Episode XXX - The Heart of the Matter

            “The life of the Silverspire?” Ellis asked in disbelief, his voice echoing around the strange chamber, “Do you mean this building is… is alive?”

            The creature in front of him, Heart as she had called herself, smiled and replied in a soft voice that somehow sounded like treading on grass, “Not alive in the sense that you are.  It is stone and mortar, fixture and fitting, building and machine and, in that sense, it is not alive at all, but there is life in it, life which is joined with it and which can control it.  I am that life and from me have come all these other lives,” she gestured to the creatures scuttling around her feet as she sat on her throne.

            “So… have you always been here?”

            “I am joined with the Silverspire and I have no freedom other than that which it allows me.  For ten thousand years that was freedom enough.  The Aether is vast and infinite and filled with many wonders and almost as many terrors.  Ten thousand years has passed quickly, but I was not expecting to be called back like this.”

            “Incredible!” he could feel the tingle of nervous excitement building within him as he began to imagine what Heart must have experienced, and then he thought of other possibilities that made the feeling even stronger.  “Can you control the machine?” he asked.

            “I can control anything within the Silverspire," Heart replied and instantly a stream of scuttling creatures swept like a wave across the fungal carpet of the chamber, “if I so desire it,” she added, “and if it is still functional.”  The creatures froze on the spot, all seeming to gaze up at her as she continued, “I have thrived in the aether, but, as you have no doubt seen, this great temple of Philosophy has not fared so well.”

            “But the machine has been restored!”

            “Yes.”

            “Then, could you use it to take us back to Shadow?”

            Heart seemed to spend a moment thinking, then she smiled.

            “That would be quite a sacrifice for you, would it not?  Or do you really feel that there is more for you in that other world than in the one in which you were born?”

            “I just want to save my hometown.  It doesn’t matter where I end up, but I can’t let it get taken over by Grinders and crazy Philosophers.”

            “In such a short space of time that is what your life has become.  There are alternatives.  You could destroy this place, destroy me with it and your home would still be saved.  Then you would be able to stay and live your life as if nothing had ever happened.”

            “But…”

            “Inedeed.  What about your new friends?  What about your curiosity?  You are not yet done with Shadow, are you?”

            “Why are you asking me all this?” Ellis demanded, suddenly impatient.

            “To see if it is worth doing what you ask.”

            “And?”

            “I will think about it.”

            “Think about it?  But there’s no time!  There’s a whole army of Stoneskins up there ready to invade my hometown any minute – what’s there to think about?”

            “There are many more variables than those immediate to your own experience.”

            “And how can any of them add up to something that makes it worth wasting time!”

            “You do not understand.”

            “No, I don’t understand!”

            Ellis’ voice seemed suddenly to echo around the chamber louder than before, then he realised that, up to that point there had been a faint susurrus of noise all around him and now it had suddenly gone silent.  The noise must have built up slowly as he explored the corridors beneath the Silverspire, so slowly and subtly that he had not noticed that was any noise at all, but now that it had gone it was like a vacuum had opened up all around him.  He flinched at the sound of his own voice.

            “I have decided,” Heart said into that terrible silence and Ellis trembled at the authority in her soft voice.

            “What,” he whispered, “what have you decided?”

            “The Silverspire will return to Shadow in fifteen seconds, fourteen, thirteen-”

            Ellis felt something moving around him, like the rush of air and accompanying it was a barrage of strange noises; wind, whistling, howling; machines stirring; the creatures striking up their almost silent, sibilant chorus.  It stirred a rush of panic within him as he realised just how close he was to the precipice of an eternally altered fate.

            “Wait,” he yelled into that cacophony, “I need to warn people.  I need to stop the Stoneskin scouts, I-”

            “-nine, eight, seven-”

            “No, you need to stop the countdown!  I’m not finished here yet, are you listening to me?  I need more time!”

            “-four, three-”

            “No, wait, Heart, wai-”

            “-one.”

            For the second time in one afternoon the English countryside was disturbed by the exceedingly unusual phenomenon of trans-aetherick travel.  For a brief moment the sky above the sheep pasture darkened, hints of greenish light shining through where pale English sunlight had been before.  There was a sound like a crack of thunder and then a sudden rush of air as the Silverspire vanished.

Just as with its arrival, there was no one to mark its passage.  A few sheep looked up with mild disinterest and one trotted over to enjoy the grass which had freshly reappeared.

That was all.

Ellis felt the change.  It was different from the first time.  There was no flash of light and no grand revelation of a different sky this far beneath the Silverspire, but he could still feel the transition.  One moment he was governed by the laws of one universe and, in an instant, he was somewhere else entirely with its own slightly different rules.  He had not noticed it before, but the effect seemed to be amplified by Heart’s presence, or maybe it was the strange atmosphere of the lower levels of the Silverspire.  He couldn’t really tell.  He just knew that he was not in his own world anymore.

“Are we in Shadow now?” he asked, tentatively.

“Yes,” Heart replied, her soft voice as cool as ever.

“Now what?”

“Now you find your friends and leave this place.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I can travel anywhere I like now and I choose to use that freedom.  There is much left that I would see, worlds where I can spread my seed.  I will become life on a thousand different planets, in a billion different forms, as I have dreamed of since I first gained consciousness.”

“So then, there are other worlds than these?”

“Of course.  Many more than you could know or even count.”  Heart stood up, the tendrils of flesh extending from the wall moving around in beautiful waves of iridescent silver, “Go now, your friends are waiting.”

“But what about the Stoneskins?  What about Doctor Barkham?”

“You do not have to worry about them.  Go!”

And suddenly Ellis felt himself being lifted up and his vision of Heart began to recede as he was carried backwards along the corridor.  Looking down he could see the tiny scuttling creatures and the fronds of fungus and coral holding him above the ground and gently pushing him back the way he came, into the darkness.  Then just as it was about to became nearly pitch black he was hoisted into the air and he felt himself being wafted upwards by the gentle touch of plants or fungus, like giant cilia, carrying him up through the secret vents and tunnels of the Silverspire.  In almost no time at all he could see light again; the faint, flickering luminescence of the Silverspire’s ancient lighting.

When he was in reach of the floor of one of the main corridors running through the building he grabbed hold of the slightly slimy concrete slab and pulled himself up into the light.  The last of the organic tendrils brushed off his leg and then he was free, lying face up on the stone.

The air in the corridor was as damp and stale as ever.  He was surrounded by it, encased in its silence.  He closed his eyes and thought of Larksborough, of his family and of Sarah and of the flying Stoneskin scouts Doctor Barkham had sent out to them.  He wondered whether they had reached town yet and, if so, what would they do?  Would they just watch, gathering information to return to their Philosopher mistress only to find that she and all their kind had left them behind?  Or would they rampage through the streets, causing untold damage?  He tried to imagine the newspaper and news reports explaining that away.  For a moment the corner of his mouth twisted into a smile and then it fled as rapidly as it had come.  There were monsters in his hometown, he was trapped once more in Shadow and there were enemies everywhere.

Oh hell!  Stoneskins!

He opened his eyes and leapt to his feet, feeling panic and embarrassment at his own stupidity, lying out in the open with his eyes closed, oblivious.  He scanned the corridor warily and listened for any sign of possible assailants, but it was as silent as ever.  If there were any Stoneskins nearby, then they were being exceptionally stealthy, but that was not something Ellis would have put past them.

When he was as sure as he could be that he wasn’t about to be ambushed at any second, he began to make his way along the corridor, hoping to find his friends and a way out.  Instead he found something deeply disturbing.

The first noise he noticed apart from his own footsteps was a steady dripping followed by a soft sizzling sound, like bacon frying first thing in the morning.  The accompanying smell, which hit him only seconds later, was less appetising.

They were staked out on the ceiling; the Grinder and its Spiketail minder.  What colour their eyes might have been, Ellis couldn’t say, but the colour of their innards was clear for all to see.  Whoever had murdered them had taken great pains, not only in the creative manner of their suspension, but also in making sure that as much gore was spread as far around as possible.  Slowly, the sizzling ichor ate into the stonework.

Ellis clapped a hand to his mouth in an effort to suppress the urge to vomit, but, his eyes flicking wildly from one horrible detail to the next, he soon found himself backing into the corridor he had come from, turning away from the scene and retching against the wall.  When he felt he could bring up no more he started waling away from the gruesome display, hoping that the Stoneskins’ murderer had not travelled in the same direction.  It didn’t take him long, however, to discover that the brutality was much more widespread,

In every corridor and at almost every junction the scene was repeated, with subtle variation, so that it was as if the Silverspire had become a giant exhibition space for the talents of one exceedingly cruel artist.  As he staggered from corpse to corpse Ellis found himself becoming more and more frightened and increasingly despondent, losing his touch with reality so that each blurring passage became part of a labyrinthine nightmare he could not escape from.  Blood dripped and ate into the stone all around him.  Even when he was far from the worst of the carnage he still seemed able to hear it.  Drip, drip, drip.  Sizz, sizz, sizz.

Where is Heart in all of this? He wondered, Where is all the life she talked about so much?  How could she let this happen in her home?  Why is she making me wander these halls like this, alone…

His questing thoughts found no answers and his tired body cried out to him to stop, so, making sure he was not near any of the Stoneskin massacre sites, he found  spot against a wall, pulled his legs close to his chest and hugged his knees, letting sleep come as it would.

He was only just dozing when he heard the echoing voices in the corridor.

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