Well, it was clear from the start that Lechmere’s Archive wasn't simply a copy of my own. Unless he had heavily modified it from the ground up. I had been told that was possible. The place the rest of the Flique worth staying at didn't have to be an island. We could change that anyway we wanted to. There just hadn't been much time to focus on that. Too many things had been demanding our attention. Case in point, this murderous fuck.

In any case, this wasn't an island. It looked like a somewhat sparsely forested desert type area with a massive train yard covering most of it. There were tracks criss-crossing one another in a random pattern, huge buildings where trains were worked on, or stations where people were supposed to wait, and dozens upon dozens of the trains themselves. They seemed larger than they should be, at least twice the size in both length and height.

Yeah, this guy really had some weird thing about trains. That much was clear. And the other thing that was clear was the fact that these trains weren't ordinary. Of course not, that would be too simple. We found out exactly how not normal they were, besides the size thing, as Miranda took a step closer to the nearest engine and started to say something. Before she could even get a word out, that train engine's headlights opened to reveal biological eyes. Then its front metal grill parted as well, showing enormous teeth as it lunged forward a bit in an attempt to eat her with a terrible roar.

My hand was already grabbing Miranda’s arm to yank her back. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Bezique catch her other arm and give a hard flap of her wings to pull us back even more.

Together, we managed to yank the other girl far enough away that the monster train messed with that bite. Unfortunately, that was hardly the end of it. The thing glared at us and started to follow our retreat. It wasn't about to just go back to sleep. Worse, I sensed movement around us and glanced that way. There were more living trains. Some longer than others, some with no extra cars attached at all, but all with humanoid eyes behind those headlights, and big teeth. And all of them were hungry and pissed off. The way they were moving, their long bodies of train cars coming up against one another and curving around as though to encircle us, suddenly it felt less like we were in a train yard, and more like we were in a giant snake pit. That was what these monsters seemed like, giant train-shaped snakes who were very annoyed at us.

And we still had no idea where our actual target had gone. Then again, somehow I wasn't exactly surprised by the idea that he was a fucking coward when it came to a real confrontation. He was content to ambush helpless women, people who couldn't fight back at all. He liked creating his patchwork creatures, then sending them out to do his dirty work for him. He hadn't been the type to do his own fighting against someone who could defend themselves, and he wasn't going to start now. Not until we dragged that bastard into it.

Of course, first we had to escape this area. Fortunately, these train monsters didn't seem to have any sort of ranged attack. Which might have seemed obvious, but who the hell knew what was possible to put together in these Archives? He had clearly taken a lot of time to put them together.

Taking a running start toward the nearest train, I use a burst from my staff to launch myself up and over its wide open mouth before landing on the thing’s back. Or rather, on top of the second train car behind the engine and the one with all the coal in it. I could hear it rumbling under me, could see a couple more train snakes twisting around as though to attack. I waited just another second, then used my staff to jump straight up while those two slammed into the one I had been standing on.

Below me, Miranda and Bezique were already weaving between a couple more trains, heading for an open spot near one of the stations. But my attention was focused on trying to spot any sign of the man we had come in here after. Something told me that he would be close enough to watch what was going on. He would want to see his creations attack us. I had no idea if he actually expected them to win, but he seemed like the voyeur type.

Sure enough, I spotted him, but it wasn't in any of the buildings or hidden in the woods. No, he was standing at the conductor’s spot on the biggest fucking train snake there was. They were already twice the size of normal trains, and this thing was twice the size of the other ones. It was clearly his personal favorite, lounging back out of the immediate melee where its brethren were swarming and slamming into one another in an attempt to chase their new prey. I could actually feel the malevolence and danger coming off that thing from here. Or maybe I was just feeling Lechmere himself and he had infected his creation with this horribly malevolent aura.

The man in question was shifting his head around to look up at me. Our eyes met, and I saw a weird mixture of delight as well as fear, which kind of threw me off just a bit. It was weird for him to be happy and scared about this situation at the same time, right? Maybe he was just that fucked up deep down. Or maybe he was reacting to it like someone on a rollercoaster or in a haunted house. Either way, it just made me want to put an end to this whole thing even more. I needed to make him stop. No more patchwork creatures, no more killings, no more of this shit.

I had used my item-pause power to suspend myself in the air for a moment, staring that way. Now, with the man in sight, I summoned a swarm of ghosts all around me, filling the air with over a hundred of their incorporeal forms. Three quarters of them scattered to run cover for Miranda and Bezique (and to guide them the right way), while the rest surrounded me. Several caught hold of my limbs or waist while I canceled the item-stop on my shoes, carrying me that way. The rest, the ones who weren’t physically holding me, were there to block his line of sight to me so I wouldn’t be an easy target for anything he might want to send my way. They formed a big blob of constantly moving ghost forms that would make it difficult to spot and target my actual body.

Even as we moved that way, I could feel him trying to take control of my ghosts. I felt his power try to wrap around them and yank the figures away. He was strong, probably strong enough to do it to most people who were simply using Necromantic spells. But that wasn’t me. I was stronger. When I felt his power attempting to snake through my ghosts, I gave it a hard shove to push the energy away. Somehow, I was pretty sure the sheer force of the shove took the man by surprise.

Just as I was about to reach the front of that giant leader snake-train, the thing reared up, rising high above me with its enormous mouth open, showing all those teeth. It loomed like that, giving an audible hiss-roar before lunging down to swallow me. Or it started to. But in that second, Bezique came into view over its head. She was flying, straining those wings of hers for all she was worth as she carried Miranda, who was dangling by one hand. My old friend’s other hand was pointed down, as she sent three quick balls of wind that way. I’d seen her use these before, but she must have upgraded them at some point. Because when those balls of wind reached their target, the lunging snake-train, they exploded into a trio of tornadoes strong enough to fling the mostly mechanical monster violently sideways and into the ground. The impact sent up a spray of dirt in every direction and shook the whole area. As a (probably intended) bonus, the slightly smaller snake-trains who had been circling closer were knocked backwards as well.

I could already tell that Bezique was tired from carrying Miranda that high, so I sent a couple ghosts to help her get back down. At the same time, I was carried by the others all the way down to where the dazed giant snake-train was just starting to try to pull itself up. The sound of protesting, groaning metal mixed with slightly dazed hissing was getting louder by the second.

Before it could recover, I landed directly on the front grill, just above the part where its mouth would open. From that spot, I could see not only the man behind all this, but also the open part of the firebox where the coal would be shoveled in to keep the engine going. But there was no fire there. Instead, I saw what looked like an actual physical, biological heart pumping away. Just a giant heart beating there where the fire should have been. And yes, it did freak me the fuck out.

A second later, my gaze locked with Lechmere’s, and I snapped a single, sharp word, “Penny!”

Whatever he was expecting me to say at that moment, that wasn’t it. And he was taken even more by surprise a second later as a small yet terrifyingly strong form slammed into the man from behind. I had summoned Penny Dreadful while being carried through the air. Her coffin had slammed into the back of the train, before the golem herself, piloted by the actual Penny’s ghost, charged on all fours up the length of the monster. When I called for her, she leapt and crashed into Lechmere. The force of her impact carried the man forward, out the window of the snake-train engine, and past me while I was twisting myself to one side to let them pass.

While twisting around, I pointed my staff toward that giant heart I had seen. A thought made the staff grow to twice its normal size. Which, by extension, made Gus, in his grapple form, grow as well. I hit the button to send him shooting out that way, launching the grapple blade into the heart of the snake-train. It gave a terrifying, awful roar when the blade pierced that heart, sending blood everywhere through the engine space as it latched on deep inside the fleshy muscular organ.

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With that, I used a burst from the staff as well as my own boost to hurl myself forward, off the monstrosity. My oversized grapple remained locked on the heart, literally fucking ripping the thing right out of its home, where it shattered the rest of that engine compartment. Half of the heart stayed there, trapped in that cramped space, while the other half was torn away by the grapple and carried along with me as I was sent flying out over the train yard. The giant bio-mechanical monster’s death screams echoed out over the whole area. Which was apparently enough to make the slightly smaller snake-trains think twice about coming closer.

Retracting the grapple and shrinking my staff back to its usual size, I halted myself in midair and let the remains of the heart pass by just under me so it could splatter against the ground. Then I dropped down and approached the spot where Penny Dreadful had knocked Lechmere. He was extending his own power over her, doing his level best to force her away. But as with the ghosts, my own power shielded her, making his coils of Necromancy slip off while she pinned him down. A small girl, keeping Jack the Ripper trapped with his face in the dirt. It wasn’t exactly the same as allowing his victims to get their justice out of the man, but it still made me feel a little better.

At a word from me, Penny jumped backward and moved to hold onto my leg, crouching there somewhat behind me. By that time, as the man picked himself up, Miranda and Bezique had joined us, with the latter moving by my other leg while Randi herself stood to one side. We had our guards up, waiting to see what this bastard was going to do. My voice was sharp. “Okay, no more games. No more bullshit. We need to talk, and I need that key before this gets out of hand.”

“Out of hand?” The man sounded amused, despite the situation. He picked himself out of the dirt, moving to a seated position. Before he could stand up, I pointed the blade of my staff that way, making him pause like that. He sat there, staring up at me with--not hate. It wasn’t loathing. Hell, it wasn’t even hatred. It was apathy. He wasn’t actually angry about this situation. It was like he didn’t care about it at all, like he didn’t care about anything at all. None of this mattered to him. Which seemed to be at odds with the way he had looked at me a few moments earlier, when he had been in the snake-train. But maybe he had simply been reacting to that situation? I wasn’t sure, and I probably didn’t want to try to understand the reactions of someone like that, honestly.

“I don’t believe this has ever been in your hands, sibling,” he informed me in that infuriatingly casual tone. “You and I are the same, yet I have spoken directly with our benefactor. I have heard his words. What I do is for his glory. What you do is a sin. He has named you as his adversary, for you squander his gifts and refuse his instructions. You are a failed experiment.” His gaze flicked down, then up again as though taking me in. “Unsurprising, coming from such a whore.”

Miranda started to move that way, but my hand snapped out to stop her. Yet it was Bezique who spoke up, her voice a loud chirp. “You’s will not call the Jacob-Bonded that word! You’s will not call anyones that! We’s remember, we’s--I’s remember the word. The word you used. The dirty, foul, filthy word. You’s said it while cutting, cutting, cutting us. You’s said it while stitching us! You’s said we deserved such things for being that word! But we didn’ts! We didn’ts deserves such things, never never that wasn’t right.” She was holding both tiny fists up, clenching them as tightly as she could considering the disparate sizes of all those fingers. “We’s deserved better.” That last sentence came not with anger, but anguish, her voice cracking through the words.

At that moment, it was like the man only noticed her for the first time. His eyes flicked that way before giving a dismissive, “You are mine, do not forget your place.” Even as he said that, it was accompanied by… something. I wasn’t sure exactly what he did at first, but it made Bezique collapse to the ground with a terrible shriek of agony.

Oh no, no no no. It was like her entire body was being torn apart very slowly. Which, I realized a second later, was exactly what was happening. Lechmere was somehow using his own power to control each of the various body parts from all those different people, all the pieces that had been combined to create Bezique herself, and attempting to rip them away in different directions. He wasn’t simply trying to kill his own creation for the unforgivable crime of talking back at him, he was doing his best to do so in the most agonizing way possible. There was no mercy, no care for the life he had made. He wanted her to suffer.

“Stop!” I had no idea how he was doing that, which kind of scared me, to be honest. I didn’t understand how he was doing any of this body modification, patchwork stuff. Was he simply that advanced in some strange form of Necromancy that I hadn’t put the time into yet? Whatever the truth was, however he was doing it, I could sense his power. I could feel him extending his Necromancy out into those body parts, and I didn’t need to understand the specifics in order to stretch my own power out, catch his, and rip it away from her. Which was exactly what I did. He put up a struggle of course. This wasn’t nearly as easy as keeping my ghosts out of his control had been. Was that more because they were under my control to begin with, or because he understood exactly what he was doing better than me in this case? Whatever it was, it took everything I had to force his power away from her, leaving Bezique lying on the ground.

Oh god, this was bad. She looked--she looked broken. The patchwork harpy girl was bleeding from… from basically everywhere. He had almost torn her into dozens of pieces. I could see where the different… parts of her had been pulled away, leaving her almost… dismembered there on the ground. She was just making weak little noises of pain right now. She had dropped her Magic cards, leaving them scattered across the ground.

“Flick, do something!” Miranda was there, trying to hold the broken girl up, trying to help her, but she couldn’t make the pieces stay together, couldn’t stop the bleeding, couldn’t do… anything.

That was when I saw it. High in the air, some sort of… rip appeared. It was a hole in the fabric of this Archive. And through that hole, we could see another place, another world. The view immediately made my blood run even colder than it already had. Because this wasn’t just any random place. Through the hole, we could see brief glimpses of familiar tall creatures with gray-green skin and bulbous eyes. It wasn’t one continuous view of one single spot either. It was like this vision of all these Fomorians was playing on fast forward, showing bits and pieces of those creatures from all across various times and locations, never staying in one spot or moment for long. It was like this hole in his Archive was somehow simply linked to the entire Fomorian race as a whole, or… or something.

But there was something else, something worse than just seeing those random glimpses of the creatures through that hole in the sky. I could also feel some sort of… energy or… or something coming through as well. The energy went to Lechmere himself. But--no, it wasn’t just energy. It was information. It was… their knowledge. I felt that in that moment, like the Archive itself was telling me what was happening. The Fomorian knowledge, their specialty, was pouring through that hole. That was how Lechmere had learned his craft, how he had learned to create creatures like Bezique. How--how had this happened? How did his Archive end up with this link to the Fomorian--whatever it was. I had no idea. But seeing it there, for those few seconds before the hole closed once more and left the sky looking normal, gave me such a palpable sense of revulsion. It was wrong. Very, very wrong.

I felt the energy going to him, and in that moment I did the only thing I could. I grabbed it myself. I wrapped my own Necromancy around that and yanked it away from the man before he could absorb any more of that knowledge. Which meant the energy from that hole came into me. I… I felt a rush, I saw pulsing hearts, blood pouring over outstretched gray hands, a line of eyeballs, completely separated from any body, twitching and rolling. I saw bones crumbling to dust. I saw… I saw…

I saw the hole in the sky close, returning the Archive sky to normal. No sooner had it done so, than Miranda blurted my name and pointed while Penny snarled. Lechmere had already started to move. He was running away again, fleeing across the open trainyard while some of his creations started to slither toward us once more.

But I wasn’t paying attention to that for long. I may not have gotten much from that Fomorian knowledge… energy that came through, but I did absorb something from it. I understood how Bezique was held together, how her various parts had been made to stay as one and work together. I finally understood how to make my Necromancy work on these body parts. Pivoting that way, I went down to one knee and put my hand out to her half-broken body. As she stared up at me with two very different but equally terrified eyes, I focused on my own power, pushing it into her body to coax her pieces back together. I stitched her up, made her whole once more while dampening her pain by essentially muting her nerves somewhat. I couldn’t really explain the details of how I did that, but I just… knew how. It was instinct.

“Flick.” Bezique used my name for the first time, her voice full of wonder and confusion. And fear. “No. He escapes. Bad mans escapings to hurt more. His leave with key. Yous need key, yous stop him, not saves us. We’s not important.”

“Oh Bezique, that’s where you’re wrong.” As I said that, my hand was already pressing the Magic cards into her grasp, as she had been blindly reaching for them. “You are so very important. You always have been.” Rising, I took her hand, the one not clutching the cards, and pulled her up. “Besides, I think I know a bit more about these places than Lechmere does.”

We turned then, all of us looking back the way the man in question had fled. He was still there, slowly back up toward us once more. And the snake-trains he had been sending after us, they had stopped short. The monsters had stopped, and Lechmere was retreating, because we weren’t alone in here anymore. That was why I had felt safe enough to take the time to heal Bezique, why I hadn’t sent the others after Lechmere when he started to flee.

“I know that Archives can be linked.”

Yeah, the Flique was here. All of them, all the active ones anyway. They were surrounding Lechmere, forcing him to retreat, keeping his train creations back, making the man stumble and fall all over himself as he fled back toward me, away from dozens of versions of me closing in on him.

“Now,” I announced while he fell into the dirt in the middle of all of us, “like I was saying before.

“I’m gonna need that key.”