Within the puzzling, ancient space
Secrets of a long-dead race.
The cat had disappeared.
Mekka had been following it down the hallway, which remained perfectly straight and unchanged; the same infuriating black-and-silver pattern continuing unbroken on all sides. No corners, doorways or side corridors.
Nothing.
Nothing but the same infinite, claustrophobic purgatory… and then the cat was simply gone.
The Angel stopped walking. He spun to look behind him.
No cat.
He closed his eyes, feeling his heart rate increase dramatically. Thinking he had either lagged behind or carelessly wandered too far ahead, the urge to run in either direction was great, but he knew if he did so, he would become lost all over again.
Did I imagine the cat? he thought, horrified. Was it an hallucination after all?? Or some kind of illusion conjured by the Pyramid…?
And then…
A meow, faintly, from somewhere to his right.
Mekka looked towards the sound, confused. There was nothing there, except for the wall, and nothing about the wall appeared different.
“Cat!” he yelled, glancing up and down the corridor. “Cat! Where are you?!”
Silence.
“Dammit!”
In frustration, Mekka kicked at the wall in front of him…
… and fell through it.
For a heartstopping moment, everything went black, and Mekka was convinced he had fallen into a void. An awful memory of plummeting into the Endless Pit flashed through his consciousness, and he would have screamed, except that a second later something hard and solid crashed into him.
It took him a stunned few seconds to realise that he was still alive, and lying on the floor.
He pushed himself up, tasting blood from a split lip and pain from a bruised chin. He could see little beyond the blue glow emanating from his headpiece, which illuminated his gloved hand wiping at his mouth. Feeling around, he determined that he was in another hallway of the same dimensions as the one he had left, and the glow revealed the same pattern was inlaid into its smooth, metal-like surface.
Getting to his feet, he placed his left hand against the wall and looked behind him, but there was nothing there but impenetrable darkness.
I must have fallen through an invisible opening, he surmised, but he didn’t dare an attempt to go back the way he had come. This pitch-black hallway was not exactly an improvement in his circumstances, but it was at least different…
Keeping his fingers in contact with the wall, he made his way forward.
Mekka walked for what seemed like an excruciatingly long time. He tried calling for the cat several times more, but though he strained his ears for the slightest sound, there was no response. The cat had vanished like a shadow, and the silence was oppressive.
Sweat beaded on his skin, and his breathing and heartbeat and footsteps sounded far too loud. For the first time, Mekka began to understand his poor friend Aari’s phobia of Grath Ardan. He had the distinctly unpleasant feeling that the further he wandered into this unfathomable Black Pyramid, the harder it was going to be to find his way out again. It was like delving into a cave system that became narrower and narrower until it crushed the life out of you…
Swallowing, he kept the fear at bay with the thought that Ferrian was in here too, somewhere.
Mekka refused to contemplate the worst. He would keep going until he found his friend, one way or another…
Damnable cat! he thought scathingly. The wretched thing could at least have led him somewhere more interesting…
The thought had barely finished forming when the hallway he was following simply… ended.
There was no gradual dimming of the blackness, no glimpse of light or outline of a doorway. Mekka simply stumbled all of a sudden into a room.
Lit by the now-familiar dreary grey light, it was exactly the same size and shape as the fountain room: hexagonal and surrounded by pillared arched alcoves. There was no fountain in the centre, however, and no eerie, triangular black portals, but the room was replicated above his head like the first had been. The floor tiles were startling blue and white, an incongruous splash of colour like those that had lined the water basin; the geometric arrangement of trigon and silvertine continued around the walls.
Four of the alcoves were sealed off with something that looked like glass, indistinguishable forms lurking in the shadows within them.
Blinking in the abrupt change of light, relieved to finally be free of the endless corridors, Mekka nevertheless proceeded cautiously into the room.
He didn’t like the look of those alcoves.
The blue glow of his headpiece reflected in the glass as he approached one. Staring past his own image, he could see some kind of creature behind it – taxidermied or preserved by some other means. It had the head of a bull, an obscenely-muscled and furred humanoid body and thick, black-scaled legs ending in viciously clawed feet. Huge, black leathery wings were folded at its back.
Its dark eyes were glassy and devoid of life.
Disturbed, Mekka moved to the next alcove.
This one was an immense black serpent, with no wings or limbs, but its head was narrow, horned and Dragon-like, with striking yellow, wedge-shaped eyes that glared out at the Angel with impossible vengeance.
Despite himself, Mekka gasped and took an involuntary step backwards.
Something tangled up in his legs and he tripped and fell, for the second time, to the floor. There was a yowl and a flash of furry shadow out of his peripheral vision.
But Mekka was preoccupied staring up at the creature behind the glass.
Its head was unquestionably that of a Muron.
What were the Ancients doing in here? he thought, horrified. Evidently, they had experimented with creating animal, Human and Angel hybrid abominations…
Another revelation slashed through the first like a knife.
Is this where the Murons were created?!
Recovering from his shock, he climbed to his feet. Taking a deep breath, he turned to see the cat sitting indignantly in the middle of the room, spiky tail curled over his feet, as though incensed that the Angel had stepped on him.
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Mekka strode over to him, returning the glare.
Deciding that his point was made, the cat yawned, stretched, then sauntered over and rubbed himself against Mekka’s leg. Then he flopped down on the floor and rolled over, gazing up at Mekka with round yellow eyes, his head upside down, ear squashed, and his little legs in the air.
You can’t be mad at me, he seemed to say. I am far too cute.
Sighing, shaking his head, Mekka knelt and rubbed the cat’s furry belly, then scratched his chin.
“You little monster,” he chastised the cat aloud, then paused at his own words. He glanced at the cat’s scaly leg and tail.
This cat was one of those experiments.
And he had survived.
And he was roaming around free inside the Pyramid.
Mekka’s wing feathers prickled. He stared again at the glassed alcoves.
Eyes, dim and glazed over, stared back at him from behind the room’s dark reflections. More of them, creepily, peered out from their reversed positions overhead. There were, in total, eight of the glass enclosures, all containing some kind of lifeless monstrosity.
Slowly, Mekka placed a hand on the hilt of one of his daggers.
Nothing moved.
The cat purred loudly in the silence.
Mekka studied the room for a minute more, then rose and began walking purposefully towards the far wall. One of the archways was not sealed off, and appeared to lead into another room.
He had no desire to stay in this one a second longer than he had to.
The cat followed, silent save for the slight awkward tap of his reptilian talons on the tiles.
The next room resembled the previous one in configuration, but the arched alcoves were empty and the tiled pattern on the floor had returned to black and silver.
Dominating this room, however, was a large pyramid-shaped structure, perhaps twenty feet in height, made of hexagonal panes of clear glass. It was raised slightly off the floor on a black dais.
It appeared to be another enclosure of some kind, but it was empty.
The room was replicated, like the others, on the ceiling. A second pyramid hung inverted over the first, their tips almost touching, with only about a foot of space between them.
This pyramid was not empty.
It was filled with something white.
Mekka stared up at it, breathless. White flakes whirled around inside it in a soundless frenzy, like a trapped blizzard.
Like… Winter…
Eyes going wide, Mekka raced forward. Spreading his wings, he leapt upwards until he was level with the inverted glass pyramid.
Frost coated the inside of the glass in a sparkling feathery shroud, but he thought he could make out a dim shape, suspended upside down in the heart of the storm.
“Ferrian!” Mekka placed a hand on the glass.
Immediately, the Angel fell upwards, and for the third time that day, crashed into the floor.
“Argh…” Clutching his head, he pushed himself up. The Winter-filled pyramid was now the right way up; the empty pyramid and the floor he had been standing on seconds earlier loomed overhead.
At least he had learned something: parts of the Black Pyramid did indeed behave like Grath Ardan.
A pale white light emanated from the snowy enclosure, casting a whirling shadowy pattern on the floor, making it appear, unnervingly, as though the geometric tiles were moving.
Mekka shoved himself to his feet, moving quickly to the side of the pyramid.
“Ferrian!” he yelled.
There was no response or change from within, and little could be seen through the dense raging snow and ice.
But Mekka was convinced that he was in there, bottled up like some kind of… specimen…?
The idea that Ferrian could be taxidermied like those monsters in the other room caused the blood to leach from his skin.
Without another thought, he pulled both silver daggers from their sheaths, gave a cry of fury and leapt onto the pyramid, stabbing downwards.
The glass did not shatter, as he had expected, but the opposite happened – the force of his blow repelled him backwards, throwing him across the room to smash into the stone pillar of an archway.
This… bloody Pyramid is… kicking my arse, he thought as he lay on the floor, gasping.
Painfully, he pushed himself to his knees. He flexed his wings; fortunately, they were not broken.
He looked back at the snow-filled pyramid enclosure, which remained unscathed.
His dark green eyes narrowed.
Like hell it is…
Snatching up his fallen daggers, he forced himself to his feet and stumbled back over to it. He studied the pyramid’s smooth sides more carefully, but could see no sign of any door, hatch, hinges or any possible way of opening it.
Anxiety ripped through him. If Ferrian had been inside that thing since they had entered, there was a very real possibility that he could freeze to death within his own magic. His Winter had killed him before, and this time there was no Dragon hanging around to scoop up his soul and stuff it back into his body.
Mekka had no intention of seeing his friend turned into a cadaver a second time…
He turned his attention to the dais that the pyramid was sitting on. It was made of trigon; black, shiny, metallic and smooth. It slanted outwards, then back underneath at an angle, until it met the floor. The whole structure appeared to be seamless.
There HAS to be a way to open this damned thing!
Crouching, he peered at the recessed underside of the platform.
The shadows were deep there, and he would not have noticed anything if it hadn’t been for the soft blue glow of his head-wings, which were just bright enough to reveal something odd.
It was a small triangular patch blacker than the trigon, reflecting no light.
Black as a void.
Lifting one of his daggers, Mekka touched it, very gently, to the patch.
Nothing happened, but the patch was definitely solid matter.
He tried pressing his dagger against it more firmly, but immediately felt resistance, and the dagger sprang back, repelled.
Silvertine does not work here, he thought.
Sheathing his daggers, he hesitated, then reached out and touched the triangular shape with his hand.
A strange chill passed through him, but otherwise: nothing.
A thought occurred. Against his better judgement, shaking his head, he pulled off his glove, and flexed his hand in dismay, as though it was the last time he was ever going to see it.
Taking a deep breath, wincing, he placed it upon the patch.
It glowed blue.
Surprised, he pulled his hand away. Then he noticed that something had changed on the upper side of the dais.
An array of elaborate blue symbols and lines had materialised across the polished black surface. It looked like a language of some kind, but one that Mekka did not recognise, and could make no sense of. He stood frowning down at it.
Whispers murmured at the edge of his hearing, those insidious voices that he knew and did not know. He felt suddenly strange, light-headed and disassociated, the pyramid and the room around him becoming inconsequential and distant, his fear and pain fading with them. Only the symbols mattered, and he began to realise that he did understand their meaning…
… and their meaning was beyond mere knowledge or instruction… it was beauty, a beauty based on logic that yearned to awaken, a profound eternal truth…
A furry black shape intruded on Mekka’s consciousness, luminous yellow eyes filling his vision.
With a start, Mekka jumped back.
“Cat!” he yelled.
The cat had jumped up onto the dais and was sitting on the symbols.
Mekka grabbed him in annoyance and shoved him off… but something had happened.
Three of the symbols turned white; the rest of them vanished. The entire glass pyramid turned opaque silver, obscuring everything within.
Mekka stared up at it in horror, then whirled on the cat. “Cat, what the hell have you—”
The pyramid began to disintegrate. Starting at the tip, the hexagonal panels disappeared, one by one in rapid succession. Above it, the other pyramid collapsed as well, a mirror to the first.
There was no chance for further thought or words, for the Winter escaped. It blasted forth in all its freezing fury, flattening both Mekka and the cat to the floor, swarming snow and ice across all the space around it.
Crawling through the blizzard, Mekka found the cat and pulled the animal under his coat, then huddled with his wings over his head, hoping for the Winter to blow itself out.
Endless minutes passed, but eventually the storm subsided. The wind died out, leaving snowflakes drifting softly in its wake.
The cat squirmed out from beneath the frozen Angel, but wasn’t impressed with the snow beneath his paws, and meowed in complaint. He butted Mekka with his head.
Ice cracked and slid off Mekka’s dark feathers as he stirred.
Numbly, he lifted his head.
Everything was still, and white. Both of the glass pyramids were gone. Ignoring the cat’s plaintive cries, Mekka got unsteadily to his feet, his only concern the mound of snow covering the black dais.
Shoving his way through the cold drifts, Mekka reached the dais and climbed onto it. Pushing through more snow, he came across a glimpse of grey cloth.
Digging frantically, he uncovered a body. With a cry of desperation, he shovelled snow away from him, and dragged his friend out.
Brushing ice away from his face and hair, Mekka removed his gloves and checked Ferrian for signs of life.
He found nothing. His skin was extremely cold and very, very pale.
Mekka hugged Ferrian to him. “No,” he whispered. “Please…”
Please, he cannot die in this place…
He looked up, beseechingly, at the frozen room, as though somewhere in this godforsaken Pyramid was a miraculous power that could bring his friend back to him, even though it had sealed him up like an insect to study. He wondered, despairingly, what the Pyramid had been trying to achieve – to test the extent of Ferrian’s magic, or purge him of it, perhaps…?
Then he felt the pulse, where his hand still rested on his friend’s neck. It was slow, but there. His breath was a faint whisper.
Ferrian was alive… barely.
Mekka let out a relieved sob.
After a minute or two, he scooped Ferrian up, wincing with the pain of his bruises, and carried him off the dais. In the wall opposite was an archway – the same one Mekka had been thrown against. The Angel slogged through the snow, heading into the next room.
Ice splayed across the floor and walls from the doorway, but petered out about halfway across the room. Mekka took Ferrian to a dry, empty alcove and sat down with his back against the wall, holding Ferrian against him for warmth. He wrapped the young sorcerer’s grey cloak around him, brushing off as much of the ice as possible. Then he took off his own jacket and draped that over him as well. Vainly, he looked around for something to light a fire with, but there was nothing. The room they had entered was barren, devoid of anything but stone arches and black-and-silver tiles.
He sighed wearily. The cat crawled up onto Ferrian, shivering. Mekka stroked his black fur until he settled into a tight, furry ball.
Then the Angel hunched into his wings, closed his eyes and tried to stop his own body from trembling.