Episode CI - Ashvault

            Sarah looked up at the tall and terrible creature which had addressed her, the cold fire of its eyes matching its name, and didn't know how to respond.  Instead she just stared and waited for whatever came next.

The creature called Frostfire returned her gaze, or at least, she thought it did.  It was hard to tell when its eyes had no obvious pupil, but there was a deeper intensity to the flames within which seemed focussed upon her.  Eventually it let out a growl and turned to look at its companion.

"What is this, Dimsun?  Is she mute?  Has she lost her wits?"

"I imagine she's scared," the other creature replied, "and she is also injured. Humans are fragile creatures, Frostfire, you know this."

"Then we should take her to a Shaman at once.  I have no time to deal with her frailty."

Frostfire turned to look at her once more, cocking its head - no, his, she thought there was something masculine about this creature - and speaking to her in a softer, but still harsh and gravelly voice.

"What is your name, human?"

"Sarah," she replied without hesitation.  If these creatures thought her weak she would do her best to prove them otherwise, whatever they did to her.  It was better to be out of the cell and fighting than it was to just sit around waiting.

"Good.  Well, Sarah, we're going to take you to a Shaman who can heal your wounds and then you and I will have a little talk about your friend Ellis."

"If you say so."

The creature's eyes burned indignant at her tone, but rather than say anything in reply, Frostfire turned to his companion - Dim-Sum, Sarah thought she had heard him called.

"Fetch some manacles.  She will try to run despite her injuries."

Dim-Sum nodded and disappeared into the corridor beyond.

"You are wilful," Frostfire said softly into the ensuing silence, "hold onto that.  You will need it."

Dim-Sum must have been away for at least five minutes, but Frostfire didn't say another word the whole time they waited and Sarah could think of nothing to say herself.  Instead her thoughts drifted back to Thomas, to the way his cheeks dimpled when he smiled, the warmth of his hand as they walked together and the serious look he got when he looked at her sometimes.  I have to make it back home somehow, she realised, if not for my mother, if not for myself, then for him.  There was no confusion in that thought at all and she almost laughed that it should take imprisonment by hostile monsters on another world to give her a moment of clarity.  There were other obstacles in the way of course, but re-crossing the divide between worlds was a big enough one to be getting on with.

"These should do," Dim-Sum said as he reappeared in the doorway holding a set of chunky metal handcuffs.  They looked like they were made of lead.

“Put them on her then.  I’ll be waiting outside.”

Sarah watched as Frostire turned in the doorway, disappearing into the corridor outside until only his spiked tail was left to swish around the corner.  Dim-Sum approached, holding out the manacles, his dull eyes twitching nervously.

“It’ll go better if you don’t fight, little girl,” he said, “I don’t want to have to add to your injuries before we see the Shaman.”

She didn’t fight.  She certainly considered it, but, with her injuries as they were and with the obvious strength of the monsters stacked against her, she didn’t think the odds of her getting away with it to be very high.  Instead she stared at Dim-Sum’s flickering eyes for a moment, trying to read some recognisable expression within, then, realising that the creature was possibly as scared of her as she was of it, she held her hands out meekly.

“Very good,” he replied as he slipped the manacles over her wrists and locked them in place.  They weighed even more than Sarah had been expecting and the metal was cold and hard against her bones.

“Now what?” she asked, looking down at her weak and injured legs.

“Carry her,” came Frostfire’s voice from outside.  He sounded like he was losing his patience.

“Very well,” Dim-Sum muttered so that only Sarah could hear her.  He bent down towards her, reached out his long-clawed hands and then, surprisingly gently, lifted Sarah up and cradled her against his granite-like chest.  She winced as he turned, putting pressure on her broken rib, but he responded to that almost immediately, lessening the pressure and shifting her weight ever so slightly so as to prevent it from happening again.

Dim-Sum carried her out into the corridor where Frosfite was waiting in sullen silence, leaning against the far wall, his eyes flickering like the heart of an icy thunder storm.

“She’ll be fine like this,” Dim-Sum said, as if he felt the need to break the ice.

“Good,” Frostfire replied.  He pushed away from the wall with an insolent grace, walked across the corridor and slid the door of the cell shut with such force that dust shot out from the seam, then he turned and marched away.  Dim-Sum hurried to catch up.

The corridor was long and empty apart from intermittent torch stands and tiny squares cut into the wall; the only indication of there being other cells in this dunegeon.  Eventually they came to what appeared to be a dead end, but Frostfire rapped loudly on the stone wall at the end and it began to shift, as had her cell door, to reveal a room on the other side.  Two creatures just like Frosfire and Dim-Sum waited within, each carrying spears and a little further away another creature was chained to the wall like a guard dog.  It was huge and monstrous, however, with a mouth filled with teeth like rusty axe blades.  It turned towards them as they entered and let out a roar like groaning metal.

“The prisoner is coming with me,” Frostfire announced as the two spiked-tailed creatures stepped forward to greet him.  They glanced towards Sarah in Dim-Sum’s arms and then nodded before Frostfire continued past them without saying another word.  Dim-Sum acknowledged the two guards and then followed Frostfire out a door on the other side of the room which let in a curiously bright reddish orange light.

For a second, as they stepped out through that door, Sarah’s eyes, which were by now quite accustomed to dimness, couldn’t cope with the sudden wash of light.  It was like a blinding flash, the sudden glare of a sunset breaking through clouds, and with it came a rush of hot air, like opening an oven door.  Sarah blinked in surprise and then her eyes began to accommodate until she could see the path they took and all that was above and below it and, for a moment, the fear and wonder of it made her utterly breathless.

Frostfire and Dim-Sum were taking her across a narrow stone bridge which like the rooms before it, appeared to have been carved straight out of the rock.  To the left and to the right and above them more bridges spanned the emptiness of a  massive cavern, leading from wall to wall where hundreds if not thousands of buildings stood out in relief against the rock, all lit by the same bright orange-red glow from beneath.  And that was where the true wonder and terror of this vertiginous place lay, the source of the oppressive heat which made Sarah feel that she was baking alive, though her captors seemed unaffected by it.  A sea of molten rock filled the bottom of the cavern.  It appeared to be miles below them, bubbling and flowing in strange currents of convection, but once it caught Sarah’s eye it suddenly seemed like it was just beneath the bridge and the air it heated seemed only to get hotter.

“She’s overheating,” Dim-Sum called towards Frostfire, “Humans aren’t meant to live in this kind of environment.”

“That’s why places like this are all we have left,” the colder of the two creatures replied, “but she’ll be fine once we reach the Shaman.  If need be we’ll keep her to the cooler side-passages for the duration of her stay here.  If all goes well that won’t be long at all.”

They journeyed across the cavern towards a pillar of rock which towered out of the sea of magma and rose high into the heart of this strange underground city.  A spiral staircase seemed to lead all the way around it from the lowest level bridges to those higher up and they climbed it for a few hundred feet before taking another bridge back towards the walls.  Here something very like a street had been carved into the rock and as they wandered into its darker recess, lit more by torches than the fires beneath, the air began to cool a little and Sarah found she was able to take in more of the world around her.

City was the only way to describe this place.  Every street they walked, every building they passed seemed to be full of life.  There were many creatures all around them similar in appearance to Frostfire and Dim-Sum, but there were also many other kinds of creatures too, from some like the hulking monstrosity they had seen at the prison, marching along the streets like living battletanks, to smaller, dwarf-like creatures covered in moss.  There were some whose torsos descended into serpentine tails with no legs and others, like the ones in Larksborough, who flew through the air rather than walk.  It was as diverse as any metropolis and they passed all the signs of busy city life, markets and bars, chattering crowds and loitering thugs.

The air was still warm and Sarah felt light-headed from the heat and the extent of her injuries.  Soon all the noise and bustle of this volcanic city became dreamlike and insubstantial, too little to hold onto.  She tried to stay awake, to claw herself back to reality, but the pull of unconsciousness proved too much for her.

The last thing she saw was Frosfire stepping into a low building decorated with coloured banners and chains of bones and feathers, beckoning Dim-Sum to follow, and then the blurry reality faded into the absolute clarity of darkness.

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