The cost of love, p.1
The Cost of Love, page 1
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2025 Chaos Forge Press LLC
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise – without prior written permission of the author, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
A Murder Most Foul
Part 1
A Midnight Soirée
Ashes and Echoes
The Emperor’s Library
The Mad Emperor
Imprisonment
A Mirror of Words
Memories
Seeking Escape
A Slow Death
A Glimpse into the Past
Connection
Orders
Release
Mashina’s Heart
Part 2
Katherine
The Forward Operating Base
The Body
In the Ashes
The Twisted Teat Tavern
A Choice
The Machine Doctor
A Glimpse of Power
Fires in the Night
Helga’s Workshop
The Contraption
Efir
Memories
Part 3
A Killer on the Loose
The Burning of the Forensic Team
An Unsuspected Ally
A Helping Hand
The Art of Sacrifice
Separation
Part 4
Ashes of the Heart
The Monster Inside
Making a Path
Into the City’s Heart
Glimpses of the Past and Future
Long Live the Emperor, Long Live the Empress
Acknowledgments
Also by W. B. Biggs
W. B. Biggs
Dedication
To those who have tasted love’s sweet kiss and to those who have felt its prickly thorns
A Murder Most Foul
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They say the Slums devour men, but tonight... it was my turn to feast.
The night pressed down heavy, the sky a canopy of iron smeared with coal smoke. Gaslights flickered like dying stars along the crooked alleyways, casting broken shadows over gutters clogged with yesterday’s sins. I moved through it like a blade through silk: silent, deliberate, cold.
The house at the end of the alley sagged against its neighbor’s, a rotten tooth in the jaw of the city. The home belonged to two siblings, Arkane Scientists. Or so our intelligence claimed. Light leaked through the cracks in the boarded windows—dim, flickering, like a heart about to fail.
Perfect.
My boots crushed shards of glass as I crossed the threshold. No one to announce me. No one to mourn what came next.
Inside, the air was thick with stale sweat and cheap perfume. A man sat slumped in a battered chair, his back to me. He nursed a bottle with trembling hands, oblivious to the death stalking closer. I could smell the fear on him already, though he didn’t know why yet.
I drew my weapon – a slender thing of brass and black iron – and leveled it at his head. The click of the hammer was the loudest sound in the world.
He turned, slow and stupid, his face slack with drink and despair. Recognition flared in his bloodshot eyes a second too late.
“Wait...” he managed, voice cracking with terror.
I pulled the trigger.
The gun’s report was deafening in the cramped room. His skull shattered like pottery, blood and bone painting the wall behind him in a grotesque mural. He collapsed sideways, the bottle shattering at his feet.
I holstered the weapon, heart steady, breath calm. Another necessary evil in a city built on corpses.
The mission was simple: misdirection and the elimination of possible threats.
But tonight, a little more theater was required.
I grabbed the corpse by the ankles – his boots were split and dry rotted – and dragged him across the splintered floor. His body left a wet smear as I hauled him down a narrow hall to a back bedroom.
A tattered bed sagged in the center of the room, the mattress stained and speckled with mold. I threw the corpse onto it without ceremony.
Power, true power, required sacrifice. From inside my coat, I withdraw a relic from my past, a memento from a past love, a cherished keepsake.
I would miss it when it was gone. It would cost me dearly, but power always did. The item, a silver ring with an engraving along its inside, disappeared into a wisp of smoke as I made my sacrifice.
I stepped back.
The body convulsed.
Then it detonated.
The explosion was wet and savage, a blossoming flower of blood and viscera. Shards of rib and slivers of flesh embedded themselves into the peeling walls and worn ceiling. A crimson mist hung in the air like a funeral veil.
Perfect.
To the city patrols, it would look like a forbidden ritual gone wrong. Proof that the Arkane Sciences led only to madness, to horror, to corruption. Another justification to tighten the leash. Another corpse to terrify the Slums into obedience.
I wiped a drop of blood from my cheek with the back of my glove. Realizing this wouldn’t be enough to get myself clean, I turned to staging the scene. I’d get clean later.
As I removed evidence of the bloody trail, I caught a glimpse of something out of place—a scrap of fabric half-hidden beneath the chair. Not just any cloth. A woman’s clothes. The other target. A feminine scent still clung to it.
My jaw tightened.
There had only been one in the house tonight. Good fortune or foul, I couldn’t tell yet. Either way, she was now a liability; she still breathed when she should not.
I shut the door behind me leaving the crime scene exactly as I wanted. Let the police do the work for me, a bullet aimed directly at the remaining sibling.
And somewhere out there, she was running.
But she would find, soon enough, that there are things in the dark far worse than a bullet in the night.
Things like me.
Part 1
Nero and Lada’s Story
A Midnight Soirée
Nero
The black, iron gates of the estate loomed, slick with the sheen of a recent downpour. Moonlight, a silver serpent, slithered through the ironwork, casting long, skeletal shadows across the cobblestones. By the arched doorway stood a manservant, his posture rigid, his expression a mask of tedious indifference, as if he were carved from the very stone of the estate.
The hilt of my sword dug cruelly into the flesh of my palm. Pain. A good reminder of the importance of what I was about to do.
I released the hilt, letting the blade remain in its scabbard, and straightened my spine. My footsteps took me toward the estate’s door. How much more must I sacrifice for this city?
“May I assist you, sir?” the manservant asked, his voice dry as parchment.
Ignoring him, my fingers brushed the door handle, and it swung open on noiseless hinges. The sound within surged out to meet me, alive with an intoxicating symphony: music, laughter, voices thick with wine and intrigue.
The foyer blazed with light, a thousand gas lamps casting a golden glow over polished marble and gilded archways. Beyond the threshold, the strains of a waltz beckoned from the ballroom. As I advanced, the revelers came into view—men and women adorned in finery, their jeweled adornments catching the light like stars in the firmament as they danced.
“Excuse me, sir,” the manservant said, his voice now edged with irritation as he shadowed my steps. “Weapons are not permitted on the premises.”
I paused, turning to him. “Do you know who I am?”
“No, and it...”
The manservant’s protest withered in the air behind me as I left him standing at the threshold and swept into the ballroom. Velvet-lined walls shimmered under the flicker of crystal chandeliers, the scent of perfume and polished brass mingling in the air. A full orchestra nestled in a carved alcove, their instruments singing waltzes old enough to stir ghosts.
I kept to the edge of the room, a solitary figure weaving through powdered aristocrats and painted smiles, my gaze slipping from face to face as I searched for Chancellor Ivanotich.
A silver tray passed by—held aloft by a mechanical steward whose face bore the frozen grin of servitude. I plucked a flute of champagne from its polished surface, not out of thirst but necessity; idle hands too often betrayed troubled thoughts. I let the bubbles climb toward my lips but never drank.
“Sir, would you care to dance?”
The voice came soft, confident and crisply accented. I turned to find a woman adorned in layered frills and dusk-colored lace. Her gown was high fashion, her bearing proud. Beauty painted her features with precision, though there was a hardness behind the eyes and too much calculation in the corners of her smile.
“It would be my pleasure,” I said, handing off the untouched glass to the nearest bystander, a portly man who looked positively scandalized to be saddled with it.
“I’m Katra,” she said
“Nero,” I replied, my voice low.
“Like the emperor,” she said, lifting a perfectly sculpted brow.
“Yes,” I said with a half-smile. “I’ve heard that before.”
The music swelled, and I spun her gently, her skirts flaring like velvet petals before she returned to my arm. Her palm was soft, perfumed, and warm against mine, yet my thoughts were elsewhere.
At the edge of the floor, a tall figure captured my attention. He stood with the indolent stillness of a man used to commanding rooms without effort. Broad-shouldered, immaculately dressed in a tailored suit that hinted at military formality, he held his top hat in one hand like he had just come inside and gestured subtly with the other.
“My dear Katra,” I said, slowing our motion, “thank you for the dance but duty calls.”
She let out a sigh of playful resignation. “Then find me again before the night is through.”
“If time is kind,” I replied, bowing with just enough flourish to satisfy decorum.
I turned and cut across the whirling bodies and embroidered silks, heading toward the man, who looked upon the festivities with the detached amusement of a bystander watching someone else’s opera unfold.
“Emperor,” the man greeted me with a faint bow, his voice oiled with deference.
“And you are?” I asked, narrowing my gaze at the newcomer.
“Chancellor Ivanotich, at your service,” he replied, a sly smile curling his lips. “Shall we speak in a less conspicuous locale?”
He turned without waiting for my reply, striding down a dim corridor. The sound of the ballroom’s gaiety faded with each step. My eyes lingered on his frame. Stocky and thick, he did not match the description scrawled in my notebooks. This was a discrepancy that tightened a knot of suspicion in my chest.
The chancellor led me into a secluded office, the air heavy with the scent of ink and ancient vellum. A single switch illuminated the space, revealing a cluttered desk buried under mounds of paper and mechanical schematics. He lowered himself into a high-backed chair and motioned to the seat opposite him.
“You don’t match my records, Chancellor,” I said, thinking about my notebooks. “The man described in my notes is leaner... and older.”
“Ah, dear Emperor,” Ivanotich said, his tone sardonic. “People change. Perhaps your notes are as outdated as your reign. Do you even recall when they were written? I worry about your memory.”
When did I write that description? Frustration threatened to bubble to the surface, but I wrestled it down, focusing on the reason for my intrusion. “Do you intend to outlaw the Arkane Sciences even from me?”
“It is no longer an intention,” he said, his smile vanishing. “It is done. The Arkane Sciences are a relic of a bygone age, much like yourself. If I ended you, it would be an act of mercy.”
His hand reached into a drawer, producing a gleaming chrome-plated pistol. The barrel leveled at my chest, and his eyes burned with zealotry—a fanatic on the precipice of murder.
I had kept a single precious memory from childhood. My mother, her face a radiant jewel, held me in her lap. Her lips moved in a gentle rhythm, shaping the words of a story. It was the last vestige of my past, and at that moment, I let it go.
Power filled me as the chancellor, if that was who he really was, pulled the trigger.
The sound was deafening. The power released from me, and the weapon in my would be killer’s hand exploded as it backfired.
The chancellor, his face contorted in a silent scream, was thrown back against the wall, his pistol exploding in a shower of sparks and shrapnel.
The clock on the wall, a contraption of gears and cogs, ticked toward midnight. I pulled out my journal before it was too late. My hand scratched the words onto a blank page before they slipped through the cracks of my mind: Chancellor Ivanotich - imposter? Killed. Protect Arkane Scientists... or... imminent... destruction...
The journal slipped from my grasp, tumbling to the floor, and I looked up to find myself in unfamiliar surroundings. Who was I? Where was I?
Ashes and Echoes
Nero
When I came to my senses, there was silence, like wool stuffed into my ears. The air smelt of gunpowder. My eyes glanced about, taking in the desk that dominated the space, the opulent walls, the clock that marked the time as the start of a new day. On the floor beyond the desk was a body.
He had not died well.
The corpse lay crumpled near a shattered decanter; thickened blood pooled beneath his shoulder. His mouth hung open in what might once have been a scream. His eyes stared at nothing at all. One side of his face was ruined. The blackened metal of what once was a gun lay near his outstretched hand.
I didn’t know his name; I didn’t know mine.
My legs faltered, and I fell back against a sideboard, sending a crystal goblet crashing to the floor. The sharp tinkle of glass cut through the silence. My breath came fast and shallow. I didn’t remember this room, this night, this corpse. I didn’t remember me.
And yet.
My gaze landed on a book, discarded near where I had stood. The cover was scuffed, the pages splayed open like a wounded bird. I knelt, hands trembling, and lifted it. A journal. The leather was smooth beneath my fingers, oddly warm, as though it had been waiting. Looking inside, I read the top of the first page.
Here lie the memories of Nero - Journal No. LXXIII.
The name struck me like a bell.
Nero.
Was that me?
The syllables hummed with recognition, though no memory came to meet them. I slid the journal into the inside pocket of my coat. It settled there with a comforting weight, like a fragment of my soul returned.
I turned away from the corpse. I didn’t want to see it again. I feared what its presence might whisper, what guilt might curl its fingers around my throat.
The hallway beyond the door was a corridor of shadows. Sconces flickered along the walls, throwing gaslight halos that swam in my still-dizzy eyes. The sound of music reached me, light and lilting, like champagne poured over crystal. It tugged at me.
I followed the sound down the hall and into a grand ballroom. Inside, people danced in lavish attire beneath a domed ceiling of stained glass. Brass chandeliers spun lazily above them, gears humming with rhythmic precision. Laughter rippled through the air, threaded with the sharp scent of absinthe and perfume. It all felt obscenely disconnected—oblivious to the deadman cooling not a hundred feet away.
A chill ran up my spine. I turned from the scene and slipped out through a side door.
Outside, the cool night air met me like a balm. The street was lined with carriages, their brass lanterns flickering like fireflies in the gloom. Steam hissed from pressure valves, and somewhere in the distance, an automaton clanged past on patrol, its iron legs thudding against the cobbles.
“Sir!” a voice called out.
I turned. A man in a long driving coat and goggles stood beside one of the waiting carriages. His breath steamed in the lamplight.
“Yes?” I said, my voice hoarse.
“Are you ready to return to the palace, sir?”
“The palace...” I echoed, as if tasting the word.
“Home, sir,” the driver said, as though that settled it.
Something in me responded before thought could intervene.
“Yes,” I said, stepping into the carriage.
The interior was lined with navy velvet, the seat cushions worn from long use. The door clicked shut behind me, and with a hiss and a lurch, the carriage took off down the winding road. Streetlamps passed in sequence, one after another, as though bowing to my approach. The journal pressed against my chest.
I leaned against the window, watching the city flicker past in brass and shadow. Towers rose like the bones of leviathans. A thin strip of a bridge stretched across an open void of air.
The hooves of the cyborg horses struck the bridge as the palace came into view at last, rising like a crown against the moonlit sky. Its spires clawed toward the stars, wreathed in mist and veined with golden light. As we passed through the outer gates, I could feel a pull—a strange current threading through my bones.
