Leaving the ruins of Shalereef was always refreshing. As much as he enjoyed living and working in
the Colony - the sense of camaraderie and meaning that pervaded every moment -
it was a delight to take a trip beyond the fallen buildings, past the rubble-strewn
streets and into the rest of the world.
And no place was more refreshing to visit than the neighbouring district
of the Borough.
Ellis had not had cause to go there very often, just the
occasional trip to visit an old friend or nemesis of the Former Baron, seeking
aid offered or possessions borrowed, but every time he did he relished the
change of scenery, the fresh, unhindered breeze, the grass and trees and wide
open spaces. One had to be careful, of
course, as all of that open land was really the estate of some noble or other
and they rarely appreciated trespassers.
Still, as long as one stayed on the main avenues and admired the
surprisingly English-seeming lawns and copses from a distance, there was hardly
an angry shout, nor a musket shot to be heard.
Today the experience seemed especially fine. Not only were the skies a crisp, clear green,
the sun a gaudy diamond dazzling whenever the horseless hypostatick carriage
turned its way, but Ellis was enjoying the feeling of the wind in his hair, the
cheerful chatter of Annabella and Gulliver's grunt form behind and, most of
all, the warmth of Siren snuggled up against him. It was a fine day indeed.
It didn't take too long to reach the scrapyard - that
incongruous patch of discarded metal and all the effluvia of Hypostatick
Philosophy, right amidst the manicured lawns and hedge mazes of the
Borough. They stepped out of the
carriage to feel cogs and springs beneath their feet, Gulliver eyeing it all
warily as if it might come to life at any moment. Annabella, in contrast, skipped out into the
middle of it all and, turning to face the group, took the lead as naturally as
Siren ever had.
"We're looking for anything that might work as a
decoration - interesting shapes and colours, things that still have their
shine, nothing too dirty or corroded, unless you think it will clean up
well." It was obvious she was excited to be there, excited to be a part of
the whole wedding planning and excited to be doing something as childlike as
hunting through scrap to make something pretty.
She beamed at them all and added, "have fun!" before turning
away and disappearing behind a mound of discarded parts.
"I don't know 'ow she can enjoy this all so much,"
Gulliver muttered.
"Well," Siren said with a half-hearted sigh,
"for a start she wasn't here the last time, so she has no reason to
associate the place with Geists or the Noble Society."
"And she's been here loads of times over the last few
months helping the Former Baron find materials for his hypostatick experiments,
nevermind all the scrap we've needed to help build the Colony. Not all of the rubble is as useful as this
stuff."
"Even so," Gulliver replied, "this place
sends me all a shiver."
Siren rested a hand on his shoulder. "It's alright, Gulliver, we
understand," she said gently.
"There aren't a lot of places we can go these days that don't hold
some bad memories, but we just have to get on with it, don't we?"
"S'pose so," the grumpy pirate concluded. "So, where do you want me then?"
"You can stay near the carriage if you like,"
Ellis suggested, "there's plenty of useful-looking stuff in these piles
right here."
Gulliver's expression lightened up a little. "Alright," he said, then moved over
to the nearest pile of junk and started rummaging.
"Where do you think we should look?" Ellis asked
as Siren turned towards him.
"Somewhere discreet, perhaps," she said with a
twinkle in her eye and Ellis could only smile.
Annabella was totally engrossed in her task. There were so many things left lying around
in the piles, precious things, deemed rubbish by the nobility and yet so full
of potential: a piece of broken mirror, its backing made of aetherised silver,
still reflecting the dissected fragments of some other reality; a dented brass
pitcher, half-full of some metallic liquid which seemed to evaporate as it was
poured out, yet the pitcher itself never emptied; a set of cogs, each slightly
larger than the one before it, in metals of various colours which, when stacked
according to size revealed a perfect colour spectrum, visible and, Annabella
suspected invisible. There was so much
to choose from that the difficulty would be narrowing it down to those things
which were really special. The mirror,
the pitcher and the cogs were keepers, obviously, but there were other things
nearly as good that she discarded with a hint of regret, knowing they would
have looked pretty too - just not pretty enough.
She made two small piles at her feet. One of those objects she would definitely
take back to the Colony with her and one of those which didn't quite make the
cut, but which she wanted kept aside anyway, just in case. Both piles grew steadily larger as she
searched, but the 'discard' pile was, unsurprisingly yet regrettably, the
larger of the two.
She'd been working steadily for about half an hour, enjoying
herself so much, and so engrossed, that she hadn't really noticed the time
passing, when she found what she realised would be the centrepiece of any
decoration they created. It was a large
turquoise-hued gemstone, set in a plate of tarnished pewter. A number of channels in the metal ran away
from the jewel towards blackened dimples she assumed were reservoirs. She knew enough about the history of
Hypostatick Philosophy - from her hours of reading and conversations with
Franck - to understand generally what the item was. In the early days hypostatick energy had only
ever been harnessed using black sand, the rare, crystallised, fossil form of
the life energy all creatures possessed.
Before it was understood how to use the body’s own energies, black sand
had been required to be ignited to use the energy it stored. When in a plate like the one Annabella now
held, the sand would turn into the more familiar green liquid form -
hypostatick fluid - upon ignition and run through the channels towards the
gemstone, which would then absorb the hypostatick energy it contained, usually
for use later on, either directly by a person in what was once known as
hypostatick magick, or, later on, in a machine.
This particular charging plate seemed to be in perfect condition bar the
tarnish and a little cleaning would sort that out in no time, but it did beg
the question as to why one would discard such a thing in the first place.
It looked beautiful, though, and Annabella was pleased to
have found something in such good condition.
She imagined using it as a centrepiece for the head table, perhaps, or
maybe hung on a wall behind. If they could
charge the gemstone it might even glow!
She was just about to place the plate on top of her keeping
pile when she felt a sudden, terrible pressure in her head. It last for just a moment and though awfully
uncomfortably, wasn't really painful, but once it had left she was filled with
a sense of deadly, imminent danger.
Clutching the plate to her chest, she ran off to find the
others.
Gulliver was staring at the remains of an obscure clockwork
device with a prominent set of rollers on the front, trying to work out if it
was supposed to iron clothing or if was, in fact, some kind of torture device. He prodded the rollers, nearly caught his
fingers between them and was just about to settle on the latter, when he heard
his friends shouting.
He looked up and saw Annabella, Ellis and Siren running
towards him, waving their arms and shouting so much all together that he couldn’t
make out any of the individual words. He
dropped the useless machine, took a step towards them and then realised that
half the reason he couldn’t hear his friends properly was because of the low
rumbling sound growing from behind him.
He turned, slower than he really meant to, feeling slower
still, to see the horizon full, not of Borough treelines and mansion rooftops,
nor the hills of endless buildings beyond that, nor even the distant
cloud-hazed mountain peaks far to the east, but filled instead with a tremendous
grey-black cloud, racing towards him like a breaker on the shore.
He flicked his gaze back to look at his friends, his feet
already moving towards them, and saw that they were waving for him to
follow. It felt like he was mired in
mud, like he was suddenly the slowest man alive, like all the world was rushing
past him and he was stuck where he was, and yet suddenly he was running
alongside his friends, heading for the largest of the scrapheaps , sckirting
its edge even as the rumbling sound behind seemed to envelope them.
They skidded into the lea of the pile, first Annabella, then
Siren, then Ellis and lastly Gulliver, already feeling the first piece of
debris caught up in the cloud pelting his back.
They pulled him in closer to the rubbish, huddling together as small as
they could, watching the roof of their carriage blow past, until a sudden, hot
night fell around them and the ash-storm began in earnest.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please let me know what you think of this episode!