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

It was a long, long, long way down. Siren's feet ached, her legs ached, her head ached from the unending dizziness of looking down and seeing only further spiralling rock ledges. She wasn't scared of heights, but this was different, this seemed eternal and it wore you down, just the constant concentration of staying vertical...

It wasn't just her. She could see Ellis and the Former Baron flagging also, her boyfriend especially. For all that he had toughened up over the last few months - even more so the last few weeks, he was still not used to adventure - he was still the somewhat naive, somewhat urbane, somewhat self-involved creation Doctor Barkham had made him to be and, as he descended the ever-twisting rockway his face seemed to grow greener and greener.

And always their mysterious Draconic guide floated ahead of them, to wait at the next level, its voice and expression all mockery and insult. That was wearying too. It left Siren's hands twitching for her weapons, her mind seeking ways to eliminate the beast.

How much longer can this go on? she wondered.

And the light beneath them grew and the echoes of the chamber seemed to last ever longer, ever louder and so, bit by bit, drop by drop, twist by twist, they drew near to their destination.

The light seemed to come from crystalline deposits which seemed to have grown up around the base of the cavern. Each crystal had a bluish colour, giving off this bright, blue-green light, but as they approached the crystal layer it became clear that that was not all the crystals did. They were vibrating, giving of a background hum which grew louder and louder as they descending, merging with its own echoes in such a way as to almost cancel itself out, but not quite, not when you were near enough to them that the echoes were a more distant phenomenon. There was something unsettling about it, and Siren found that, the closer she was to the crystals and the more of them there were around her, the less she felt she could trust what her sense told her. She had no basis for such a feeling - she was not, to her knowledge hallucinating and she experienced nothing odd save the crystals themselves and that vague sensation of unreality, and yet there it was. She glanced at the Former Baron for reassurance, then at Ellis, but they both appeared lost in their thoughts. Did they feel the same thing?

The brightness of that place ought to have been blinding, but they passed into it gradually, allowing their eyes to accommodate to some extent. Even so they had to pause for a while every now and then to let them adjust a little more, and Siren could feel a headache starting to form, though whether it was the light, or the noise, or something else, she couldn't really have said.

Their eyes had only just adjusted to the brightness of that particular level of the cavern's depths when they first saw it. It emerged out of the radiance like a ship through fog, tall, angular, imposing, a blue-white structure of humming crystal and beyond, contrary to all expectations, a great black pit from which no light seemed able to escape - a black hole in the bedrock.

"You have arrived," their grotesque guide and guardian said. "Behold, the Sacred Temple of the Deeps!"

"They always have to be so dramatic about everything don't they?" the Former Baron said, loud enough that the Draconic must have heard, even without its apparently exceptional hearing. Siren and Ellis both shot him a warning glance, but he continued regardless. "I mean, it's a very impressive temple, I’m sure, but it's not the only one I've seen, or 'beheld' for that matter and, well, sometimes I just like to admire these things in silence anyway. Why does there always have to be the fanfare beforehand? The pomp and circumstance? The ritual? Can't a man just approach a temple and enter it and get on with whatever it is he needs to do there without a dramatic announcement? Is it all really necessary, I ask you?"

The Draconic did not look happy, but, to Siren's surprise, said nothing. It merely gestured for them to approach the temple. She could sense Ellis looking at her, waiting for a decision, because, of course, she would be the one to make it, even though this was really his plan.

She took the first step – and instantly regretted it.

The ground didn’t seem to give way beneath her, exactly, it was just – so suddenly – not there. What had been crystal-encrusted rock one second was instantly transformed into blackest nothingness the next. She fell - oh boy did she fall – tumbling through that no-space, head over heels over head, dizzy with the spinning and the fear alike. And above, looking down like horrified gargoyles, Ellis and the Former Baron, held captive by distorted Draconics on either side. She screamed and it sounded alien, like someone else had screamed it, because her mind was not on it at all. Another thought entirely had settled across her mind: I’m going to die now and it was only really when the echo of it came back to her that she noticed she had screamed at all.

And it came back and back and back, endless waves of echo and reverberation, until she was awash in her own scream, surrounded by it, suspended by it, almost.

Only not almost.

The sensation of falling had ceased, and, instead, she felt like she had gradually come to a stop in mid-air. All around was still black and void, with only the blue-green light from above, but she could turn towards that now, hovering, it seemed, on the echoes of her own voice.

“What the-?” she asked and felt the echoes rolling over those of her scream – fading at last – to boost her upwards a little towards the light.

“I’m being held up by echoes!?”

“In a manner of speaking,” came the modulated voice of their Draconic guide, “that is exactly what is happening, but only those things which resonate with the truth will produce an echo and keep you from the eternal darkness of the pit that tells no lies.”

Panic flooded Siren's helpless body. She could already feel the buffeting effects of her most recent echoes beginning to lessen. They would not hold her up forever. She had to keep talking.

"That's fine!" she said, trying on bravado for size. It usually fit, but at this precise moment she was feeling a lot out of her depth, "I have nothing to-"

The echoes stopped at once, as if her words were dampeners, deadening all sound that came after her and, as soon as the echoes had gone, she began to fall once more.

"Tell no lies," the Draconic called, "and you will be spared the pit!"

"Okay! Okay!" she screamed, "Okay, I'm terrified!"

The echoes caught her like a soft, springy net, bouncing her back upwards a little before she settled at one height, all too aware of the precarious position she was in.

"This is cruel," she continued. "After all the things we've been through lately, this still seems the cruellest."

"Justice and truth always seem cruel to those who oppose it," the Draconic replied.

"That may be so, but that doesn't mean this is justice."

The echoes continued and she rose slightly higher.

"You dare to question our Law?" The creature's voice rose a couple of octaves in anger, sounding all the more bizarre through it's surreal modulation.

"Your pit is letting me, so why not?"

"Enough!" the Draconic snarled, but, it seemed, did not have an answer. "You still must face our questions."

"Very well, you can ask all you want." Which was perfectly true, as there was no way Siren could have stopped the creature from speaking.

"Are you really emissaries from Lakhma?"

Siren tried to think around the situation. She had to be quick as the echoes were fading fast, but there had to be a way to maintain their deception without lying - she just had to work out what that was. She tried stalling.

"We came here because of Lakhma," she replied. True, but a weak answer.

"But are you his/her emissaries?"

This was a much more direct question. Siren paused for a long time, listening to the dying echoes, trying to see a way around it. At last, jsut as she felt her position wavering, she spoke.

"No," she replied, and the echoes lifted her higher.

"Aha!" the creature shrieked, "so you admit to deceiving us!"

"No, I did not." Also true. That was not the purpose of her previous answer.

"But you told us before you were Lakhma's emissaries and now you say you are not! Which is it to be? The Pit will not let you have it both ways!"

"But I want it both ways," she replied calmly and again the echoes lifted her higher. She could feel the blue-green light from above bathing her face, lessening the darkness around her.

"That is not an answer!"

"Yes, it is. You spoke, I replied, that's all there is to it." Higher and higher.

"But you lied to us!"

"I have never lied to you." After all, it was Ellis who had spoken before, at the top of the chamber.

The Draconic was getting very frustrated now, that was clear. Its wings were flapping madly and it hovered over the pit with a look of daemoniac rage.

"Just answer plainly, what are you?"

"I am Siren," Siren replied, "I am a woman and a daughter, a lover and a fighter, a pirate and prophet." That last word was less certain than all the others, but she held to the truth of what she meant by it and those the echoes wavered, they h continued to boost her towards the light.

"A prophet? How, if you are not emissaries?"

"We were not sent, we came of our own volition, and we bring a warning with us. We have seen Lakhma in the skies above and have beheld his/her anger. We know his/her wrath and that is why we have come here, to you."

The echoes were sending her higher and higher now, indeed, she was nearly at the top of the pit.

“Lies!” the Draconic shrieked, an ear-piercing sound like electromagnetic feedback, it seemed to cut through Siren’s echoing voice and, for a moment, she feared she would fall again, but as the shriek grew louder she realised it was because the Draconic was plummeting towards her, wings flapping around it like a tattered cloak, a look of panicked confusion in its twisted face. She watched as it fell right past her - screaming in mad, fervent outrage all the while – to disappear, echoless, into the dark.

“Talk, Siren!” came Ellis’ voice from somewhere behind her. She spun in the air to see him, reaching out towards him over the pit, held back only by the restraining claw of a shocked Draconic.

“Ellis!”

It was only as the words came out of her mouth that she realised they were needed to keep her from falling once more, but as the echoes swelled around her she saw her boyfriend’s relieved smile and knew, somehow, that another hurdle had been passed. Then her own smile broke through the fear within and she laughed, amused merely to be alive as much as to be hovering in mid-air supported by her own words.

“How do I get out of here?” she asked.