“The cavern…” Ellis said even as the memory of it came flooding back – how the Ancients had manipulated his memories and those of Annabella and Gulliver, testing them and learning. For a while, they had been playing with Ellis’ memories of Christmas in Larksborough, before transforming into something more like a scene from The Matrix.
“You decided not to go with Agent Smith this time, then?” he asked, taking a chair opposite, though it wasn’t really a question.
“Last time did not go quite as well as we had hoped,” said the man who was not-quite-Santa and not at all human. “We thought this would provoke a more gentle discussion.”
“And what is there to discuss?”
“Your purpose, our purpose – all purposes lead to this moment.”
“Well, of course that’s true for you. You’ve been here in this other reality for God knows how many millennia, just waiting for a chance to return to Shadow. I can see how any such opportunity would look like fate to you but-”
“You don’t believe in your own destiny, then? All of the keys were foretold. It was known that they would be constructed over the centuries. That one day they would all know to come here to this city.”
“All of the keys? You mean Annabella and I?”
“So you have forgotten our last conversation. There are many more keys than just the two of you.”
“But we’re the only ones who went through the gates in Gihana…”
Not-quite-Santa’s
laugh was familiar, but hollow and his smile as he gazed across at Ellis was
cold and patronising.
“There are many ways to reach this city, Ellis Graves and many more stories to be told in your world than just your own. In the end, they are all our stories. They have always been our stories just as it has always been our world.”
Ellis shifted in his chair. “So why aren’t you in it anymore?”
“A conspiracy between our slaves and our enemies.” Not-Santa sneered with each word. “They worked together in secret for years, until they could perform the greatest piece of Hypostatick transference ever seen and there was nothing we could do to stop them. But we have not been idle in the years since. And now you’ve come.”
Suddenly, the cosy cottage disappeared, and Ellis found himself standing once more, this time in a large hall built in the unnatural style he was beginning to recognise as the work of the Ancients. Annabella was standing not far away from him and about the same distance from him on the other side stood another young woman. Beyond each of them there were more people, men, women, children, all standing in widely space circle with the figure of an Ancient – no longer concealing its appearance – in the centre.
“You’ve come to us to fulfil your destiny,” the figure said, though its distended jaw never moved from its eternal ‘scream’ rictus. “We called you and you came. Now you must do what you were made for.”
A bright blue-green light began to emanate from the figure and, though at first the strangers around him were all looking at each other and chamber in confusion, soon, they all began to let their gaze drift back to the figure and the light. Ellis felt the cloudy, hazy, dreamlike feeling coming over him once more and realised that he was about to lose control. Whatever it was the Ancients wanted him to do, there was not going to be anything to stop him.
Why can’t my
life ever be my own? He wondered angrily before all such feelings vanished into the
light.
Siren stepped into the light and felt… nothing, except maybe a cool wind brushing past her for just a moment and then the light was gone and in its place there was a space, large and empty – the antithesis of the impossible city before it.
“That was… an anticlimax,” Nadiyya said, appearing beside her. “Where did they go?”
Siren stared around them, but there was no sign of anyone or anything in the space with them. She could see neither walls, nor ceiling and the floor beneath had a translucent, immaterial quality to it that made her distrust the feeling of solidity beneath her feet.
“I… don’t know. They can’t have gone far, though, right?”
Nadiyya shrugged.
“Ellis! Annabella!” Siren’s voice echoed around the space, despite there being nothing visible off which the sound could bounce. “Ellis!? Annabella!!? Where are you!?”
“I don’t think that’s going to do much good, either,” Nadiyya sighed.
“We walk, then,” Siren declared and immediately set off into the middle-distance which, in that space, was everywhere.
They walked for long seemed a long time, although with nothing around them to indicate any kind of progress, it was hard to tell. The ground felt the same, the view felt the same and the echoes of their footfalls sounded the same. The only thing which changed was their own growing frustration and impatience.
Eventually, Nadiyya stopped, stood rooted to the floor with irritation and yelled, “Where the hell are you!?”
The noise seemed to send little ripples through the space, as if reality was warping uncomfortably with the passage of the soundwaves.
Siren watched it happening with confusion, before suddenly remembering something.
“They don’t like noise!” Her words, too, seemed to ripple through the air, as if the space were liquid somehow. “Scream!”
Nadiyya gave her a quizzical look, but Siren wasn’t interested in explaining any more. Instead, she opened her mouth wide, took a deep breath and screamed as high and as loud and for as long as she could manage. Nadiyya covered her ears and the space around them rippled and warped and then began to crack open, so that the strange blue-green light could pour through revealing something else beyond.
There was sound – voices. As the echoes of Siren’s scream faded away and the cracks began to widen, slowly, she could hear them. They seemed to be chanting.
“Again,” she said and this time Nadiyya joined in. The tamer from Shadedstreams was, apparently, capable of being very loud indeed and their combined volume shook the air around them as if it was physically in pain. The cracks widened and widened, letting the sound of chanting pour through along with the light. Siren began to see shadows within it – human shadows – standing in a circle all around them. The cracks grew and grew and-
Nadiyya
screamed again and this time it was Siren’s turn to cover her ears for it was a
shriek, it seemed, that should wake the dead.
The cracks widened more and then the very air about them seemed to
shatter. There was a sound like
something snapping, light flooded everything and the chanting filled the air.
“Ellis!” Siren shouted as soon as she saw her boyfriend standing across the circle from her, with Annabella a little to one side. “Ellis, what are you doing?”
“They look like they’re being controlled,” Nadiyya said, “by that.” She pointed at a figure standing behind Siren, clutching at its strange, coralline head and doubled-over with pain. Slowly, the figure brought itself upright and glared at the two women with a look of such otherworldly hate and malice that Siren found herself taking a step back without even thinking.
“You dare to defile this place!” it said and its voice was like a choir of horrors. “You dare to enter our sanctuary unbidden!”
“We were just following our friends, who you seem to have taken without permission!” Siren replied, angrily.
“Permission? What permission do we need to use tools like these? Tools, the seeds of which we planted over countless millennia. They are ours! They are ours, every atom of them and we will not relinquish them until their job is done!”
Nadiyya drew her blades and Siren readied her cutlass. “Are you sure about that?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” the figure said and if its face had not been contorted beyond human expectation, Siren might have thought it was smiling at her – the self-satisfied smile of the victorious villain, “quite.”
And then the chanting of those around them grew in tumultuous crescendo: a song of strange whispering, guttural, clicking sounds and words which, unlike the screams, seemed not to affect the figure at all.
And the light
grew bright. And Siren felt the world shift
around her and her heart sank.
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