by Adam Cairney
Chapter 12.
The stairs were incredibly dark, darker than Elijah would have thought possible when they started heading down. It was odd as well, because the vague light that shone from somewhere below them never seemed to get any brighter or closer. The staircase descended slowly, going in a large clockwise spiral. Elijah felt an irrational fear as they moved downwards, convinced that at any moment he would miss a step, or step too far or not far enough, and go tumbling the rest of the way down. He kept one hand on the wall, which felt cold, and very slightly damp, and one hand on Molly's shoulder as she led the way. As the continued further the light did gradually began to brighten, and Elijah could finally make out the soft edge of each step, which was a huge relief. He wondered what on earth could be causing it. It was a pulsing, unusual light, with a strange, indistinguishable to it. He was actually quite excited to see what Molly had been working on. She was incredibly clever, one of the smartest people he had ever met, and it was one of the reasons they had both got on so well when they first met all those years ago. It was also one of the reasons he could never fathom why Molly had not been allowed to study on the Cloud as one of the scholars. Of course, if she had been up there when all this happened...
"Watch out here, there's no more steps." Molly warned. Elijah saw that the steps here did indeed stop, and gave way to a gentle slope. "We're nearly at the bottom now. It's always further down than I remember, it's a miracle I didn't break my damn back when I fell down here the first time. Maybe it's just the ether stretching my house out yet again though."
"I wonder why this place in particular seems to change so much. It's odd you know. I mean...things get more unstable near ether sources, but the main reservoir of it is miles underground. I mean, you would have to have a barrel of the stuff here to affect it that much, surely. In fact, I would think th-" He stopped mid-sentence as they rounded the last part of the slope and the passage opened up to what was essentially Molly's laboratory.
"A bit more than a barrel actually. Quite a bit more." Molly said in a very matter of fact tone. Elijah stared in amazement at the scene in front of him. Sitting in the middle of this vast room was an enormous glass container, truly huge, with various pipes leading off in myriad different directions. Contained within was a dark, thick liquid, constantly swirling and eddying around inside. It looked like an entire galaxy was being stored right here under the ground, as it was full of what looked like little stars, twinkling in the darkness of the liquid. Occasional swirls of colour span through the mix, further enhancing the look of a miniature universe. It was pure ether. Molly had somehow ferried pure ether from deep below the city to up here in her home, and Elijah could only presume that she had been experimenting creating with it.
It was impossible and amazing, and as he looked around he only became more impressed. The lab seemed to be split into three main sections. One third of it was filled with vials, bottles of various coloured liquids, and workbenches full of other ingredients and items. A couple of bandoleers hung on pegs on the wall as well, each one containing various pockets and slots for different vials and jars. Next to the bandoleers were the racks for those jars, full of all different potions, a rainbow of formulas, and all different types. Some looked like glue, other looked like water. One or two were bubbling away ominously in their containers, despite the fact that they weren't moving at all. Elijah's gave swept further around the room, and the next area he saw was equally as fascinating. Here there were also workbenches, but unlike the other corner, where they had been made of wood, here they were made of metal. Various instruments and tools lay around, most of which he didn't recognize, as well as a large furnace, and an anvil. Multiple creations lay around on the workbenches, hung up on walls, or stacked or placed on the ground. It looked chaotic, but he was sure there was some kind of order to it.
Looking further at the strange metallic creations he noticed something that looked like...were they wings? There was no way they would ever be strong enough to lift someone or something off the ground, surely? He also spotted something else buried under a veritable mountain of metal, debris and tools that looked suspiciously like a cannon, just slightly smaller. He was going to have to ask Molly about that. He turned his attention to the final rough third of the place, and now he truly had no idea what he was looking at. Along this portion of Molly's workshop the various glass pipes that had stemmed from the reservoir of ether in the middle all ended at various different experiments. There were all sorts of beakers, tubes, and small machines at work or sitting idle here.
Elijah knew how to conduct the ether, and he knew it existed, but that was about the extent of his knowledge. Molly was doing things beyond anything he had even imagined possible. He wondered if the academics on the Cloud had known about all of this before everything had happened. He turned to her, the look of wonder still shining in his eyes. Molly had a very big smile on her face.
"I thought you'd be impressed!" She grinned, "I've been real busy lately, as you can see. It's a good thing too I'd say, we're going to need most of this if we're going to stand a chance of doing anything."
"Yeah you're not wrong there. Listen, I'm curious...how is it that the ether in this room not eroding everything?" Elijah asked with just a trace of concern, eyeing up the huge spherical container of ether in the middle of the room.
"Ah! I knew you were going to ask that. I actually stumbled on it by accident you know. Total luck. I didn't even know what I had at first." She spoke as she walked across the room, heading to her bandoleers to refill them. Elijah wandered around, gazing at things as he listened.
"I was working on some new potions, testing to see what I could come up with. You know I've already worked out some pretty useful stuff, and the ones we use as standard now, but I'm always trying for new brews. So! I'm working away one day, and I add the wrong ingredient to one of my mixtures. I'm about to throw it away and start over when it turns this beautiful colour. Look over here, you'll see." She indicated to the bottom of one of the racks filled with vials. At the bottom, sure enough were 5 large jars of beautiful, pearlescent fluid, it glowed a faint, almost ethereal white. Elijah looked at it hard, he had seen that somewhere before, he was sure of it.
"So I had no idea what it was, but it looked valuable. I went to see Noah, paid him a visit with it, to see if he had any idea what it might be. He was, well, completely useless at first to be honest. But then something happened, right? We're both in the main room, he's packed up for the day, and I'm getting ready to leave. I go to scoop the jar of...whatever it is up, and I'm not really looking, and bang, over goes the jar. Spills this stuff all over the countertop, and it starts to drip and run onto the shelf below, yeah? Well Noah acts real fast, and goes to conduct the ether, as he does, to move all the plates, bowls and whatnot out of the way. Except...the liquid is already on the stuff. And he can't conduct. It stops people conducting, Elijah."
It instantly hit Elijah the moment Molly said it. He had been racking his brains from the moment he had seen the colour of the formula. It was exactly the same colour and look as Percy's breastplate and trident had been back at Noah's place. He said so to Molly.
"Of course! I don't know why I didn't think of that sooner! I mean, everything happened so fast, and I just didn't...well, that explains what happened with you then."
"Yeah I guess so. Where the hell did Percy even get that stuff? I wonder if the scholars up on the Cloud discovered this at the same time as you did. I mean, what are the chances though? It can't be..."
Molly shrugged, and began to load up one of her bandoleers (the biggest one she had) with various vials. She tucked a couple of the anti-conducting ones in there, Elijah noticed. "We'll find out once we confront that waste of space Azrael I'm sure. That's what we're doing right? With the stuff that I've got in this room we should be able to show him who's boss. Ah, we still need to head to the library first though, yeah?"
Elijah nodded. "Yeah, if there’s anywhere we can help during all of this it�
�s there. Well, Noah too, but he would always give-" He stopped mid-sentence, realising what he was about to say, and realizing that Noah had probably given his life for them. Elijah felt a solid lump form in his throat, and hung his head for a moment, the true realisation of what was going on and what was happening finally hitting him. They had been moving so fast that he hadn't had time to take anything in. Here, in the relative quiet and calm of Molly's lab, he finally could.
He braced himself against the nearby table. His knees and legs felt weak. Molly saw it straight away and rushed over in a hurry, practically dropping her bandoleer on the workbench. She reached him just as she thought he was about to fall to the ground and start sobbing, and gripped him by the shoulders.
“Hey, come on now. You’re supposed to be the strong one of the two of us, I can’t have you imploding on me now!” She laughed to try and lighten his mood, and Elijah reluctantly smiled along with her. He looked up at her with watery eyes.
“What are we going to do Molly? I mean, everyone’s gone, near as I can tell. Either encased in crystal or turned into one of those…things, those monsters we saw up on the Cloud! We have no idea how to change everything back to the way it was, or even if we can. Say we go and confront Azrael, and we, I don’t know…let’s say we kill him. Then what? What if, god forbid, we make things worse?” Elijah was looking at her with a hard stare, he seemed almost angry. Molly returned the stare and answered him.
“Now you look here. We are not just going to sit here and do nothing. We won’t make things worse, trust me. Have you seen it out there? It can’t get much worse! I refuse to let you give up on me now. We are going to gear up, go to the library, and head to the Cloud. We’re going to get ourselves to Azrael one way or the other, and make him pay for what he’s done. That’s a promise.”
Elijah’s stare softened as he realised that she was right. He apologised and acknowledged so, and Molly let him go, telling him that everything was going to be alright. Elijah apologised again and ran his hands through his hair and across his face, exhaling hard. He glanced around the room again and spotted a couple of things that he thought could be useful, and proceeded to start readying himself. With his momentary lapse of confidence and clarity dealt with he found that now, as he began to equip himself, he felt his confidence returning, along with his strength of conviction. It wasn’t an instant, strong feeling, rather it was almost as if he now felt quietly confident, renewed and resolute to accomplish what they needed to.
He and Molly talked as they prepared, discussing strategies, what things they should take, routes to travel and so on. Molly had packed two bandoleers full of the precious, tiny vials containing a veritable rainbow of liquids. There was an appropriate gap in each one so that they could be slung over each shoulder, forming and X shape around her. To go along with that she had chosen to take a short, robust metal pole to fight with. Elijah commented that it didn’t look like much, until Molly twisted the pole in the middle and it suddenly sprung outwards at each end, becoming a full length quarterstaff. Not only that but the ends crackled and almost seemed to hum with some kind of unseen energy.
“I’ve been messing about with the ether for quite a while. I was going to tell you but things have just been so crazy, even before all this. One of the things I managed to do was concentrate the liquid ether, and turn it into…well, almost a solid, I’m close to getting it that way. Anyway, what I’ve done here is applied the anti-conducting formula to either end here, and then coated the ends in the concentrated ether afterwards. The anti-conductor stops the ether from eroding the metal away, but it has incredible raw strength if it touches anything else. Think of it like coating the end of a weapon in poison, except this is more like an added punch in the gut. Found that out the hard way, by the way.” She smiled ruefully here, thinking back to her painful discovery. “It’s strange, the anti-conductor doesn’t stop the ether from being applied, but does stop people conducting ether against the weapon. I don’t know why, but…works for me!”
With her equipment readied she explained to Elijah that she was heading back upstairs to wait for him. She was ravenous, having barely eaten at Noah’s, and they needed to try and keep their strength up. Elijah agreed, and she started heading up the stairs. She shouted down that she would get something ready for him as well, and then Elijah was left in the quiet of the laboratory, with just the hiss and hum of the various instruments to keep him and his thoughts company. He took another wander around the place, stopping here and there to examine various pieces of equipment or half completed inventions that he had missed before. As he wandered around he got closer and closer to the huge glass container of ether in the centre of the room. He had never been this close to it before, and had barely even seen it up close. It was still ceaselessly swishing around inside, almost as if it had a life of its own. He walked right up to the glass and decided to lift a hand to place it on there. He didn’t really know why, he was partly just fascinated at how close he was to such a dangerous material. Molly had explained that the entire inside of the sphere was coated in anti-conducting fluid and so was completely safe.
He lifted his hand up to touch the glass when something extremely unexpected happened. Elijah jumped back in surprise, stifling a cry. His entire forearm was glowing, bright colours, a mixture of yellows and oranges, and the brightest whites. It was almost as if his arm…was on fire. He looked down at his arm again. Now that he had jumped back away from the ether it had returned to normal. There wasn’t any sign it had ever been different. He rubbed it with his other hand to be sure, but everything was fine. He moved forwards again, very cautiously. Sure enough, as he moved closer and lifted his arm it started to glow again, softly at first, but once he had his hand right up against the glass it looked as if his arm was engulfed in a roaring inferno. It was an incredible sight. Elijah had a sudden idea, he took his hand away from the glass, just by a couple of inches, and held it palm upwards. As slowly and carefully as he could manage, he conducted the smallest, most insignificant amount of ether he could. Instead of the tiny candle-like flame that normally appeared, a huge roaring fire appeared in his hand, flickering and dancing, completely engulfing his palm. It was incredible, he couldn’t quite believe it. He cut off the ether he was conducting and looked at his hands again, and then back at the large container of ether. His gaze wandered over to the various sealed containers of the stuff that Molly had been doing experiments with. A slow smile began to spread across his face as he hurried over to the workbenches. He had an idea.
