King Tides Curse Read online

  King Tides Curse

  Book one of Knights of Noble Metal

  Christopher James Timms

  Copyright © 2020 Christopher James Timms

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  To the kind souls that trained me so I may serve others.

  To my wife, thankyou for all the power hours that got this book finished.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prelude to the Knights of Noble Metal Chronicles

  Prologue

  Gale - Siren's call

  Gale - Ionhome

  Gale - The Iron Church

  Rust - A rusty holden ute

  Red - Family

  Gale- Reefwall

  Gale - The entrance exam

  Gale - A bubble burst

  Gale/Swan - Unlikely allies

  Swan - The Hive of Larcs

  Gale - Together tested

  Rust - The nine relics

  Gale - The Lighhouse

  Gale- First day

  Spur - Maw then bargained for

  Gale - Walkabout

  Swan - The little anvil

  Gale - Paged to action

  Gale/Swan - First pager

  Spur - The cafe at the end of the world

  Gale- Deep Training

  Gale - Eureka

  Gale/Swan - Just good etiquette

  Gale/Swan - Glenrowan

  Gale - The best defense

  Gale - The salt mines

  Grace/Spur- The Titans

  Gale - A date to remember

  Gale - Silver and gold

  Gale - First tuition

  Gale - Ironchurch

  Gale - Blood cursed

  Gale - A monster hunt

  Gale - Hunter becomes the hunted

  Gale - The Heretics

  Swan - Larc

  Gale - The Bookwyrm

  Gale/Swan/Yip - Debts

  Gale - Tempests

  Gale - A picnic on the beach

  Gale - Locomotyr

  Gale - Jetpack

  Gale - Ultimate Frisbee

  Gale - The forbidden library

  Gale - Christmas in July

  Splinterpoint Gate Exam

  Swan - Beacon stolen

  Gale - A loan and a wager

  Grace - The Oceanus

  Gale - Fatigue

  Gale - The hydroplanar

  Gale - Infinity Bazaar

  Gale - Ghosts of the past

  Gale - Ironchurch worsens

  Blood and Rust - Feeding minnows

  Gale/Swan - Spring Formal

  Swan - The brig

  Joseph - A proposition

  Gale - Ultimate Frisbee

  Gale/Titus/Sterling - A mate's back

  Yip - The assuault

  Grace - The order

  Gale - The Reefwall burns

  Sterling/Swan - Airships

  Gale - Cathedral

  Sterling - Hunt

  Swan - Spark

  Yip/Spur - Duty

  Gale - Temptation

  The imperfect offer

  Gale - The Turtle wakes

  Gale - The Bogan Knight

  Spur - A hammer and a nail

  Spur/Gale/Red

  Afterword

  Acknowledgement

  About The Author

  Prelude to the Knights of Noble Metal Chronicles

  NINE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO (1050 AD) - WESTMINSTER EARTH

  ‘Well, this is a balls-up.’

  They'd broken the sky. High above King Canute, the Floodgate had punched through reality, leaving jagged cracks in the air like shattered bone. The Floodgate stretched over a kilometre across, a sphere of brittle stone and corroded iron, like a false sun on the horizon. A deep pressure built beyond the gate as she forced her way into the world. Atop the gate, a man in rusted armour stared down at him, bodies scattered in the ocean beneath. The rusted knight raised his blade in a silent challenge.

  Canute’s weathered hands gripped his trident, and the tide lapped at his well-polished boots. His battered armour gleamed with the signs of a fresh coat of paint slapped over the damage. Canute was broad of shoulder with a strong jaw. Grey dominated through his once-proud black hair where a crown sat his brow heavy, at a skewed angle. He pushed it back in place, never able to get it to sit right.

  'Measure twice cut once,' he muttered.

  The beach beneath him was ash grey. The Nine-metal Throne thrummed with power behind him, planted into the sand. In the distance, the town of Westminster carried on its day, oblivious. There was no retreat possible now.

  This was his line in the sand.

  The bodies of wounded knights scattered the beach and sea. The last of his winged knights retreated or fell from the sky, their shining armour cracked, their metallic wings shredded. His healers scrambled to retrieve their fallen brethren, the Catalystes, who had failed to seal the Floodgate.

  In their desperation to save the world, the Catalystes had burnt out. The Catalystes armour was shredded, replaced by black and silver keratinous scale. Their war hammers had fallen into the sea. Longnails, the size of a man’s femur, littered the beach. Still others floated like driftwood on the eerily calm waters. He had pushed them to breaking point, in service of the greater good.

  ‘Well…this is a bit of a gee-up.’ Came a voice beside him.

  A winged knight in golden armour took a knee. Rid, the Skyburnt’s leader, was a tall man with flaming red hair and an ever-present bronze tan. Metallic gold wings folded back into his plate armour. Rid shook his head and spat in the water. Canute’s cursed, this was it then.

  Nine Floodgates.

  The Westminster gate had been the last. From a frosted maw of ice above a volcano in the tropics, to a void of pure darkness in an Indian harbour, to a bleached bone coral gate in an African desert, they all foreshadowed one thing.

  The World Flood was coming.

  ‘You don’t need to do this, my lord,’ spoke Mosios, a bespectacled pale man. Mosios’s sword was ready, a blue-white metal blade that ended in a point like a pen. Mosios had always loved his writing and his sword scrawled the best tales. ‘We stand behind you, and we can take this burden.’

  Canute shook his head. His fault, his burden and he would see it righted. Rid stood and grasped Canute’s shoulder. ‘Yeah, without you we’ll be running round like headless chooks.’ Then Rid pulled a pie from frak knows where in his armour and chewed. Flecks of piping hot meat splattered the golden armour, dripping from the gorgeously browned pastry.

  Canute turned away from his knights to watch the Floodgate. On the horizon, high above the ocean, it began to rotate. It opened, like a gaping maw, its terrible breath reeking of salt. A tidal wave roared through the gate, from the darkest layer of the Trench. Black reptilian beasts they had come to call ‘fathomless’, rode the dark tide. They spewed into the sea with cold, alien eyes. Phyton swarms reached through after them in green bio-luminescent columns that speared into the ocean. Behind it all was the presence of…her.

  ‘Corrosyv,’ Canute spat the words. ‘Frak.’

  ‘Swear jar,’ coughed Mosios, thrusting out a mug. Rid put away a similar jar that he hadn’t got out as quickly. Canute sighed, held his hand over Mosios’s pot and with a flourish dropped a coin in. Mosios filled out a receipt and passed it to him.

  B
ehind Canute, a commotion erupted. One of Canute’s knights turned on his fellows, swinging a two-handed sword wildly. The knight eyes were completely white, his movements jerky, like a puppet on strings.

  A silvered blade pierced the traitors chest. A straight-faced woman pushed the foe off her sword to the ground. Serence, in her simple black outfit with silver collar, wiped the blood off with a black cloth. The traitor’s body shuddered and morphed into a black reptilian shape. It gave a final spasm then collapsed to salt. The salt scattered in the wind, carried back out to sea. Ah, Hronn, thought Canute, I thought I smelled you.

  ‘This is a real cock-up.’ Serence said, cleaning her blade. Canute turned back to the ocean as his healers did what they could for the injured. So many lost already. So many lost because he had thought to do some good.

  ‘Are we to sacrifice ourselves in a heroic last stand my lord?’ Serence asked, as though enquiring about the lunch specials. ‘Should I submit my overtime claim now then, while someone can still sign it off?’

  Canute tilted his head to Serence and shook it with a bitter smile.

  He had never been one for paying overtime.

  The oncoming wave built, an ocean ripping forth from the Floodgate. A faint line on the horizon became house-sized and then a towering castle. It grew until a mountain of water surged towards them. The coastline fell into the shadow of the wave, dark blue water with twisting currents of rust-brown. Canute's men shifted behind him and hands trembled on shield and swords.

  Canute raised high his trident and offered a final prayer. He offered a prayer that had drawn these three to him. He uttered a prayer that had built a resistance across the nine realms. One glorious prayer that spat in the face of the natural order and the gods.

  ‘Noble does not rust!’ He roared.

  ‘Noble does not rust!’ His army bellowed back.

  Canute slammed his trident into the sand. The thrumming of the Nine-metal throne roared in his ears. He planted his feet on the ash-grey sand and threw out his hands to turn back the tide.

  Prologue

  Nine waves born, to call the Flood.

  On siren’s rock shall spill man’s blood.

  The King Tide comes, we batten down.

  With nine gates open, we all shall drown.

  The Journal of Grimace the Heretic

  20 YEARS AGO (2000 AD) - The Deep Realm

  He’d made a dogs breakfast of this.

  The airship Arghost burned beneath Adelphus’s feet. The ship rocked in the sky, another engine giving out and Adelphus snatched at the wooden railing. He listened for the final working engine, for the sweet sound of whirring metal. The ship screamed its protest, already under strain and overworked…but it held.

  Adelphus grinned, until his feet skidded on the tilting deck. The Arghost started losing altitude. The ships timbers had cracked under pressure, the metallic plating shredded on the sides.

  NRMA roadside assistance was not going to cut it at this point.

  The airship timbers were a scattered mess. Ironbark from country Victoria, good Aussie stuff, ran the length of the ships skeg in a bug shoe. Fire had glanced off the ironbark, leaving it charred but whole. Saltpalm from Volkstorm ran along the railing for camouflage. Lightcoral from Mount Axis ran underneath that, for when the saltpalm failed. Even as he thought it, the lightcoral spluttered, their makeshift reefwall shredded by their invaders. He picked up a piece of the lightcoral where it had fallen to the deck, hard-earned, so long ago. He threw it over the side, only dead weight now.

  The ships bow tilted downwards. The view of dark storm clouds gave way to the sight of a vast ocean with a raging maelstrom. Beneath him roared a vicious whirlpool, the size of an outback station, stirred by the rising horror.

  A skyfish swooped down, like an oversized jellyfish corkscrewing through the clouds. Its whipping tendrils gave off a piercing scream. Adelphus speared the skyfish with a vicious hooked harpoon, pinning it to the deck.

  Adelphus scanned the rest of the deck. His crew was dead or fled. His tailored suit shredded and bloodstained. He stood alone, atop the crashing wreck of his life’s endeavour.

  Adelphus’s stroked his long brown beard and mane of hair, trimmed to perfection. He was dressed in a black suit and tie. Adelphus straightened his tie reflexively and looked over the railing once more. The water below thrashed with hundreds of fathomless, crashing waves of red foam darkened by their packs, driven before their mother.

  The rapidly decreasing kilometre of sky between the Arghost and the ocean had shattered, fragmented in an area the size of a football field. The sea rushed through cracks in reality into a new world. Through the reality fracture, the ocean surged into the sky of the Volkstorm Islands in Ionrealm. It poured down onto an island chain with smouldering volcanoes. People desperately fled in canoes as waves swallowed their homes, food for the hungry Deep.

  Adelphus’s corona of magical energy, his Script, sputtered like a candle flame at the end of a wick. Moments away from burnout, he gripped the railing hard. He looked down at his knuckles. The first scale appeared on Adelphus’s hand. A keratinous silver reminder of his limits.

  An infants cry cut through his thoughts. Attached to his chest in dual baby bjorn’s were his sons. One just born and the other barely a year old. The newborn had woken while the other somehow slept.

  Babysitters were so hard to find on short notice.

  Adelphus had lost so much to get these two back, his career, his friends and even Laureli. Laureli, that was the most bitter wound of all.

  The crack of a gunshot rang in the air. A short harpoon slammed into the railing, skewering another skyfish that had snuck up. Adelphus’s first mate, a slender man carrying a blunderbuss like weapon, clambered over a pile of skyfish. He pulled another shortened harpoon from his side and loaded it into the blunderbuss. His first mate’s suit was even more shredded than his own.

  ‘We have to go. Abandon the ship.’ His first mate said.

  Adelphus looked him up and down. ‘Did you take your tie off? We do have standards to uphold.’

  ‘It’s casual Friday, and my point stands. We need to leave.’

  Adelphus shook his head.

  ‘There is a fracture. I need to fix it.’

  He unbuckled the baby bjorn’s from around his chest and held them out to his first mate. His first mate stared at the babies with trepidation even as he fired off another shot, pinning a skyfish.

  ‘You can’t close a breach of that size. There isn’t a nail big enough.’ His first mate said.

  ‘If it’s not closed, the Deep will flood Volkstorm and then Ionhome. Take the children. I will close the fracture from this side.’ Adelphus said.

  ‘I can't leave you, not to face her alone. You don’t need to be a hero today.’ His first mate yelled over the rushing wind, even as he took the infants from Adelphus. Orders were orders after all.

  ‘You must leave, it’s all for nothing if Concord and my newborn don’t escape.’ Adelphus said.

  His first mate finished strapping the two children to his chest. The newborn, still screaming into the squall.

  ‘Please Adelphus, come with me, this is not your sword to fall upon.’

  Adelphus’s hand went to a piece of bone-white coral on a chain around his neck like a set of dog tags.

  ‘Its what we signed up for, its what Zasterix made us for.’ He clasped his first mate’s forearm. ‘Dredge the depths and stir things up.’

  ‘Make the path and clear the muck.’ His first mate replied.

  Adelphus tore a chain from around his neck. He shoved it into his first mates hands.

  ‘The boy must have a name.’ His first mate yelled over the storm.

  It was true, the parents should name the boy, and well, Laureli won't be doing any naming. Adelphus Jr, wasn’t a fate he would subject the child to. Adelphus took in the storm all around him, the wind tearing at his face.

  ‘Gale, the boys name is Gale. Now go.’ Adelphus shoved his first mate o
ff the side of the ship. The man tumbled through the sky, managing to fire a final harpoon from his blunderbuss into a skyfish. Then his first mate fell into the reality fracture and disappeared with his sons.

  Adelphus breathed in deep.

  What the hell, it is casual Friday, he thought. He reached up to his neck and undid the tight knot that bound his neck like a chain. Loose, it blew away in the wind, a lone ribbon of colour in the dark sky. The blue pinstripe pattern on the front of the tie gave way to tiny cartoon dogs on the back, Adelphus’s first small act of rebellion against the College and their standards.

  Adelphus took hold of the gun panel and aimed the nail cannons downwards. The ship plummeted through the sky like a giant harpoon, flung by the gods.

  ‘Well Laureli,’ he whispered. ‘Who would have thought it would come to this.’

  Adelphus readied the nail-cannon, the Arghost’s one remaining engine pushing them straight down. He flipped a button on the panel and AC/DC began to play over the speakers. The burning Airship crashed downwards into the gaping maw of the Deep. He grinned maniacally.

  ‘From hells heart, go frak yourself!’

  Gale - Siren's call

  And nine waves came forth from the Deep.

  Bara the corroding wave, Blooughadda the red foam of waves after a naval battle, Dufar the pitching wave, Hefring the rising wave, Himinglaeva the wave that reflects the light of the heavens, Hronn the ever-changing, Kolga the chilling wave, Drofn the foam fleck comber and Uor the final.

  Calling to the King Tide.

  Text found in a Viking longship crashed in Ionhome. Noted difference in translation compared to Earth texts of Viking legends.

  Where the worlds fracture, you may pass between them.

  Spur’s Primer for fracturesmiths - 2nd Edition