Chapter 12

The mass of muscle and pressed suit that was Hector escorted me down the parlor hall. Teal carpet, mahogany door frames. The muffled groans of pleased customers. A door cracked open and lurid fem eyes ogled me suspiciously before it clacked shut.

The prison hall is ensorcelled brick and iron. Two guards flank me, meat-fed muscle, helmets like old coins, sleeves tucked into long gloves, lightning sticks swinging at their belt, my wrists in void-steel shackles. “Iron Stalls dungeon prisoner 3313131,” the guard grunts. “This will be your ward when they’re done with you below.” As our procession makes its way, prisoners in striped jumpsuits leer, faces smushed against bars, some holler, playing the edge with the guards. “Hoochi, did ya bring the baby oil?” A slobbering, furred prisoner yowls. “Red, red haunch I see,” says another, a derange-faced humie. “That the college boy? Boy toy yucca-yucca-hello.”

The elevator took us both down, the industrial humming broken only by Hector’s grumble, “I’m watching ya, hob. Don’t ever do my mistress wrong.”

We step onto the tower’s antigrav platform, its hum taking us down floor after floor of titanic concrete which separate us from the general prison population. One of the guards stares at me from under his half helm, as if recognizing I am alive for the first time. “You better not make us look bad in front of the Archons. Trust me. We don't need no fancy magic to make you squeal.” He lifts a blood charred stick. “We know our work real good.”

 The descent through stone stairs and hallways felt long and winding, more so than previous nights. The dungeon corridors were built before the building above was a parlor, before the war. It was common in those days, for buildings to have bomb shelters, reinforced basements, interconnected tunnels; all built by those that knew the Gods War was coming. 

The guards shove me along a long, rune-brick hall, but as majestic steel doors part open the pair become all pomp and ceremony, walking me down a flight of stairs that cuts through an auditorium-shaped lab as if I were something between a royal guest and a sacrificial lamb. The lab air is frigid on my skin. It is dotted with robed figures. Archons, commoners call them, others Masons, Engineers; whatever they are, they are all a kind of priest; there are 8 of them divided in two ranks, with one more standing at their center. Their prismatic robes are impossible to wrinkle, visors at the ready to protect their sight from all manner of Mana radiation, the rank regalia on their collars all equal save for one. He is a rank above the engineers, the Architect, draped in black and white even as I am, though of an entirely different form and substance. He stands alone, his intricate visor a fixed shadow over his face, behind him, a labyrinthine machine, like machine god intestines that could fill a theater stage.

Pearl stood at the bottom of the stairs, a welcoming poise and smile as she stood by her prized artifact coffin, tentacles adorning her like albino garden vines.

Two priests step forward, latch void steel hooks around my arms, pry me from the grip of the prison wards, and walk me toward the waiting machinery, toward the beckon of the Architect.

The dream chamber was drained of its green elixir, a gradient shadow rounding on its metallic interior.

Pearl gave a hostly wave, beckoning me onward, toward the few, narrow steps that rose along the base of the machine as if they lead to a diving board. She spoke:

“I have to say, you surprised me, pulling off the troll job. But even so, I am glad we will finally do away with games. I do not like you holding this... secret of yours between us. Not if we are to work together. It makes me question your intentions, you see.”

“I understand.” I glanced her way, sniffed, shrugged to loose my jacket and slipped it off. “When I came here, that first night, you asked how you could trust me.” The metal patterned steps had a subtle give to them, a rattling shakiness negotiated by my deliberately planting boots. “Well trust goes both ways.” My fingers began unbuttoning my longsleeve.

The engineers pry my convict jumpsuit off with bony, gloved hands.

The engineers strap me into the machine, on its central rectangle of steel that resembles an inclined operating table, metal latches painfully binding my wrists, my ankles, hooks tugging at my lips, smaller versions pulling at my eyelids.

They do not need the drudgery of their limbs and digits to do this work but they forego all magecraft, forgo telekinesis, forego golems, familiars, spells, for in large part this work is symbolic, a ritual of their science and faith: that matter is the first and the last, the only truth.

“I only reveal this to those who are too ignorant to understand it... or those I trust with my life.” The shirt fell from my hand, leaving only the lead vest over my hob skin. “I suppose now there's a third kind. Someone I’m forced to trust with my life.” For a moment, a smile ruefully spreads, then dies. Unfastening metal latches at my sides, I raised the shield vest’s sagging weight over my conya, then tossed it. It clanged down the steps before stopping at a haphazard drape over the bottom one. Standing bare-chested I locked my eyes on Pearl’s. Her normally poised face tremored with uncertainty, lips slipping open, eyes unblinking:

“You... you're....”

The 8 Engineers intone an arcane canto, work controls on the intricate machine. Its central apparatus descends with a monotonous whirring, stops once its cylindrical shape is pointed straight at me. It looks like some kind of menacing, surgical telescope aimed at me. From the end facing me, an otherworldly blackness, a color I can only call “void” as in the game of Logic. This blackness begins bleeding to life. Within its mass, I can see writhing, something almost alive, almost a pair of eyes within the worming darkness. The priests go on chanting while the Architect marks my chest with a mechanical needle brush.

The machine blares and a noxious cold blasts from its vents, and the living void pours into my chest, and my eyes want to leap from my skull in terror and my very bones seem to wail with pain, nerves and sinews at once swell and sing past madness.

Pearl's face somehow managed to pale still further. “You’re... branded...”

The brand on my chest. Its substance something between cooling magma and arcane obsidian. Mark of the damned, the soul silenced. It began three inches from my throat and spread down past my gut, was shaped into the ancient glyph which meant something akin to ‘endless fall,’ roughly an elaborate T with a jagged S sideways across it, all stylized, runic.

“You should have told me.” She rose, her tentacles coiling like copperheads. “What did you do? What did you do to deserve... that?”

“Does Lady Pearl suddenly have a conscience?”

“That is not... you are putting me in danger.”

Hector opened his coat flap with rough subterfuge.

I only looked at her: “You deal in tree, in rackets, in hooahs. But dealing with a branded got you spooked all of a sudden?”

“I don't need the Arcanum involved.”

“You have an unlicensed dream chamber!” I shook my conya, irritation flush on my sudden sweat. “Archons would be creaming for you on that alone.”

“That, I can plan for, take precautions. That I can control.”

“And me?” A snide smile. “Me you can't control? Is that really what you’re scared of?”

Pearl’s voice quavered, swallowed a stillborn response, then rose again:  

“This is strictly business. Risk versus reward. Mrgh! The thought, the instinct. It is the mark of any good rogue. You should know that. And right now I do not see any reward that justifies this.”

Me, radiating sincerity: “I do. I do, Pearl.”

“What?”

“Well. Hm. When this thing is off... I'll remember my friends. I'll do right by them. Think on that. An ally. One of the greatests mages on the flogging planet. By Mog, someday.”

“All the more reason why I need to know who I'm getting involved with. What did you do?”

“What is there to say that would make a difference. I... didn't kill nobody. You won't believe me, but I didn't steal nothing neither. I was just a student. Young and a fool. At Dragontusk University...”

“Dragontusk?” Even she knew the name, it's prestige world famous.

“Yeah, I was going to be a real Merlin, so I thought. But I broke a rule, a few of them I guess... did something no student had ever done before. My reward for all that, my precious life plan, career, hopes to name and fame, all washed away. But at one time... I could juggle the sun, the earth, and the moon. Could sing wine out of blood and gold out of lead, with just a tune. And I can get back there, Pearl. That sort of Mage, to have on your side. Isn't that worth the risk?”

Her nose crinkled with intellectual derision, frustration boiling over. “Nothing can take a brand off! Not artificing, not biomancy. Not even 9th circle spells. Certainly not a dream chamber. No power on Hybrid Earth can remove it.”

“...You're right.” My brow knitted as I stepped to her. “That's why I'm going further... beyond it. That's why I need this chamber.” I seized her slender shoulders in my hands, skin cooly moist. “That's why I need you.” We were close enough that we could see each striation of our lips, that we could taste each other's breaths, hers like ocean brine, mine like dying coals. “I'm here, Pearl. I know you could turn me away. Turn me in even, blast me for a coin. But I'm laying it all out for you. On the line. Betting on you. Do you finally trust me?”

She stared. Primal calculations.

“No.” Her electric blue eyes softened. “But a deal is a deal.”