Undermind

Saskia stared at the grotesque fusion of flesh and machine splayed out before her, and the shrivelled torso and head enmeshed in its core. The cybernetic monstrosity filled the room, but on her minimap, she could see that its tendrils extended far beyond, reaching deep into this steel and concrete treehouse of horror. It took all of her willpower not to vomit all over the pulsating carpet at her feet. Part of her refused to accept that this was what her father had become. Another part was telling her to get the hell out of dodge before she ended up like him.

“I…I don’t even know where to begin,” said Saskia. “What the hell is this horror show? What have you done to yourself?”

“Now is that any way to greet your long-lost dad?” Calbert Bitterbee spoke with a surprisingly strong and clear voice for one who looked like a corpse.

“Answer her question,” said Alice. “After everything you’ve put us through, you owe us an explanation.” Under her breath, she added, “I can’t believe I had sex with that. What was I thinking?”

Calbert leered at her. She stiffened, and Saskia stepped in front of her, fists clenched.

“Believe me, you weren’t complaining at the time,” said the grotesque figure. “You want answers. I get that. But this…well, this will require a somewhat lengthy explanation.”

“Then give us the Cliff Notes version,” said Saskia.

“Very well.” He looked between Saskia and Ivan. “You don’t know how lucky you are. This…” He glanced down at the skin of his chest, stretched tight over his ribs. “…is what happens to our kind if we linger on this world for too long without adequate protections.”

“We turn into hideous cyborg monsters?” said Saskia.

“Well, no,” said Calbert. “We wither and die. It took all of my ingenuity to stave off the debilitating effect of this universe’s magic dampening field. What you see here is the culmination of that effort.”

“You call our daughter lucky?” said Alice. “Saskia went through two years of hell. She almost died. And where were you through all of that?”

“Yes, that was unfortunate,” said Calbert. He looked at Saskia. “You became a mouthlet sooner than I had anticipated. There was little I could do at the time. But it all worked out in the end. Thanks to your anti-dampener infusion, you won’t have to take such extreme measures.”

“The anti-what?” asked her mum.

“He means the freaky robot arm that came out of the floor back at the temple, and jabbed us with a needle,” said Ivan.

“Oh, of course,” said Alice. “How could I forget that wonderful experience?”

“Why couldn’t you just get your own injection?” asked Saskia.

He grimaced. “If only it were that easy. I was sadly unaware of the temple’s existence until you came across it. And it wouldn’t have helped me, in any case. I’m not of Yona’s blood.”

“Okay, so how does this…” She gestured around her. “…protect you?”

“Well, you see, my ambitions extend beyond mere self-preservation,” he said. “This structure serves myriad purposes. You can think of it as a multidimensional antenna and transmitter. Among other things, it allows me to tap into any country’s communication networks—and communicate back.”

“Your Jedi mind trick,” she said. “It’s voice-activated.”

“So you do have a brain,” he said. “Good. But that’s not all it does. It also sustains my damaged biology. And finally, it staves off any further damage. Essentially, it’s a big anti-dampener. Very big. In time, its effect will grow to encompass the entire planet.”

“Wait, what?”

“Neat, isn’t it? The Earth will finally be free of its limitations. I will bring magic to this world—not just for our kind, but for the flatlanders too.”

“Like you brought technology to Arbor Mundi? Because that worked out so well for them…”

“No thanks to that interfering god of theirs.”

As he spoke, a dizzying cascade of thoughts, images, and sensations swept over Saskia. Abellion’s thoughts. And in that instant, she understood the depths of her so-called father’s depravity. The fall of Ulugmir had been entirely Calburn’s doing. Abellion had only been guilty of acting too late to stop him.

Saskia grabbed onto her mum’s arm to steady herself. “You’re lying,” she said. “You drained Ulugmir dry. Abellion had nothing to do with what happened—other than trying to stop it. It was all on you.”

Calbert rolled his eyes. “Oracles.”

Another realisation struck her in that moment. Calbert had the same disregard for this world as he had for Arbor Mundi. All he cared about was what he could get out of it. If people suffered because of him, that was too bad. Just as he’d lied about Ulugmir, he was lying—or at least withholding some important details—about the purpose of this bizarre tree tower he’d constructed. And whether by oracle magic or pure intuition, she had an inkling of that purpose.

“This thing won’t just free our magic, will it?” she said. “You’re siphoning essence from this world, as you siphoned arlium from Arbor Mundi.”

Silence settled across the room, punctuated only by the hissing of pneumatic pumps, and a low rustle as Viktor Storozkenko shifted uncomfortably by the door. When Calbert finally spoke, it was with an air of resigned bemusement. “You’re thinking too small. Why do you think this construct in which you stand is shaped like it is?”

“Like a tree?” Saskia drew in a sharp breath. “You want to create another world tree. On Earth.”

“Not quite,” he said. “Different universe. Different rules. But I was…inspired by certain things I’ve seen in my travels…”

“You’re insane,” she said. “Arbor Mundi’s planet was a dessicated husk, not a habitable world.”

He didn’t respond. And that was when the final pieces fell into place.

“Arbor Mundi devoured its home planet. And this thing will do the same to Earth.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper, yet it seemed to echo throughout the room.

Everyone tensed. Having laid his intentions out in the open for everyone to see, their course was set. There would be no reconciliation. This would only end with their deaths, or his.

But Calbert wasn’t the only one they had to worry about. Through the corner of her eye, she saw Viktor’s hand drifting toward the gun he had concealed under his jacket.

Saskia turned her own weapon toward him. “Don’t even think about it.” She glared at Calbert. “You’re a monster. And I thought Abellion and The Ram were my enemies. You’re even worse than they are. Deep down, I always knew it, but for a while you almost had me thinking you were one of the good guys.”

If her words stung him, he showed no sign of it. Instead, he gave a low, rasping laugh. And she’d thought this couldn’t get any worse. Her father wasn’t just a villain. He was a laughing villain.

“The Ram,” he said. “What a convenient fiction he has proven to be. If ever I have to do anything distasteful, blame it on The Ram.”

An icy tendril crawled through her gut. “A fiction.”

“Oh don’t get me wrong, the Infernal One was very real—about a thousand years ago. If he’s still out there, he hasn’t made his presence known to me. His descendants, however…” Calbert looked pointedly at Ivan.

Ivan’s eyes went wide. His mouth fell open.

“Pick your jaw up off the floor, boy,” said Calbert. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“I’m The Ram’s descendant?” said Ivan.

“I don’t know why you’re surprised,” said Calbert. “Only a few of us would come to a backwater like Earth, and he’s one of them.”

Saskia turned her glare up a notch. “If The Ram is long gone, you must be the one who sent those mind controlled goons after us.”

Calbert gave a little cough. “Ah. That.”

Saskia ground her teeth together. “Yes. That.”

He didn’t answer for a long moment. “Understand that everything I did, I did to help you grow. Call it…tough love.”

“Tough love?” she growled. “People died because of you. A lot of people.”

“My daughter, you still don’t get it, do you? These people…” He swept his gaze around the room. “…don’t matter. A few thousand years, and they’ll have wiped themselves out without our help. I’ve seen it happen on many worlds. It’s just one apocalypse after another out there. I’m surprised Arbor Mundi is still standing after all this time, but its days are numbered, as are the Earth’s.”

“Oh, so because things are bad, you think that gives you a free pass to make things worse?” said Saskia. “No. You’re part of the problem. A big part. We’re done talking.”

“About fucking time,” said Dave. He pointed his gun at Calbert’s head.

Calbert laughed, sending cables wobbling around him. “Oho, the flatlanders want to play. I’m only too happy to oblige.” He glanced at Viktor and Ivan. “How about you…”

Dave’s shots reverberated in the confines of the chamber. In the same instant, a disc of polished metal appeared in front of Calbert, accompanied by the repeated clank of a ricocheting bullets. The sound died off, and the disc vanished.

“…kill these intruders.”

Saskia didn’t hesitate. The moment Viktor’s hand twitched, she shot it. The bullet went through his hand and into his chest, and he slumped to the ground without a sound. Whoops.

At the same moment, Ivan jerked backward as if he’d been struck. A look of confusion flickered across his face. Then he righted himself. The muzzle of his gun came up.

Saskia found herself being shoved to the side. It was Ruhildi who had pushed her, and now her friend was barrelling into Ivan as a spray of bullets tore into her body armour. Something slammed into Saskia’s side, knocking the wind out of her, and sending her stumbling back. Dazedly, she watched Ruhildi grappling with Ivan, while Dave frantically reloaded, and Alice turned her weapon against Calbert. When her mum squeezed the trigger, nothing happened.

Jammed.

Ivan was a powerful magus. Alice was a magus too, but not on Ivan’s level. She couldn’t counter Ivan’s absurdly strong luck magic.

Ruhildi tore the gun from Ivan’s fingers and hurled it aside, even as he pulled a knife, and sunk it into her throat.

“Fight it, Ivan!” wheezed Saskia. “He’s controlling you, but I know you can resist—”

“Saskia, you’re hurt!”

Her mum’s words cut into her own. She followed Alice’s gaze down to her midsection, where a crimson stain was spreading beneath her vest. Ivan’s shot must have penetrated her body armour and wedged in there somewhere.

Crack!

Something whizzed past her ear and struck the wall behind her. She glanced up in time to see Viktor rising to his feet with his pistol raised in his good hand. The other hand was a bloody ruin, as was his chest. His eyes were vacant, his skin pale.

Undead! But if Ruhildi had raised him, why was he aiming at her…?

Not Ruhildi. Calbert. Her father was also a necrourgist.

Saskia raised her own weapon. Though her hands shook, she managed to squeeze off a round at just the right moment, with the help of her oracle interface. Again, she aimed for the hand that held the gun. Her experiences with Ruhildi’s zombies had taught her that shooting them in the head accomplished exactly nothing.

Viktor’s gun leapt out of his hand and skittered across the writhing floor. He lunged for her, bloody hands outstretched, until Ruhildi glanced in his direction. He jerked and fell, bones snapping and popping as he flopped voicelessly at her feet.

Only now did it occur to Saskia to question why her own gun hadn’t jammed, as had her mum’s. One look at Ivan gave her the answer. He lay on the floor, clutching at his face. Ruhildi had put a spear of bone through his eye.

Saskia drew in a shocked breath. Ivan didn’t deserve this. Nor, for that matter, had Viktor deserved a bullet to the chest. Calbert had jerked them around on puppet strings. For some reason, Ivan hadn’t been immune to Calbert’s mind control, as she and her vassals were. And now…

Even as she watched, his form began to waver and stretch, forming impossible shapes; tendrils of light and shadow that passed in and out of this four dimensional world.

Then he was gone. Dragged into the between—and from there, she couldn’t begin to guess where he might end up.

“Well,” said Calbert. “I didn’t expect him to split so soon. Good for him. Now as for you, I do believe it’s time to up the ante a bit.”

The floor lurched. Caught off guard, Saskia stumbled and fell. Something wet and slimy snaked around her ankles, holding her in place.

Fumbling for her machete, she hacked at the fleshy horror. The bloody blade clanged against something so hard, it came away with a huge dent. A glistening, blood-covered metal spine flailed and flexed, as the nightmare appendage squeezed tighter and tighter around her.

Dave and her mum were in similarly dire straits, but Ruhildi had torn one of the cyborg tentacles free in a spray of blood and ichor. She swung the thing at Calbert like a whip. Another silvery disc appeared in the air in front of him, deflecting the strike.

Ruhildi rushed to Saskia’s side, and with a jerk of her arms, yanked the tentacle in half. Saskia scrambled free, shuddering in revulsion at the sight of it flopping on the floor. In her haste to get away, she’d dropped her gun. She reached for it, but Ruhildi pulled her away. Another appendage burst out of the floor, flailing wildly. They scrambled back.

Ruhildi pulled her mum free a moment later, and turned to Dave, who hung limply in the grip of three separate tentacles. His face was pale, his eyes fluttering, as the monstrous things tightened around his legs and arm and torso.

From a ceiling hatch poured a swarm of skittering spider bots with power tools where their mouths should be. Drills and circular saws whirred menacingly in the dim light of the nightmarish chamber.

“Are you frocking serious?” growled Saskia, shooting her father an angry glare. “What is wrong with you?”

While Ruhildi struggled to free Dave, Saskia and her mum turned to face the oncoming spiders. Alice drew a shotgun, and blasted the first of the skittery monstrosities into scrap metal. Saskia, who was all outta guns, pulled a crowbar and swung with all her strength, flipping one of the robots onto its back. Agony shot through her midsection, but she wouldn’t let the pain distract her now. Avoiding the metal spider’s flailing limbs and spinning sawblade, she plunged the makeshift weapon into a certain spot on its belly that her interface identified as a weak point. The machine went suddenly limp.

Yeah! Take that you little—crap!

A bundle of snapping, buzzing metal was leaping for her face. She narrowly sidestepped, and batted it aside. A second shot rang out, and half of its limbs fell off.

Ruhildi had managed to get Dave free, but he was in a bad way. He hung limply in her arms. Blood trickled down his limbs. His breathing was laboured.

“We’ve got to get him out,” said Alice.

Saskia nodded. They needed to deal with Calbert, but it wasn’t worth her friend’s life. They could regroup, and come back for another go at him.

She dashed for the door—and fell back as it slammed shut with a resounding clank. Saskia stared at the thick slab of steel blocking their path.

“Oh no, I must insist you stay,” said Calbert. “You haven’t even seen the best part.”

Ignoring him, she turned to Ruhildi. “Can you get it open?”

“Aye,” said her friend. She laid Dave down next to Saskia, and stepped up to the door.

Saskia returned her attention to the spider bots, which were gathering around Calbert. While they regrouped, her mum took aim at the cyborg abomination controlling them. Once again, a metal disc appeared in front of him, blocking the shot.

Saskia took that moment to dash forward and retrieve Ivan’s assault rifle and ammo bandolier. She barely made it out before all hell broke loose.

The room shuddered and swayed. Something big began to shove its way through the ceiling duct.

“I hear you like video games,” said Calbert. “So you should get a kick out of this. An actual boss fight.”

“I thought you were the boss fight,” said Saskia through clenched teeth.

“Oh no, I’m not much of a fighter,” he admitted. “I let my minions do the work.”

A ragged crack tore through the ceiling, widening with each passing moment. Through the opening came a large white paw, followed by an even larger head. As the monster spilled into the room, Saskia gaped at the forest of tubes sprouting from the back of its neck, and the armour plates that seemed to be riveted to its white furry body. It reared up on its hind legs, and in that moment, it looked like nothing so much as a giant ape. But it wasn’t an ape. It was something much worse.

“You have got to be frocking with me,” said Saskia. “It’s a yeti. A cyber-yeti.”

“I call him Charlie,” said Calbert. “He’s not from around here, as I’m sure you can imagine. Say hello to our guests, Charlie.”

The yeti growled and pawed at the floor.

“What the actual frock is it even doing here? How did it get up here? What is wrong with you?” It was the second time she’d said that, but it bore repeating.

A deafening crack split the air behind her. She glanced back in time to see splintered door fragments tumbling to the floor. And beyond the broken door stood…another door.

Groaning, Saskia turned back to the yeti, which was now barrelling toward her on all fours. Resisting the urge to curl up into a ball and cover her eyes, she raised Ivan’s rifle and squeezed off a short burst at point-blank range.

Her oracle interface gave her a pretty good idea where to aim—the eyes and the neck, most notably. The shots didn’t even slow it down. Nor did a shotgun blast to the face, courtesy of her mum. Was its brain encased in solid titanium or something?

She dove to the side, sucking in a breath at the spike of agony that ripped through her as she landed hard, and rolled to her feet. The creature was already twisting around to paw at her. On the one hand, she was glad it wasn’t going for her mum or Dave. On the other…oh crap!

Saskia sprinted forward, desperately trying to evade its reaching paw. She wasn’t quite fast enough.

Pain flared through her as its claws raked across her back. They caught on her backpack, and the next moment, the creature was lifting her high in the air. She caught a glimpse of an open maw, filled with huge teeth, with bits of rotten meat stuck between them. A putrid stench washed over her.

The giant paw had pinned her left arm. But with her right, she managed to lift the rifle in an awkward one-handed grip, aiming straight into its gullet. She squeezed the trigger.

The rifle kicked and twisted out of her hand, almost breaking her finger in the process. But the damage had been done.

With a squeal of surprised pain, the yeti jerked and fell over. She flew free, landing with a sickening crack next to Dave. Through unfocussed eyes, she watched as the beast kicked, voided its bowels, and died.

“Ah well,” said Calbert. “There’s plenty more where that came from—hmm, what’s this?”

A piercing white light had suddenly flooded the room. From amidst the glare, a dark shape writhed. Tendrils wrapped around Calbert’s body. He let out a grunt of surprise. His flesh seemed to turn insubstantial.

“Ivan?” she whispered.

But the voice that emerged from the chaos was not Ivan’s. It was feminine, and somehow familiar. “Go, children. I will take care of this nuisance.”

Saskia stared at her in bafflement for an instant before her mind caught up, and her body sprang back into action. Ruhildi had managed to break through the second door. The way out was clear. Much as she wanted to stay and help this new arrival, she’d just get in the way. Besides, she was in no state for more fighting, and they needed to get Dave out. Time to vamoose.

Her mum’s steady arms supported her as she staggered out the door. Ruhildi lifted Dave as effortlessly as if he were a child. The floor and walls shuddered. Booms and crashes sounded at their backs as they ran.

The elevator may be a deathtrap at a time such as this, but there were no stairs, and abseiling down an elevator shaft was not something one would want to do while the elevators were still running. They waited in tense silence while the annoying elevator music cut in and out, the lights flickered, and the capsule shuddered alarmingly. By some miracle, they reached the ground floor intact. The door slid open, and they dashed out into the corridor.

The vibrations were now accompanied by the ominous groaning of overstrained girders. Plaster and paint fell off the walls around them.

Near the exit, they came across the mind-controlled worker, still with his head in a duct.

“We should get him out too,” said Saskia. “After this is over, the guy should go back to normal.”

Ruhildi sighed. “I can’t carry him and Davi at the same time. What are we going to do? Drag him?”

“Move, move, move!” shouted Raji in her ear. He and Fergus waited in the hexapod just outside. “The tower’s about to come down!”

“Yeah, we kinda figured that out on our own,” said Saskia.

She tugged on the worker’s ankle, and he kicked at her. Regretfully, she kept running. Ruhildi was right. Trying to haul him out would only get them all killed, and the last thing they needed right now was to get into a fight with him.

The hexapod was waiting for them just beyond the shattered doorway, looking none the worse for the wear. Saskia clambered up into the cockpit, where she sagged back into the webbing. Alice tugged off Saskia’s vest so she could get a look at the wound in her abdomen. It had already begun to heal over, but the bullet was still in there somewhere.

“Later,” said Saskia. “Now isn’t the time for surgery.”

Fergus was already piloting the giant bug mech away from the disintegrating structure as fast as its legs could carry them. Which was pretty fast, as it turned out.

With a colossal roar, the apex of the tower split apart, billowing smoke into the sky as the pieces rained down across the mountainside.

“Feck!” shouted Fergus, as he steered the hexpod out of the way of a falling chunk of masonry the size of a large house.

The rest of the tower began to collapse in on itself, vanishing behind a descending column of smoke and debris.

“Good riddance,” said her mum.

Saskia was silent, thinking of all the innocents her father had forced to work for him, now buried under untold tonnes of steel and concrete. And what about their mysterious eldritch saviour? Had she died in there as well?

She got her answer a minute later when a soot-smeared figure stepped across the snow, walking purposefully toward their still-invisible hexapod. A faint glow emanated from arlium veins beneath the woman’s skin. Now Saskia remembered where she’d heard her voice. She’d seen this woman before—in visions and dreams.

Sarthea—or Yona, as she’d been called on Earth—appeared unfazed by the bitterly cold wind sweeping down the mountain. Even so, she accepted the warm cloak Saskia handed her.

“Thank you for saving me,” said Yona, offering her a grateful smile.

“It’s just a cloak,” said Saskia.

Yona’s smile broadened. “I refer to your actions on Arbor Mundi. You don’t remember them yet, but you will. You freed me from the shackles that bound all of my mouthlets, including this one.”

“Oh,” said Saskia. “Go, me! I’m glad you’re free now, and I hope Abellion gets what’s coming to him.”

“He did,” said Yona. “As did your father.” She glanced back at the disintegrating structure. “Let’s be away from this place.”

“Right,” said Saskia. “The cloaking field thingy that surrounded the tower must be down now, so someone’s bound to come looking. You’re welcome to ride in the hexapod with us. Actually, I suppose it’s your hexapod. We just…borrowed it.”

“It would be my pleasure to ride with you,” said Yona.

The ancient machine made its way quickly down the mountain, and headed south, skirting around the fjords. They didn’t really have a destination in mind. Saskia had no clue what she was going to do with herself now.

They stopped by the shore, where Ruhildi and her mum managed to get the bullet out of her. Yona eyed her slowly healing flesh with a surprised expression. “You have inherited your trow mouthlet’s rapid regeneration.”

“Yeah,” said Saskia. “Isn’t that how it normally works?”

Yona frowned. “We can inherit knowledge, experience, sometimes magical talents. Some of us can even carry across items or people. But it is not normal to transfer physical traits between mouthlets. I believed a trow’s regenerative ability to be a function of their unique biology, and therefore not transferable.”

“Huh,” said Saskia. “I thought it was just another form of magic, like all the other weird stuff on Arbor Mundi.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Yona, though her eyes betrayed her doubt.

“So did you know Calbert?” asked Saskia.

Yona didn’t answer for a long moment. “I knew of him.”

“You knew he was my father. How?”

“I could tell just by looking at you. Just as I know you are also of my blood. It is thanks to the joining of two bloodlines that you are one of us.”

“You mean someone like Mum, who only has one eldritch ancestor, will remain completely human?”

Sarthea nodded.

“Then what about Ivan?”

“I don’t know this Ivan to whom you’re referring.”

“He…went into the between, shortly before you arrived. Calbert was controlling him. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will,” said Yona. “Our kind tend to cross paths more often than not. Especially with those who are already familiar to us.”

Saskia frowned. The last thing she wanted was to run into Calbert again. Ivan, though…she hoped he was doing okay, wherever he ended up, and that one of her mouthlets would find him. “Ivan is a descendant of The Ram, or Ogunteng, as you might know him.”

Yona’s expression darkened. “Okael.”

“Yeah, him too. But my point is, Ivan is one of us, and we only know of one eldritch ancestor in his family tree.”

“The obvious answer is that there is another of whom you’re not aware. Who it may be, without seeing Ivan, I cannot say.”

“So it could be anyone. You or Calbert, or someone else I’ve never heard of. I guess it doesn’t matter that much now.”

“It matters,” said Yona. “But if it worries you, I would never hold someone to blame for the sins of their ancestors.”

Now Saskia couldn’t tell if she was referring to Ivan or herself. Probably both, she decided.

“Speaking of ancestors, I hope you don’t mind, but I—we…” She pulled her mum close. “…would like to get to know you, the good ancestor. Calbert was absolutely useless at giving answers. You seem to be more forthcoming, though. I want to know what’s out there. How it all works. The places you’ve been, the things you’ve seen…”

Yona smiled warmly. “There are some things you are better off experiencing for yourself. It’s much more fun that way. But I would love to get to know you too. Both of you. And believe me, we have all the time in the world.”