Episode LXI - Accelerated Plans

            Ellis was tired of walking.  Since he had been released from his incarceration in the sacrificial chambers of the Fallen, that seemed to be about all he was doing.  Their city was enormous, their temple, vast, and their catacombs seemed to stretch for many miles through the soft substrate of the Shoals.  This he was just beginning to learn, as he followed Broken-Hope, Siren and the Former Baron on their way to the laboratories of the Fallen known as Reason-Unbound.

            The catacombs were a seemingly endless maze of corridors and chambers, twists and turns.  There was very little lighting and, just as it had been on their journey into the city, Ellis found that he had to keep close to Broken-Hope’s slightly luminescent form to prevent himself from becoming lost, or stumbling on some piece of ancient masonry.  At intervals he would get glimpses into chambers lit by candles, or by fire, or by various coloured lights with no visible source, and he would wonder what went on in such rooms, but they never lingered near the entrance of one long enough to find out.

            These tunnels, so Broken-Hope had explained, were not really part of the city of Enoch, but were rather an expression of the individuality so prized by Fallen society.  After their empires across Shadow fell and they were forced to retreat into their buried cities, many Fallen had felt the need to separate themselves from their brothers and pursue interests and activities which might not have been popular in the city itself.  It was for this reason that there were chambers for sacrificing souls to Lakhma, for example, when the Fallen normally saw themselves as beholden to no god.  Reason-Unbound’s experiments were another example, although these were in the catacombs less because they would have been looked down on by the other Fallen and more because of the space required to perform them.

As they continued walking, Ellis wondered how many of these outsiders and loners were still active in the chambers they passed and whether any of them, like the Lakhma cultists, might mean them harm.  The tunnels were empty, however, and whilst Ellis heard many strange sounds coming from side passages and mysterious rooms, not one of them sounded like it had been made by a sentient being.

At length - great, tortuous, foot-pounding length - Broken-Hope stopped by an opening in the carved, granite-lined wall of the passageway.  Unlike most of the rooms they had passed this one was sealed with a heavy stone door, carved similarly to everything else the Fallen had built beneath the Shoals, but Ellis was surprised to notice that he recognised some of the images amidst the glyphs.  As well as the ubiquitous robed figure of a Fallen, there were also stylised engravings of various equipment and apparatus of the kind which Ellis was by now quite used to seeing.  Indeed, the image on this door looked like an ancient prophecy of the Former Baron's laboratory in Tentacle Lane.  Ellis was about to remark on it when the deposed noble himself spoke.

"Now this looks more like it," he declared boldly and, without waiting for Broken-Hope to take the lead, or to invite them in, he pushed against a symbol on the door until the great stone slab rolled into the wall, and then he stepped inside the chamber.

"Oh marvellous, truly marvellous!" the old man was saying as first Siren and then Ellis stepped through into the cavern-like room.  “I would give my right arm to have a lab like this!  I always thought Cousin Marton was a fool to sacrifice his for that Aetherick Teaspoon he was so proud of, but this… this would be worth it.”

Looking around, Ellis could understand what Von Spektr meant.  The lab was enormous.  On earth it would be compared to the size of a football stadium and he suspected that it could easily fit two of those, although it was hard to tell because of the size of some of the equipment which filled it.  There were dozens of workbenches covered in the usual glass apparatus and Bunsen burners.  There were clockwork mechanisms, much the same as those own by the Former Baron, with many metres of piping snaking around them.  There were fractional distillation tubes and alembics the size of a human being and motorised conveyor belts, currently silent and still, threading between them.  There were more pieces of equipment than Ellis could name and many for which the purpose and function seemed completely obscure, like a small brass device attached to a partially deflated balloon, sitting gathering dust in a corner.  There were so many strange machines and wonderful devices that Ellis couldn’t focus on one for more than a few seconds, but one item drew his attention again and again.

Sitting in the centre of the chamber, with massive metal pipes running out of it to disappear down side corridors, stood a gigantic glass-fronted boiler, bristling with valves and dials.  Its sheer size reminded him of the great machine in the central chamber of the Silverspire, but this was nowhere near as complex and it had no clockwork components, instead it seemed to be all about pressure and Ellis could see sections where rivets had begun to work loose from the force of whatever had been inside it seeking to escape.

The Former Baron, of course, was in his element, dancing from one machine to the next, examining little details, tinkering with knobs and switches, fumbling with small parts only to drop them as his eye caught the next piece of equipment.  This went on for a few minutes, with Siren, Ellis and Broken-Hope watching on from a distance.  Ellis caught Siren’s gaze at one point and a slight smile of amusement flickered across her lips.  There was nothing quite like seeing the old man surrounded by the things he loved most.

Eventually he began to slow down and, as he neared the boiler in the centre of the chamber, became more thoughtful in his movements, until, at last, he stood before that glass-fronted cauldron, stroking his chin and muttering to himself.

“Yes, yes,” he said aloud after a few moments, “this Accelerator will do just perfectly.  It will need a little work, of course, but nothing that wont take more than an a few hours or so.  Yes, I think we could have it ready by dawn.”

“What are you planning to do with it?”  Ellis asked.

“Oh, you’ll see, my boy.  You’ll see!”  Then he turned to speak to their Fallen companion, who stood behind them all, a slightly bemused expression upon his youthful, androgynous face.  “I will need a few things to get this up and running again,” he said, “and I hope that you can procure them for me.”

“I am not an errand boy,” Broken-Hope replied without malice.

“No, but you know where everything is.  Take the boy with you if it makes you feel any better.”

Ellis did a double-take, his gaze flitting between the Former Baron’s determined expression and the Fallen’s usually impassive visage.  Siren snickered.

“Very well,” Broken-Hope conceded, “what do you need?”

The Former Baron began to call out a long list of parts, accessories and ingredients whilst Broken-Hope listened thoughtfully, nodding occasionally as he did so.  When the list at last came to an end the old Philosopher asked, "Did you get all that?" to which Broken-Hope replied with a slight nod and an equally slight smile.

"What about me," Siren asked, "what would you like me to do?"

"You my dear can stay with me.  I'll need an extra pair of hands if I'm to pull this off in a timely manner.  In fact I could use several.  Would any of the Fallen help?”

Broken-Hope frowned.  “You are lucky the others are letting you live to do this.  I do not think they would willingly participate.  Not here, at any rate.”

“That’s a shame.  If only we had some of Siren’s crew still with us then.”

Ellis suddenly felt a knot of shame as he remembered that Siren, the Former Baron and himself were not the only ones captured on the deck of the Ya’Ma’Khul that day.

“Actually-” Broken-Hope began.

“Greta and Luke!  They were captured with me.  Once I found out you two were here I must have completely forgotten about them!”  He felt his face burning with embarrassment and horror that he could so easily forget the people he had spent most of the day with.

“Two more pairs of hands is better than none, I suppose,” the Former Baron murmured, apparently uninterested in Ellis’ forgetfulness, “can they be released and brought here?”

“I can probably convince my brothers to do that,” Broken-Hope replied, then his face acquired a far-away expression for a moment before he blinked, looked back at the old Philosopher and said, “It is done.”

“Very well then, let’s get started,” Von Spektr said, rubbing his hands in anticipation, “Siren, my dear, if you could come over here, please.”

Siren nodded, rushed over to Von Spetkr's side and was immediately put to work holding a valve shut and the spindle-thin old man began to fiddle with a dial beside it.

"Come," Broken-Hope said to Ellis as he turned for the door to the corridor, "we must make haste," and then he was already gone and Ellis found he had to run to keep up with the Fallen's long, powerful, yet somehow graceful strides.

At first they travelled through the corridors and tunnels in silence, Ellis cursing his luck that he should have to do yet more walking on such an interminable day.  He barely noticed where they were going or what strange doors and side passages they passed.  Eventually, however, he began to feel like he should be saying something, that his proximity to the Fallen who was his guide should be eased in someway with conversation, although he wasn’t entirely sure how, or what he should say.

He started with, “So, uh, you guys have been here a really long time, right?”

“Yes,” Broken-Hope replied curtly, “this community has been here for fourteen-thousand years and the Fallen have been on Shadow for nearly twenty.”

Ellis tried to take that in, failed.  Instead, he asked, “Where were you before that?”

“A realm of unimaginable beauty, purity and glory.”

“So why did you leave?”

“It was… complicated.”

Ellis wasn’t sure, but Broken-Hope sounded almost regretful.

“This is another long walk, right?” he asked

“Yes.”

“So, why don’t you tell me about it?”

The golden-haired Fallen stopped suddenly in the middle of the corridor and turned, slowly and gracefully, to face Ellis.  His face seemed carved into a deeply sorrowful expression as he replied, “Because it is too painful.  Even for the most proud of us, though they would never say such a thing, you can feel the pain radiating off them like heat from a star.  We are a long way from home and that is what we chose.  We deserve everything we have received.”

“Is there no going back?”

“I do not think we would be allowed back."  He paused.  "Though there have been... some who have tried to reconcile with him."

"With who?"

"Our Father, the one who made us, who even now sustains us though we have rejected him.” He paused, “Well, some disagree on that point..."

"So it's a family dispute?"

"You could call it that, but then again, most of us no longer see him as family."

"So what happened to those who tried to make amends?"

"They set up a sanctuary for themselves in the catacombs, although they were frequently in the city, telling us we should join them, that our rebellion had been a serious error and that there was still hope for redemption.  Very few listened, of course.  Then, one day, they didn't return and they have not been seen since."

"Do you think they were accepted back?"

"Perhaps, or perhaps they were destroyed, or faded away from all their pining.  No Fallen has tried to find out since, as far as I'm aware."

"It all seems very sad."

"It is.  We... I hurt from it every day.  I miss what we have left behind and regret all that we have tried to achieve on our own.  We were not made to be like this.  Our individual desires have spawned at best a crumbling legacy and at worst nothing but war and hatred and loneliness."

"You sound like you've already decided.  You should try to go back."

"But there is no hope.  None.  There cannot be.  We do not deserve it."  He shook his head, then turned away.  "Come, we should not waste time talking."

Ellis nodded sadly, then followed the white-robed entity deeper into the catacombs, knowing they were searching for much more than just spare parts.

Toby had not dared peek out from behind the relative shelter of the ancient, split hull, but he had heard everything that transpired between Gulliver and the Lich and now, as he heard Harker’s crew shuffling away across the sand, he was trying to will himself into some kind of action.  Unfortunately there were many things standing in his way.  For a start his legs had ceased to be able to hold him upright, his whole body was shaking and his heart rate and breathing had become something unnatural.  To make matters worse he had absolutely no idea what he could do to help his friend.  He was just one man and, so he thought, not a very capable one at that.  How could he possibly hope to battle a Lich and a crew of zombified pirates all on his own?

His only hope, as he saw it, was to find whatever was left of Siren's crew and to find Siren herself and the Former Baron and whoever else might be alive and then, maybe then they'd be able to think of something together.  He couldn't see any other path than that.

He stayed where he was, sitting in silence, for a long time, just cycling these thoughts through his mind and keeping a ear out for any sign of the Lich and his enthralled henchmen, but all was silent.  Darkness fell and the mist which had been building around him took on the eerie light of the moon once more.  Only the wind and the shifting of the sand around the wreck made any noise at all.

At last, when he was sure it was safe, Toby stood.  Very carefully, trying to make as little noise and disruption as possible, he edged his way along the inside of the hull until he came to the stern of the vessel, where the two halves seemed to merge again beneath the sand.  He peered out around the stone planks, gazing into darkness and mist, seeking movement and still listening intently for any hint of the enemy.

Minutes passed and there was nothing.

Closing his eyes to brace himself, Toby took a deep breath, then opened his eyes again as he stepped out into the night.  He stood outside the ruined ship for a moment, feeling the mist curling around him, fighting the urge to shiver from the cold, then he took another step forward and prepared to make a run for it, back to the ship where he had last seen Siren and the Former Baron - if he could even remember the way.

There was a roar behind him and Toby had just enough time to turn on the spot, to see the decaying features of one of Harker's men, one who had apparently outgrown his more immediate usefulness to the Lich and had been reduced to a mindless, feral corpse.  The zombie lunged forward, blood-speckled teeth somehow whiter-than-white in the darkness, and Toby screamed.

He did not scream for long.

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