in the pads of her feet.
“Hey,” she said, surprised at how out of breath she sounded.
“Yeah,” he replied, not turning to look at her.
“So, uh, where do you think we’re going?” She asked. She forced herself not to sound winded while asking the question, which only made things worse. The word “going” nearly made her hack up a lung. If he noticed, he didn’t show.
“East,” he replied. “Far as I can tell.”
“Why?”
“War, I suppose,” he said. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with his wrist, and then curled his thumb back under the strap of his pack. Sylvia did the same, and was disheartened to see her forearm caked with brown.
“With the Imperium?” Sylvia asked. She looked at the line of red stretching ahead down the path. Hundreds, thousands maybe, but the Imperium’s volunteer forces alone numbered in the millions. “They don’t have anywhere near enough people.”
“Maybe,” he said, “maybe not. None of this makes sense. We shouldn’t even be alive, much less walking behind this formation wearing the enemy’s colors.” He shook his head, flicking a bead of sweat off his bangs. Sylvia couldn’t argue. The whole situation was insane.
“Is this…” She started. “Is this all some sort of trick or something?” She glanced at him. “Are we going to die?" He paused for a long time. Without his voice, the only sound was the roaring echoes of thousands of feet falling in time.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, we’re probably going to die.”
Sylvia stopped talking to him and looked at the footprint filled ground passing by quickly beneath her.
The formation stopped abruptly in front of her, a single word being passed quickly down the ranks. Somewhere in the far distance, something like an eagle screamed into the wind. The word, Caanish, just a few syllables she couldn’t make out. The screech got louder. Dragon?
“Get down!” The blond haired man yelled, grabbing her by her pack straps and throwing her to the ground. Sylvia barely had time to see the entire line of red ducking down and as close to the mountainside as possible. The screaming grew louder, became soundless. It felt as though all the air in the world was being shredded apart.
“What’s happening?” She tried to scream, but the air was sucked from her lungs. The noise became physical; it pushed them down into the mud. She turned to look at the sky and saw it, just a black flicker against the clouds. A dark blur gone as soon as it came. The noise hit its crescendo in a single, massive crack Sylvia felt throughout her spine. Then the noise was gone, replaced by some deep rumbling.
“What was that?” Sylvia asked, feeling panic rising up in her. A new round of shaking was beginning, somehow more forceful and yet much quieter than whatever had just passed.
“GET DOWN!” He screamed back at her, grabbing a handful of her top and pulling her in closer to the mountain just in time for her to see a boulder the size of a train car falling toward her out of sky. She screamed and crossed her arms in front of her face, waiting for the pain to come.
Instead, a sound not unlike an old, massive bell rang the length of the path. Nothing hit her. Nothing at all. She opened her eyes and looked through the space between her arms to see a few large rocks sitting three meters in the air above her. Just resting there, as though some invisible platter was holding them there. A physical barrier.
“Holy fucking shit,” said the blond beside her. “Oh no fucking shit. What the hell?”
“Uh,” Sylvia said, swallowing despite her dry mouth. “It’s a barrier spell. Like an invisible wall.”
“Uh, oh,” he said. Another rock, nearly as large as the last, came out of nowhere and smashed itself to pieces in front of their faces. They screamed in unison. “Mother fucker, shit. That is impossible to get used to.”
“Yeah,” she said, shakily returning to her feet. Soldiers stood and brushed themselves off down the line, most of them just as shook up as Sylvia. “That was, what, a dragon or something? Like… a real dragon?”
“Uh, yeah,” the blond said, getting to his feet as well. “That’s about the closest I’ve ever gotten to a living one. They’re the reason you don’t travel in mountains like these during the day.” He beat some of the dust off his cloak. “They’re fiercely territorial, and they shoot around like that to cause rockslides to kill whatever’s in their area.” He swirled his finger around in the air. “Then they go and eat whatever’s sticking out from between the rocks.”
Sylvia shuddered.
“That’s wonderful,” she said.
“Yeah,” he replied. “You get used to that in the north. ‘Fair weather makes foul play for walks in the mountains.’” She cocked an eyebrow. “Dragons won’t go flying in bad weather, they move too fast.” She nodded. “How did that shield stop those big rocks? I’ve never seen a caster stop something bigger than cannon shot.”
“I don’t know,” Sylvia replied. A low murmur had risen up at the front of the formation. “I couldn’t stop that rock on my own, and even trying to cast a spell in the neighborhood of being strong enough could take hours, days even.” She shook her head. “The only thing I can think of is hundreds of mid-level casters casting in tandem, but the energy and concentration that would take is unbelievable.”
“Well…shit,” he replied, sticking out his hand. Sylvia took it. “Malcolm.”
“Sylvia,” she replied, shaking his hand.
“Brothers!” Called a voice, magically amplified, from the front of the formation. Caan himself. “The dragons themselves challenge our resolve. ARE WE IMPRESSED?”
“No!” Came the resounding call down the line, echoing strangely off the inside of the barrier.
“Shall we falter? Shall we fail?”
“No!”
“Then onward, my noble sons! The lady of the east spreads her legs for thee!”
The soldiers beat their chests furiously, and Malcolm shot Sylvia a worried look. The call came down the line, and they began marching again.
“So,” Sylvia said, after a time, “who were you before all this.”
“Just another soldier,” he said. “A nobody in need of a paycheck. There’s no work in the northern colonies now outside of mining and farming. I wanted to see the world I guess.” He gestured to the mountains. “This same range continues all the way up into my homeland. I may as well have never left. And you?”
“Steam Trainer,” she said, “with Compton E&L. I… grew up in the capital, and my parents paid for me to go to a very nice college out there. I wanted to major in spell craft, but my grades weren’t very good. I have a very high natural tolerance for magic though, so I became a Steam Trainer.” She sighed. “And here I am.”
“Well,” he said, “at least you’re getting paid better than me.” They both laughed.
“Yeah, I guess there’s an upside,” she said.
They rounded a final curve and the path opened onto a massive valley, covered in green grass despite the weather. Sylvia could make out speckles of snow gathering atop a massive invisible bubble arching hundreds of meters into the sky. Then they saw it, an almost limitless sea of crimson.
“Behold my children, my brothers and all our new blood,” Caan said, his voice once again amplified. A hundred thousand soldiers at least, stood ready in long, well-organized rectangles, awaiting the arrival of their leader. Caan drew his sword and held it in the air above his head.
“Behold,” he screamed, facing his legion, “the Army of Caan.”
Their answering roar shook the mountains hard enough to spite a dragon.
Lucy finished rolling a cigarette, lit it, and passed it to Buckle. She brought it up and took a drag, enjoying the brief moment of relief when the buzz hit her. Lucy rolled another for herself. They didn’t talk. Only the occasional quiet splash of one of their boots in the alleyway puddles and the bobbing cherries in front of their lips gave away their position.
Coalton was quiet on the outskirts. Most people out here couldn’t afford the power companies’ prices. The poor went to bed early, or they left for brighter streets. Either way, they always minded their own business.
Buckle had seen her own face on a wanted poster a mile out of town. Younger, softer, but unmistakably her in the photo. She ran a gloved finger down her cheek and wondered which bit of leather was softer. The picture had been taken by some clerk in the capital years ago, when young skin was all she needed to hide the meanness in her. Now it crinkled up the skin around her eyes, ran in lines away from the corner of her mouth. She cracked her jaw without dropping the smoke.
“Lantern,” Lucy said, moving closer to the building to their left. The Coalton alleyways were cramped and twisted, like the spaces in a broken mouth. Even longtime residents could get lost here at night, but not Lucy. She always new where she stood, where she was going. Buckle respected that about her.
Some porter, his face half covered in shadow, popped around the corner a block ahead. Buckle tipped her hat forward and hunched her shoulders, following in line behind Lucy. The man held his lantern up to see who he was passing.
“Put those eyes to bed, son,” Lucy hissed. “Lest I find them a new home.”
The man snorted and continued on, but not before switching the lantern to a different hand. Buckle peaked back at him, watching the ball of light bounce and bob until it was gone into some other alley.
“Lot of ‘em out tonight, eh Buckle?” Lucy asked.
“Yeah, Luce,” she replied, peaking at the building tops above her. “How much further you reckon?”
Coalton was plugged with pollution. The sky was black. The building tops were grey. No stars. No color. Just a couple red cherries swaying through the dark.
“Not much,” Lucy said. “Gettin’ loud yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Low, reedy catcalls from some lonesome oboe player had begun to echo into the alleyway. Buckle could see the red glow of kerosene lanterns against the sky.
“Maybe, Buckle,” Lucy started. “Maybe this idea’s not quite got wings on it, you get me?”
“Aw Luce,” she replied, her eyes still on the glowing red in the clouds. “You don’t think my baby chick’s gonna fly?”
“I’ve no love for Fries,” Lucy replied, flicking her cigarette into a puddle. “Got love for you could make me see different, maybe, but this whole town feels sick right now.”
“You just don’t like pimps,” Buckle said, chuckling. “Or madams or whatever. Don’t sweat it Luce, me and Fries go way back.” Lucy laughed.
“Oh, so this mug definitely got sommit planned for us then, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Buckle said, “I’d reckon so.”
Buckle had sent word to Fries through the usual backchannels before setting off for Coalton, letting him know something would be in it for both of them if he could help her with a thing she was planning. Fries hadn’t wasted any time responding.
“How great am I?” Lucy asked as they emerged from the alleyway onto a wide, dark cobblestone street. Fries whorehouse loomed across the street. Like a fat, red sore, it emanated its own heat into the winter night. Every window on the street was shuttered to the massive eyesore. Even the poor had a sense of dignity.
“Least the hangar rails are well polished, yeah?” Lucy said, pointing at gleaming brass bars hanging in couplet over the street. Coalton’s public transportation system. The only stops in these outer wards were at places like these. Places that didn’t exist in the inner ward. Places you didn’t want to have to walk to, or back from.
“Yeah,” Buckle said. The dull roar of drunken voices and brushes on a snare drum had joined the oboe. The song was long, slow and sickly. A hangover in elegy. “Hey, Luce, roll me another one of them, will you? I’m no good at it.” Lucy chuckled and rolled the cigarette as they walked.
“Last chance boss,” Lucy said, handing over the home roll. Buckle took it, grinned around the smoke and lit it.
“Keep saying that and someday you’ll mean it,” she said, blowing smoke up at the rails. “Let’s say hi to an old friend.”
They entered through a set of swinging double doors, pushing past a sleepy-eyed bouncer. The place had its own special sort of aroma. Sickly sweet incense, dry and smoky, mixing with the cloying stink of sweat, sex and spilt alcohol drying into the rug. Below all that, faint, but strong enough to stay with you, eggs that had gone over.
“Lovely friends you keep Buckle,” Lucy said, stepping over a pair of legs jutting out from beneath a coat rack.
Fries’ place was a big, cobbled-together network of other, older buildings attached in a slapdash manner by aftermarket corridors. Everything was built at a slant. Seeing further than ten or so meters was impossible in the hallways. Red electric lights did little to illuminate the hallways. The few people they passed shambled by like ghosts, faces to the floor, covered in shadow.
The band, wherever they were, could be heard all throughout the building. The thick, tacky red carpet softened the noise from the instruments and suffocated their footsteps. Occasionally, some thump in a distant room threatened to break the silence, or a muffled chorus of voices. All the while, the oboe, the snare and a trumpet reigned supreme.
“I don’t think we’re going to look back on this moment as your crowning achievement Buckle,” Lucy said, craning her head around to look behind them. “Place here has my hairs upended.”
“On end,” Buckle corrected.
“’On end’ means something different in the broken sea,” Lucy said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Lucy said. “On your butt like, have it? You’d be having me say I’ve a hairy ass.” Buckle laughed.
“Well I’ll be keeping that under advisement,” Buckle replied. The hallway twisted sharply up ahead of them, and they found themselves walking into a relatively large barroom. The music was louder here, but the band was still nowhere in sight. A few patrons sat here and there, quietly chatting over beers and petting thighs beneath tables. The same red light from the hallways lit up the interior of the bar, except for the tables lining the far walls, which were bathed in hideous blue. The entire room was a perfect circle.
They approached the bar.
The bartender, a slim man in a dark suit, raised an eyebrow when they approached. He poured a single drink for a man at the bar, set it down and turned to them.
“Drink, fuck or smoke ladies,” he said, resting his hands on the bar and leaning toward them. “What’ll it be?”
He smiled, revealing a mouthful of immaculate teeth, save for two on the bottom left that looked as though they had been smashed with a chisel. A clean-cropped toothbrush moustache sat atop his upper lip. His eyebrows looked drawn on. His hand would be slick with slime if she touched it, Buckle thought.
“Neither,” Buckle said.
“Oh my,” he replied, “employment then.” Lucy chuckled.
His smile widened, showing the broken teeth continued much further back into his mouth. The thought of a piece of his fractured teeth cracking off when he chewed entered Buckle’s mind and she gagged a bit at the thought of it. Crunch.
“Not quite, honey,” Buckle said, trying to keep some politeness in her voice. “We’re here to speak to Madame Fries.”
The bartender’s face seemed frozen in smile for a moment. Buckle thought she could see the corner of his lip twitching somewhat. He drummed his fingers on the countertop, then stood. The smile vanished.
“Are you expected?” He asked.
“Yeah,” she replied.
“Then wait here,” he said, turning and walking through a door behind the bar.
“Strange creature,” Lucy said when he had gone.
“Tell me about it,” Buckle said, turning and leaning against the bar. The cigarette had almost gone out. She looked around for an ashtray or an empty bottle, but found nothing.
“What gods have you angered to make such lovely friends, Buckle?” Lucy asked, turning and mirroring her stance. Lucy’s head swiveled, scanning the bar. There wasn’t much to see.
“Just about half of them, I suppose,” Buckle said. She plucked the cigarette out of her mouth and scratched her chin in the same motion. “Which is… what, a hundred and…65 million?” Buckle took the cigarette and snubbed it out on the palm of her glove, then set the dead smoke on the bar and clapped the ash off her hands.
“Whichever god is punishing me with Fries is a real cocksucker,” she continued. “I met him, oh, fifteen or so years ago I think? Maybe more, I dunno. We were in the same crew at the time, knocking off casino bank cars coming out of Dulles Dane. Small time stuff, you know? He fucked off out here ‘bout a decade or so ago and started up this lovely place, I guess. Only whore shop in town, far as I know. Guess he killed the rest.”
“Lovely,” Lucy said.
“Agreed,” Buckle said.
“Ladies,” said the bartender. They both turned to look at him. “Madame will take you in his chambers. Please, follow me.”
“You sure, partner?” Buckle asked. “Wouldn’t want this lot getting out of hand, would you?” She jabbed a thumb in the direction of the mostly empty room. He smiled without using his eyes and gestured to the door he had just walked through.
“Please,” he said. “Madame is a very busy man. Haste is a necessity.” Lucy shrugged and followed Buckle as she passed through the open section of the bar and into the doorway where the bartender’s shadow had disappeared. The door opened immediately onto a crooked staircase of alternating red and black stairs. The colors hurt Buckle’s head.
“Right this way,” said the bartender from the top of the stairs, his voice almost being drowned out by the music. It had become almost unbearably loud in the stairwell.
Buckle and Lucy made their ways up the steps, turning right at the top into a hallway identical to the one at the entrance to the building. It was lined with polished black doors, some of which hung open onto empty bedrooms. Buckle caught the eyes of a tired looking prostitute. She was sitting on the edge of a rumpled bedspread in an oversized button-up shirt, smoking a cigarette and massaging her thigh. Like a fucking mirror, Buckle thought unexpectedly.
They followed the bartender till the hallway split into a Y-shaped fork. A door was set into the angle of the split. The geometry was off-putting to say the least. The bartender opened the door and gestured for the women to go inside.
“Please,” he said, “after you.”
“Thanks, partner,” Buckle said, walking through the door and into Madame Fries office.
The room was bizarrely common in comparison to the rest of the manse. Normal, yellowish electric light filled the white-carpeted room. The office was relatively large, about half the size of the bar downstairs, and shaped like a pentagon. An uncluttered oak desk sat at the far end of the room, in front of a wall made completely of glass. The massive window looked out over the Coalton lights, which only glowed in the distance, in the uptown district.
“Have a seat ladies,” the bartender said, gesturing to the chairs in front of the desk. “Madame will be with you momentarily.” They obliged him.
“Lucy,” Buckle said in a half-whisper. “I’m full-on promising I’ll take you somewhere nice on our next date.” Lucy snorted.
“Be holding you to that one, Buckle,” Lucy said, reaching over and squeezing Buckle’s thigh just above the knee. “We’ll be having beefsteaks and wine after this then, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Buckle said.
A door to the left of the desk opened and Madame Fries stepped into the room.
“Brass Buckle Betty,” he said, opening his arms and walking forward to greet her. She stood to return the hug. “It has been far, far too long.”
A sundress, covered in pastel wildflowers, hung over his massive frame. The man stood at least a couple heads taller than Lucy did. His body was carved, nearly perfect and tan. Ropy muscles propelled him across the floor, and even the heavy carpet couldn’t absorb the thumps of his footfalls. He had been completely bald, even when Buckle had first met him, and he was now wearing a luxurious blonde wig.
He wrapped her in his arms, going so far as to pull her off the ground a bit, then slapped her on the back. She coughed a bit.
“Sorry about that, Betty,” he said, standing with his hands on his hips. Buckle could see he wasn’t wearing anything underneath the dress from up close. “It is just so good to see you. Have a seat and let’s get started.”
Buckle’s head swam. Sitting down was definitely a good idea, she thought, hurrying to sit down without looking as if she was going to fall. The dizzy spell faded once she was down in the seat. Lucy flashed her a concerned expression, but Buckle shook it off. Fries beamed at them from across the table.
“Well,” he started, “how long has it been Betty? I’d say ten, what do you think?”
“What do I think?” Betty asked. “Uh, I think you’re right, I guess. And, um, I think you can help us…out…with something we’ve got planned.”
“Buckle…” Lucy started. Buckle shook her head and held up a hand. Something was definitely off.
“I think you may be right,” Fries said, leaning sideways in his chair and crossing his legs. “I definitely could help you, but I most definitely will not.”
“Shit,” Lucy said, standing up and arming the spell on her glove. Fries raised his palm toward her without taking his eyes off Buckle. Lucy’s arms fell slack to her sides. He pointed down and she fell back into her seat.
“I know, I know,” he said, smiling. “You girls must have a bunch of questions right now, and I’ll do my best to explain them.” The music was a steady thrum throughout the building, throughout the room, and throughout Buckle’s head. She couldn’t move either. The fucker had them dead to rights.
“You see,” he continued. “We’re friends Betty. Great friends. But I have made so many new friends in the last few decades and, ha-ha, they really, really want me to kill you. Do you know why?” Buckle’s head shook involuntarily. “Because you are just way too good at your job!” He stood and spread his arms out to the side.
“You see Betty,” he said. “That last job you did, that one really got some folks’ notice. Some not to friendly folks that I just happen to love to death.” He smacked a hand down on the table. “You see, I’m not very good at magic and spells and stuff, and you have just got to be good at those things to keep up with today’s demanding economy. My new friends helped me with that a few years ago and…well let’s just say I owe them more than a few favors.”
He put his fingers into his mouth and whistled. The door to the right of the desk opened, and a naked young woman walked into the room. He clicked his tongue at her like a dog and she hurried over to him, the dirty leather collar on her neck bouncing as she walked.
She was a pretty, pale-skinned easterner, purple-eyed and silver haired. Fries slid a single finger under her collar and pulled her gently to him, then licked up one side of her face. The girl flinched a bit, but otherwise remained expressionless. He whispered in the girl’s ear, and she laid down across the desk before him, her rump in the air. He caressed her ass with a single, rough hand. The girl’s eyes just stared off into the middle distance.
“This is Tanya,” Fries said, slapping the girl hard on the ass. She bit her lip. Buckle could feel the hatred emanating from Lucy. “She is from a very well-to-do family who lives near the capital, and all her life all she’s ever wanted to do was become a writer.” Fries stood and pulled his dress up, revealing a massive erection. He guided his cock into the girl, pushing in slowly.
“But Tanya trusted the wrong people,” he continued, “and they took her off a train in the middle of the night, didn’t they, sweet thing?” He began fucking her slowly. The girl reached forward and curled her fingers around the edge of the desk. “Now Tanya’s one of my pretty little girls, isn’t she?” Fries grabbed the girl’s collar and twisted it, making her gasp for breath. He pulled her violently back, till her face was almost next to his. “Aren’t you?”
“Yes Madame,” she said, trying to pull down the collar and catch her breath. Fries smiled at Buckle and pushed the girl’s face down into the desk. Tanya’s body shook with every thrust. She moaned. The desk tipped forward a bit. Buckle ground her teeth and tried to move.
“Now, you see Betty,” Fries said, breathing heavily. Tanya pushed herself back against him, her face a doped-out, expressionless blank. “You made the same mistake as Tanya. You wanted—ah, ha—to be a legendary outlaw, but now you’re going to be one of my special girls too.”
Fries stepped back from Tanya, his glistening cock holding up the folds of the dress, and walked around the desk. The girl collapsed on the desk, panting and staring at nothing.
“Well, ok,” he said, smiling and shrugging like a child. “You won’t be my special girl, Buckle. This delectable piece of chocolate…” He ran a finger down the side of Lucy’s face. “She’ll be my pretty little lady, oh yes. Yeah, I’m going to have so much fun with you, but you, Buckle, oh you, my friends have so many plans for.” He knelt down beside Lucy. “You wanna hear them?”
Fries leaned in and whispered something in Lucy’s ear. Buckle watched her expression twist on her face. Her eyes, terrified, caught Buckle’s, and she shook her head.
“No, not to Buckle you—“
Fries snapped his fingers and her words got caught in her mouth. He put his hands on Lucy’s knees and leaned in until their faces were nearly touching.
“Yes,” he said. “And there’s nothing you can do about it.” He smiled, then stood and walked toward Buckle. His dick swayed about with every step. “I promised them I’d stop you, that I’d deliver you up unmolested for what they have planned. You know, they didn’t really mind the bank, they have more money than you could ever dream of, but that shipment on the train.” He clicked his tongue at her. “Must absolutely get to its destination.”
Fries squatted down and pulled her head to the side by her hair. He pushed his nose in close to her neck. He licked her skin, bit it. She swallowed. The only thought in her head was how satisfying it would be to tear his carotid artery out of his neck with her teeth.
“Oh Betty,” he said, smiling. “You should have gotten out of this game so long ago, but here you are.” He stood up and brought his dick to her face. “I said unmolested, but I don’t think they’ll mind as long as I don’t leave any marks.” He turned to Tanya. “Go to sleep darling, I’ll wake you later.” Back to Buckle.
“Now,” he said, running his hand through her hair and fixing the bit he had mussed. “You’re going to suck my dick, and I want you to really pretend as though you enjoy it.” Lucy screamed at him, but he just turned his head a bit to the side and shushed her. “I’ll get to work on you shortly, but for now I’d like to get reacquainted with an old friend.”
He lifted her chin. She couldn’t resist.
“Open up,” he said. She complied. “Good girl.” The same hazy dizziness from before washed over her. The band was really going to work on their instruments. “Now begin.”
She closed her lips around the tip of his cock, kissing it gently, then moved her tongue forward. She licked up the center of his shaft, tasting Tanya on him even now. Her eyes lidded. She brought the rest of him into her mouth, struggling to get his unyielding girth further down, inside of her. Her hand rose to his hips, involuntarily, pulling him in and out of her mouth. She moaned, despite herself.
“Good girl, Betty,” he said. “Harder now.”
Her neck flushed with heat. She sucked him off in long, slow strokes. His cock flexed in her mouth. She pulled back for air, stroking his dick with one hand and suckling at his balls between breaths. The floor of the building heaved beneath them. The band grew quiet.
“What the…” He said. The building shook again. The cobwebs in her head began to fade, and Buckle could hear people screaming in some different room. She realized Fries’ cock was in her mouth and pushed back in disgust, knocking him back and off balance.
“Buckle, down!” Lucy said, standing and activating the spell on her glove. Buckle moved without thinking, rolling back and over the chair and covering her head with her hands.
“Wait,” Fries said, holding his hands up in front of himself, trying to back around the desk. His dick was rapidly deflating.
Lucy shot off her rend spell, obliterating the top half of his body and spraying the wall and ceiling with blood, viscera and a good portion of the desk. The bit of his legs and lower torso left hit the floor with a splat and began convulsing. Chewed up entrails slid out onto the floor. Buckle barely got to her knees before throwing up.
“You have gone and fucked with the wrong mother fucker boy,” Lucy said, recharging the spell and firing it into his remains. Red light spilled up and out of the hole Lucy’s rending tore into the floor. Lucy walked over to the hole and fired another shot down into it, accomplishing nothing.
“Oh my god,” said the bartender, who had just returned to the room with a shotgun. “Madame Fries? Oh sweet, merciful god what have you whores done to Madame?” He brought the gun to bear on Buckle and fired, missing low and hitting Buckle anyway with reflected shot and bits of splintered wood. She fell back on her butt, drew her gun and fired at him through her knees as he chambered the next round. Three shots missed, but the third blew a hole through his shoulder. He cried out and dropped the gun.
“Oh, you whore,” he said, “you’ve shot me.”
“And worse will be done upon you boy, we have each other?” Lucy yelled, striding across the room and recharging the spell.
“Lucy, no,” Buckle said, getting to her feet and pulling a splinter out of her eyebrow. Blood trickled down from the wound, stinging her eye. “I got this one.” She kicked away the man’s shotgun, knelt down and stuck her finger in the wound. He screamed. She locked eyes with him.
“Don’t cry son,” she said, “it always hurts a little the first time, but you get used to it after a bit.” She twisted her finger in the wound and he opened his mouth to scream noiselessly. “Guess not in your case.
“Now listen here, boy. Your boss just stuck his cock in my mouth and we turned him into red sauce. You sent us up here, knowing that would happen, cause you’re an asshole and that shit’s just in your nature. Scorpions and frogs and all that nice bullshit.” His face was going white. She hoped he didn’t go into shock before she finished with him.
“So I’m gonna ask questions and you’re gonna answer, and be quick about it, or else you become marinara, we have each other?” He glared and tried to spit in her face, but missed. “Guess not.” She fingered his wound until sweat broke out on his face. “Who does your boss work for, and what the fuck is on that train?”
“Fuck you, whore,” he said. She twisted again and he screamed again.
“You’re one of those not learning shit mother fuckers aren’t you?” She asked.
“Our shadow touches all things, whore,” he said. “That shadow will swallow you, then you will know to fear gold.”
“You are not going to be helpful, huh?” Buckle asked. She pulled her finger away and walked over toward the desk, taking care to avoid the messes she and Lucy had made. “Go ahead Lucy.”
“My pleasure,” she said, activating the spell and aiming her palm at the bartender.
“Do your worst, who—“ Lucy blew away everything above his knees, then kicked his shins into the hole in the floor. The same red light glowed upward. Buckle pulled open the desk drawers and bundled up every bit of paperwork she could find, not even bothering read it. Gunfire had broken out throughout the building now.
“Buckle,” Lucy said, waving away the bit of smoke coming off the rune on her glove. “I believe we’ve outstayed our welcome.”
“Yeah,” Buckle said, jamming Fries’ files into her shirt. She looked at the bloody remnants of Fries and spit on the ground. “Yeah, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
End Chapter 3
.pdf included for your convenience.
by axmanjack » Sun Apr 13, 2014 8:39 am 
Steam Chapter Three.pdf
