Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits

The Endeavor, Part I

Darkness. Everywhere was darkness. There wasn't any light. I couldn't see! What was going on? I didn't know. I could nearly feel the rust on my limbs, could nearly smell the stench of the oil leaking from the valves in my arms. But I couldn't. I never would. A robot can't smell. A robot can't feel.

But a robot can see! Why couldn't I see? Where was I?

There! There, I saw light! I saw a flash of light, just beyond my grasp! What was it? Where was it coming from? I tried to reach for the light, but I couldn't move my arms; I tried to run for it, but I couldn't move my legs. What was the light?

Wait! What was that? There, over there! Kharg! I thought. It's you, Kharg! Isn't it? Darc! You're there, too! Paulette, Volk, Tatjana! You're all there! "I'm coming!" I tried to say, but there was not hint of a voice in my system, so all I could do was mouth the words, hoping they could hear me, my thoughts. But they were drifting away! And I could see it behind them! A giant eyeball, bigger than the moon! It was swallowing them up! "Wait!" I tried to say. "Wait, I can help you!"

But I realized I couldn't. I was trapped. My friends were getting lost in the ever-penetrating darkness, and I couldn't even call their names…

"NOOO!"

Suddenly, it all vanished. I could feel the sparks flying in my ocular circuitry, the oil pulsing through the tubes in my body. I could feel my memory banks trying to reawaken. What had I just been dreaming about? I couldn't remember, but my eyes… I could see!

"Reactivation process complete," said the disembodied voice inside my head. I remembered now. That voice which told me everything. The monitor of my vital circuitry, the exterior sensor alerts… I was completely reactivated! I was back!

And I was sitting amid a pile of junk.

Normally, during deactivation, my legs would fold underneath my torso unit and my arms would be in normal resting position in front of me. But here I was, sprawled on the dirty ground, in no particular position whatsoever.

I slowly got up, taking care to brush off the dust that had accumulated on my motionless form. And then I wondered about that. How long had I been inactive?

"Thirty years, four months, six days, seventeen-point-four hours," said that voice in my head, and I nearly fell back over. Thirty years? Why had I been deactivated in the first place? And why had I been out for thirty years? What had happened?

"Error. Refine inquiries."

I cursed out loud at the voice in my head, having forgotten how annoying it could sometimes be. Then I cursed again. It was good to hear the sound of my own voice for a change. Now, how do I shut off the internal voice? I thought.

The answer came almost instantly. "Internal vocal protocol shut-off control located in front breastplate." Finally, the damned thing was being useful. I opened up the plate and flicked one of the switches. "Internal vocal protocol deactivated."

I let out the closest sound I was capable of making to a sigh of relief. Now to figure out what I was doing here, and what had happened. I searched my memory banks, looking for any relevant information. What was the last thing I remembered?

A tower… yes, that's right. A tall tower, and at the top, five large stones, each a different colour. A desert, a wasteland, all I could see for miles from the top of the tower. Strange. I remembered the places, but what had happened there?

But it wasn't over. A large, black palace, with many floors. A steady climb. A giant doorway, which led to…

Darkness! Utter darkness! Where was it coming from? Where was I now? I remembered being in what looked like the belly of a beast. Veins pulsated in all the walls and below the very surface upon which I was standing. And a giant tree, and a girl trapped inside. And then…

And then I remembered.

I screamed aloud as it all came back to me. Kharg and Darc, Paulette, Maru, Ganz and Tatjana! And the Deimos! The Lord of the Black Abyss! It all came flooding back to me through my memory banks, and I nearly fell over once again. "Kharg!" I yelled. "Kharg, where are you?" I spun around, searching my surroundings for any sign of them. "Paulette! Maru! Where are you all? Ganz! Tatjana!"

There came no answer. I finally gave up, sitting down, with my legs folded inside my torso. I had a name. I remembered that. I had a name. What was my name? I thought. What was my function?

Diekbeck. That was my name. My function? I had a function, long ago. I didn't remember. What was my function with the humans and the Deimos? We had to find the Great Spirit Stones, we had to defeat the Lord of the Black Abyss. We did. Didn't we?

I tried to remember what happened after that. We fought the Lord of the Black Abyss. We pulled out all the stops. He had other eyeballs, too, that were attacking us. He turned his dark beam on us. But we won. But why? He was still powerful.

But the Great Spirits came. They came and banished the Lord of the Black Abyss, sealing him away for all eternity. We beat him! He wouldn't ever return again!

And then the palace began to fall. The others ran, and I tried to, and then the floor shook. I fell backward, losing my balance. I hit the wall, and my ocular circuitry went awry. I tried to get up, and I fell back again. I remember the girl… Choco. I remembered that she came and tried to help me. We almost made it back to the door and out of the palace…

And then…

I shook my head as I tried to remember. We were there, we were at the door, and nearly out of the accursed palace, and then it sank! The palace sank below the water! Choco and I were trapped in the ruins underwater! But it wasn't over, still. The palace exploded! I screamed again as I remembered. I flew from the palace, and I remembered falling all the way back down to land…

Here.

I stopped searching my memory banks and brought my ocular sensors back online. So this was where I fell. I landed here, in the – where was I? I looked around again. Ruins. I saw an old, abandoned box with glass in the front; a television, my databanks told me. Similar old relics lay strewn about in no particular order. The Parenz Ruins. I wasn't far from Sulphas. Or, at least, I thought I wasn't far from Sulphas.

Then I looked up, and gasped. The sky was a dark green, with eerie black clouds floating about. What had happened to the sky? I looked around myself again, and saw things in more detail. The ground was charred, the old equipment among the ruins damaged, with pieces falling off and – I looked closer – melted together in some areas. A green mist was floating from the dirt. I ejected my wrist scanner and examined it; radiation! The ground was drenched with radioactivity. What kind of catastrophe could have caused this?

I went to the entrance of the ruins, looking as far into the distance as I could see. All the ground was spurting that same green radioactive mist, and the highways were all but destroyed. I could see Sulphas in the distance, but it was not the same as I remembered it. The buildings were smouldering piles of rubble. The roads had giant craters in them. I couldn't see many details from where I was, but my bet was that nobody – human or Deimos – lived there anymore.

I was alone.

I turned around again, and was assaulted with another flash of memories. Sitting in typical deactivation position was a replica of myself, except this "me" was totally silver. I thought back; I hadn't seen this robot in years, not since the time of the Ultra-Mech Squad. His name: Ziekbeck. He had been a member of the Squad, and I'd been his leader. He was a shy one, this robot, a design flaw that our creator had overlooked when adding personality circuitry. But he was social enough, and a good fighter.

I walked over to him, noting the rust on his body. It was only then that I realized how rusted I was; I made a mental note to fix that problem later. For now, my priority was to revive Ziekbeck. Maybe he could tell me what had happened.

I clanked over and crouched next to him, examining him. He was in bad shape; the total shutdown sequence had been initiated some time ago, and he now had about as much life left in him as a rock. I opened up his front frame, checking the switches. Auto-reactivation, I thought, looking for the switch. I found it, near the bottom corner of the panel. Sure enough, it had been set to "Off." I flipped it, but I had no way of knowing what would happen. As far as I knew, he'd been inactive since the end of the Ultra-Mech era. I sat back, looking for some sign of life in him.

Then I heard a clanking sound from inside him, and I jumped back up. I saw his arms twitch and his legs began to move inside him. I looked at the switches again, noting that the Internal Vocal Protocol was also set to "Off." No matter; he'd wake up one way or another.

Soon, his eyes opened with a creak, and he stood. I could nearly see the sparks flying in his mechanical brain. He looked down, closing his front panel. And then he looked up at me. His eyes opened up wide as he began to recognize who I was. And then, in a creaky voice that obviously hadn't been used in years, he spoke.

"Diekbeck? Is that you?"

If I'd been able, I would have smiled. "Yes, it's me."

He looked around himself. "Still in the Parenz Ruins… How long have I been inactive?"

"As far as I can tell," I said, "you've been down since the Squad was decommissioned."

"No, no," he said, "I remember when they deactivated us, but I've woken up since then. Humans… Humans!" he said, sitting down again. He was checking his memory banks, I knew, and I kept quiet.

Finally, he spoke again. "I was reactivated once before… I don't know how long ago, but I was reactivated when my proximity sensors detected humans in the vicinity. They didn't notice me for a while. But I remember that before that, I was with the rest of the Ultra-Mechs, they were shutting us down. I still don't know how I got from there to here."

He closed his eyes as he tried to remember, but finally shook his head. "No, I don't know. But the humans… they discovered me! They found me sitting here, so I pretended to be inactive. But they didn't go away! I finally… well, I couldn't sit there and do nothing. So I pretended I was… I was you."

He sighed. "They didn't believe me, though. I thought I was convincing enough… But they didn't go away. So I had to give them something so they'd go away. What did I give them? I don't remember…" He shut his eyes again, and then opened them wide. "The Talisman! The Shadow Talisman you gave me! I was desperate! I didn't know what else to do… I'm sorry, Diekbeck."

But I was reaching into my storage compartment, rummaging around inside for something. When I finally pulled it out, his eyes opened wide again; I was holding the very same Shadow Talisman. "Where did you get it?" he said.

I put it back in the compartment. "I was traveling with some humans. They found me in Cathena."

"Cathena?" he said. "Did you see any of the other Ultra-Mechs?"

I shook my head. "None of them were there. From what I could tell when we left, the only thing left standing since the Squad times was the arena. Everything else was different. It wasn't the same Cathena that you and I were built in. And those humans…" I turned away. "Those humans didn't know what I was. They had me as a prize to be won in the arena. So I kept quiet. They all thought I was a piece of rare junk. So I listened in when they were talking, and I caught things like Deimos feuds and human rivalry. Something was going on, and I felt it was my job to stop it. So I figured I'd let myself be won, and then escape after I was taken out of the arena.

"But the humans who – ahem – "won" me were different. They had the same goal I did. So I fought with them. And we won… or so I thought."

His eyes were wide again. "The Divine Ruler?"

"Worse," I replied. I told him the story of the Lord of the Black Abyss, about Lilia, and Darc and Kharg, and everything that had happened since Cathena, including its obliteration by Darkham.

"Chances are," I said when I finished, "that none of the humans or Deimos are alive now. Something bad has happened here. I was hoping you'd know what it was."

The top of his torso unit that served as his head rotated from side to side, the Ultra-Mech equivalent of a head-shake. "This is as much news to me as it is to you. I don't even know how long I've been inactive."

"Probably around the same as me, if the humans you met were the same ones I fought with," I said. "I've been offline for thirty years."

He sighed. "So much can happen in thirty years. Do you think it had anything to do with the end of Spirit magic?"

I looked down. "I don't know anything right now, but I plan to find out." I turned away from him, checking the gun on my arm to make sure it was functioning. "How are your weapons?" I said to Ziekbeck.

He raised his hands, and presently a pair of sleek metal blades shot from the tops of his wrists. "A little dull, but they'll work," he said, and clanked over to join me at the entrance to the ruins. "Do you think we'll need them?"

I looked out at the remains of Sulphas, so far away. I thought about all the humans, and even some of the Deimos. I thought about Choco and what might have happened to her when the flying castle exploded. I thought about what could have turned our planet into such a wasteland.

"I don't know," I finally said, "but something tells me that this is deeper than humans, Deimos, or Spirit magic. We're eventually going to find out what's going on. And I want to be ready when we do."

I stared out into the green sky and the black clouds. I wondered for the umpteenth time what had happened. And then, as I kept staring into the distance, Ziekbeck by my side, I wondered if I'd want to know the answer.

There was a long road ahead.

To Be Continued…