Death Whispers 34: Dire Arts and the Arcane Engine

Aug 8, 1722. Standing on the Arcane Gate’s granite base. Knocking at Death’s door, and hearing a knock back…

Author’s Note: Death Whispers of the Etherwave is a serialized fiction story that is a part of Legends of the Privateers. Each chapter will appear weekly.

Missed a chapter? (or ‘Episode’ if you like!) Well, never you worry, as we’re only just getting started! The full list of chapters will appears here!

Transformed by the cataclysm of 1712, Doctor Pedro Sangre and his four courageous privateer companions confront mysterious and evil forces that plague innocent people. Together, they grapple with uncanny forces and myths come to life, risking everything to preserve peace and set right what has gone wrong.

Previously: Trapped in the lower decks of the sinking barge, Pedro confronts the murderous wood wraith, Lucas Argall. The battle raged across the barge, nearly tearing it apart. In the end, a combination of direct sunlight and drawing too much power from the Etherwave completely destroyed the wood wraith. But Pedro didn’t come away unscathed. Now, infected with the same petrification illness he discovered a cure for, he has to climb over to the Arcane Gate itself to stop Tristam Greenholm’s last foul touch of corruption… the mysterious Arcane Engine…

Aug 8, 1722. Standing on the Arcane Gate’s granite base. Knocking at Death’s door, and hearing a knock back…

I dropped to my hands and knees on the seaweed-slick rock, gasping for air. A wave of nausea slammed through my stomach.

My gut clenched. I vomited hard. It was sour bile with a little blood. Then I spat, wiped my mouth on my sleeve, and blinked away tears.

“Potions never taste better the second time around,” I complained, throat raw.

Wood crackled as the infection flared again. Pain shot through my left arm while waves broke against the Arcane Gate’s granite base around me. Sea spray was everywhere.

It wasn’t easy to stand. That entire gray stone base was slick with rotten seaweed and brine. Whitecaps slapped us like we deserved it. The storm winds howled, delighted to have two more victims.

I felt hollowed out, lightheaded, but not done. That’s when I noticed I’d cut my hand on the rocks. It was just more pain layered on pain. Then the infection flared, clawing at me, but I was still bleeding red—not amber resin.

“Just put one foot in front of the other,” I murmured, then forced myself to stand. Sebastian barked in agreement.

My legs kept moving after the rest wanted to give up. It wasn’t willpower, but a bitter elixir of guilt and desperation, trying to set things right.

Beside me, Sebastian scrabbled for solid footing, claws clicking against the stone. Desperate and determined in his own gargoyle way, so I wouldn’t face this alone. Together until the end.

“Come on, Sebastian. It’s right ahead.”

Over the wind, Sebastian whined, low in his throat. I guessed he felt what I did. An itch behind my eyes and at the base of my skull, along with a tightness in my chest. A sense that something impossibly ancient next to us was awake and furious.

The last few yards felt like forever, but we crossed the wet rocks to the Arcane Engine nestled against the Gate. I knelt down heavily for a better look.

It wasn’t some mythical carved statue with glowing eyes. This was actually something even worse. A device of brass, bone, and quartz, but not clockwork like I knew it. This Arcane Engine looked more like an abused wooden sea chest whose maker had a morbid fondness for bone and brass.

Bits of bleached whale and other scrimshawed bones lined corners and seams. What wasn’t bone had been layered in light tan leather and tarnished brass rivets. Black resin had been used to patch ugly cracks edged with the singed remains of lightning strikes. A large, tarnished steel latch kept the lid closed.

Gears peeked out from gaps in the chest’s bloated wood slats. Some were on the lid, others along the sides. They glistened with a dark, reddish oil that I suspected might have been something far worse.

I remembered the conversation with Renwick in my shop days ago. One where he explained sailors ‘sent to the engine’ never returned. Suddenly, I didn’t want to guess about where the bones, leather, and oil came from.

“It’s a pirate’s pet abomination, or an engineer’s fever dream of the damned,” I murmured. “How do I stop this? Open it? What is it even doing?”

Just then, the storm winds receded. Behind the moan of wind, I heard the muffled sound of countless small gearworks, the crackle of power, and what sounded like stone being chiseled. I glanced at the gate, then at the Arcane Engine, and quickly reached for the latch.

It moved, but the lid didn’t. At least not until I found a thumb-sized knob hidden behind the latch strike plate. I turned the knob, and every visible gear came to terrible life, chattering like dozens of metal teeth. Gears turned, then slid like elaborate puzzle pieces.

I held still, braced for something to hiss and explode. But instead, the gears abruptly aligned. With a soft click, slide, and snapping sound, the chest’s lid opened a sliver.

Quickly, I caught the edge with my fingers and pulled. It shifted only a few inches. Steam hissed out, thick and sour, reeking of hot sewage.

With a frustrated sigh, I gripped the lid with both hands, putting my full weight behind it. The chest creaked in protest. I winced immediately from fresh pain as more skin on my left hand steadily turned into split wood.

“All right, what do we have?” I grunted with a glare at the chest.

Sebastian pressed in close against my leg, gargoyle tail lashing the air like a whip. His horned head cocked as if listening to a distant sound. After a second, he hissed furiously at the chest.

I didn’t blame him at all.

All at once, the stink of boiled rot and burnt copper flooded out so fast, my eyes watered. I coughed and wiped away tears while I peered inside. The smell was so dense, it ignored the storm that tried to blow it out to sea.

“Dios mío,” I coughed.

Inside was an alchemical mess, but at least it finally explained why the Codex Luminari contained so many mechanical and alchemical designs. This Arcane Engine was an elaborate combination of alchemical stills, a Hauksbee battery, and a deranged engraver’s tool.

Row after row of tiny, interlocking gears, some of quartz, others of shell, or bone, drove the entire thing. They meshed together in clusters like barnacles on a hull at regular intervals along a trio of metal rods. Those drilled and chiseled into the Arcane Gate itself, carving navigation symbols and alchemy formulas into the base, or grinding rock to powder.

That enchanted stone powder was conveyed to a series of distilling pots. Containers heated by a cluster of glass jars filled with a shimmering liquid. It was the most elaborate Hauksbee battery I’d ever seen. The silver-blue blood of Etherwave power literally pumped from the Gate itself like an open wound.

Now, it wasn’t hard to figure out what this was doing. I recognized those carved formulas. They were symbols rumored to be tied to resurrecting the dead. I shook my head, then coughed again against the rotten stench.

“This is how they’re opening a portal to the land of the dead.”

Another wave of pain shot through me. I grabbed my left arm and nearly doubled over. Heat boiled out of the chest like a blast furnace. I wasn’t sure if my sweat was from what I’d drunk or the heat.

“The Hauksbee jars must be storing power pulled from the Gate but also from what’s boiling in those alchemy stills. If I can disconnect just a part of this, that drill will stop, and so will what’s being done to the Gate.”

I tried to reach inside slowly, but the heat was too much. Even my coat sleeve smoked.

“There has to be another way,” I murmured.

Wind whipped around me like a mad ghost. I looked over my shoulder at Lysander. He had the Arcane Gate stable for now. But I could see he was losing the struggle. I glanced toward the Silk Duchess where the battle had died down, then at Lysander, and finally at the Arcane Engine.

“He needs one of those gear-laden portal platforms to ground out the excess Etherwave power.”

I scowled at the Arcane Engine. Not that it cared. It sat boiling out searing heat, eating at the Arcane Gate, practically breathing like some hell-born parasite. Then I scratched Sebastian behind the horns.

“We need to solve one problem with the other,” I said to him as much as to me, looking around the gray rocks. “Where did I drop the Codex?”

Sebastian found it before I did and dragged the battered book over to me. I leafed through the pages with their lurid details about necrotic formulas and rituals until I found Tristam’s designs for this devilish Arcane Engine. It didn’t take long to find the passage I wanted.

“Of course, disconnect the chisels, but the Hauksbee jars have to be tuned? Did I read that right?”

Tension gnawed at the back of my head while I read the passage again.

“Tuned. Musically, like ‘singing glasses’. This is tuned by sound.”

My eyes cut back to the glowing jars in the searing hot Engine. I skimmed the passages again, then glanced over at Lysander. The idea made sense, even if it might burn me alive. That sent me back to searching the Codex for a way to bleed off the heat.

“There has to be a way to touch those jars,” I muttered, flipping pages so fast I nearly tore them out.

Then I stopped on a page adorned with a familiar, horrific diagram of a thin and ragged figure, barely even human.

A Death Whisper.

Just like the kind I’d fought too many of, and never wanted to see again. I grunted as my stomach rebelled again, threatening to bend me over in another wave of violent nausea.

I didn’t want to create one of those nightmares. Especially given what Renwick had said, they needed a living spirit. I swapped an uneasy glance with Sebastian, who whimpered back at me.

“It’s what we have,” I rasped in a tight, brittle voice.

I pulled out the vial with the last of the ink I used on the barge, along with a broken bit of wood. Then I flipped to a blank page in the Codex and scribbled a slightly altered version of the Death Whisper ritual.

Sebastian whined at me one more time, and I scratched behind his horns. He gently butted his head against my hand.

“Don’t worry. It’ll be over soon. It has to.”

Then, I slammed my open palm onto the page hard enough that there was a sharp crack. Blood from the cut on my hand mingled with the hastily scrawled formulas in an ink just waiting for a spark of power. I wiped a tear from my eye, took a deep breath, then sang against the wind.

“I’m a privateer of the sea, of the waves and wind. With my ship and crew, I sail the ocean without fear…”

Green-white ghostfire exploded to life around my right hand. At the same moment, I felt the Etherwave Arcana rush to my aid. It flowed down through the Arcane Gate, then into me, like a torrent of water breaking through a dam.

Drops of fresh ink bled up from the page to dance in the air in front of my eyes. Every formula glimmered and rippled while a dark shadow of ink and blood stained the entire page. Sebastian’s whimper was swallowed by the wind.

“I just hope this Death Whisper listens.”

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Hoist the Colors is a work of pure, unabashed fiction. Actually, when it's not swinging off the rigging, or shivering some timbers, it's rather shy and retiring. Did I mention it enjoys baking? Names of characters, places, events, organizations and locations are all creations of the author’s imagination for this fictitious setting. So he really is all to blame here.

Any resemblance to persons living, dead, shoved overboard, or reanimated is coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author's, since the characters and the author tend to disagree a lot.