Ellis blinked and sat up. He was in the middle of a brightly lit square dominated by a vast, black ruin. Siren was staring at him in astonishment. Her eyes were puffy and red. Her cheeks looked damp.
“Uh… what happened?” he asked, trying to remember how he had gotten into that position. He looked down and saw drying blood on his arms. Instinctively he tried to wipe it away and found clean, undamaged skin beneath it. He looked up at Siren once more, hoping she might have answers, but instead she just looked angry.
“You… you don’t remember!?” she said in disbelief. “After all that, you don’t remember what happened?”
Ellis tried hard to think back. He remembered being in the lab in Tentacle Lane and putting on the ring, then everything seemed to be a blur. He wondered if that was a side effect of being transported within the same world, because he clearly wasn’t back in Larksborough.
“I remember trying on the ring. I see that it didn’t work.”
“Didn’t work…” Siren began and Ellis shrank back. He was starting to get a little frightened. “Didn’t work… is that all?”
“Was there more?”
“You were… You… you died, Ellis! You actually died! There was blood everywhere, we… we thought it was too late…”
He stared at her in disbelief, then, “Are you being serious? How can I have died? I’m here aren’t I?” He glanced down at the blood again, then back up at Siren’s face. “Ok,” he admitted, “you’re scaring me.”
“Scaring you? Oh gods forbid that we should put you to any inconvenience. We’ve only been rushing around trying to find you and then to save your life. We’ve only been worried half to death. We’ve-”
“You were worried about me?” He couldn’t quite suppress a smile, but Siren’s face twisted into a scowl.
“Of course we were worried, you were dead, I really can’t stress that enough!”
Ellis laughed. It all seemed so ridiculous to him, but then he saw the shimmer building in Siren’s eyes once more and he stopped. Carefully he pulled himself up onto his feet and approached her.
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand what’s been happening, but if I’ve upset you…”
He wasn’t expecting the slap, but the tight hug which followed it was even more of a surprise.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she said and he realised that she was crying into his shoulder. He didn’t know what to do.
“I don’t plan on dying again anytime soon,” he managed and Siren released him from her grip, stepping back to what he assumed must have seemed a safe distance. The fragrance of her hair lingered for a moment before being swept away on the forest breeze. His mind seemed to stall for a second, then there was a silence that neither he, nor Siren, seemed to know how to fill.
“Allgood, my boy, good to see you again!”
Ellis and Siren both turned to see the Former Baron marching out of the forest, followed by a short, balding, middle-aged man who looked very out of breath. He felt his cheeks heating up and, glancing briefly at Siren, saw that she too was colouring.
“Where’s Amy?” Von Spektr continued, apparently without noticing the awkward situation.
“She, uh, she disappeared after…” Siren trailed off.
“Ah, yes, I thought she might. All that energy had to come from somewhere. We’ll have to revive her in the lab once more.”
“No,” Siren shook her head, “I don’t mean that she vanished. She ran off.”
At this the Former Baron looked truly puzzled.
“What did you actually see?” he asked, his tone inquisitorial.
“There was that really bright light, then a column of purple fire and, as that began to rise up into the sky and all those symbols appeared, I saw a shadow moving off in the direction of the Silverspire. It could only have been Amy.”
“But, up until this point, Amy hasn’t been capable of even projecting a shadow, let alone appearing as one.”
“I know, but… that’s what I saw.”
Ellis cleared his throat, “Would someone mind explaining to me what happened?”
“Search me,” the middle-aged man said, having finally got his breath back, “nice to meet you, by the way. My name’s Sydney.”
“Uh, yeah, hi,” Ellis replied awkwardly, “so, anyone else want to venture an explanation?” He let his gaze pass from the Former Baron to Siren and back again. Von Spektr shrugged.
“It’s quite simple, really. The ring transported you back to where Amy had found the amethyst from your world and, in what was possibly the most exciting piece of guesswork I have ever been involved in, we ventured out here in Syndey’s Skyboat, a journey that took us two nights - thanks to an unfortunate diversion I’d rather not speak about - and then, by pure coincidence, we found you bleeding to death in the entrance to the Silverspire over there. Siren and Amy stayed with you and Sydney and I made our way back to the Skyboat to cannibalise some parts that we might use to restore some life to you, meanwhile – actually, Siren, my dear, perhaps you should explain this bit. My best guesswork is often superlative, but when the raw facts might be presented by a primary witness, I feel that I would only be showing off.”
Siren nodded, “I went to get some leaves to make bandages and left you here with Amy, but when I came back she was doing something to you. She said you were dead and she had you levitating above the ground, glowing with energy. Then she touched the ring and… something happened.”
“She had unleashed a complex philosophickal equation - with one purpose,” the Former Baron chipped in, “it told the universe to bring you back to life.”
“You can do that?” Ellis asked, astounded.
“I can’t,” the Former Baron declared, with slight irritation, “but apparently Amy can. What’s more, she wouldn’t have demonstrated such knowledge unless she really wanted to keep you alive. It has its costs you know.”
“And now she’s gone in there,” Siren concluded, shivering slightly as she gazed at the dark entrance to the Silverspire. “She was really creepy just as she brought you back, Ellis. I’m not sure I like ‘Philosopher Amy’.”
“Well, I for one wish to know her better,” announced the Former Baron, taking a step towards that dark corridor, “but not because I am any more likely to like her now than you, Siren, my dear, but because I fear she has answers that we are all sorely in need of.”
Ellis stepped up beside him and stared into the darkness.
“So, we have to go inside?” He shuddered.
“Oh, don’t worry,” the Former Baron said, cheerfully, “I have lights!” and then he pulled out a brass tube and shook it so that the terrifying darkness became lit by an eerie green glow, highlighting all the cracks and crevices in the ancient stonework. Ellis wasn’t sure which was worse. “Now,” Von Spektr, continued, “shall we?”
Sydney stayed outside, unwilling to step inside the ominous, dark building, and so the Former Baron, Siren and Ellis entered together, staying close so as to gain the most benefit from the light stick. The corridor was damp from centuries of humid air condensing in the cool darkness and echoing drips could be heard all around. Thick patches of moss grew on the ground near the entrance, but they were soon replaced by patches of fungi fringing chill puddles in the worn stone slabs which made up the floor. The Former Baron’s unsettling green light occasionally revealed rotten scraps of carpeting fabric, still being slowly eaten away ten thousand years on. Ellis began to realise that the Silverspire would once have looked very different. The phrase ‘opulently appointed’ came to mind.
Long passages led off to left and right at regular intervals. The sound of their footfalls echoed back to them as they passed these, telling of a hollow darkness and little more. Occasionally Ellis would pause by one of them, listening to the flow of air, but Von Spektr seemed to know exactly where he was going, or else he was unwilling to get lost in a maze of side passages. Either way he kept going straight on without faltering and Ellis had to hurry to catch up to the receding light.
They were silent, apart from their echoing steps. The atmosphere of the corridor seemed to suppress any desire to make conversation and even the most interesting of discoveries made within their circle of light were marked by little more than an intake of breath. Remains of shattered glass from a light fitting, a patch of coloured mosaic, a stray cog of worn brass and even a tarnished, but expensive-looking pocket watch were all passed by without comment in favour of venturing deeper into the ancient building.
With each step the air grew colder. Ellis looked back over his shoulder and saw, to his dismay, just how far away the square of light, representing the outside world, had become. He tried not to think about it and, instead, tried to take advantage of the silence and searching his mind of the missing events of the night before. It wasn’t that he actually couldn’t remember anything at all, in the sense of thinking that he had left tentacle lane and immediately woken up outside the Silverspire, although that was how he had described it to Siren. To him, it was more like he could remember that something had happened between slipping the ring on his finger and waking up in the sunshine, but that it had been recorded over with static and nonsense so that his mind tended to skip over it, fast forward, even.
Still, there were a few little details, here and there, that he could glean from the fog in his mind, like a sense of guilt at having failed some task, a memory of faces, staring at him, lit only by firelight, and the pounding of his heart as something chased him through darkness. He began to wonder if he really wanted to remember it al clearly after all.
A loud groan echoed down the corridor, halting the three companions on the spot.
“What was that?” Siren asked, although the words were on the tip of Ellis’ tongue also.
“Probably just an effect of the air passing through the building,” the Former Baron said uncertainly, “There’s probably a vent somewhere further up and if the wind picks up then this place turns into a veritable pipe organ. Something like that.”
“I suppose that’s reassuring,” said Ellis.
“Oh, there’s nothing to be worried about,” continued the Former Baron, “It’s nothing more than an old ruin. Don’t let that fact that it’s dark turn it into some sort of haunted-”
Another groan rumbled through the building, shaking the stones around them as it passed and ahead there was a flicker of green light and then a dim, pulsating glow. Light appeared in pools along the corridor, until at last a bulb above their heads warmed up enough to emit a sickly green glow.
“That’s not a vent,” Ellis said.
“No, no it’s not,” conceded the Former Baron, “but it is the sound of a generator starting up, somewhere beneath us I would assume. We’re definitely not alone here.”
Ellis stared ahead down the corridor, through the little puddles of green light, each warming up towards a brighter, whiter luminescence, and, as his eyes adjusted, began to make out other details.
“There’s a door ahead!” he declared.
“So there is,” said Von Spektr, leaning forwards and squinting.
“It’s closed,” added Siren.
They stared at it for a moment longer and then the Former Baron shook his light stick so that it was no longer contributing pointlessly to the light in the corridor and made his way ahead, splashing through puddles and kicking up spores from the shredded fruiting bodies of ancient fungi as he went.
Ellis glanced at Siren and saw an uncertainty in her eyes which was a mirror of his own.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” she said. Ellis smiled in spite of himself and then laughed.
“What?” Siren demanded, her hands gravitating towards her hips, although Ellis feared that that was more because the hilts of her knives were there, rather than any more feminine instinct.
“Nothing, just…” he laughed again, “just remind me to tell you about Star Wars if we ever get out of this.”
Siren watched as Ellis turned and made his way after Franck, still laughing as he went. She was puzzled. Nothing he had actually said made any sense, but there was something in his eyes, in his smile as he had said it. That laugh was quite infectious and she wasn’t as scared now as she had been a few minutes previously, but there was something else, too. Ellis’ laugh had done something inside her, flicked a switch like on one of Franck’s weird machines, of that she was sure, but what it had done and why it had done so now, of all times, was a complete mystery to her.
Still, she couldn’t quite suppress a smile as she followed after him, listening to that laughter as it echoed off the walls and down the side corridors. Perhaps it’s just life, she wondered, after all, he is alive. He’s alive!
AUTHOR COMMENT: Well, you didn't think I would really kill Ellis off at this stage, did you? Again, we really get to see a bit more of how Siren is growing more and more attached to this weird boy from another world and the mystery of Amy just deepens. What will they find inside the Silverspire? I can tell you that none of them are expecting the revelations to come.
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