Episode CLXXIV - Dissolution

Inside the obelisk, within its very core, Ember was preparing himself.  He had just expelled all creatures, alive and dead, from the obelisk to ensure that when the final hypostatick and aetherick shock wave ripped through the towering edifice, they would not be destroyed.  He knew, however, that as part of the machine there was now no escape for him, and whilst another being might have allowed themselves to believe that he would continue to live on in the mechanism for centuries to come, he knew that was not to be his fate.  Those who had built the obelisks had done a good job, but no design could prevent the decay and entropy that five hundred years of inactivity could bring and this next attempt to rid the world of Lakhma would be their last.

Ember did not really mind, however.  He was not the same dark creature he had been in his centuries beneath the Stonerib Shoals.  He was no longer Broken-Hope.  His new friends had taught him that there was hope after all and, whilst they knew little of the worlds beyond Shadow, Ember understood where that hope truly came from.  It seemed fitting that he should be a spark in the flame which would ignite the obelisk, as he himself roared fully to life.

And there was the feeling that he was not alone.

He had had it the whole time he had been within the obelisk, of some other intelligence inhabiting the space, manipulating the structure and events according to some greater plan.  It had become stronger and more intimate upon merging with the machinery, almost as if he were in the same room as another, sharing their air and perhaps the root ideas of their thoughts, though he had not been able to communicate.  It had been a comforting presence, and a reminder of something he had lost a long time before, thought it was only a shadow of such.

But now…  now there were two other consciousnesses he could sense and there was no doubt about whom this other was, nor that he would be heard if he spoke.

"Father, forgive me," he said, his voice echoing through the corridors and chambers of the massive weapon.  "I was proud.  I thought I had the right of it, but I know now how very wrong I was and now, here, at the end of my life, I see how it should have been."

The walls pulsed with energy, flickering faster and faster as the weapon charged towards the point of release.

"I offer myself now as a sacrifice to rid this world of one false god, and hope - truly hope - to be reunited with the Living One."

The obelisk seemed to tremble for just a second, and then the shockwave ripped through the tower, running up the core like a shiver down the spine, and Ember screamed - a sound like the death of suns, the rebirth of stars - and was no more.

If one could have seen Shadow from space, it would have been clear how terribly cancerous Lakhma was.  His/her body was hidden in layers of cloud, so thick that not even a sliver of the planet's surface could be seen.  From this cloud rose hundreds of thousands of massive tentacles, each writhing and twisting, curling in one themselves and stretching out to taste air and vacuum alike.  From this hypothetical distance, all one can see is a black, squirming mass, bulbous and ugly, turning a glittering spheroid into a black, quivering tumour.

Yet watch a while, for there is light amidst the darkness.  From this imagined angle we see three such points, equidistant: a perfect equilateral triangle.  They start very small, little dots of green, almost smothered by the instant wave of darkness that falls upon them in agonised defence, but they do not waver, nor do they die out.  They grow stronger, piercing flames of light and heat and raw hypostatick energy, tearing through the flesh that would conceal them and cutting, too, through the many layers of reality, baring the aether.

There is a ripple from each point.  They stutter across the black surface of this cankerous deity, rebounding off each other, reversing and as they pull back to their origins, they begin to take the great mass of flesh with them.

They say in space no one can hear you scream, but Lakhma's voice was not sound alone and his/her pain could be felt as well as heard.  All across Shadow people were frozen by it in their daily tasks, or woken by it as if from a nightmare.  And out here, where one hangs in infinite narrative solitude, omniscient and safe - even here you feel the scream.

Tentacles flail in vain, organs like continents contort and twist and compress, disintegrated and sucked, relentlessly, into the vortices of the obelisks.  Shadows pass, clouds pass and soon whole landmasses are revealed in the light of the moon and the sun and the distant stars.

There is a final psychic shriek, a rush of air and the sensation of a door slammed shut, and the lights wink out, one by one.

On the island formed by the raising of the final obelisk, Ellis watched as the obelisk first glowed, then pulsed, then fired a beam of brilliant green-white energy into the open mouth of the elder god above.  He watched the self-proclaimed deity recoil and felt the shrieks, watched the flesh tear as the vortices formed and watched, unable to do very much more, as if spread across the sky, taking both cloud and god with it.

The final spectacle came when , exhausted of all the energy stored up in the complex machinery deep within the planet's crust, the light winked out and the obelisk shattered with a blast, forcing them all to flatten themselves against the sodden silt as chunks of masonry flew over their heads to land far away in the empty ocean.

An eerie silence followed, heavy with anti-climax.  Ellis picked himself up, letting the silt that had stuck to his face and clothes slough off in gritty lumps.  All around him the others were doing the same and each was staring at the others as if they were all complete strangers.

It was Annabella who first broke the strange mood.

"It's so quiet," she whispered, "I can't remember when it was last so quiet."

Ellis turned to her and saw she was staring up at the clear skies with eyes wonder-wide and a smile growing on her lips.  She shot a quick glance in his direction and the smile spread.

"They've gone!" she said with glee, "no more voices, no more whisperings, no more endless crackle!"

"You mean you've been hearing things this whole time?" Siren asked, stepping up beside Ellis.

Annabella nodded.

"Why didn't you say?"

"I just thought... I thought that it was normal."

Ellis gave the girl a wide grin, then pulled Siren gently aside to whisper, "The Noble Society constructed her much like they did me, but with the specific intention of using her to summon Lakhma - it's quite possible she's been connected to that thing this whole time!"

"But she's free now," Siren said, letting herself smile, "and that's what matters most."

"Yeah," Ellis agreed, "and perhaps there's a chance of her being a normal girl now?"

"Aha! There you are!"

Ellis and Siren looked up simultaneously at the sound of the familiar voice.

"You know, this island is just lousy with corpses.  I was getting worried that I'd find you all amongst them!"

The Former Baron was waving at them as he picked his way across the silt, occasionally flicking the remains of a starfish or sea slug off his shoes.

"Franck!" Siren called out, her smile only growing bigger, "You made it!"

"Yes, well," he said, finally drawing close enough that he no longer needed to shout, "one moment I was in the control room watching the walls catch fire and then the next I was standing knee deep in dismembered Lakhmaspawn and stranded benthos and able to to watch the whole show from quite a safe distance.  It was really rather entertaining!"

"I'm sorry," Ellis began, puzzled, "you mentioned corpses and Lakhmaspawn...?"

"Yes, whatever pushed us out of the obelisk - Ember, I'm assuming - also seems to have ejected the remains of all those who died inside as well.  I'm not sure why, they are only Lakhmaspawn after all, but I suppose Ember always was a sensitive soul.  Where is he anyway?"

Ellis glanced down at his feet, unsure what to say.

"He, uh... he didn't leave the obelisk, Franck," Siren explained slowly, "he was bound to the machine..."

"Oh," the Former Baron replied sadly, "Oh my..."

He closed his eyes for a moment, then blinked them open very suddenly, a grin on his face, "But I'm sure the old fellow has finally found some piece at last.  It would take more than an hypostatick, trans-aetherick catastrophe to destroy one of the Fallen, now...  And Lakhma's gone!  It's all over at last... at least for another couple of hundred years anyway.  Honestly these elder god types are the worst pests, just when you think you've put them down they come crawling back up the drain, all legs and tentacles and doomsday prophecies..." he trailed off, as if forgetting what he was saying, then just as suddenly as before, perked up and smiled.

"You know," he said, "I could really use a cup of tea!"

There followed a lot of discussion between all those present about what might happen next and how they might get off the island, now Ember was no long around to transport them and the Absolution was grounded thousands of miles away in the suddenly inappropriately named sub-district of Templeshade.  Siren was not worried, however, and Ellis felt her confidence like a breath of fresh air amidst the otherwise tense discussion.  She remembered the location of the this obelisk from Lord Blood Dragon's maps and knew that it was situated along an important trade route.  Such thoroughfares had grown quieter since Lakhma's rule began, it was true, but now that the elder god had been overthrown, there was bound to be a ship coming along within a few days.

"And there's plenty of sea-life just waiting to be eaten," the Former Baron had added, picking up a shrimp-like creature, cracking it open and sucking up the innards in one go.

Ellis tried not to think about what eating crustaceans raw might do to them, but he was quickly assured that they would be able to start a fire with a little hypostatick trickery in the ruins of the obelisk control complex.

It was only at the end of this discussion that anyone realised that Frostfire had crawled off.  They agreed to split up to scout the island out and find whatever resources they could and Sarah and Miss Barkcastle set off in search of the injured Spiketail.  When they all met up again in the ruins as night fell once more, Frostfire had not been found, but some  other surprising discoveries had been made and all were brought to the hypostatick fire Miss Barkcastle and the Former Baron had arranged for their seafood dinner.

"Are you sure it was Rosetta?" Sarah asked, after Gulliver had described the tattered corpse he had found in the mud.

"Absolutely," he replied, "there was no mistakin' 'er!"

"Sounds quite reasonable to me," the Former Baron observed,  "I stumbled across her remains inside the obelisk last night."

"You mean you knew!?"

"Oh, yes! Did I not say?"  He looked puzzled for a moment.  "I knew there was something I'd forgotten to tell you all..."

"Well, it couldn't 'ave 'appened to a nicer lady," Gulliver remarked.

"Even so..." Sarah said with sadness, "I wonder how she died..."

"She wasn't the only one," Rockspark said, arriving late to the conversation.  "I found a Spiketail amongst the Lakhmaspawn."

"Frostfire?"

"No, this one was female.  She could have been one of Tiberius' lackeys..."

"Spriggan,"  came the lonely, unheard whisper of one hiding in the shadows, eyes dimmed to cold embers.  The broken thing that had been Frostfire clenched his talons until his scales cracked, sending clacks to echo through the ruins like falling rubble.  A head turned, just briefly, and he clawed his way off into darkness like a flame-cast shade.

“What happens next, do you think?” Miss Barkcastle mused as the fire began to die down.

“What do you mean, my dear?”  The Former Baron asked as he reached for the last of the flame-crisped sea anemones.

“I mean, Lakhma has gone, but the world has been changed in many ways.  What comes next?”

“I suppose it will go on very much as it always has.  Wars, plagues, famines, gods, these things come and go, but Shadow has endured them all.  We’ll rebuild and we’ll forget and before very long we’ll make all the same mistakes once more.”

“Yeth, it’th all wather tiwing, ithn’t it?” Lord Blood Dragon said with a yawn.  “I for one intend to weturn to my vaultth and thleep thwough the nektht few thentuwies.  I’d thuggetht you wake me up if anything intewethting happenth, but… I doubt I’d thank you for it!  In the meantime… I’m going for a thtwoll.”  He picked himself up, pulled his cloak around himself dramatically and marched off into the night.

“Well I think I might come out of retirement,” Miss Barkcastle said once the footsteps had faded.

“In what way?” Ellis asked.  The kindly old Engineer had been so busy with them over the last few months that he found it hard to think of her as retired at all.

“Well, all this activity has given me a whole host of ideas for machines and… and I’m just not sure I can pass them on into the hands of another.  I want to build again!”

“That sounds like a marvellous idea,” cheered the Former Baron.  “You know I always thought that you’d hung up your ratchet too soon!”

“Well, I’m not sure where you’ll go to do all this,” Siren said, gently, “Shalereef’s been destroyed now, so…”

“We’ll just have to rebuild it, then won’t we, my dear!  Oh my, yes, we’ll have my chateau as a base of operations, of course, and some of the street layouts might still be recognisable and - my goodness! – there’ll be no more of those awful fruit stalls that only sell rotten apples, there should be rotten pears as well and nectarines with maggots on them and-”

His sudden lapse into unconsciousness was as unexpected as it was welcome.  Miss Barkcastle covered him in part of his jacket, curled up beside him and drifted off soon after.

“I think I might ‘ead off and visit my Mum.  I ‘aven’t seen her in years, but… someone ‘as to tell ‘er about ‘Arker…”

Siren reached over and gave him a hug.  “Of course you should visit her,” she said, “and if we can help we will!”

“It’s alright.  I think this it one of those things you ‘ave to do on your own.”

“Perhaps,” Rockspark said from the corner, “but if you don’t mind I’d like to go with you part of the way.”

“Where are you going?” Ellis asked.

“I have something I need to find out,” the Spiketail shaman replied enigmatically, “an ancient mystery I need to solve for myself.”

“Well, of course you can come with me, Rockspark,” Gulliver agreed, “but I don’t expect I’ll make terribly good company.”

“It’ll give me time to think, then,” the Spiketail replied, and there was just the hint of a toothy grin.

The night wore on.  Annabella slept in her corner, with Rockspark watching over her, half-dozing, Gulliver lay, deep in slumber, against a wall and Siren, Sarah and Ellis discussed all they had been through and what the future might hold.  Sarah seemed melancholy and uncertain, something Ellis could understand.  He knew now that Shadow was, in many ways, the world he was made for, even if he might never feel anything but a stranger there, but for Sarah there was a whole other world she needed to be part of and they still had not way of getting her back there.  For himself, Ellis had only one thing in mind, but he wasn’t ready just yet.

The opportunity came later the next day.  A ship was sighted, much sooner than Siren had anticipated and, with a little bit of clever signalling devised by Miss Barkcastle, they managed to secure themselves passage to the nearest harbour.  They sailed away as the sun began the slow descent towards dusk, turning the skies to amber and jade once more and, after everyone had managed to find their berths and received a ration of ships biscuit, Ellis found Siren standing near the bow, watching the smoke waves rolling by.

“Beautiful,” he said.

“Isn’t it?” she said, turning with a smile.  “It’s good to be back on the sea again, to be truly free again!”

Ellis smiled back.  “I was talking about you,” he said and his hand reached up to brush away a strand of her hair that the sea breeze had whipped across her face, “but what you see in the sky and the waves, I see right here.”  His hand slid down past her cheek, along the line of her neck to rest on her shoulder, then he blushed.

“I… I don’t really know how to do this,” he said quickly, “but I know that I want to.”

She tilted her head slightly.

“Wha-?”

“No, don’t speak yet, please, or I might not get it all out.  You see I’ve been thinking a bit, these past couple of days, really, about what you mean to me and about what I want out of life if I’m to remain here on Shadow – and I want to, I mean… I want to stay here, with you… I… I’m messing it up already!”

He clenched his fists, turned his head away, dropped his gaze.  This wasn’t what he wanted.  He was supposed to be suave, sophisticated, sexy even.  Instead he was just being stupid.

He turned back, let his eyes journey up Siren’s familiar form, to rest upon her face, her eyes.  What he saw there seemed to still his heart a beat.  I can do this, he thought.

“What I mean to say, is… Siren… I love you… I love you so, so much and you’ve opened up this world to me in a way no one else ever could have.  I’d be lost here without you, but… more than that… I’m better here because of you and I want to keep getting better, for us to keep getting better together for the rest of our lives.  I don’t know how this normally works here, but I’ll do it the only way I know how.  Siren, my love…”

[deep breath - control your heartbeat – please stop sweating - oh god what if she says no]

“Will you marry me?”

END OF BOOK FOUR

FIRST EPISODE

PREVIOUS EPISODE

NEXT EPISODE

FULL ARCHIVE

Like SHADOW? Please vote!