Party of Five - Book II

by Vasileios Kalampakas

  ***

  The Elevator came to a stop. The dimmed, darkened glass pane opened sideways, like a hatch. Directly in front of them, down three small steps, stood the Ygg representatives, staring at Tej with cold, machinating, blue-on-blue eyes. Winceham was already plying his trade, unseen.

  “Enginseer,” said the Ygg in unison; their combined voices sounded like a nest of insects through a metal reed.

  Tej did not return the greeting. He simply walked outside the Elevator slowly, calmly. He did not return the Yggs’ stares. The others followed close behind. Lernea grabbed Theo by one hand, and shoved him forward suddenly, treating him like one would a captive or a prisoner. Theo exclaimed:

  “Watch it with that! It’s a long drop and from what I’ve been though you never know where you might end up.”

  “Shut it,” Lernea said with vehemence and twisted Theo’s arm just hard enough for him to remain locked in an awkward, sideways position. By the look on his face, he wasn’t sure whether it was something he’d said that had gotten Lernea so mad or if this was just part of some sort of plan he vaguely remembered agreeing to non-verbally.

  “Him?” said one of the Ygg and pointed vaguely at Theo with one webbed, clawed hand. Tej simply nodded with an austere look of barely contained anger on his face. One of the other Ygg shot an icy stare at Lernea.

  “What of her?” the Ygg asked.

  “The elf is mine to sell,” said Lernea with a cold-hearted grin. “Our mutual furry friend over here has a soft spot it seems for the fluffy thing you keep locked up somewhere,” she added, playing her part convincingly.

  “The Ygg have no friends. Isn’t that right Enginseer?” said another Ygg and let out a dry cackle.

  “It is,” said Tejwel with a crisp, embittered voice. But his stare was still hard as stone, set on the Ygg like a hound after its prey.

  “What need do we have of this puny elf?” asked the Ygg who hadn’t spoken yet with a measure of impatience.

  “That crystal in your possession; it is merely a trinket compared to what it is capable of. This elf is the key. Or so I’m told,” said Lernea and shot a meaningful look at Tej.

  “Everything is transpiring according to the Grand Design. Nothing will be allowed to stand in our way.”

  “Except this whole damnable thing is missing its primer,” said Tej with a grim face. The Ygg looked at each other momentarily. Lernea held Theo down who looked puzzled, trying to ascertain if he was indeed on sale and for what price.

  “To put things in perspective, you have the wrong guy. It’s not the bunny you were really after; it’s this guy.”

  “That’s impossible! The thaumaturgic readings on that mammal were off the scale!” blared one of the Ygg. Theo’s eyes darted to and fro the monsters. There was little with which to distinguish them visually.

  “That’s great, if you think this hellish apparatus runs purely on thauma.”

  “You designed it, Enginseer!”

  “I was tricked into designing it and damned be that day!”

  “Most of our brethren would frown upon this meeting. But us four have a mind for a good offer, no matter its bearer. Isn’t that so?”

  The rest of the Ygg nodded imperceptibly. Except for one.

  “There is a human saying that comes to mind,” he said and the tentacles around his maw writhed as if a sudden breeze had touched them.

  “Care to enlighten us?” growled Tej. Lernea tried to look the part handling Theo like a slave, but her eyes were already scanning the horizon for a sign that Winceham had done his part already. She felt like she was coming down with a peculiar nausea.

  “Beware of Tej bearing gifts.”

  “That’s not how the saying goes.”

  “But that is what it means,” he said and another ring platform appeared from below and locked into place behind their own. Two Ygg were standing on it, slightly bigger and uglier in appearance however impossible it seemed. One of them had Winceham tied on a rope; he was completely paralyzed, stiff as a piece of wood. His eyes were stuck wide open in terror.

  “Theo, this is going to get really ugly, really soon,” Lernea whispered to Theo, even though in the back of her mind she knew it didn’t matter whether or not they listened to her anymore. She kept her calm and didn’t appear shocked. Not even when the other Ygg dropped the pale, blood-robbed body of Rat at the platform, right behind the Ygg who did not seem to tolerate theatrics for long.

  “A doppelganger will take his place. A sense of normalcy about this place will hasten our goals,” said one of the Ygg.

  “There’s nothing normal about this place,” said Lernea and let go of Theo who couldn’t help but wriggle his wrists and try to get his blood flowing back.

  “So I’m not being sold?”

  “That remains to be seen, woodkin,” said one of the Ygg.

  “I was talking to my friend,” said Theo and pointed to Lernea. Another one of the Ygg cackled profusely, the same as before.

  “Which reminds me,” said the Ygg with a tone of pure malevolence. The Ygg looked at Tej knowingly. Tej looked at Theo and told him with the faint trail of a single tear running down his furry cheek.

  “I’m returning to the light that bears us all, Hanul,” said Tej right before a pulse of white fizzling light tore through his chest, spattering blood and bones in a burst and toppling the giant bear off the platform. Tejwel’s form fell down below, into the whirring machine parts of the huge crystal silently. Reveling in the way his words produced hurt in Theo’s face, one of the Ygg said:

  “The larger they are, the easier they fall. Isn’t that another piece of what you call popular wisdom? Such an infantile oxymoron.”

  Theo’s face remained still. It looked like he hadn’t really seen what had happened. Lernea had left her bow behind; all that she carried with was her ceremonial dagger. It was a dull little thing, fit for show and tell. But she clenched her teeth and appeared ready to meet whatever fate lay in store. The Ygg approached them like a cat approaches a fanciful toy. Lernea told Theo, in all seriousness:

  “I find death at your side suits me well, Hanultheofodor.”

  “What did you call me?” he asked flatly, without emotion. He wasn’t looking at her, nor the Ygg. He was still looking at where Tej had been standing moments ago.

  “Hanultheofodor. Isn’t that your full name?”

  “It’s just a name really,” he said and looked at the Ygg that had come within a single step of him. The Ygg looked back and let an abyssal gleam filter through his eyes; its tentacles writhed expectantly. Abruptly, the writhing stopped. Theo’s eyes were closed, his arms extended. A vein throbbed on his head. He began to tremble. And so did the Ygg; all of them.

  Lernea stood motionless. Then she began to shake as well. Theo was floating a few inches above the surface of the platform. His face was drenched in sweat; his dreadlocks stood up in a bizarre, disconcerting fashion. He looked like a terrible, wrathful figure; not the timid, somewhat kludgy sorcerer other people usually saw.

  The Ygg struggled to move, to react; all that remained was a terrible realisation in their eyes. The gems in their foreheads flickered with intensity; slowly their bodies drifted off the platform seemingly of their own accord. But Lernea knew that it was Theo that somehow did all that. She then felt the platform sway and start to gyrate oddly. Another tremor shook the world around her. She heard a terrible raucous of a thunder reverberating from deep below. Winceham, released from the Ygg’s embrace fell on the platform’s surface hard. It was the third time that day his tenderlies had received unwanted attention from blunt objects.

  “This can’t be normal,” she whispered and was surprised to hear the voice of Theo flood her mind.

  “Nothing will ever be again, Lernea,” his voice said and the Ygg were flung with blinding speed across the hollowed-out space. It looked as if some being of immense power had pulled a sinister set of strings with all its might. Their bodies had become small affairs on a distant wall, white murky
blood smearing it like a blotch of ink on paper, only every colour reversed.

  “So that’s how it feels,” said Theo as he settled himself down, panting not from the exertion, but from a rampaging, burning sensation in his mind; he felt hate for the first time in his life.

  “I don’t understand what it is that I just saw. But this is not good. At all,” said Lernea and wished for a set of wings for the first time in her life instead of her bow.

  “It is what is,” said Theo brusquely.

  “I’m talking about them,” she said and pointed at the hundreds of Ygg pouring out from every recess and crevice around the inner bark. They filled the platform rings and rushed Theo and Lernea. Some were cradling ornate weapons spawned out of nightmares, others simply flew with all their might across the distance, screeching in their nameless voices, a single name:

  “Shubb-naur! Shubb-naur!”

  The huge crystal formed a crack on its outer layer; the rings had fallen out of sync. Everything appeared to be breaking apart. A terrible grinding noise had risen up from the very depths of the crystal assembly and it wouldn’t die down.

  “Theo, I really am honored to die by your side!” she shouted as to be heard. Theo only barely whispered a reply.

  “Honor has nothing to do with this. It’s justice.”

  “Noone dies!” shouted a voice above the din. Lernea looked behind her and saw Ned sweeping inches above her head only to grab Winceham in his arms a moment or so later. Not to far behind, a comfortable height up, a small, sleek twin-hulled ship floated elegantly amidst the crumbling chaos of the infernal crystal machine. Layers upon layers of crystal began to crack and shatter, giving off blinding amounts of light followed by scalding heat waves at random.

  “Throw me a line!” shouted Lernea. Just as she had finished her sentence, she saw a strange-looking thin blunderbuss firing off without ever seeming to be in need of reloading. It cut down the first lines of the Ygg with an outrageous hail of fire. But they would not double back. Even as the world around them became undone, it was as if a higher zeal compelled them to bring ruin to those that dared take the Ygg for fools.

  “Hasten thee, sister!” came back a loud answer; it was Parcifal, benting over the ship’s rail and waving as if it wasn’t clear enough where to look for her.

  “Will you drop a line?” shouted back Lernea. Theo looked as if he wasn’t aware of what was actually happening. Then as if he had a sudden moment of enlightenment, he sprang at Lernea without a care, ignoring the bright white shots of deadly light the Ygg were throwing at them. The floating ship wobbled slightly as a series of cannonshot sprayed havoc amongst the ranks of the Ygg. But still, they came.

  Theo fell on Lernea and threw her a couple of feet away right when she was just about to catch the line they’d thrown for her. She was about to start shouting obscenities she would have found quite distasteful herself, when a huge piece of rock smashed the ring platform in two, right at the spot where she was standing a moment earlier. Theo held her hand as they both slid off the platform and started falling down into a blazing inferno that seemed to rise with every beating heart.

  Ned saw them, as did Parcifal; but they were helpless, frozen in disbelief. Tark shouted by himself, while no-one had asked him:

  “We need to fly off now; I can’t risk the ship and the mission any longer!”

  Then Bo’s eyes flared up with fire suddenly; the next moment Bo the Bunny leapt off the ship as everything around them began to look like thick grains of sand, sliding away into a sea of fire. The Ygg were lost in vortex of fire and ruin, chanting as they fell into oblivion.

  “No!” cried Ned while Parcifal hang by a thread on the ship’s rail. Judith held her back.

  “It’s done!” she shouted, while Parcifal couldn’t break free from her grasp. She fell on her knees, and letting go, she began to wail with every drop of her soul.

  Tark led the ship on a steep upward course with a speed that no ordinary ship could handle; everyone had to hang onto something. As they shot up and away from the cataclysmic ruin, there was a bright blue flash of light like a broken piece of glass shimmers in the sun. Then every platform, every ring and piece of crystal along with all the Ygg was engulfed in flames. Bursts of lightning flared away and the sound of doom ripped past them like a howling tide. Ned caught a glimpse of that blue flash; all he knew was it looked out of place, even in a mess like that. In his heart, nothing was certain.

  Even Tallyflop looked like it was still standing though battered and shaken; all its lights were out and not a merry song could be heard.

  Parcifal was sobbing on Judith’s shoulder with as much dignity as a princess of Nomos could muster. Judith found the feeling strange; she wanted to comfort Parcifal. She was ashamed to find out she had forgotten how. She simply hugged her and felt the tremors against her chest.

  Tark had lit up a pipe, and was sharing it with Winceham who was still in shock, reliving another time entirely.

  “I’ve never felt so much pain in one single day in my life. It’s up here, down there; I’m telling you, it’s everywhere,” Winceham managed to croak dizzily.

  “Don’t you have the least bit of decency for Parcifal’s sake? I don’t know you half as good as I’d like you to, Mr. Tark. But not you as well, Wince. Gods below, not you.”

  “Mr. Larkin, I can’t assure you about much of anything that happened, but I can safely assume it’s going to be alright,” Tark told Ned.

  “What makes you say that with that grin on your face?”

  “Did you see a bright blue flash down there, when we were outrunning all the shockwaves and debris?”

  “I did. What of it?”

  “That’s when I got Bo’s message in my mind,” Tark said and smiled thinly.

  “Well?”

  “I thought it’d be better to pause for dramatic effect. Anyway, she said it worked. I believe she actually shouted it, if that’s at all possible.”

  “What did?” asked Ned biting his lip.

  “I’m not a mind reader myself, Mr. Larkin. But it’s pretty likely that whatever worked, was in their favor.”

  “That was all? It worked?” repeated Ned without being able to understand.

  “Nah, this bloody pipe isn’t working. Too weak a blend. Where’s my pouch?” said Winceham, shearching the ship’s deck like a drunken, dizzy turtle for a pouch that not long ago had fallen through a bright, blue, blinding flash, and onto a hard, broken shore.

  “Judith?” Tark beckoned. Judith nodded and waited knowingly for an order.

  “I’ll man the helm for now,” said Tark and took the good ship Mary Righteous on a course for the very heart of the Human League.

  END OF BOOK II