Ellis was lost. The deep dungeons beneath the Silverspire had twisted and turned so many times that he no longer knew where he was in relation to anywhere else. All he knew was that he was surrounded by strange, vibrant, colourful life and that it was leading him on towards some as yet unknown destination or purpose. It was becoming quite a struggle. Where the air had been quite chill and damp, it was now beginning to heat up. Sweat rose up in beads on his skin and, with the moisture in the air, found it had nowhere else to go. Ellis wiped ineffectually at his forehead, flinging the water away into the darkness with his arm where it was instantly absorbed by the abundant fungi, or became part of the omnipresent vapour.
He hated being led on like this. Not knowing where he was going or why, and even more than that, he hated that he had no choice. He would only get lost if he tried to head back, and, even if he didn’t, he had nothing to hope for except being caught by Frostfire and friends. It was bleak.
All around him the fungi twitched, glowing things flittered like groups of shrimp and crowds of unseen watchers scuttled past his feet. Each and every living thing seemed to be pushing him one way and one way only.
“I wish I knew where you guys were taking me,” he said and suddenly he was answered by a chorus of insectile clicks, whines and buzzes. Ellis started, finding himself half-frozen to the spot, aware that all those creatures seemed to be pausing as well. There were a few more softer sounds reaching his ears from all angles, then silence.
“I don’t underst-” he began, but he was drowned out almost immediately by another chorus of sound.
“I don-”
This time he could barely even begin speaking. Everything around him seemed to be chirruping and clicking and buzzing and whistling at him. There might have been something almost melodic about it if they hadn’t all been making sound at once. As it was it quickly became a dissonant cacophony which silenced itself almost as quickly as it began. A lone, trilling whistle went on a littler longer than the others, then faded out as if ashamed.
I don’t think they can understand me, either, he thought, staring at all the many eyes gazing back at him in the weird glow of the shrimp-things, but they seem to like making noise.
Without moving from the spot and still staring at his alien audience, her pursed his lips and began to whistle. It was the first thing that came into his head – a piece by one of the bands that regularly played at DUSK in Larksborough – but before he could get more than a few notes in all the whistlers around him joined in and provided their own improvisational take on where they thought the melody should go. The result was not tuneful, but it brought a smile to Ellis’ lips nonetheless. For the first time since the creatures had begun guiding him, he was sure that they meant him no harm. There was no malice in the singing, only a strange, primitive kind of curiosity and joy.
He whistled again, taking a careful step forwards and the creatures which hid amongst the fungal fronds ahead of him moved aside, even as they clipped claws together, buzzed wings, bowed their carapaces or whistled between mandibles. Ellis stepped between them and began to whistle his way along the corridor, the creatures singing and swarming around him, making him feel like the Pied Piper of Shadow.
Franck paused before the central pillar, gazing back at the still-deformed body of Siren possessed. He feared she would not be pleased with him when this was over, however he tried to excuse or explain his actions, but he had acted, however rashly, out of necessity. She would forgive him in time, of that he was sure.
The daemon snarled at him, showing sharp, elongated teeth in Siren’s beautiful mouth. Franck sighed, then leaned forwards, put his weight on the switch and pressed down. The lever shuddered, then slid down into its off position with a loud, almost satisfying click. There was a moment of tense silence and then the pillars which had risen out of the ground before sent out a chorus of clicks as all their switches flicked off simultaneously. There was a rumbling sound as they began to descend back into the ground and an accompanying scrape of metal as the bars of the Holtzmann cage slid up the wall into the recesses in the ceiling.
Siren’s face stretch into a nightmarish grin, she let out a wild howl and then the world seemed to vibrate and fragment for just a second as something indiscernible left her body and disappeared along the corridor. Without her supernatural support, Siren slumped to the floor and Franck stood frozen for a second, looking at what he had achieved with a kind of distanced horror. After a moment his feet seemed to catch up with events and he rushed forwards to kneel beside her.
He reached out an arm to scoop her up and placed his hand on her head. Her forehead was damp and her features were pale. There was almost no colour at all in her lips and her eyes, though open, were unfocussed, glazed.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
To his surprise Siren’s eyes swivelled his way and, whilst they were clearly not able to focus on him properly, he knew she was trying to see him. Her lips moved.
“I can’t hear you,” he said as he leaned in closer, trying to catch the faint moan of her breath.
“…think… …’ve… …bee… …poisoned…”
Franck felt a rush of shame and panic. He’d forgotten just how sick she had been. The very reason he’d been able to use her to trap the daemon had left his mind as quickly as the daemon had left her body. No wonder it had wanted to escape so badly, she was on the verge of death.
“I- I’m sorry,” he began, “I’ll fix this… right away!”
He rested Siren’s head on his lap, then freed his hands to work.
“This isn’t going to be easy though, not without my engines to help me. Making Hypostatick energy glow and breaking fish tanks is one thing, but I’ll have to think up a whole new equation for this and I’m just not as good at that as Amy – I mean Doctor Barkham – it might take me a while.”
Siren’s lips moved again and Franck was quick to lean in.
“…ere’s… …black sand… …my pocket…”
Franck’s eyes lit up,” Yes! Yes, of course! I know a healing pattern for that – I used to play about with black sand when I was a tyke!” He examined Siren’s jacket. There were a lot of pockets. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m got to have to have a bit of a rummage. You don’t mind, do you?”
Siren groaned.
“I thought not.”
He reached down and began searching each pocket one by one. Siren muttered something which sounded like ‘right’ and so Franck focussed his attention on the pockets on the right hand side. Siren moaned again and he realised she was saying ‘other right’ so he quickly switched sides and almost instantly discovered a small sackcloth bag filled with fine black sand in an inside pocket.
“Perfect!” he exclaimed, then he stood and began sprinkling the sand in a circle around Siren’s body. Once the circle was complete he made another, smaller circle half within and half without the first circle, connecting them together with radiating lines which passed over Siren in places. Once this was done he set the remainder of the sand aside and stood within the smaller circle.
“Brace yourself,” he said so that Siren could hear him, although it was as much a warning to himself as anyone else.
He closed his eyes.
Concentrating hard on his own existence, Franck began to imagine himself digging for his soul. He reached inside his being, searching through existential darkness, trying to find light and warmth – energy. At first everything seemed empty, a hollowness left behind by a residual, stubborn disbelief, even in the face of years of experience, that there was really anything there at all, then, suddenly there was a spark, a glittering hint of possibility hidden behind a veil of doubt. He stretched out into that space, lifted the veil and then, there it was. He bathed in the light of his own, pure, undiminished existence – his eternal state.
It was not perfect. It was marred in a thousand places with flaws, stains and veins of ugliness – each a source of almost unbearable shame – and yet it was still beautiful. Part of him wanted to linger there forever, marvelling at such beauty, whilst another part wanted to flee, terrified by the ugliness hidden within, ashamed that he might not be the only one to see it.
He let the light and the warmth build around him whilst he fought that internal battle and then he opened his eyes and that which he had imagined seemed to have become real beneath the Silverspire.
There was light and heat everywhere. It flowed in veins through the lines of black sand, which now glowed a bright green as his hypostatick energy flowed through it, but the glow was at its strongest in the centres of the two circles. It was concentrated in his own flesh and that of Siren.
She looked almost angelic with the light bleeding out of her like that. Her pallor was fading to be replaced by vibrant life. A calm smile began to form at the corners of her mouth and Franck imitated it in spite of himself, until the weight of what he was doing finally hit him. The light faded and he fell to the floor, exhausted. He had not given her enough for her to be up and moving straight away, but any more might have killed him. It was painful, but the look on Siren’s face made it oh so worthwhile.
The darkness was diminishing. It was very subtle at first. Ellis began to notice more details of the fungi around him than could be explained by the glow-shrimp alone. Edges became clearer, blacks faded to blues, colours began to emerge. It was subtle, but it didn’t take long.
He rounded a corner and suddenly there was light everywhere. Colour was leeched from everything for a second as his eyes were forced to make dramatic adjustment, and then it all flooded back around him in a rush of exotic hues. Shadows seemed to jump out at him and then vanish as the light even seeped into the cracks between the stones. It seemed so much like daylight that Ellis automatically glanced up to look at the sky, but even here he could still see the cold rock of the tunnel’s ceiling, sloping up and away to cap off a vaulted chamber: the source of the light.
He blinked, trying to rid his vision of the moving lines and whorls of colour burnt into his retina by the brightness and, as he did so, he began to move forwards again. The swarm around him seemed frozen, silent in reverent awe. Whatever lay ahead, they seemed uncertain about approaching. Instead, they followed behind Ellis at a distance, scuttling and sliding in wary, fitful motion.
Shielding his eyes with a hand, Ellis stepped out into the chamber. His eyes had almost fully accommodated and so, after a few seconds, he felt ready to lower his arm, but when he saw what lay before him, it dropped to his side, forgotten.
The room was filled with light and, almost equally, filled with the source of that light. Silver lines of flesh-like material, pulsing with peristaltic regularity, laced up the walls, at points merging completely with the stone in a vein-like convalescence. All the lines lead towards the centre of the chamber where silver flesh joined with stone once more on a tarnished throne. A carpet of colourful fungi spread across the floor and silent life drifted between hyphal masses and fruiting bodies with servile purpose. All things here seemed to be connected to everything else and those connections grew more intimate and complex as they neared the throne.
As the silver veins and arteries joined with one another to form arms, imperiously grasping the silver armrests of the throne, so the fungal ecosystem seamlessly became feet and calves, rising up to sitting knees and then on, a whole body of soft, silvery skin.
It took Ellis a moment to realise that the being of light and flesh which he was looking at was female and that she was naked. She had long silver hair flowing and rippling like a stream parting to either side of her silver face. Eyes of brilliant aqua stared at him with regal intensity and a seductive smile crossed her silver lips. Lines of colour passed beneath her skin and Ellis’ eyes followed them around her body, passing down her fine neck, pulsing across her chest, rounding her breasts and coursing on to all the parts of her body. He found himself blushing, but unable to look away.
His gaze returned to her eyes and he noticed something in her expression which seemed to be inviting him forwards. She raised a hand, the silver vessels stretching from the walls to join now at her elbow, and beckoned.
“What… who are you?” he asked, feeling foolish as he took a step closer.
She smiled and then whispered to him in a voice like drops of water, tinkling metal, crystal shards and shifting sands.
“I am Heart,” she said, “I am born of the Aether.” A creature scuttled out of the fungal forest which lay at her feet and climbed the throne to caress and play with her fingers. She glanced down at it with softening eyes and a sweet smile as she finished her introduction, “I am the life of the Silverspire.”
FIRST EPISODE
AUTHOR COMMENTARY: My University background is in Zoology, with a specific interest in Marine Biology, so it shouldn't surprise you to learn that I loved writing Ellis' journey through the basement of the Silverspire - imagining all these kinds of quasi-aquatic lifeforms for him to encounter. Writing Shadow really is too much fun, sometimes.
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