She could feel the rush of air around her as she ran. Even in such a stale, damp environment, it gave her a slight thrill of exhilaration. The ancient water splashed up to either side of her as she sliced through it and then, as air and water joined together in a perfect, storm-like unity and the Grinder ahead opened its mouth to roar at her in defiance, she leapt. Both feet left the ground at once. She tucked her head in, forced herself into a somersault roll that propelled her over the head of the beast and then she performed a perfect pirouetted in mid air and jammed the knife in between two of the Grinder’s scale as hard as she could, dragging it down with her as she landed.
A jet of hot, steaming blood arced over her head as she pulled the knife free and slid backwards through the water, telling her that the plan might just work. The beast’s back was now an open wound, with scales prised aside to reveal bubbling gore. The Grinder responded the only way Grinders ever did and roared.
Siren knew that she had only a little time before the Grinder turned that wound away from her and then the only way to get at it would be to brave the second monster as well. She took a deep breath and ran forwards, holding the knife at the ready and, as she neared the Grinder’s back, plunged it in deep. The Grinder roared again, but this time the tone had changed. It was clearly in a lot of pain.
Almost immediately it began to shake, rocking its body from side to side in an effort to remove Siren from its back, but she was working the knife in deeper, holding fast to the scales with her feet and her other hand so that she would not fall. The creature’s blood was hot on her arm, almost scalding in fact, and trying to manoeuvre the knife within all that steaming viscera was harder than she had hoped. Not knowing much about Stoneskin anatomy, she didn’t even know what she was looking for.
Meanwhile the Grinder was spinning about, splashing water up all around it and shaking violently from side to side. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the other Grinder opening and closing its massive mouth and with every rotation the wounded creature made she became more and more aware that it was leaving her open to attack. She knew she had to work quickly, but the feel of the scalding blood was becoming unbearable.
She wiggled the knife back and forth, trying to feel for something that would finally put an end to the creature. Each movement was clearly causing it terrible pain, but it was otherwise unhindered. She felt the knife snag on something for a split second, before sliding free and, as it did so, the Grinder let out a scream even more terrible than any it had uttered before. Resisting her own pain, she tried to work the knife back to the point where it had caught.
The second Grinder roared and stomped its feet. She could hear it approaching cautiously, and she imagined that it was trying to work out what to do. It knew it should attack her, but it didn’t want to attack its kin in the process. She silently thanked whatever powers there might be for the slow thinking of such beasts.
The knife snagged and slipped free once more and again the wounded Grinder screamed. It was piercingly high-pitched this time, like gas escaping through a tiny fissure. She stretched in for one last wiggle of the knife and then-
The creature’s scream was almost ear-shattering this time. It rose in a crescendo of terrible, guttural sounds and then began to die away, leaving Siren’s ears ringing a little as it did so. All this noise accompanied an arching of the beat’s back which knocked her to the floor, followed by a wild, squirming display of helpless rage and fear. It stumbled forwards and moved no more. Blood spilled out to stain the already murky water iron red, steaming off the surface with a soft sizzle.
Siren allowed herself a moment to catch her breath before returning to her feet. The second Grinder was staring at her, its eyes seeming to dull as it did so. It let out a sound that was almost a whimper, despite the accompanying boom. It was nearly mournful. She knelt quickly and pulled the knife free from what she could now see was once the beast’s heart, although it was now little more than a charred lump of flesh. She raised the knife and its sickly payload upwards so that the other Grinder could see it clearly. It stepped back a few paces.
She allowed herself the luxury of an advance, although her muscles were threatening to seize up. Blood dripped down her blouse and into the water in hot, thick droplets. The Grinder’s eyes flickered once more, then it let out a single roar before turning and marching down the corridor in the opposite direction. She had won, for now.
She staggered over to the wall of the corridor and slumped against it, breathing heavily. The murky water suddenly looked cool and inviting and it was all she could do not to slide down into it. She thought of Ellis, held captive by Barkham, and of Franck, captive, lost or… she didn’t want to think of the other possibilities. All she knew was that he was somewhere else within the Silverspire, that she had to find him and that together they had to free Ellis and then, somehow prevent the Doctor from setting her army of Stoneskins loose on Ellis’ world.
She pulled herself upright and sheathed her knife, before examining the corridor junction and the scene of carnage she was responsible for. She pondered her options for a moment and then pushed off the wall and took the passageway to the right, hoping that it might lead somewhere useful.
“Why are you doing this?” Ellis demanded as Frostfire carried him along in the wake of Doctor Barkham, still within the vast chamber of the machine. His voice seemed to get lost in that emptiness, but as he heard it he realised that he had become a cliché and that, perhaps, there was a reason why clichés like that existed in the first place, because there was nothing else he could have asked. Of course, there were other questions that might have formed in his mind, but the entire situation had numbed his thinking and ideas trickled slowly into his stunned awareness.
“You don’t need to know that,” Doctor Barkham said matter-of-factly, not even looking over her shoulder as she marched ahead.
“What does it matter what I know? You’ve got me captive, you’ve said you don’t even need me! Can’t you just explain this one thing?”
“Indeed it doesn’t matter what you know, boy, which is precisely why I’m not telling you. That would be a waste of energy, as, come to think of it, is this conversation.” Her tone became a few degrees colder. “Frostfire, gag him.”
Ellis felt the Spiketail reaching around its person for a gag.
“I think you’re lying! You said you don’t need me, but you brought me back to life out there in Blackfeather and you risked revealing yourself early to do so. And why have you separated me from my friends? What aren’t you telling me? What’s going-”
The gag was forced in suddenly and painfully.
“Thank you, Frostfire.”
Frostfire gave a satisfied grunt.
“Ellis, I didn’t ‘risk revealing myself at all – it simply didn’t matter anymore by then. I was back to my senses and standing outside the Silverspire, exactly where I wanted to be. I couldn’t have cared less who knew!” she laughed, “The only reason I have kept you alive and kept you nearby is because you are from this world. That might prove useful to me.
“I do not need you. I don’t need anybody, but if something might work to my advantage, I would be a fool not to hold onto it until it is proven otherwise. Quite frankly, the more you lose yourself in this messiah delusion you seem to be developing, the less useful you will be.
“I can assure you, you do not wish to become useless.”
Ellis tried to say something in reply, but he couldn’t manage anything more than an unintelligible mumbling through the sour-tasting fabric of the gag. Frostfire made a low noise that just might have been designed to convey amusement.
“You had better hope that your friends prove useful as well.”
She ducked under the curve of a large trailing pipe and then into a corridor on the other side. Ellis was surprised to see daylight at the other end of it.
“Are you looking forward to seeing your world again, Ellis?” Doctor Barkham asked, “I know I am. I have waited such a long time for this.”
The Former Baron Von Spektr, or Franck as he liked to be called, opened his eyes and almost immediately sat up to vomit out a stream of foul-tasting water. He had been lying, half-propped against the wall of the corridor, with his head held only a few inches above the level of the water. His head hurt and he could only assume that he had been slammed against a wall by the flood and knocked unconscious. He said a silent prayer of thanks to whoever might be listening that he hadn’t drowned.
Looking around he realised there was no sign of Siren or of the Spiketails that had served as their guards.
“This might not have been such a brilliant idea,” he confessed to himself as he began to climb to his feet, “but I might as well follow through on it now. It’s too late for any other course of action.” And so he promptly began feeling along the walls, paying no attention to where he was going or what other debris from the flooding might be littered about the corridor. Instead, he merely muttered under his breath as he checked each stone.
Anyone listening in would have been forgiven for thinking that he was reciting a nursery rhyme.
The sky was a dazzling sapphire blue half-concealed by sheets of grey cotton-wool cloud. it hung, suspended, above pastures painted an inescapable, and yet somehow dull, shade of green. A herd of monochrome cows stood chewing away at the grass in one such pasture and nearby a small country lane wound its way between hills. A lone sheep had wandered away from its flock on the other side of this to stare in sheepish confusion at the figures now emerging from the edifice of stone standing where once there had merely been more grazing. Good grazing, the sheep might have thought, perhaps the best this small flock had experienced in this field and yet they had still instinctively moved away before the building had appeared.
They were unsurprised, and, other than the relatively insignificant fact that the grass they were now eating was not as good as that which had been crushed beneath their feet twenty minutes ago, they were equally unmoved. Even this lone sheep, distracted from the vital act of grazing by the mysterious building’s latest revelations, returned to the grass within a few seconds, having done little more than stare and, when it was sure it had been noticed, bleat.
“It is a quiet world,” Doctor Barkham said when the sheep had turned away, “but it will do perfectly.”
Ellis, who had been drinking in the sight of the English countryside, trying to work out exactly where he might be in relation to Larksborough, suddenly returned his gaze to the Doctor. She was removing something from a pocket in her coat. It looked like a pocket watch – small, round, brass – or a compass, but Ellis knew enough now about what served for technology in Shadow to assume that it was anything other than either of those devices. He stared at it warily.
“Are the scouts ready?” she asked, turning to Frostfire and staring over Ellis’ head.
“Yes,” the Spiketail replied in a rough, sibilant voice.
“Good, tell them to go,” and with that she turned back to the Silverspire and hit a button on the device in her hand. There was a high-pitched whirring sound from the brass device followed by a low rumble from the building. Ellis watched as the sides of that truncated edifice, the still-silver spire which gave the otherwise black building its name, slowly opened out like the petals of a flower. There was a shriek, something like the call of a crow, only higher and louder and more protracted. Echoed at once by other calls of a similar nature. Ellis felt sweat beads forming on his forehead as he began imagining what kind of creature might make a sound like that, but he didn’t have to try for long as three shadows rose from the top of the spire and began to fly off in different directions.
He watched, eyes widening in horror, as one of the shadows flew his way. It was a large, bird-like beast, with a long reptilian tail and a toothy beak, whose black feathers grew out between slate-like scales of armour. It was another kind of Lithoderm, and, if Ellis had been guessing correctly about their location, it would be flying over Larksborough in less than fifteen minutes.
He glanced at the sun, half-hidden behind a cloud. He reckoned it was about two thirds of the way into the west, which would mean that students would be starting to come out to drink and the streets, while far from being full, would still be rich pickings for a Stoneskin raid from the sky. He gulped and swallowed the sour taste of the gag and the bitter taste of terror all at the same time. It wasn’t a cocktail that he’d ever ask for.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY: Poor Siren, poor Ellis. Things aren't looking good for either of them, are they? It was fun to be able to write an action scene with Siren in it again. It's clear that this is her element, raw and visceral and not a little gory, but she thrives on it. Perhaps we might find out a bit more of the 'why' of that in the next couple of episodes.
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