It was like reaching the eye of a storm. The Absolution
passed through the invisible barrier protecting the obelisk and was immediately
surrounded by an untouched remnant of Shalereef, that sub-district which had
long named itself Templeshade, after the belief that the obelisk's apex was, in
fact, some shrine to a forgotten deity.
Here the streets were still streets, just barely wide enough to permit
the ambulatory steam barge passage. The
shops and houses remained standing, free from smoke and fire and decaying
masonry. All the peaked roofs were as
they had been before, far from perfect, but missing merely a few slates with no
gaping holes. Indeed, Templeshade showed
almost no signs of impact from the atrocities which had levelled most of the
rest of the district. The only sign that
they were under attack at all, bar the rumbling explosions in the
near-distance, were the crowds of people taking shelter.
Evidently those who could run from the barrage had
done so and those fortunate to run towards the pyramid - out of superstition or
mere dumb luck - had found themselves in a haven of safety they could never
even have imagined. They stood in the
streets, huddled in doorways, leaned out of windows and stared back at where
they had come from, unable to believe the devastation, or that they were
somehow still alive.
In comparison the sight of a ship with spidrous legs
scuttling up the hill towards them was positively mundane. They hurried out of the way to let it pass
and then resumed their shocked stares towards the coast.
The pyramid loomed above all this, looking ancient
and implacable and the crew of the Absolution
- it's leaders, crammed together in the wheelhouse, included - fell silent as
they approached. It was only as they
reached the end of the street, coming to a halt where the cobbles merely
stopped and the houses huddled close to the sloping sandstone, that anyone felt
the need to speak.
"So, how do we get in?" Ellis asked.
The resumption of silence was not the answer he had
hoped for.
They climbed out, all of them. The Absolution
knelt on cobblestones like a waiting crab beside them, its battered metalwork
reflecting the final rays of evening light as they rushed past the pyramid to
shape its long tapering shadow into an arrow of accusation, pointing towards
the sea and the thousand wrecks which still burned there.
"There is no obvious way in," the Former
Baron was saying. "I've explored
this part of the district before, hoping to gain entry and satiate my
curiosity, but there are no doors, no vents, no hidden pressure pads, not even
a crack."
"But there must be some way inside!" Siren
insisted. "Can't you take us in,
Ember?"
The Fallen shook his head. "The power that kept
me from sending you straight inside the barrier before is still at work
here. I can only hope that I can move
the obelisk from the inside somehow... if we find a way inside."
"I wouldn't go near that thing, if I were
you," came a woman's voice out of nowhere.
Ellis looked around them, but there was no one
nearby that he could see. He glanced at
Siren who had been doing the same, but she merely shrugged.
"I'm up here," the voice called and this
time Ellis was able to pinpoint it a little better. He turned and looked up at the overhanging
upper storey of a small house where the casements of a large window had been
swung open and a thin middle-aged woman was leaning out.
"I don't know what you're doing here with
that... thing," she gestured
towards the Absolution with disgust,
"but I can assure you that that pyramid means us no good!"
"Why do say that, dear woman?" the Former
Baron replied, tilting his hat back as he looked up.
"Because the damn thing's been taking people
all day. I saw it! I know!"
"Taking people?" Doctor Barkham scoffed,
"It's a gigantic lump of stone, how can it be 'taking people'."
"You just rode in here on a steamship,
Missus," the woman replied snippily, "so you're hardly one to be
telling me what can and can't happen, and you can cut that sarcasm right out,
or I shan't be talking to you!"
Rosetta's eyes darkened and she was obviously about
to say something in reply when Sarah stepped forward and asked, "What's
been happening to these people?"
"They were taken, I tell you!"
"Yes, but taken how?"
"They were just walking past, or tending to
their gardens," pointed towards the small shrubby patches of greenery that
lay between some of the houses and the pyramid, "then, just like that,
they were gone."
"And this had just been happening today, you say?"
the Former Baron asked, rubbing his chin.
"Well, since late morning at any rate. It certainly never happened before that. I'd have
seen it elsewise. I'd have
known."
"You're obviously an expert in the goings-on
around here, that's for sure," Rosetta muttered, "I bet your
neighbours love hearing the up-to-date sneeze report from number 23."
"What did you say?"
"Ignore her," Siren said, taking a few
steps closer to the woman's house.
"Did the people who vanished do anything, that you know of, before
they vanished - to the pyramid, I mean."
"I suppose they might have touched it, just for
luck. A lot of people around here do
that. I shan't be doing it from now on,
though, I can tell you."
"Indeed," Rosetta said in her driest
tones, "well, I think we have everything we need here. Let's be moving on." She began to walk towards the pyramid.
"Don't you go touching those stones!" the
woman shouted, "Don't you ignore me!" but Rosetta was already there,
reaching out her hand to the golden sandstone, pressing her flesh to the
weathered pits in the rock and-
"See!" the woman shrieked as Doctor
Barkham vanished into thin air.
"Didn't I tell you so!"
"You did indeed," the Former Baron
replied, "but I'm afraid we're going to have to ignore you also and follow
our... companion? ... nemesis? I'm not
sure what the dynamic is..."
The woman began to gesticulate wildly and complain
about how nobody ever listened to her, but the Former Baron had been right, of
course and everyone was now making their way to the spot where Doctor Barkham
had vanished.
"So, do we just touch it, do you think?"
Siren asked.
"I don't think the Countess did anything else
of note," Rockspark replied.
"I can sense a strongly distorted
trans-aetherick field," Ember added, "it seems contact with it
results in absorption into the anomaly itself."
"Which, translated, means?" asked
Gulliver.
"That would be a yes, Gulliver, my lad, and I
suggest we get on with it as quickly as possible."
Von Spektr's words were highlighted by the sound of
low, throbbing engines from above and, glancing up, Ellis saw that the massive
vessel which had risen out of the sea was now approaching the apex of the
pyramid.
"On the count of three, then?" Sarah
asked, reaching her hand out tentatively towards the sloping sandstone.
"One," Siren began.
"Two," continued Miss. Barkcastle.
"Thwee," said Lord Blood Dragon and then
they all touched the stone at once and disappeared.
The remaining crew of the Absolution watched on in some confusion from the deck of the
transformed steam barge, glancing back and forth between the last known
location of their suddenly absent leaders and the woman in the window.
She glared down at them and sniffed. “And exactly what do you think you’re looking at?” She demanded, before slamming her window shut
so that she might never learn the answer.
“I have honestly no idea,” one crewman replied and,
one by one, they all began to retreat below deck.
Ellis woke up on a cold stone floor which seemed to
be glowing with markings not unlike a printed circuit board. It was similar to those he had seen on the
stones in the obelisk chambers they had visited earlier in the day.
The lines pulsed in all directions, giving the
impression of some terribly complex system and, as such, telling him very
little. Except...
Does this mean
that the obelisk is already active?
He climbed to his feet and tried to get a bearing on
wear he was. He stood on a small
corridor, stretching no further than five feet in either direction before
veering off at right angles. There were
no doors, nor any other markings other than the glowing lines.
Okay, he
thought, which way do I go? And where is everyone else?
There was no obvious answer to either question, so
he just picked a direction at random and walked around the corner, only to find
himself in an almost identical section of corridor, just as small, just as
devoid of useful clues. He paced the
length of it, barely more than eight feet and turned another corner, to find
the pattern repeated once more.
This is like a
maze, only the only choice I've had
to make so far was at the start. Do I
keep going, or should I go back, try the other direction?
He paused on the edge of decision for about a
minute, unable to bring himself to choose without any more information, and
then, as if by magic - horrible, horrible magic - the world chose for him.
He heard them approaching, unsure how far away they
were, but certain about which direction they were coming from. They chittered away to each other, their insectile
chirps laced with guttural violence and a sense of slimey, oozing vocal tubes,
and there was a susurrus that lay underneath it all, a soft, irregular
slithering, like something dragging itself along on too many tentacles.
Lakhmaspawn!
Ellis first reaction, as always, was to run. What else was there he could do? He picked the opposite corner to the one the
noises were coming around and dashed for it, finding himself in yet another
slice of corridor, faced with yet another blind corner. The sounds of his pursuers grew louder.
Just keep
going, he thought as he ran around the next corner and the next corner and
the next corner, unsure, now which direction he might be facing relative to his
starting position, certain that at least some of these corners should have
intersected corridors he had passed through minutes ago and feeling a terible
sense of hopelessness that he would never escape, that he would be lost
forever.
If only I
could fight, he thought desperately, if
only I'd brought my sword I could stand my ground and fight.
And then he rounded another corner and found himself
in an arena of sorts, made of the same dark stone and glowing lines, but filled
with sand like a gladiator pit and surrounded by ranks of empty seating. An open doorway mirrored the one he had just
unknowingly passed through.
"What the-?" he said out loud, then felt a
tingling sensation in his hand. Looking
down there was a rod of light materialising and glowing brighter just across
his palm. Something told him - against
all instinct - to grasp his hands around it and, as he did, it became solid,
hot at first, but cooling quickly, shooting light up into the air above which,
in turn, formed the blade of a sword.
Within moments the whole thing seemed solid and complete and perfectly
weighted for his use.
He stared at it in wonder, not sure what to make of
it, but it felt right, somehow and as he looked up to see the first of the
Lakhmaspawn slithering in to the arena, he was surprised to find a faint smile
curling his lips.
You know… this
could be fun…
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