It was, in fact, another three days before Diana
concluded that their position matched that which she recalled from scanning one
of her mother's journals, back when Fracture was still being constructed. The ocean was calm and empty, with no sign
that there was anything unusual beneath them and Diana's vague memory did not
seem to be an awful lot to go on as Sarah stared at the diving apparatus they
had secured before taking the Limping Hound.
It was designed to be operated independently from any vessel, with a
built-in hypostatick engine to draw oxygen from the seawater itself, but Sarah
wasn't very confident of the idea of sinking to the bottom of the ocean in such
an untrustworthy-looking pile of metal, especially whilst knowing that the
fishing boat they had commandeered would be sailing away the moment they were
beneath the waves.
There was no other option, however, at least not one
that anyone had been able to come up with.
They had to trust Diana's memory, or give up and turn back. So, as the skies grew dark again, preparing
for another Lakhma rainstorm, four hypostatick diving suits dropped into the
smoky black and the Limping Hound turned, relieved, for home.
It was a long fall.
Hours seemed to pass with nothing but softly
speckled blackness drifting up past Sarah's helmet. It was claustrophobic, cold and there was no
way to communicate with her companions whilst she was falling. They would have to find each other on the
seabed and then use vague arm signals to point the way. In freefall, they just had the black. Sarah found herself praying.
Touchdown was softer than she had been
expecting. The hypostatick lamps on her
diving suit seemed to flare as the smoky water was instantly clouded with silt
and the flashing extremities of weird, bottom-dwelling sea creatures. She had to stand around for a few minutes
before it had cleared enough to see anything useful and even then visibility
was poor. The light barely travelled
five metres before petering out.
How am I going
to find the others in this? she thought, starting to panic. It had been one thing to keep her cool in the
long, slow descent, but now she was at the bottom of the ocean with what little
hope she had of finding her companions vanishing into insignificance like the
phosphorescent fish which darted in and out of her field of vision... It was suddenly too much.
She turned, looking left and right, moving around in
a small circle and kicking up so much more silt that she was completely unable
to see once again.
This is no
good, she thought, I have to stay
calm. Help me, God, please! she added.
Something banged against the metal frame of her
diving suit and she froze. Oh god, oh god, oh... The noise came again, then a third time and
Sarah's panic melted away almost instantly as she realised that it was a
knock. She turned in the direction it
had come from and there was Dimsun, his long Stoneskin face and burning eyes
looking particularly amusing inside a diving helment.
Silt swirled around them, but as it began to calm
she saw that Dimsun was pointing. She
looked in the direction of his arm, saw nothing but blackness, but chose to
trust once more. She nodded and then
they began to walk across the sea floor together.
They found Diana next, standing where Dimsun had
left her, just a few metres away. They
stared at each other in silence for a while whilst the silt settled then, very
slowly, they shone their lights around the seabed in all directions looking for
any signs of Frostfire. After a few
minutes of searching, however, they found nothing.
What has
happened to him? He's supposed to be our
leader. He... Sarah couldn't articulate her thoughts any
further and it didn't matter anyway, because suddenly Diana was pointing, then
marching off across the mud. They had no
choice but to follow.
Maybe she's seen something, Sarah thought, Frostfire
must be just a little further this way.
But they didn't find him on their journey along the ocean floor, nor was
there any sign of him when they finally came to a halt. Instead, Diana had lead them to their
ultimate destination.
They stood overlooking a chasm in the ocean floor
and filling it up with glass and light, buildings and machinery, was the city
of Fracture. They had arrived and
Frostfire was still not with them.
The descent into the chasm was hard going. The feet of their heavy metal diving suits
often caught on rocks, dislodged scree, or sank into the mud and the steadily
increasing gradient of the slope they had chosen didn’t help matters
either. By the time they reached what
amounted to the bottom, Sarah was exhausted.
She had no idea how they would face the inhabitants of the city in such
a state, but Diana seemed unfazed and ploughed on towards the nearest visible
airlock.
Despite the probability of imminent danger, Sarah
found it a relief to see the water draining away around them and even more so
when Diana indicated that they could all take off their helmets. It was only then, however, that it became
clear that Dimsun was whimpering.
It was a very soft, almost dog-like sound, only it
seemed to contain more pain than even the most hard done by puppy could
achieve. Sarah stared at him in surprise
and confusion, and then realised what it must be. Stoneskins couldn’t cry in the usual
sense. Their eyes were floating balls of
fire, after all. They did this instead.
“We don’t know he’s gone,” Sarah said, trying to be
comforting, “he could still find his way here.”
“He could be here already,” Diana added as she
examined the airlock mechanism. She didn’t
seem to have much time for emotions.
“But the ocean is so vast and the sea bottom so dark…”
Dimsun replied in an uncharacteristically small voice, “how could he ever hope
to find his way?”
“We did.”
Sarah put a hand on his rocklike shoulder. “Don’t give up hope yet, Dimsun.”
The Spiketail stared down at her with his soft red
eyes and nodded.. “For all of his
silence and schemes, Frostfire is my friend,” he said.
Behind them the airlock door ratcheted into life and
by the time they had turned around Diana was already storming through into the
dome beyond.
Sarah’s mouth gaped as she stepped through. Fracture was beautiful; a full-sized city
contained within a dome at the bottom of the ocean. It’s buildings seemed grander and slightly more
modern than many she had seen on the surface, say eighteenth, or nineteenth
century rather than seventeenth, giving it an air resembling Paris or Vienna or
some parts of London. Gaslamps flickered
all along the streets and above them a sky the deep, dark blue-black of endless
ocean, with floodlights piercing through.
For a moment she thought she saw the silhouette of something massive and
vaguely shark-shaped pass by.
One other thing struck her about the city, however
and this was even more unexpected. The
streets of Fracture were completely
empty.
“Where is everyone?” Sarah asked.
“Something’s definitely not right,” Diana agreed.
They took a short stroll along the phosphorescent tree-lined
avenue in front of them. Sarah could
hardly take her eyes of the buildings.
The architecture was so grand, so bold and confident. This was a city of privileged, possibly even
arrogant people. From what she
understood of the Noble Society that made sense, and yet the scale of it all,
the cleanliness and neatness… it was just so different to the surface city that
she felt the need to drink it all in. As
she did so she noticed that almost all the curtains were drawn in each of the
houses they passed.
Diana walked ahead, a sense of purpose and
determination in her lopsided stride.
Her huntress’ eyes scanned every detail, looking for signs of where she
might find her prey: her mother. Sarah
and Dimsun were just a few feet behind, but Dimsun was staring at the cobbled
street and not where he was going. Sarah’s
heart went out to him.
They were approaching a small square with a statued
fountain sitting neatly in the middle when suddenly there was a crackling noise
which seemed to fill the air, followed by a squeal of feedback and a hiss of
steam.
“Citizens of Fracture, this is Doctor Rosetta
Barkham,” came a powerful, deep female voice from all directions at once, “Countess
of Skullbridge and President of your
Noble Society of Hypostatick Philosophers.”
Dian cocked her head and listened intently, frozen to the spot. Sarah tried to work out where the noise was
actually coming from. “Once more I implore
you, listen to me, your rightful leader; take up arms against the Lakhma
Faction and liberate Fracture from the insidious schemes of the Von Spektrs. Don’t stand by and watch whilst the city you
helped build is lost to a plague of superstition and fear. The promises of Tiberius Von Spektr are
lies. Take your stand. My army is building in the shadows and deep
places: you will not be alone! We rise
soon.”
The crackling intensified for a second, there was
another hiss of steam and then silence.
Sarah walked to the edge of the square, stared up at one of the gaslamps
and watched as a little brass box continued to vent small quantities of steam
for a few moments longer.
“Some kind of speaker?” she asked.
“Something like that,” Diana replied, only half
listening.
“It seems… it seems as though things have changed,”
Dimsun commented.
“Nothing has changed,” Diana replied firmly, “our
goal remains the same.” She turned to
face them so that Sarah could see the fierce green glow in her eyes. “We seek out my mother, just as we were always
going to.”
“And then?” Sarah asked.
“And then we kill her.”
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