Episode Thirty-Five: Descent

They kerplunk onto the ground. Onto a dirt road. A dirt road that is rarely used. Surrounding the road is yellow and green grassland and savanna dotted with odd trees. Not a building, vehicle, or person in sight. Their horses snort and whicker next to them. After a few moments of being here, Castor realizes she doesn’t receive a vision. She looks to Ivetta in confusion.

A haze hangs in the distance. The islands, so often above in their adventures, are nowhere to be seen. “Do you guys see that haze?” Ivetta asks.

“That’s the only thing I see.” Castor says dejected. “I didn’t get a vision. I have no idea what we’re looking for or why we’re here.”

Tobias mounts his horse. His mount whinnies with happiness at finally being ridden again. “Well, we might as well take a look and see what that is. It is our only clue at the moment.” He offers a hand to Mary, who gets on behind him. The other two agree and get on their horses. Then all three head toward the haze.

They ride for an hour or so, the environment changing as they ride to more gray. The plants here are less plentiful. And the vegetation they do see seems to be sick, dead, or dying sparse grass. Further on they find no grass at all, only a barren gray dirt almost ashen. Soon they begin seeing litter. A little at first a bit of wooden refuse a bottle or two. Then more and more of it. Waste begins to pile up. Many of the items within are unrecognizable to the out-of-time-travelers. Glossy and thin plastic metal twist and warp. Old Tvs, microwaves, and brightly colored labels mix in with the muck. At one point they look up and find they can no longer see the sky, covered with the haze, the air is thick and harder to breathe.

Finally, they spot some people. They come out of bent metal shacks. A shanty town within the trash heaps. There’s a trail of people moving toward the center of ‘town.’ They move quickly toward it and so do they.

The people speak accented English and another language they, strangely, don't understand. All these people are dark skinned. Some take notice of the horse riding strangers but move on quickly, their attentions drawn elsewhere. Their conversations give nothing away to the newcomers. Small phrases like, “Go get grandma,” “Go wake your brother,” “Fetch water, we need to move.” Some seem panicked, others unconcerned.

They make it into the center among a throng of people. More shoddy buildings here sit squat and low. It seems large and pretty wide town, they can’t see edges. There are no walls surrounding it. Sloppy power lines are erected, stringing everywhere and connecting to various shanties. Many places are constructed of old, cheap concrete that is weathered and worn. Some even have rusted rebar protruding from their broken edges. Atop it all balances flat tin roofs. The only blots of color dot around are neon signs that spell out letters in a vast array of different languages. The only one in English that they spot is: “**EAT**” The other languages even if they did understand what they said just don’t make any sense to them.

Nearly all the people in town are doing the same thing. They peer into shop windows watching lit tvs inside. More are crowded around tiny picture boxes and phones in their hands. Tobias tries to see what the boxes are showing. They push through the crowds to see.

On the screen they see large silver birds. On the water are huge metal behemoths that house these birds. They fly off into the distance. The camera gets closer to the birds that charge at other birds, then back away. Seemingly a mating dance of some kind. At the corner of the box, a man with a stick with a black ball on the end of it speaks into the stick. He says many things but the only thing that really makes any sense to them is that, “...there are tensions in the East.”

Tobias looks about for any sort of indication as to where they are and finds an unfamiliar flag: Green, white, and green. Castor watches people closely and realizes they are only watching the boxes, not acting at all.

Ivetta dismounts, turns to a woman, and asks, “What’s going on?”

“What? Who are you? Why are you asking these stupid questions?”

“I’m not from here. Everyone seems—” She’s cut off by the broadcast on the boxes. They all hear a strange, horrible buzzing noise repeating in a pattern. Words scroll across the screen with the flag stating: “**SEEK COVER IMMEDIATELY**.”

Suddenly, people are terrified and try to flee. All at once. They shove and push, jostling Ivetta. Castor tries to grab her but the people are too packed. She falls to the ground getting stepped on and kicked but eventually she makes it to her horse and grabs herself up and astride. Hundreds of panicked people rush around. They try to move out of the area as well but it is difficult with their steeds.

A new terrifying sound blares above them, a horribly loud, out of tune, siren.

Tobias rears up his horse and is off like a shot but both Castor and Ivetta’s horses also rear up in fear and send them hard to the ground. Their ears are ringing but they get up. Some bodies already litter the ground around them, trampled by the stampede. Still others cling to life, begging for aid. Women, children, and elderly among the fallen. Castor and Ivetta get back on their steeds and ride after Tobias.

Audible cries surround them. They ride as fast as they can and are just about to make it to the edge of town when they see it. Off in the distance, on the horizon a white streak. Just one. Then another. And another. Until there are dozens. Then hundreds, perhaps even thousands. Streaks from the opposite direction fly as well. Some collide in mid-air. Far away explosions erupt massive fireballs billow, larger than anything Castor could ever even attempt to do in aschar.

Then their eardrums burst. And a wave of hot air throws them backward into a ditch. The shock wave tosses their horses away like toys. The streaks are close and grow ever closer by the second.

A blinding white light fills everything and through their ruptured eardrums, they hear and feel the very earth beneath them shatter.

Then there is nothing.

The sound stops. The wind is gone. And there is no movement of any kind.

They find themselves on the ground, in the ditch where they fell. Their eyes water and their vision slowly returns. And they see…nothing.

Tobias turns to Mary, his lips move but the words are muffled and unheard. He feels the vibration of his voice but doesn’t hear it himself. She makes out the words from his lips, “are you alright?” She drops the small shield she’d made of garbage she used to try protecting them both and merely shrugs. Ivetta too, asks after Castor’s wellbeing, finding the same dilemma. Castor pats herself down, finding nothing broken merely gives a nod before pointing to Ivetta, her face set in the same curiosity. Ivetta finds herself undamaged as well apart from the deafness.

They stand up and clamber out of the ditch, making sure they’re all alright. They see in the distance the massive fireball billowing toward the heavens, they don’t feel the heat but simply watch it grow larger and larger. The column of fire growing ever larger.

Castor turns away from the horrible sight to see if she can find her steed. She does indeed find Azur but not as she expected.

He is flipped on his back, his legs in the air. His eyes wide and fearful but he is frozen in place mid-fall. Ivetta’s horse is the same. As is Tobias.’ All the unfortunate people surrounding them too are frozen in place as if made into statues. They are not warm, nor cold. They don’t breathe. The fireball too, now, is frozen. Nothing, save the four of them, moves.

Ivetta pulls out the pocket watch and finds time has come to a full stop.

They hear a woosh behind them. They whirl to see what caused the noise and find a white, glowing portal. Just big enough for them all to enter but simmering a solid white. Castor tries to move her horse to bring them with. She tries and tries but they don’t budge. Eventually, she gives up and tries to test it. She gingerly pokes just her hand inside and her entire body vanishes. Ivetta, hell-bent on fulfilling her mission and protecting her best friend, follows suit.

Tobias looks at Ellen Mary and sighs. He too follows them into the portal, Mary on his tail.

They all find themselves arriving together inside a long, white, pulsing corridor. The walls move, made of shiny stained glass imperfections in glass that make it seem textured. While they look at the walls they seem rigid, solid but at the edges of vision, the material moves and bends. It is not bright but they can see the corridor. There is a door behind them, they see the desolate waste they just left but then it closes. In front of them, quite far, they can barely make out a metallic door, a jarring juxtaposition to its surroundings.

They move the only way they can: toward it. The door is old but it is a different style handle than they’ve ever seen. It turns downward. Evident rust on the door marks age and indents. But they can’t quite tell how the marks came about. Ivetta draws her gun just in case.

Castor reaches out with her right hand and turns the handle. Tobias moves in front of Castor. She protests, "We go together or not at all. I can hold my own." Not willing to die on this hill Tobias relents and they move in together.

They step forward and fall, comically, into a bucket of water. It overturns soaking them both. The mop in the bucket teeters over and knocks Castor on the head. They find themselves in a tiny room, a broom closet. "Ow." Castor rubs her head, "well that was unexpected." Ivetta and Mary join them but remain on their feet.

Behind them, the door they came through, shuts. With a huff and a grumble Tobias rights himself and opens the door in front of them. They open this door and find that the material of this place seems familiar, a black metal similar to the base underwater. Before them is a large room. On the left a rock protrudes. It seems that this place was built into the side of something, perhaps the side of a mountain. Most of the room is a workshop like in the base. Red lights light the room with a reddish glow. Another door on the far wall lets in a smidge of natural light. Most worryingly, in front of them on a wall, a door sits, huge indents push it outward, away from them, concave. Tobias does a quick scan for black goo but finds none.

Wooden work benches line the walls, sets of tools and cork boards with more tools rest above them. On the right there is a giant door. Natural light comes in from behind them. A small breeze tickles their necks. They turn to see a small window, a small opening sucks air out. They see clouds. They must be up quite high as they don’t see any land.

“Castor, can you detect magic?” Tobias requests as they suddenly realize their hearing has returned. She does so and finds none. She reports her findings. Ivetta inspects the dents in the door.

“Something much larger made these dents…”

Castor closes her eyes and reaches out to see if she can feel anything about this place. To her surprise she gleans nothing at all. Sure she did the spell right she tries again and finds absolutely no information about this place seems to exist. “...guys this place doesn’t seem to have a history— the spell, it’s never done that. It's always given me something— and I haven’t received a vision again…something isn’t right… there’s no information at all.” Ivetta checks the clock again and it does indeed move.

“Maybe we’re all dead…” Ivetta hypotheses. “That light…that explosion maybe it killed us.”

Castor squeezes out some of the water from her clothes and hair. “I… don’t know. I feel the wet…” The water splashes to the floor.

“Can you try and meditate? Get in contact with your other selves?”

“I can try…” She sits down, her back to a wall for several minutes and finds she just…can’t. Her brow furrows in frustration. “There’s nothing! There’s no one.”

“Then we should search physically for clues.” Tobias says and he moves to do so. He looks out the far window and sees a decayed metal platform with rusted edges. A flagpole stands on a bent railing, its colors threadbare and tattered but still recognizable as the same one from Paris. Also on the platform rests a large cylinder with an ‘x’ laid horizontally on top of it. They can see black cushioned seats inside it from an open door.

Castor tries to push open a door but finds it completely stuck, something large keeping it shut. Ivetta looks around the tool benches to find anything useful. She finds thick manuals written in French and a drill that Castor uses on the door. In the stack of manuals that are labeled for various instructions, she finds one that details how to fly a ‘helicopter’ with a helpful picture of the contraption outside on the cover. She flips through that one and finds that it is quite complicated but that there is also a setting called ‘autopilot’ that will fly for them. Printed in each of the manuals is: Ⓒ 2094 the 5th French Republic base in St. Paul Island. She calls Tobias over and hands him the book. He gleans what he can from the book, certainly more knowledge than he had.

Castor breaks through the door she’d been drilling and jolts forward at the sudden arrival at the other side. She pulls it back and a flurry of papers come out with it. Evidently a storage unit was holding the door closed. She picks up some of the papers and finds miscellaneous papers, requisition requests, leave slips, unimportant documents, at least concerning their current predicament. Now with a view of the inside, Castor pushes the cabinet in front of the door away with magic and opens the door.

In this room are long tables. It looks like people just got up in the middle of dinner. There is no food but blue plastic trays litter the tables, plates and cutlery atop them. Metal desks on the other side of the room with computers atop them draw Ivetta’s attention. Castor looks for where the filing cabinets came from and finds large scrapes on the floor from where they were dragged across the room. The rest of the room is spartan but includes a small staircase leading up. Castor goes up.

Surprisingly, the power remains on the computers. Ivetta pokes at the screen but when it does nothing, she types “open door” on the keyboard. Nothing happens.

Upstairs there is a hallway with many doors on either side. At the far end, a ladder leads up to a locked hatch. She peeks into the rooms on either side of the hall and finds a bed in front of the door. A shattered window sucks air out, the glass completely gone. The room is small and contains not much else, save a small water closet in the corner. She checks the other rooms and finds similar setups in each room. Not all windows are shattered but all the beds rest in front of the doors. On the doors are the same scratch marks. Ivetta gives up on the computer and joins Castor. She takes a closer look at the scratches. They’re both inside and outside the doors. “Something terrible happened here but there’s no blood, no bodies. Nothing.”

“They had a means of escape. So it begs the question, why didn’t they escape? Or did they? But they're ride is still here.”

Tobias comes up and joins them. He climbs the ladder and opens the hatch with ease then steps out. A moment later he calls down to the other three, “You all are gonna want to see this.” Mary, Ivetta, and Castor drop their search to join him. They all make it up the ladder into the harsh, cold wind.

They look out toward the horizon and there is nothing. A bottomless expanse of clouds stretches before them. Right off the edge of the platform is the end of this island. A nearly diamond shaped mountain holds them up, the base itself only a quarter of the size of the mountain. They can see other islands dot around them all about the same size: extremely small. Thousands of tiny tiny islands look as if they were shards from some great hammer fall of land. The clouds have soaked up the brilliant colors of sunset and float above and around the island. But below the clouds dissipate, they lose their puffy texture and instead become an orangey tinted haze. Looking at this grand expanse fills them all with unease. A gnawing, off, feeling tickles at the back of their throats. They stand on metal supported by thin beams of French engineering and ingenuity the only thing between them and the void.

Ivetta stutters, “there is something very wrong. The realms aren’t supposed to be this small.”

“This realm might be this collection of islands.” Tobias says. They see way off in the distance, darker clouds, thunderheads, moving closer.

Ivetta returns to the relative safety of inside the base, down the ladder. “Why don’t we look at that contraption on the platform? Maybe there’s something helpful inside it.” No one has any better ideas so they all move to do so heading outside once more into the wind. The platform itself has lost most of the handrails. They bend and twist off into the Caelium. Ivetta leads the way into the ‘X sphere.’ A screen states: “Awaiting input.” Static sounds over the radio and then a voice sounds. The same voice as MOI. She says “P-p-p-personnel detected. Awaiting i-i-input.”

“MOI? Is that you?” Castor asks with wonder. She doesn’t respond.

Tobias says, “Must be a relative. Activate autopilot.”

“Autopilot enabled.” MOI states. The ‘fasten seat belt’ sign dings and the door shuts. “Select d-destination.” They look at the display she brings up but many of the locations are corrupted. Only one symbol alights labeled “the source,” Castor presses it. The X atop the sphere begins to spin. At first quite loud but the noise dissipates as they reach speed leaving only small whirring engines above. Ivetta holds Mary’s shaking hand and Castor ties their belts to hold them in place.

They rise into the air but just as swiftly they begin descending. Their small craft heads through the orange mist. They move past the small islands around them. Some even have foliage. One appears to be a jungle forest. On another they see a few small animals, squirrels and such. The contraption runs silently now, no sound except the wind.

They go further and further down. It grows darker, the haze surrounding them completely inhibiting further observance. MOI automatically switches to radar. As they descend further and further they see rocks crop up out of the mist. The machine keeps a distance from them, guiding itself away from hitting the jagged points. On some of the rocks, long tendrils hang. They are a dark green and look like inverted kelp. It continues to grow darker as they plunge.

Mary is absolutely catatonic, Ivetta and Castor both trying to comfort but also not entirely confident. Tobias watches the radar warily and peers out at the void ready to wrest the controls at a moment's notice.

After some time they begin hearing noises, quite far away. Deep bellicose rumbles. They don’t recognize the noise but others would know them as whale noises. Ivetta whips her head around, “what on earth was that?” Castor tries to see if whatever it was is magical but nothing appears to be so. The noises are infrequent but they do get close. Castor has the bright idea of turning on the lights of the vehicle. The light just illuminates the kelp that surrounds them. But then, off a short ways, a ball of light sits in the center of a large cavern made of the slimy green. Huge caves jut off the cavern leading elsewhere. They seem to have descended from one of such offshoots. Then they just…stop. The helicopter remains hovering in place.

Castor can feel something large coming. Alarms sound from the radar. On it they see a dot, much bigger than the helicopter. They look toward the tunnel before them, squinting into the darkness, Tobias catches a glimpse of a giant, black mass moving toward them long shiny teeth bared.

Tobias yells, “hold on!” and takes the controls, overriding the autopilot and diving down. Thankfully they're all strapped down as the angle he pitches turns them nearly vertical. Ellen Mary screams in terror.

Castor cries, “There’s more coming behind us!” Tobias dips and weaves through the kelp.

“What are they!?” Ivetta shouts.

“Bad news! They’ve got a lot of teeth!” The radar beeps warning of more incoming.

“What are we going to do?!” Screams Mary. Castor conjures fire outside the helicopter, lighting the kelp beside them. They skirt past the flames but the creature on their tail is stopped.

“I don’t know where we’re going!”

“Head toward that!” Castor points to the map and the label, “the source.” She unleashes more fire outside, spreading it onto the caverns as well as a few offshoots. More alarms sound as more of those things close in.

Tobias pours on the speed. For a second, out the window they see a gaping mouth. In the brief glimpse they get, they see that the thing is not a cohesive solid but rather made of thousands of tiny things moving and writhing about. Tobias spins the ship and shoots the artillery from the ship. He loses control of the ship for a moment as the ship spins.

Tobias regains control as they exit the kelp forest. Above them the cut off is stark. The kelp simply ends as if sliced by a sword. The radar reports no more creatures after them. It seems they remain in the greenery. Surrounding them is a deep black but below they see what seems to be a faint field of stars. But nothing comes barrelling out at them.

Mary is hyperventilating. Tobias regains himself and says, “It's alright, they aren’t following. We’re out of the weeds, so to speak.”

They press on Tobias bringing them down, less rushed this time. The star below them seems to be getting larger and larger, much too fast. Soon it becomes the entire ground, and they move closer and closer. Very fast, too fast. “Uhhh… Father Tobias? Can–can we slow down?!” Castor asks, desperation mounting. He pulls up, gritting his teeth with effort but to no avail.

They slam into the ground.

But they feel nothing.

None of them are hurt, broken, or dead. They just appear on the ground. The helicopter sitting as if nothing happened.

All about beneath their feet is a strange crystal. A tealish white diamond. And although bright, it gives off no light, simply illuminating itself. The glow from the helicopter is the only thing that casts light on the four. There is nothing on its surface, save them.

Castor tests the strange substance that absorbed their momentum from the fall. She jumps up and down, finding no difference. She whacks her hammer on the surface. A small chunk breaks off. This tiny piece too, gives off no light. She pockets it.

The ship is still trying to move toward the imputed autopilot destination; below. Luckily she brought the drill. She starts it up and with nowhere else to go, starts diving downward.

The ground breaks easily, Castor drills diagonally down. It has no need of supports, adhering to itself. It takes some time. but eventually the glow of the diamond subsides. The further down they go, the colder it gets. Mary is very happy to follow her away from those things. Ivetta tries to listen over the noise of the drill to hear if anything is coming.

Castor continues to drill but stops suddenly as the edges of the tunnel where she isn’t drilling seem to fall away. She tries to pull back but the drill as well as herself are tugged forward into a black hole. She screams falling head first. Ivetta tries to grab her but she too gets pulled. Tobias shoots the grapple gun backward and grabs Ellen Mary Barber. He pulls up to the side. The line is taught. Using all his strength he holds on but the weight increases exponentially. They grow heavier and heavier. “I can’t hold it!”

The cable snaps.

As they fall they witness a terrifying, awe inspiring, mind-bending sight. The sheer scale of what they witness doesn’t make any sense. It is incomprehensible. Mostly they see darkness, behind that is the Caelium with occasional stars. The most striking object before them is a gargantuan, striking ball of orange and yellow plasma. Its size is terrifying in its own right but that’s not the most perplexing thing here. The ball itself is being overpowered, consumed. A large sweeping swath of light illuminates a gaping wound of the Caelium. It sucks in the light until there is nothing. Until there is more than nothing: a black hole.

The helicopter crashes down the hole behind them and whooshes past and into the void. They all scream but nothing comes out. They float before this awful display, completely helpless to do anything but be pulled in. Luckily it doesn’t take long. They fall faster and faster until they reach the edge of this wound.

Bam! They hit the ground.

They sit up, their heads throb, pounding with a headache but very much alive.

Beneath them is a black, glossy floor. Before them is a long corridor lit by nothing(?) Light reflects off the walls but there is no source of it. Faint stars shine above and the plasma ball glows. They seem to be in the void but...that can’t be. Nothing makes sense.

There are walls, infinitely high. So high they can’t see the tops. They see that there are more walls turning in different directions, perhaps in an endless maze. Castor gulps looking up at the strange swirl above. Their only way forward is the ominous maze sprawling out before them.

TBC

Episode Thirty-Six: The End.