Shadow - Monsters, Machines and Mad Scientists!: Episode CVI

Thundervein’s crew were stunned. The few who remained standing merely stood there, staring at the girl who had so suddenly wiped out their leader. The rest were a groaning pile of living rubble on the floor, struggling to escape from under Thundervein’s unconscious form and regain their feet.

“What…?” Sarah began, staring from her glowing hands to the pile of Stoneskins and back again. She flicked her gaze over towards Frostfire and asked, “What have you done to me?”

“I’ve made you into a weapon,” the Spiketail said.

“I didn’t think it would work!” Dimsun enthused excitedly, “I honestly didn’t think it would work!”

“But what did you actually do?” Sarah tried to keep the fear and rage out of her voice, but her hands were shaking, even as their glow began to fade away.

“The Noble Society of Hypostatick Philosophers had a theory,” Dimsun tried to explain through his own excitement, “ – just an aside to Doctor Barkham’s whole Breakthrough project – which suggested that hypostatick energy might be increased through exposure to the aether, so that any trans-aetherick shift could substantially enhance an individual’s hypostatick strength.

“When you arrived Frostfire wanted to test that theory out, so we took you to Shadowsmoke to have you checked over and, when the Shaman confirmed the theory, Frostfire had the idea to take advantage of that additional strength – and to keep it from fading away – by supplementing your energies with a black sand infusion put directly into your blood. It was highly experimental, but, I think, you’ve just proved it works.”

Sarah took a deep breath. She didn’t really understand all that Dimsun was telling her, but one thing was clear. They’ve made me into some sort of weapon, she thought, trying not to fume. They’ve meddled with me… these… monsters… She glanced at all the Stoneskins around her, at Frostfire and Dimsun, at the unconscious Thundervein and his motley gang, and, for just a moment, she hated them all. I just want to go home! But that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. She was rational enough to realise that, and so, what to do?

“So I’ve just been an experiment to you?” she asked calmly, her brightly glowing skin dimming a little. Thundervein’s thugs began to haul their leaden leader out into the ‘street’.

“Oh no, so much more!” Dimsun enthused, apparently oblivious to the ice in Sarah’s voice, “You’ve become the ultimate Slayer!”

And suddenly that was it. Sarah laughed and the glow vanished completely. It might have been hysterics, it might have been disbelief, but it was a laugh and she found herself smiling in spite of herself.

“You mean… I’m… Buffy?” she asked through her giggles.

“Who... who is that?” Dimsun asked, confused, but Sarah couldn’t reply, the laughter had taken her over and she staggered back to the pile of books that had been her resting place not so long ago. “Do you know about any Buffy, Frostfire?”

The Stoneskins’ expressions only made the whole thing seem more comic and Sarah laughed until there were tears in her eyes.

Sarah awoke to inky darkness and it took her a moment to realise that that didn’t necessarily mean it was night time. She sat up and saw that Dimsun and Frostfire were awake too, the former just about to relight their torch.

“Slept well, then?” Dimsun asked as the light flared into being, making his eyes look gloomy in comparison.

“Considering,” Sarah replied.

The memories from the night before were piled up at the back of her mind, threatening to spill over into some sort of emotion, but she really didn’t want to let them. She had decided before she went back to sleep that the easiest way to get by in Shadow would be to seal all that away until there was some reason to hope that she could get back to Larksborough. As long as the situation looked bleak, she would just take everything one step at a time, following her captor companions, even though she apparently had it in her to be far more powerful than they.

The truth was that despite meddling with her ‘hypostatick energy’, whatever that actually was, and bringing her on this journey, neither Frostfire nor Dimsun had treated her like a prisoner or an enemy. She wasn’t really sure what she thought of those too, exactly. That they had altered her without her consent was clearly enough to anger her, but, as far as she knew, the end result wasn’t one which was detrimental to her in any way. She would need to pay close attention to be sure.

Frostfire was clearly only interested in her as a weapon, however, and she worried how he intended to use her. He sought revenge and wasn’t it possible, even likely that revenge would be directed at Ellis? She just didn’t know.

But they can’t make me do anything I don’t want to, she realised, they’ve ensured that. They gave me the power to refuse. And with that thought she found she was ready to get up and start moving towards whatever goal Frostfire had in mind.

It didn’t take them long to strike their meagre camp and so they were soon on their way through the tunnelled streets of Riddlepike. For the first part of the morning (and it was morning; another cut-out vista of the valleys beneath the mountain confirmed that) everything seemed much the same. They passed through streets that looked just the same as the ones the night before: abandoned shops and houses only occasionally better lit by filtered daylight. As they approached midday, however, there began to be signs of habitation.

The first that Sarah noticed was a line of rags hung out between the second storey windows of two dwellings on either side of the street. They hardly counted as haute couture, indeed they were little more than hides and salvaged cloth, but neither did they seem like they had been abandoned there for decades like so much of the other detritus of civilisation she had witnessed in Riddlepike.

Then, as she stared up at them a young Stoneskin head poked out of a nearby window, gave her a curious, appraising, almost fearful look and then ducked back into the dark interior of the building. She stared at the empty window for a moment and then dashed after her Stoneskins companions.

“Stoneskins live here?” she asked Dimsun as she hurried to catch up to him.

“A few,” the Spiketail replied, “it’s a small community of those who do not fit in in a larger settlement like Ashvault, or who disagree with the politics of our leaders.”

“And just who does lead Ashvault?”

“It’s a sort of quorum of prominent figures. Frostfire has been a member a few times, as has Shadowsmoke in days past I believe. Ashvault has always been a fairly autonomous place, keen to keep out of the politics of Humans and look after itself.”

Sarah glanced at their leader, walking ahead of them, aloof as always. Even so she lowered her voice as she asked, “Then how come Frostfire got involved with the Noble Society?”

“He’s always been a bit of a wildcard. He grew up in Riddlepike to begin with and the Stoneskins here are rarely friendly towards most Humans – something they have good reason for as I’m sure you’ll soon se. Later he got tired of the life of a Riddlepike thug and began travelling around more on his own – a lone wolf, if you will. Since then he has come and gone from Ashvault as he pleases, often getting involved in some cause or another. Helping the Noble Society was his most recent endeavour and one it’s fair to say was not sanctioned by Ashvault. There is little love for Doctor Barkham and her kind there.”

“Why did he help them then?”

“He did it mainly for Spriggan, his mate. She came from the forest of Blackfeather and the tribes there have been particularly badly treated by Humankind. Doctor Barkham offered an unexpected alliance which, on the surface at least, offered an opportunity for the tribes of Blackfeather to find a new home on Earth, where, it was believed, there would be much wild land to inhabit without Human interference.”

Sarah suppresed a bitter laugh.

“Of course,” Dimsun continued, “Doctor Barkham cared about no such thing. She simply used the tribes of Blackfeather to get what she wanted and when everything went wrong she left them to be massacred.”

“And what happened to Spriggan.”

“She was injured – by a friend of your friend Ellis, I believe – but she’s fine. She’s living in Ashvault now, incubating her eggs and awaiting the first of Frostfire’s hatchlings.”

“And yet he’s leading this quest?”

“I think he sees this as the last opportunity for his revenge and he wants to ensure that his offspring are not subjected to the same kind of prejudice and abuse as this generation has seen.”

“And what’s your part in all of this.”

Dimsun sighed, “There are few Stoneskins with the possibility for true greatness these days. I think Frostfire might just be one of them.”

Sarah pondered these things as they continued through Riddlepike, eyeing Frostfire differently as she did so. He had always seemed so harsh, if clearly fuelled by some kind of purpose. She had trouble imagining him as an idealist, or as a father, but then, most people were deeper than they first appeared, so why not Stoneskins?

As the evidence of Riddlepike’s inhabitants became more and more apparent and the number of silent watchers in the windows above increased, Frostfire and Dimsun drew closer to Sarah and she realised that they were shielding her.

“Keep your head low,” Dimsun whispered, “Thundervein is certainly not the only one in Riddlepike to want to harm you, but word of the attack last night will most likely have spread and, if we don’t get in their way they will probably leave us alone.”

“Probably?” Sarah asked doubtfully.

“Probably.”

Sure enough, as the streets ahead filled with Stoneskins of all kinds, all seemed to fall silent as the unlikely troika passed by. There were groups of Spiketails like the ones that had attacked the night before, wearing motley armour which had clearly been scavenged from some junk pile or other. Of all the Stoneskins they saw, these looked the most likely to attack, but though one or two made to advance, they were held back by their companions, who whispered in their ears and advised caution.

News of Sarah’s powers had clearly spread and she found she was glad of this newfound reputation, especially since she wasn’t sure she could recreate the events of the previous evening even if she had to.

Walking through this part of Riddlepike was like stepping through a silent gallery of accusing faces. Sarah could feel their hatred. Every burning eye seemed to want her dead and the portraits of life she witnessed, the vignettes of poverty, disease and casual cruelty, frozen by the act of her passing through, seemed to give the reason for their animosity.

In one side alley she witnessed a snake-bodied hatchling slumped in the gutter, clearly starving to death with a hollow expression and she saw similar faces, old and young, many with injuries of blade and blunt object decorating their scales, peering out of the darkness of the buildings, as fearful as they were hate-filled.

“I’d never have believed your kind could suffer so much,” she confided to Dimsun as they left the most populous section of the district.

“Yes,” the dull-eyed Spiketail replied thoughtfully, “our lot is a poor one, but some of us have suffered much more than others. Riddlepike is near the border between the abandoned districts and those, more militant Human settlements. It is here that the war between our kinds continues in earnets, fuelled by generations of bloodletting and sparked into motion by misunderstandings, and hotheads like Thundervein, on either side of the divide.”

He glanced at Frostfire marching ahead of them as usual now that the threat had passed and added, “I suspect that was the other reason he chose this pass above all others. I think he wanted you to see this before you made your decision.”

“What decision?”

“Oh, come on now, you know what I’m talking about. After last night you must have realised that we aren’t really the ones with the upper hand here. If you help us, it has to be of your own free will.”

She didn’t say anything in reply, but she wondered about the plight of the creatures she had seen and whether the Humans of this world could really be that bad. She was still thinking about it when they finally stepped out into cold daylight on the deserted North-Western slopes of Riddlepike and beheld the lush valley beneath and a pair of impressive snowy peaks. At first she thought she was staring at a wilderness landscape – the Lake District, perhaps, or the Scottish Highlands – but soon saw the tell-tale signs of buildings amongst the trees below, of streets in the snow beyond, and remembered where she really was.

Dimsun pointed down the mountainside towards a stone fortress rising up out of the trees, “That’s Riverwatch, the last bastion of Humanity in these mountains and our next destination, for there is no other way across the valley to the Icemaidens and the pass of Blizzardale between them.”

“And what will we find in Blizzardale that’s so important?” Sarah asked, desperate for some more information upon which to base this supposed decision.

“It’s not Blizzardale we aim for, but the plains of Frostfeather beyond that.”

“And we want to head there because…?”

To her surprise it was Frostfire who answered, standing a few feet in front of them and gazing across the valley with the look of one who anticipates trouble ahead.

“Because that’s where I’ll have my revenge, girl, and then Frostfeather will see the birth of a new age, just like it gave birth to this one.”