The darkness was total. There mustn't have been even the slightest
chink in the great stone doors to let light through from the corridor beyond,
because, try as he might, Ellis couldn't find even the slightest ray for his
eyes to latch on to. It was utterly
disorientating, dispiriting, frightening.
He could feel himself starting to panic, the air feeling thinner, walls
he could not see closing in like the walls of his throat. He was-
"Well, that was
unexpected," the Former Baron said quite calmly. There was the sound of rustling fabric. "Just as well I brought this with me
from the Absolution." There was a
soft whirring noise and then suddenly Ellis was blinded by a strange green
light. It took several, long seconds for
his eyes to adjust to the contrast, then they gradually began to focus upon an
image of the Former Baron standing before him, holding a small device which
resembled a fob watch, made of brass with a glass top through which the eerie
light was emanating.
"Oh, ekthellent!" said
Lord Blood Dragon, who loomed out of the darkness behind Von Spektr to peer
down at the device, "I haven't theen one of them for thentuwies!"
"What is it?" Ellis
asked?
"A sort of pocket
hypostatick lantern. I found it in an
old store room in the Blood Vaults and thought it might be useful. I figured you wouldn't mind me borrowing,
Blood Dragon, old fang."
"Not at all," the
vampire replied, "I've lotht twack of all thothe twinkets anyway. I doubt I'd have notithed."
"I love 'ow it turns
everythin' a depressin' shade of green," Gulliver muttered.
"Well, at least we can see
again," Ellis replied, starting to look beyond his companions to see what
the glow was actually illuminating.
They appeared to be standing at
the edge of an enormous chamber. It
certainly stretched beyond the limits of the Former Baron's meagre light, but
Ellis could tell by the way the sounds of their voices carried that it was
much, much larger than that.
“So where’s this obelisk,
then?” Gulliver asked, peering into the gloom.
“I would imagine that it’th
thomewhere in the middle of the chamber,” Blood Dragon replied taking a few
steps away from the sealed door towards the edge of the light.
“Careful, my vampiric friend,
we don’t know what’s out there!”
“It’th okay, my eyethight ith
much better than a human’th! The way
ith-”
There was a sudden swoosh of
air and Blood Dragon’s sentence extended into a pitiful yelp that rapidly faded
into the distance. The Former Baron
hurried to where the vampire had last been seen, letting the glow of his
portable lantern fall on the spot where his final words had been uttered. The green glow showed worn stone slabs, then
the light vanished into a sudden, sharp darkness which extended beyond its reach
in every direction.
“Oh my!”
Ellis had no words. It was impossible to tell with such a small
light source just how deep the pit might go, but judging by the sound of Blood
Dragon’s voice it must have been very deep indeed. It seemed there was no end to the loss of
life this day would bring.
“I was just startin’ to get to
like ‘im,” Gulliver said into the shocked silence.
“Ekthellent,” came a familiar
voice from behind, “then perhapth you’ll thtart talking to me duwing
dinner! I can’t abide awkward
thilenthes!”
They turned around and there
was the vampire lord, hale and hearty as the undead could be, smiling at them
around his terrible teeth.
“Didn’t you just fall?” Ellis asked, uncertain if they were even the
right words to express any of the questions rushing to fill the empty space in
his mind, like blood to a wound.
“Theemth, like it, yeth.”
“Then ‘ow are you standin’
right there in front of us like that?”
Gulliver asked, scratching his head and peering at the vampire as if
hoping to see some sort of clue to whatever was going on, “You ‘aven’t become
some sort of ghost vampire now, ‘ave you?”
“I’m thtill vewy much
corpoweal.”
“But how-?” Ellis began, but
then they were suddenly bathed in a pure white light that was blindingly bright
after the gloom they had become accustomed to. In the centre of the light, which appeared to
have its source just a little to Blood Dragon’s left, stood a figure. He was very nearly smiling.
“I think I might be the answer
to that question,” said Ember.
Siren had never been so
weary. She had spent the whole of the
afternoon overseeing repairs to the Absolution,
the healing of the wounded, and the preparation of the bodies of the dead. It was like the Stonerib Shoals all over
again, and yet this time it seemed
worse. At the Shoals there had been so
much chaos that no one could have claimed to be in control and the Lich and
what came after ensured that those who died left little behind them to mark the
occasion. This had happened on her deck,
by her orders. It made her feel sick,
and yet she had no choice but to carry on, because there was work to be done.
Once all the horrible duties
were out of the way, or at least those she could not put off until later, however,
she retreated to her cabin and, in the silence of that cramped sanctuary, she
gave in to her tears.
Is it me? she wondered, Am I
a bad captain? I keep sending my crew
into impossible danger, but it always seems like it's the right thing to
do. If it always turns out like this
though...
There was a knock at the door.
Wiping her eyes and trying to
pull herself together, she called out for whoever it was to come in. A girl, although only a little younger than
Siren herself was, peered around the door with a sheepish expression.
"It's okay Celena,"
Siren said with as much warmth as she could muster, "you can come
in."
"Are you alright?"
the girl asked once she had slipped inside and closed the door, "You
look-"
"I know. I'll be fine I'm sure, it's just..."
"It's been a very long
day."
Siren looked up at Celena's
face and realised, for the first time, that the girl had been crying too.
"Yeah," the captain
sighed, no longer trying to hide her grief.
What was the point? "We lost
a lot of friends today."
There was a silence, stretching
into awkwardness, during which Siren simply stared at her hands. When it had gone on too long, however, she
looked up. Celena was biting her lip,
tears were brimming in her eyes once more.
"What is it?"
"That's... that's why I'm
here. I had something to tell
you..."
Something cold gripped Siren's
heart as she saw the fear and grief and confusion in Celena's shimmering eyes.
"What's happened?"
she asked and the words seemed to come out in slow motion, each syllable
hanging in the air like condensing breath.
"They found a doorway,
down below us, but... The Baron and the Vampire went in, taking Gulliver and
Ellis with them and then..."
"Then... what?"
"The door sealed behind
them. We haven't been able to break
through. They're trapped in there."
Siren closed her eyes, took a
deep breath, then stood up.
"Thank you, Celena,"
she said. She was the Captain once more,
her tone one of command, her eyes steely and determined. "That will be all."
"But..."
"Go take a rest. You look like you need it. I'll attend to the issue."
The girl was even more confused
now, but she nodded and quickly hurried out of the room, leaving Siren alone
once more. She walked to the edge of the
cabin, reached out to the cold metal wall and carressed it gently. Beata,
she thought, Absolution.
"Mother," she
whispered, "I don't know if you can hear me, if you listen to me now more
than you did when you were alive... but if you're out there somewhere, I have
one request... Help me to get through
this day." The tears started to roll once more. "In fact... if there's anyone out there,
anyone at all... any gods or spirits or... whatever... I'm asking you, no, I'm
pleading to you... help me, please, because I'm not sure I can do this on my
own anymore... I don't want to do this
alone... I can't do this alone... Oh, Ellis..."
Silence seemed to wrap its arms
around her, to cocoon her, and it seemed that the cold metal wall was warming
to her touch, like metal does, and yet...
I'm not alone, she
thought, and though she did not know whose presence it was she felt, it was enough
to know they were there.
Wiping her eyes once more and
taking another deep, deep breath, she stood up straight and marched out onto
the deck.
“Ember!” Ellis could barely
contain himself. “Where have you been?
So much… so much has happened and…”
“I have been waiting here for
you.”
“What, in the dark?” Gulliver
asked.
“Nowhere is truly dark for one
such as myself,” Ember replied, “but in truth, when I say I was waiting here, I
was waiting close to here, perhaps… perpendicular would be a good word at this
point.”
“Perpendicular is always a good
word,” the Former Baron chimed in enthusiastically, “however I can’t help but
think that the point Ellis was leading towards was that we might have found
your assistance during one or two recent… shall we say… misadventures… to be
most… um… assisting.”
“’Elpful,” Gulliver amended. “You’re supposed to say that someone’s ‘elp
would be most ‘elpful. No one says ‘assisting’.”
“I might have got myself a
little tangled up in the sentence, dear Gulliver, but the point still
applies. Could you not have helped us
out, at all?”
“I cannot be everywhere at
once,” Ember replied.
“But you didn’t need to thtay
here, thurely?”
“It was necessary.”
“It’s just an empty room,
Ember!”
“Unfortunately, it is not,” the
Fallen said and suddenly his light seemed to flare so that all the chamber was
illuminated by it, and the pit behind them was plain to behold, it’s depths
brought into focus… only there was something wrong with those depths, something
darker than mere darkness, more empty than vacuum, malign and twisted and
dancing like shadows cast by firelight, something was alive at the bottom of
the pit, and, judging by the way it’s dark tendrils were rising up towards
them, it really did not like the light.
Eeek!! Good ending. And quality episode. :)
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