Returning to the flight cube I found the echo awaiting me in clear distress. Their features were blocky and crude, yet dismay was obvious as I entered the small mobile office.
“First Researcher! You’re safe!”
The relief was apparent in their tone and gesticulation, but I felt only guilt at how I was deceiving the all-too-human simulacrum. It had been one thing when I thought them just a facsimile of a person, but synthetic though they were, it was hard to imagine their feelings were false.
“I’m sorry for worrying you… Echo. Are you alright?”
The magical person made no objection to being so dubbed – there were more pressing matters and I felt the need for a name by which to call so… human an entity.
“Yes, First Researcher, however I have been unable to receive any transmissions from the capital, or from any other source.”
“I don’t think we can expect any help for now.”
“Were you able to discover any new information in the research station?”
“Yes, but… it only left me with more questions. It seems that whatever happened occurred during an experiment with the void reactors and that ‘subspace’ thing. Something went very wrong.”
I related the state of the station, as best I could recall it, Echo listening intently. I spared them the details of the gruesome fate of those researchers who’d escaped the initial event – for all I knew Echo had known them personally once. Perhaps I was really sparing myself, from having to recount what I’d seen and read.
The words were burnt into my eyes, visible whenever they closed. So were the desiccated remains of what had once been living people, trying desperately to reach out to someone, to anyone.
The shock was less than that of the first corpse I’d found, but these had been so much more recognizable. Theirs was a subtler horror, but one that lingered. Whenever I thought of the time they must have spent there the creeping pain grew rather than subsiding. The typist had escaped death, yet they had been trapped and dying, so very alone, wondering why no-one would answer.
“Thank you for the additional details, First Researcher. Without further information I cannot gauge the nature of the event you described, so I would like to recommend that we return to the Research Institute. It is too dangerous to remain here.”
“It’s not safe there either, Echo. You said yourself that they aren’t responding to communications. Whatever happened down here affected them too.”
“That is possible, First Researcher, however rescue will surely arrive if we wait there. The Research Institute is also exceptionally well defended. For your own safety we shall return there at once.”
Even as they spoke, I heard – felt – the thrum of magic as the flight cube prepared itself to take off.
“Wait, hold on!”
Loathe as I was to disabuse Echo of the fiction of my identity, the anomaly and the strange catastrophe it caused were too important to ignore. Some monumental disaster had been unleashed by the Dweomer. If it went ignored it could claim many more lives yet.
I sighed softly as Echo looked over, confused, poised to at any moment spirit me away from the anomaly.
“Do you remember when I arrived at the office earlier?”
“Of course, First Researcher, but please postpone further memory testing until we have left this area.”
“I know you don’t want to think about this, but you have to. This is vital. The lives of everyone in the Underworld may depend on it, so please, hear me out.”
Echo’s eyes widened, a Dweomer mark of skepticism, but the flight cube’s hum softened.
“Do you remember how long I was gone before that?”
“Yes, First Researcher, you were at least 281,474,976,710,656 quarters late for work.”
“Good, you still remember that clearly. But given my health and age, both of which you are intimately familiar with, how many quarters could I plausibly have lived after I last came to work? And was my body emitting huge amounts of magical essence at that time?”
Echo hesitated at that, the conviction on their face faltering.
“First Researcher, I am experiencing elevated failure rates during information encoding and retrieval. My resonance crystal may also be experiencing malfunction. Perhaps these issues are causing some confusion?”
“If your memory isn’t working, how about this; tell me, could any Dweomer at all live for… uh… trillions of quarters?”
The echo opened their mouth to speak, but the emulated jaw simply hung, like a frozen program.
“And even if that were possible, where has everyone been? Did you see even a single person in all that time, until I arrived?”
Echo shook their head slowly.
“Something terrible happened. Not just to the research station, but to the whole Dweomer Empire. They can’t help us anymore. It’s up to us to figure out what happened and to stop it from happening again.”
“First… Researcher….”
The voice was thick with feeling, halting with each word, longer pauses intermingling painfully.
“I… do not... want to be… separated from you… again….”
I pressed my palm to the glass between us.
Echo pressed their own hand back against mine. They seemed almost surprised at their own action.
“We can go together, Echo. You and me. If we don’t do this we may both be dead anyway, if whatever’s down there is just ignored.”
There was silence.
It felt an eternity before Echo spoke again, long enough that I even feared they might have broken down.
“Yes… First Researcher.”
~~~
It was a short flight down from the research station to reach the chamber of the anomaly.
Not so short, however, that I hadn’t time to grow anxious. We, Echo and I, had no idea what was awaiting us down there, but whatever it was seemed responsible for the destruction of an entire civilization.
Yet we would be facing it alone, a single human girl and a sentient spell.
It was hard not to draw a parallel with my ill-fated trip to Grand Chasm.
Echo wouldn’t think any less of me if I just changed my mind. We could return to the capital, and then I could have them fly us up to the surface, or at least somewhere close. Given a day or two I might be back in the Eyrie, safe and sound.
Aellope was in my thoughts, as she so often had been. Her warm smile filled my mind. Beside her were Chione and Agytha, and all the other harpies I’d grown to care for.
The last time I’d seen them all had been… the dream. They had been consumed, by black, fetid oil.
It was not dissimilar to the residue that had befouled the research station.
In that nightmare they had gathered to condemn me, yet I could hardly blame them, as now it was I who was contemplating condemning them.
Maybe I hadn’t learnt anything from the trauma of Chasm.
If the lesson was to sacrifice other people for my safety then I would prefer not to learn it.
Stolen novel; please report.
~~~
Near silently the flight cube thrummed through the huge square tunnel.
Nearing the very base of that vertical shaft I felt a strange shudder run through the vessel, turbulence apparently.
With a jolt we were through, into the chamber of the anomaly.
Echo had activated ‘windows’ in the sides of the flight cube, transparent sections through which I could observe the colossal cavern outside.
The sight was difficult to put in words.
As large as any Underworld space I’d yet seen, the chamber was like a gaping wound in the planet. The surfaces were uneven and jagged, great blades and fissures of stone disturbing them everywhere, like an explosion frozen in time, captured in the bedrock. From the broken walls and ceiling burst a tangle of roots of all sizes, some thicker than the Dweomer road itself had been. All was coated in thick veins of black tar.
Through the dark pollutant the surfaces still smoldered with light, as if the detonation was yet to burn out. A closer look at the ceiling as it receded showed an encrusting of raw gemstones, lit by their own overflowing mana, not immolation. The whole chamber was aglow with immeasurable essence, even the air dense with power.
Yet many miles below us the floor of the cave was a stygian depth.
Even the roots disappeared into caliginous night, no trace of light escaping.
It was as if the world simply ended there.
With a cold clarity I realized it might well do. There was no reason Arcadia should obey Earth’s laws. I had only assumed that this planet would contain the same molten core as my previous one.
I was only dissuaded from the notion when we descended past the curve of a nearby root and I looked out to the horizon.
There I saw it.
The anomaly.
The Golden Sepulchre.
Nothing else on this world could be so divinely radiant.
A perfect sphere in outline, it hung motionless in the space, yet everything seemed to bend around it, to vibrate and shudder in its very presence. It was as though even reality trembled at the presence of the discontinuity in the world.
The shape was purest gold, yet the surface was not metallic – it was no surface at all. Countless overlapping curves etched out the shape, yet there was nothing corporal. Rather than a surface, my eyes perceived a void, a concavity in space where innumerable spheres seemed to touch, as if dimensions beyond my perception were overlapping to create the object from their shadows.
But the anomaly was far from dark. Dazzling golden sunlight itself seemed to be spun into the structure. Though it was dazzling to behold, the paradoxical anomaly cast no light out.
The veil of night that washed over the lower reaches of the chamber curved around the lower third of the form, held back by unseen force, as if not even darkness could approach it.
I released a long, slow breath I couldn’t recall drawing.
If it was truly the Sepulchre, the legendary tomb of a fallen god, then… how could it have caused such devastation? Yet there was no room left for doubt that it was. I gazed upon the work of the gods, of that I was certain.
A grim thought came to me, of the ancient tombs of Earth and the curses said to be wrought upon any who should defile them.
The Dweomer had attempted to do just that.
But that was just supposition. Surely not all gods were so callous and cruel as Myr. My momentary certitude slipped however, as I looked about once more at the shattered cavern and recalled the horrors of the research station.
“What do you make of all this, Echo?”
My companion was quiet for a moment, an unusual delay for them. When they spoke the uncertainty was clear in their tone.
“It is difficult to say, First Researcher. The chamber did not contain organic matter or such dense deposits of gemstones in the past. Nor do I have any record of the unidentified matter adhering to the surfaces.”
“And the… anomaly?”
“Unchanged.”
“What about beneath us? What is that?”
“I am uncertain, First Researcher.”
“Does the floor ever just… end, if you go deep enough underground? Is there a bottom to the Underworld? With just blackness beneath it?”
“No such phenomenon exists in my records, First Researcher, however, as we have discussed, my memory is presently incomplete. I apologize.”
“What was down there in the past?”
“The lower portion of the chamber was stone, similar to the upper portion. Many void reactors and research devices were installed. None are presently visible to me.”
“Can you… scan the chamber?”
“Scan, First Researcher?”
“You know, use some sort of sensors to… investigate what’s going on,” I explained sheepishly.
“I am using my vision and hearing, First Researcher. I do not have any other senses available to me. Are you… not already aware of this?”
“Oh, naturally I am, I was just… thinking about some upgrades we should make. When your memory is fixed.”
“Yes, First Researcher.”
Even if they were placated for now, Echo looked skeptical.
“Well… just let me know if you see anything significant.”
We soon reached a point approximately midway between the ceiling and the darkling abyss below. I was hesitant to get closer to the ‘floor’ of the space, as was Echo, but in the end we agreed to fly lower and investigate.
Descending further I could make some scant sense of what we were seeing.
The veins of oil running up the walls grew thicker the lower we flew, meshing together and thickening until they formed a solid layer. The source was the sea of black beneath us.
In the bottom third of the chamber the oil had gathered, thick and caliginous, a tenebrous ocean that seemed impossibly devoid of light and life, like a void in reality to compete with the Sepulchre.
Where roots plunged into the mire it penetrated and permeated their wood, seeping up through the trunks, dying them black, corrupting and twisting the plants. A close pass revealed broken and oozing layers of bark, unidentified growths pushing out to split the skin. The largest of them glowed, not with light but dimness, as if they were drinking in illumination.
Where it met rock walls the oil attacked those too, eating into the stone and climbing the sides. In one place however, oil rose up with nothing to cling to, a pillar emerging from the vastness to tower a mile high.
Approaching, I realized that the oil was not rising– it was falling. It welled from thin air in plumes, as if pumping from fissures in space itself.
I soon picked out more such sources, scattered all over the chamber ‘floor’, weeping like ruptured wounds, flowing with diseased blood.
“Echo… what’s happening here? Where is this… stuff coming from?”
“I cannot be certain… however this distribution of sources matches records of the locations of the most potent void reactions.”
I thought back to the words left etched on an ancient screen back in the research station. They had been conducting a ‘subspace intrusion test’, and according to the readout it had caused some sort of ‘subspace breach’.
“Are those the places where the researchers were experimenting on subspace intrusion?”
“I believe so, First Researcher.”
“Then… could this stuff be coming out of subspace?”
Echo widened their eyes, but something of the idea seemed to have merit – they didn’t shoot it down right away.
“That… should not be possible, First Researcher. And yet your postulate is difficult to refute. Subspace does not permit corporeal matter…. Why have previous subspace intrusions not revealed….”
Their expression grew clouded.
“I apologize, First Researcher, I am having difficulty accessing further information on this topic. This may be due to memory corruption, or additional security.”
“Well, can you tell me anything about what subspace actually is?”
“I… apologize, First Researcher.” Their brow furrowed with effort as they answered. “I am… having difficulty accessing… further information on this topic. Something is… wrong with my memory….”
“Echo? Are you okay?”
“Yes, I… you…. Who are you?”
My breath caught in my chest as Echo looked at me as if seeing me for the first time.
If they realized I wasn’t the real First Researcher then, at so precarious a moment, I had no idea what they might do.
“Echo, it’s… it’s me. You know me, don’t you? You were taking me to investigate the anomaly.”
“Yes, First Researcher.”
The confusion seemed to have passed, but I didn’t dare ask any further questions after that. As much as I wanted to believe in my new friend, they clearly weren’t in a normal state of mind – whatever normal was for people of living magic.
What was clear was that neither of us had any idea what the substance beneath us actually was. I was certain, however, that it was something fundamentally wrong. Perhaps that was because I had seen it in my dream, before ever seeing it in the waking world, but I felt there was more to it than that.
I had Echo fly us lower; as close as I dared approach the expanse which blotted out one half of the world.
Reaching out with my senses, I looked into the morass.
Straining my eyes I searched for images, pushing my senses I felt for mana.
Peering into the somber ichor I saw nothing at all, only pitch black, and yet… I could swear looked deep into… something. It was without form or knowledge, yet I could feel a dreadful awareness.
It peered back at me.
Malevolence filled my mind. Unbidden images came, flashes of terror and anguish.
I was in Grand Chasm, being burned and stabbed all over, blinded and dying, then falling, falling, falling….
Dark water slammed against me like a wall.
Into the murk I sank like a stone. I tried to swim, kicking my legs and clawing for air.
The surface was mere inches away when I felt a presence beneath me, in the deep water. There was a void in the depths.
Horrendously strong limbs invaded my body, violating my flesh even as they dragged me down into the brackish depths to drown.
Crushed and immobile, I was pinned by the layers of an ancient ward, caged in a suffocating deathtrap countless miles beneath the earth, in the dead ruins of a long lost people….
There was no hope of ever being found. No rescue could ever come.
The energies of the barrier crackled and corroded my skin.
My flesh seared, agony wracking my very soul as hell consumed me, lighting and lava, poison and acid tearing me apart endlessly.
A shuddering breath brought the flight cube and chamber back to me.
My hands trembled. A cold sweat beaded on my skin under the crosshatches of my spongy leather suit.
Echo seemed not to have noticed anything wrong. Had I really experienced all of that without moving an inch?
I dared a glance back down at the plane of evil below. It seemed just empty void once more, but I knew better now.
I couldn’t let this substance escape the chamber.
Echo and I had no idea what it was, but we had to find some way to contain it.
But first we needed to get as far from it as we could. Echo had no objection to that.
“Can we get closer to the anomaly?” I asked as we pulled back away from the menacing sea below.
“I can take us to the minimum permitted range, First Researcher, however I will not approach any closer, as doing so would pose a significant risk to your safety. So please do not ask.”
They gave me a meaningful look, one almost reproachful.
“Have I ever told you that you’re overprotective?”
“I do not believe so, First Researcher. You have, however, told me I am interfering and annoying. Perhaps it is to that which you refer?”
“Actually, I think I was wrong there. You’re not annoying.”
“I will endeavor to be less interfering.”
Was that a trace of a smile on Echo’s features, I wondered. Rendered as they were in perpendicular lines, it was hard to tell.
After gaining height the flight cube began towards the anomaly at the heart of the cavern.
The flight cube was approaching at dozens, perhaps hundreds of miles an hour, but the anomaly barely seemed to move. It steadily expanded, until it filled my whole vision ahead, yet still it was far away.
Below us the ichor falls grew larger and more numerous the nearer we came to the anomaly, but my attention was focused on the golden form itself.
Despite the distance, I could feel the enormity of the presence before me. My skin prickled, tingles running through my bones as we drew nearer, a sense of great pressure acting on me even through the window of the flight cube. I anchored myself in place, but objects inside the office were pushed up against the back wall by the unseen force. I heard the thrum of whatever engines we had intensify as they worked harder against the resistance.
When we finally halted we were perhaps ten yards from what should have been a surface. The repulsion at this point was enough that Echo informed me we could only remain there for a few minutes before the flight cube would be overburdened and should need to take greater distance. With my vision it should be close enough.
I opened the door, despite Echo’s protests.
The air was searing hot, yet oddly still, despite the force the anomaly exerted.
I looked directly into the opening in space.
Layers overlapped as the impressions of uncountable spheres came together, a fractal dance of golden orbs in constant motion, extending into dimensions I could barely perceive, let alone comprehend. The Sepulchre was as much a void as an object, with properties of both yet neither.
But something did exist there. With all obstacles removed I could feel it as clearly as if it were in my own hands, so powerfully radiant was the essence moving within.
I could hear it too. Rather than any scent, the atmosphere carried sounds to my ear through the quiet of the cavern. They were voices, thousands, perhaps millions of speakers, all singing together, forming a shifting harmonious tone as they blended into each other. The monument was speaking to me.
My mind struggled to construct an image from the flood of sensory information, my attempts to decipher what I saw frustrated by the sheer load of alien information.
I sharpened my focus, set aside everything else.
Just as when I had first released my mana, now was the time for absolute concentration.
It came more easily this time. I had an astonishing point on which to focus myself.
My world grew sharper, vivid and suddenly more real. In that moment I was entirely present.
There were traces in the anomaly I could grasp.
The forms were so intricate, so elaborate that I couldn’t hold them all in my mind at once, yet parts I could perceive and make sense of.
The voices spoke a language so dense and heavy it hurt to listen, but as I slowly separated the speakers I could understand snatches of meaning. There was something familiar to the voices. I had heard speech like this before.
I caught a full word for the first time.
‘Tremble’
I knew in an instant where I had heard it before.
Nemoian. The language of the Stormqueens. The magical tongue Aellope used to conjure storm and lightning.
This speech was different; more powerful, more fundamental. Each could have been a thousand ideas, a million competing nuances. Yet the connection was undeniable. With that link more words revealed themselves, and with them I understood more of the form of the vast structure.
There were too many speakers for me to decode everything, too many by many orders, but if I could understand them, I could speak to them.
My mouth fought me, my mind reeling, consciousness wavering and body throbbing as I tried to shape even a single word, but I would not be refused. Whatever force resisted me could not silence me.
“What… are… you?”
Each word shook the flight cube as it emerged, violent with mana and compressed intent.
The anomaly gave no answer.
“Let… me… in.”
From unknown depths within I sensed a great, dizzying upheaval, as though my very soul were inverting.
Dark and oppressive power to make my seeping mana seem a joke welled up from unseen depths.
My body burned as something more than mere essence emerged, power and meaning inseparable, erupting through my flesh with a shock that for just a moment pushed back the very reality around me.
Weariness I hadn’t known since Earth came over me as I completed the phrase, but I could feel that something was happening.
The anomaly shimmered, resisting, then yielding to my will as my words penetrated it.
Layers shifted and parted, curves aligned.
A gleaming circle formed on a surface that wasn’t there.
I stepped forwards.