Ellis' fear was transferred
almost instantly into pain as Siren slapped and clamped a hand over his mouth.
"Will you shut up!"
she whispered, "I'm trying to think!"
Think, Ellis thought, Think,
think, think, like Whinnie the Pooh.
Think.
But it was so hard to think
when a hurricane of iridescent wings and robes was hurtling towards you, all
fangs and claws and tusks and proboscises, as the mother and father of all
draconic nightmares hovered behind them in almost lazy anticipation.
Think!
What did he know about these
creatures? Almost nothing, but the
Former Baron had just been describing them: bloodthirsty - they certainly
looked that - man-eating - best not to think too long on that point - Lakhma-worshipping
- that was it! That was the one point in
his knowledge that any thought could latch onto and work with. They had only one chance.
He pulled himself free of
Siren's grip, took a deep breath and then shouted, "Halt!" as loud as
he could. It was like a sonic boom hit
the chamber, knocking the Draconics back and sending them into a confused
flutter as they regrouped.
"We come in Lakhma's
name," Ellis continued, trying to maintain the ear-crushing volume, even
though the echo was so loud it was hard to think about the next word in the
sequence, "to deliver a message about the great return and your place in
the world to come."
It all sounded very
prophetic. He could only hope it would
do the trick. The Former Baron and Siren
were merely staring at him in surprise, but whether that was because of what he
had just said or that he had said anything at all, he couldn't really
tell. All he could do now was wait for
the response.
The cloud of Draconics seemed
to come alive with vocalisations - not words, not calls or shrieks, but
something other, something musical and yet also hinting at spectra of
communication outside of hearing. Wings
flashed different colours, bright angry reds, cool, soothing blues,
contemplative yellows, commanding purples.
Even without complete understanding, it was clear that a complicated
debate was underway. At last the largest
and most dragon-like of the creatures let out a great bellowing roar and the
cloud dispersed. Only one flew towards
the trio on the ledge - a six-legged, eight foot tall creature, resembling a
cross between a dinosaur, a centaur and some sort of insect, compound eyes and
all - and alighted beside them.
In a heavily modulated voice -
one clearly unused to speaking their language -it said, "We have agreed to
listen to you."
Ellis let out a breath he
hadn't quite realised he had been holding, but before he could feel too elated,
the creature continued.
"But not here," it
said, "you must come to the Sacred Temple of the Deeps, in the pit that
tells no lies, there the truth of what you say will be tested."
The creature turned, lifted
itself into the air on massive, leathery wings rippling with unnatural colour,
then hovered beside them.
"Take the path down. I will follow."
"What?" Siren asked,
"All the way down? Don't we get a
lift?"
"It will give you time to
consider whether your blasphemy is worth the effort," the creature
replied, before swooping down to a lower level and waiting there.
"It's good to know we're
earning the trust of the locals," the Former Baron said with a smile. Ellis had no idea whether or not he was being
sarcastic. It was rather hard to tell
with someone so eccentric.
"Well, you've bought us
some time anyway," Siren said, turning to Ellis and giving him a quick
hug. "Where did that come from
anyway?"
"I don't know,"
Ellis replied, "it just seemed the only way out of being eaten alive by a
swarm of killer butterfly-lizard-people.
What are they anyway?"
The Former Baron eyed their
impatient-looking escort below and gestured for them to start moving.
"We can walk and
talk," he began. "Draconics,
or to give them their full name, Draconic Resonances, are something of a legend
amongst Hypostatick Philosophers. The
story goes that, several hundred years ago, there was a Philosopher who longed
to see a dragon. Now, as far as we know,
there are not and never have been dragons anywhere on Shadow, but this
Philosopher had observed that there were stories about dragons in just about
every district in the city. He concluded
that the idea of dragonness, so to speak, was contained within reality somehow
and that it ought to be possible to actualise that in some way. He began to experiment with ways of vibrating
the Aether using Hypostatick energies, trying to find what he called 'the
resonant frequency of the draconic', believing firmly that, once he found it,
reality would reshape itself so that dragons would actually exist as a fact and
not merely a legend."
"So what happened,"
Ellis asked.
"Well, so the story goes,
this Philosopher tried everything he could, explored every possible frequency
and some that have been thought before and since as completely impossible,
searching the layers of reality for this idea of the draconic, until, at last,
he found it - put imperfectly. The
frequency he hit upon was close to the resonant frequency of the draconic, but
not all the way there. Other ideas were
bleeding into it."
"So it was like tuning
into a radio station, but never quite getting the right signal, music mixed
with white noise."
"If you say so,
Allgood."
"So what happened
next?"
"Well, the vibrations had
the desired effect and reality was reshaped - bringing forth the Draconic
Resonances, but the frequency was so imperfect that they were unstable beings
and their features, whilst draconic in many senses of the word, were also
insectile, or human, or plant-like, or resembling inanimate objects or... you get the point. They were horrific."
"So why didn't the
Philosopher destroy them?"
"Oh, he tried, of course
he tried. He'd have been more than twice
the madmen he was if he hadn't, but the creatures were so tortured by their own
semi-existence that they turned on their creator and tore him to pieces and
thus they were let loose upon the world."
"But you said this was
all just a story, right? How can they be
real?"
"Well, it was never
entirely confirmed. There are
half-obscured accounts of what happened in some journals, but things get easily
forgotten in Shadow, and this was all just before the last arrival of Lakhma,
you understand. It could easily have
been overshadowed by that."
"So they ended up
following Lakhma then?"
"That has been the
prevailing theory, from those who continued to believe that they were more than
just a legend. Lakhma promised them true
reality, undistorted, a chance to be what they had always wanted to be. It seems, from what we have seen, that that
promise was only partially delivered upon."
"How so?"
"Well, they certainly
seem more stable than the stories had led me to believe, and I didn't see any
with faces like lanterns, or wings like awnings, but they are still far from
being true dragons. Save perhaps that
large one. It was almost there, didn't
you think so?"
"I think we're about to
be within earshot of our friendly guide," Siren whispered, "so let's
just carry on in silence, if we can."
"A wise choice," the
Draconic said in its strangely modulated voice, somehow conveying just a hint
of sarcasm. "There are only another three hundred and thirty seven levels
to go. It'll pass like a moment of cloudshade."
The trapdoor had led into
another cube-like chamber, slightly larger than the one before it, with equally
little to suggest there was any further way out. Walls had been tested, floors swept, the
corners of the ceiling had been poked and prodded, individual stones were
examined the most minute detail and eventually they were kicked. By Gulliver.
In what he concluded would be his last act of exertion.
Miss Barkcastle, however, was
more persistent. She checked everything
twice, examined scratches in the wall for repetition and pattern, searched for
clues in the way the sand settled across the floor and then finally found a
nick in one wall, inside of which there was a tiny pressure point, the tip of a
button. Once depressed the wall opened
up and the trio were blinded with hypostatick lights from a long,
familiar-looking corridor.
It was just like beneath the
Secret Isle in so many ways. The walls
were perfectly straight, covered in intricate carvings and the corridor led on
for quite some distance to culminate in a great set of double doors clearly
opened by some sort of mechanism. It
was, however, clearly quite different in many ways also. There was no evidence of the architectural
stylings of Dunewall here, no brush-stroke hieroglyphs, or animal-headed
statues. This was a different type of
culture altogether - one made of arbitrary, angular symbols and imagery based
on geometry and mathematics. For once it
was actually Gulliver who recognised it first.
"This is just like the
architecture on the Fabled Isle of Riches!" he exclaimed after the growing
sense of familiarity became too much.
"Oh," Harker said,
his voice suddenly hollow, "I'd almost forgotten..."
Miss Barkcastle turned towards
him, reaching a hand out. "Oh, poor
dear, what happened there?" she asked.
Gulliver tried to take it
in. They were in the antechamber,
surrounded by the mysterious geometric artistry of the past, and there was this
elderly woman, so soft and gentle reaching out to the noble pirate in an unexpected
moment of tender vulnerability. And yet
nothing was what it seemed. The artwork
concealed the brutal machinery of the door mechanism, the elderly woman had an
engineer's mind of precision and efficiency and the pirate... the pirate's
vulnerability was nothing more than guilt.
"What 'appened
there?" Gulliver said, more calmly than he thought he could. "What 'appened there? I'll tell you!"
"Gulliver," Harker
said, holding out a hand in a gesture of placation, but Gulliver swatted it
away.
"What 'appened was that
'Arker 'ere stole our best friend's ship, then demoted 'is own brother in
favour of the cruellest first mate a ship ever 'ad, forcing us to mutiny and
escape an' 'ide out in amongst the tombs of the Restless Dead for three months
before we could finally be free of 'im.
That's what bloody 'appened!"
If he had started calmly, he
was certainly not by the end. He was
practically screaming, his voice echoing off the dark stone walls with a cold,
harsh finality. When he blinked, tears
spilled down his face.
"Gods, 'Arker, 'ow did
you turn into such a monster, and why are you 'ere to keep spoiling things
now?"
Harker and Miss Barkcastle
just stared back at him for a moment, but the vacuum of silence could only last
so long.
“Are you even listening to yourself,
Gulliver? Do you realise this is the
first time you have even mentioned this to me, let alone asked me why it
happened? Why do you think that is? Is it perhaps because you have always thought
the worst of me? That you have never
been able to accept that, despite all our differences, all our petty squabbles,
we’re still brothers?
“Let me tell you my version of
events, for once, eh? I demoted you
because you were behaving atrociously, pining over Siren just because she wasn’t
getting her own way with the Crest
and getting on my nerves, like any little brother. I put Salin in charge
because I thought he would do a better job.
I didn’t know that he was a bitter, backstabbing, sadist! Everything he did to you and to the rest of
the crew he did whilst my back was turned and… and with Siren gone I wasn’t
really focussing, I missed her and so I missed what was right in front of me. So
yeah, if I sinned that was it – I didn’t pay enough attention, but you –
you could have just told me!”
“And you think it’s that
simple do you?” Gulliver retorted. “What
about sending that monster after us, scouring the Fabled Isle of Riches whilst
we hid amongst the ashes and bones?”
“He did all that on his
own. I just asked him to find you for me,
not hunt you down like an animal. I was
worried, Gulliver, can’t you
understand that?”
“Worried?” Gulliver couldn’t believe it, wouldn’t. He backed away even as Harker began to move
towards him.
“Yes, you plank-headed moron,
of course I was. Don’t you
understand? You’re my brother and I love
y-”
It was too quick, horribly,
painfully quick. Indeed, there was so
little to it that, when Gulliver looked back at all that had led to it, the
actual mechanical action of it seemed insignificant. There was the slightest of clicks as Harker
stood on the pressure pad, and then the blade came slicing out of the wall -
snicker-snack - and that was that.
Harker Blake had fallen.
Oh.
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