The Antecessor Conundrum by Robert J. Crane

Author:Robert J. Crane [Crane, Robert J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ostiagard Press
Published: 2019-04-14T22:00:00+00:00

17

So I’d lost my weapon—the trusty spear that had been at my side through all of this, even before Carson and Heidi, before joining with Bub, before reconciliation with my brother, before even the possibility that Alain might be a good guy could enter my mind—it was gone.

But, as per usual, I refused to accept that this could be true. There was always a chance, however slim, that I could come out on top, that I could win.

“Well, let’s go get it back then,” I said.

Heidi shook her head. “We can’t. Mira, the cave collapsed. Preston took the second key, the Order said so, and when he did, the whole thing came crashing down. If Decidian’s Spear is still out there, it’s under an entire mountain’s worth of rubble now.”

This thing wasn’t making sense—first, that we could have lost, although I remembered that all too well. The missing arm was another major thing I couldn’t get to grips with (pun not intended). But all this stuff about the Order of Apdau? What they’d said? Just how much did I miss? And how much of it had been lost in the not-dream I’d been swimming through these past few days?

I lowered myself carefully onto the bed again—with my left hand, this time, the one that could actually feel the world around me properly rather than as inputs against springs or gyroscopes or whatever it was that made the robotic arm tick—probably a whole lot of steampunky stuff that Lady Angelica’s butlers would be well positioned to advise me on.

“I’m struggling to follow this,” I said. “Can someone fill me in? Fully?”

“What’s the last thing you properly remember?” asked Alain.

I racked my brains. The cave-in happening around us; running from it; being saved by the Order of Apdau … there, my eyebrows twitched.

“What is it?”

“I remember the Order saving us,” I said.

“That’s the last thing?”

“No,” I said—because I saw, distinctly, Preston blowing a hole in the cavern’s wall and unleashing the noxious fumes that had threatened me with blindness as the ensuing battle went on. That, I remembered too, albeit in spurts—though maybe that was simply natural; how could I possibly recall every flourish of my weapon, every sidestep I took? “There are things after,” I said, fighting to block out the last of them—the fire golem gripping my right arm; now, my mechanical arm instinctively clenched its fist, I assume at some nerve impulse from my brain, converted into an electrical signal. “But the Order saving us—confuses me.”

Glances about, between them.

“It confuses us too,” said Alain after a moment’s quiet. “But after you … after what happened … when the fire golems were defeated, but before they sent us away, they said …” He frowned, pressing that familiar dark comma into the space between his eyebrows, at the very top of the bridge of his nose.

Manny picked up the unfinished point. “The Order said that you are ‘uniquely suited’ to prevent Preston Borrick’s ascension.” Glancing over my shoulder, to Carson, he said, “That’s what they said, right?”

“‘Uniquely poised,’” Carson corrected.

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