"What the hell is
that?" Ellis shouted, backing away from the edge and looking around for
somewhere to escape to. There was
nowhere, the whole, enormous chamber had only the one door, still sealed, and
no hidey holes, nor even any obvious ornamentation beyond the hieroglyphs on
the walls. They were completely trapped.
"It's a Daemon," the
Former Baron replied bitterly, "I haven't faced one of them for, oh, five
or six months..."
"You are mostly
correct," Ember added with his usual measured calm, as if they weren't all
about to be torn apart by spectral shadows, "it is a Daemon, of sorts,
although in many ways it is actually more than one."
"What's it doing
'ere?" Gulliver asked, wide-eyed with fear, "and more importantly,
'ow do we kill it?"
"It, or they, oozed
through minute cracks in the Aether caused by the obelisk when it was last used
to banish Lakhma. The cracks were far
too small for it to make its way through intact, so it has changed itself over
the centuries, always seeking entrance.
When I arrived here it found... further motivation and began the final
effort of pulling its many selves through into this world. That is why I had to stay. Had I not it would have broken through fully
and been a danger to all Shadow."
He paused then, looking almost thoughtful. "You cannot kill a Daemon," he
added, "there is only one who can."
"Then what do we do?"
asked Lord Blood Dragon, peering nervously over the edge at the rising shadows.
"You need to reactivate
the Obelisk, only it's hypostatick energies will be able to stabilise the
cracks and push the Daemon back into the Aether."
"Couldn't you have done
that already?" Ellis cried.
"No. I needed to focus all my concentration on
keeping the Daemon out, even the effort of catching Lord Blood Dragon was too
much of a distraction to prevent the Daemon from making progress."
As if to highlight their
plight, the first tendril of shadow rose up over the edge of the pit, writhing
and twisting like a candle flame, or, indeed, what the opposite of such a flame
might be, a kind of anti-light: darklight.
"So 'ow do we activate
it?" Gulliver asked, panicking even more now he could see the Daemon
approaching.
"Franck is already working
it out," Ember replied, his normally solid and certain voice sounding,
suddenly, strained, "please, let me concentrate." And with that, Ember disappeared completely,
but his light remained, an indefinable illumination with no apparent source,
but which seemed to be beating down on the shadowy pit. The dividing line between light and darkness
seemed to be shifting every second and Ellis had no doubt that he was
witnessing some kind of spiritual battle.
"Von Spektr," he
called, turning to where the old Philosopher was pacing, slowly, one hand
scratching his head beneath his hat, the other writing invisible equations in
the air, "what do you need us to do?"
The Former Baron looked up,
confused for a moment, "What?", then his eyes latched onto Ellis and
seemed to focus, "Oh! Yes! Yes, yes, yes, you can help, yes indeed!"
"But how?" Ellis
pressed, hurrying over. Gulliver and
Lord Blood Dragon seemed to be doing the same.
"You can search! Yes, search!
I've been thinking and I'm absolutely certain, given the nature of the
way the doors to this chamber were opened, and our subsequent entombing, that
the people of Dunewall who built this place were extremely skilled in
mechanical engineering. This obelisk is
part of a complex mechanical-hypostatick weapon and if it still needs be
activated then there must be a mechanism to activate it in this chamber. That's the only thing that makes sense."
"But there's nothin' up
'ere! It's just a big old empty room
with a Daemon pit in the middle!"
"Thingth may not be ath
they appear," Lord Blood Dragon suggested, "bethideth, there are
mechanithmth which do not wequire ekthpothed workingth, flywheelth and the
like. There mutht be thomething
thubtle."
Ellis scanned the room. He didn’t doubt the assertions of the
Philosopher and the Vampire, and yet he could see nothing that could help them
at all. There were no switches or
levers, no alcoves or plinths, not so much as a crack and the stone blocks
which made up the wall were so perfectly carved that even the breaks between
them were practically invisible.
“Where do we begin?” he asked.
“There must be some clue in the
hieroglyphs,” the Former Baron suggested.
They all glanced towards the
massive walls and the thousands of carvings which covered them. Ellis felt his heart sinking, then, suddenly
there was a sound like rolling thunder from the pit and the tendrils of shade
shot higher into the air.
“Whatever we do I thuggetht we
do it vewy quickly!”
They all nodded in hurried
agreement, then dashed towards the walls, scanning the images for some hint as
to how the obelisk could be activated. The
wall Ellis was faced with was so massive that he really had no idea where to
begin, plus the images he was staring at were so obscure, half-familiar images
of animals and people and tools, all in very specific poses, all designed to
mean something to someone, but certainly not to him.
Think, he thought, there must
be something here!
He glanced over his shoulder,
saw the others staring blankly at their walls, and then caught Gulliver’s eye
as the pirate half turned to do exactly the same as him. They were getting nowhere, clearly.
There was another thunder roll
from the pit and this time the room seemed to shake with it. Ember’s bright white light flickered like a
dodgy fluorescent lamp and Ellis felt a jolt of panic. Was the fallen going to lose? And then something behind Gulliver caught his
eye. Something glowing. Something hypostatick.
“Oh,” he said quietly, but by
then all he could do was watch.
On the other side of the
chamber Gulliver had staggered from the quake, stumbling backwards into the
wall, hitting his head as he did so.
“Ow,” he yelled, apprently
grabbing everyone’s attention for, as he turned away from the wall and rubbed
his head, they were all looking at him, “that really ‘urt!” he added for
dramatic effect. It paid to play up to
an audience, and yet…they were all staring
at him now; really staring, as if something was wrong with him.
“It’s alright,” he called
across the chamber, “it was sore, but nothin’ serious!”
And yet his companions
continued to stare. The Former Baron
raised his hand to point, open mouthed.
Lord Blood Dragon’s pale, Vampire eyes were almost glowing with surprise
and Ellis… Ellis was staring like he had gone all catatonic again.
“What?” he asked, “What did I
do?”
And then he heard it, a low
rumbling sound, like stone sliding over stone, only it wasn’t coming from the
pit anymore, but from the wall behind him.
He started to turn…
Ellis watched as, first the
stone Gulliver had fallen against, then the stones connected to it and then,
one by one, the entire wall began to glow a bright, luminous green, as if it
were covered in glow-in-the-dark paint.
Individual hieroglyphs seemed to leap out of the carving, glowing
purple, or orange, or blue. Meanwhile
Gulliver stood before it, oblivious, shouting across at them with no idea of
what was happening behind them. The
Former Baron started to point, and that was when the stones began to move.
The one Gulliver had pushed
slid in first, disappearing into the wall like a wooden Jenga block, but rather
than destabilising the rest of the wall, it set off a complex series of blocks
reshuffling, one slid down, another across, more slid backwards into the wall,
some began to slide forwards so that they actually projected into the chamber. And at last, with all the moving masonry,
Gulliver had finally noticed. The lanky
pirate turned, saw what was going on within feet of him and began to back away
slowly.
The shuffling blocks began to
move more quickly now and the wall was a wall no longer, but was transforming
into a side chamber with one large configuration of blocks rising up out of the
centre. All the blocks still glowed
brightly, but only the central structure had any of the luminous hieroglyphs. The rumbling of stone stopped and, for a
moment, there was a stillness of surprise, of calculation and intent. Then,
“That’s it!” the Former Baron
was racing across the chamber now and Lord Blood Dragon wasn’t too far
behind. There was another rumble of
thunder from the pit and then all light went out but for the glowing
masonry. Ellis started towards it, being
careful to go the long way round so as to avoid the massive, Daemon-filled
hole. By the time he reached the others
the Former Baron was already hard at work interpreting what they were seeing.
“So this must serve as a sort
of control panel for the obelisk,” he was saying. “This is the hieroglyph for energy, I think,
or possibly irrigation, and the one next to it, I think is the glyph for
library, so together they are probably telling us how much power this thing
has. It’s still pretty much full, after
all these years!”
“Do you see ‘ow to activate it,
though?”
“That glyph - the one which
looks like a ploughbeast - yes that one – should be the main ignition. It usually means tool or mechanism and… the
one beside it is a sort of stylised mountain, wouldn’t you say?”
The other three looked at him
blankly. Ellis wasn’t sure it looked
like anything so much as a zigzaggy line.
“Well, it’s what I’m saying at
any rate. I think it means up and look,
there’s the little irrigation symbol again.”
“I ‘ave no idea what you are on
about,” Gulliver said, sounding tired now, more than anything, “can you just
get to the point where you turn this blasted thing on?”
“Oh, patience, patience, my
morose friend! Patience!” The old man began to pace around the ‘control
panel’, staring at all the glyphs in sequence, muttering under his breath. In the pit behind them further rumblings
indicated that the battle between Ember and the Daemon had not finished.
“Ah, yes,” the Former Baron
said at last, “that’s it! I was wrong
about the mountain, you see it’s really a-”
“Please, Von Spektr, just
activate the obelisk!” Ellis pleaded.
“Oh, alright, alright! You’re as bad as my first governess. I was never so glad as the day she took a
long walk through a short toothorn patch…”
He
slammed his hand against one of the glowing hieroglyphs – Ellis thought it
resembled some kind of ancient loofah – then tapped out a brief rhythm across a
number of other symbols, far too fast for anyone else to make out. There was a sudden, high-pitched, almost
electrical sound, then the room was filled once more with Ember’s bright
light. And silence.
“Was that
is?” Gulliver asked after a few moments.
He sounded almost disappointed.
“I suppose
it must be, yes,” the Former Baron agreed.
There was no almost about his disappointment, that much was clear.
“But
where’s the obelisk,” Ellis asked. The
chamber looked exactly the same as it had before the control panel had been
activated. “Did it really work?”
There was
a flash and then Ember was standing amongst them. He looked tired, but otherwise well.
“Well
done, friends,” he said. “The Daemon has
been banished and the obelisk is ready.”
“But
where is it?”
“Still at
the bottom of the pit.”
“But we
activated it! Why isn’t it… here?”
“It
doesn’t need to be, besides, you haven’t activated any of the others yet. They all need to be on before the weapon
itself is active. All you did today was
supply the power to this obelisk, stabilising the cracks in the Aether.”
“What an
ant-climax,” Gulliver sighed, “still, at least we’re not dead!”
“But we
are, however, still quite trapped,” added the Former Baron, “you couldn’t zap
us all out of here like a good spark, could you, Ember?”
“I will
not have to.”
“Why on
Earth not?” Ellis asked.
“Because-”
That was
when the doors exploded.
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