by Ben van Eijk
Chapter 6
Ding.
Seth was woken by the noise again. He promised himself he would find out what that was before he left Estever. There was no light entering the room, so he was disoriented at first. Slowly Seth’s cognition returned to him and he remembered where he was. He stood up, stretched, and created a small flame for illumination. He opened one of the blinds. Seth was sure Boris wasn’t going to be friendly when he came downstairs. He wasn’t scared of Boris; the monster he had fought after coming out of the Restyard seemed a much more formidable foe, but Seth did not really feel like going through a whole interrogation. Katja had been nothing but helpful, although it didn’t look like she would be divulging any more information as long as Boris was around. The flame in Seth’s hand disappeared and he slowly made his way downstairs into the shop. Before leaving, Seth looked behind him one last time and saw the dishes on the table still dirty. He wasn’t in the mood for cleaning, so he continued quietly down the stairs.
When Seth was outside again he saw the same familiar sunset sky. He needed to find the resistance Katja spoke about. First he needed to find the shadow arc, which should be extremely easy: just go the opposite direction of the sun. Seth got his bearings, saw where the sun was at its brightest, and started walking in the opposite direction. Being the impatient guy he was, Seth decided to launch into the air on spinning blades of water and started flying towards the shadow arc. A few people saw him and gasped but Seth was past the point of caring — he wasn’t sure why he tried to hide his powers in the first place. He looked at the citizens below and could see the structure of the city clearly; the market district, the wealthier district, the gap between the village and the huge pipe towers, and behind the towers, the forest in which he had arrived.
Chos Garren was getting smaller as Seth’s propeller levitated him upwards to a nice vantage point. He needed much less water for his propeller nowadays; the year in the Restyard had strengthened his matter manipulation skills. It began to get warmer as he got higher, the opposite of what Seth was used to. He looked around and saw why: the sun was now shining directly on him, no longer hidden beneath the curve of the horizon. He had to protect his eyes from the glare. What Seth saw did not look like a sun, just a great glowing wall in the distance. It was blocked out in some areas by the mountains, but it continued to follow the curvature of the planet. Neither the start nor the end of the sun-wall could be seen, no matter how high Seth got. When he turned around to face the shadow arc again, he was surprised by how suddenly the darkness began. A solid line of shadow was seen in the distance, also following the curve of the planet. Seth was almost at the cloud line now. He slowed his ascent and attempted to get his floating under control. Seth preferred flying via means of manipulating the air around him but the matter from which Estever was made still refused to cooperate.
It took a while but eventually Seth was able to hold himself reasonably still. He began to scan the landscape for any signs of light in the shadow arc. To his surprise, he saw many lights, all of them moving around. Some were much brighter than others. None of the lights seemed to indicate some kind of building that might house a resistance. Seth flew towards the shadow arc for closer inspection. He came closer to the ground so he could see what was controlling the moving lights. They didn’t seem to be illuminating anything in particular; their purpose must have been to announce a presence. Seth saw a series of multicoloured lights shooting up and down in small stripes, moving so fast he found it hard to count how many individual bands there were. As Seth approached the source, he clicked his fingers and an incredible stream of sparks began flying from his hand to illuminate the area. The source of rainbow coloured lights was something Seth had never seen before: a small translucent dome with hundreds of tiny legs, scurrying around on the ground. The dome was made up of segments, and the line dividing each segment was filled with coloured lights.
The dome started to run away from the light Seth was creating, and he saw that it was dragging two long blue tentacles as it ran, leaving a trail of reflective liquid behind them. Seth, still hovering several metres above the ground, began chasing the strange jelly-like creature (which was rather difficult as it was quite an agile beast with its hundreds of little legs). He was concentrating so hard on the domed creature that his stream of sparks had nearly disappeared. It was easy to understand how people might go insane in the shadow arc: it was dark. Seth let the spark shower dwindle to nothing and held his hand up a few centimetres from his face. He saw nothing. He hadn’t even travelled very far into the shadow arc and it was already darker than anywhere he had been his entire life. For people who are used to bathing in the light of a permanent sunset, the shadow arc must be absolute torture; distance was impossible to judge, and the feeling of the the darkness pressing in on all sides was almost overwhelming.
Seth noticed the rainbow lights of the creature were suddenly gone, which meant that it had hidden behind something, or turned its lights off somehow. Seth clicked his fingers, directing his stream of sparks in the direction he had last seen the jelly dome creature. He was greeted with a huge, unimpressed, yellow eye staring right at him. It startled Seth, and he reflexively fired a blast of water at the eye. The water splashed back ineffectually and extinguished Seth’s spark light. He quickly clicked his flint rings together again and inadvertently shot this new deluge of sparks directly into the humongous eye staring at him. A blood curdling cry reverberated over the pitch-black landscape, coming from whatever was attached to the gargantuan eyeball. Its cry was so low and powerful that its intense vibrations completely disoriented Seth.
He flew up higher, hoping it would bring him out of range of whatever he had just semi-blinded. His torrent of sparks had disappeared again and in the pitch black it was impossible to know how far he was travelling. During his vertical journey, Seth once again clicked his fingers to create his jet of sparks. The creature he had seen was not visible anymore, just a strange texture on the ground. Then the ground started moving. Seth realised he was looking at the skin of the half-blind monster; he would need more illumination to truly understand what he was facing. Flying even higher, Seth used his magnesium ring to create some long streamers of the metal. Seth then ignited the streamers with the shower of sparks erupting from his other hand and the magnesium began to burn a bright hot white. He threw the streamers towards what he thought was the ground next to the creature. Seeing straight away that one magnesium ‘torch’ was not enough, Seth created several more and launched them around the darkness. The shower of sparks coming from Seth’s hand mixed with the magnesium and began burning with the same white-hot fire.
Now it was almost as bright as daylight in the circle of light Seth had strategically created on the ground. He could finally see the immense size of the creature: it was the shape of a ball squished on both sides into a saucer. It was standing vertically, and the apex tracing the circumference of the saucer had dark, bony fins sticking out. Emerging from the flatter sides of the shape were six legs in total, each very bony and ending with a black shiny texture, like the shell of a beetle. The beast’s legs tapered into two massive hooks sinking deep into the ground with every step. Dragging on the ground behind it was an unattractive, leathery sack. The creature’s one good eye was sulphur yellow, and looking angrily at Seth. Its mouth was huge, with teeth so formidable they made it impossible for the creature to even close its mouth.
Fighting such a behemoth did not seem like a smart idea, so Seth decided to flee the scene. He could see the pupil in the creature’s one good eye following him as he flew further away. Around the six legs of the beast were about eighty of the jelly dome creatures, some of them climbing up the behemoth’s legs while some were already walking around on its back. The creature started to shake around as if trying to rid itself of these tiny parasites, but not one of them lost their grip as more and more climbed the onto the bulk of the massive beast. The lights that Seth had cast were dimming now; magnesium burned quickly. Soon Seth could
only see the lights of the small jelly creatures. There must have been at least a hundred swarming over the behemoth now, and their bouncing lights had all turned blood red.
The shadow arc was a place unlike any Seth had ever seen. The creatures there all seemed to have some sort of bioluminescence, each one unique. Seth’s white fire light illuminated many more: tiny lizards, always feeding on some kind of moss blanketing the surroundings. Seth also saw many mushrooms coating the ground. Most were white, but some of the mushrooms were glowing a little too. Sometimes one of the mushrooms seemed to get up and walk around, which Seth surmised was a beast that had developed camouflage as a defence mechanism. Sometimes Seth flew a little lower to observe the small strange animals, but he mostly tried to stay up higher; he had already seen a few more of the behemoths walking around.
It was impossible to imagine just how life could have evolved in such a place. Seth could still see the line bordering the shadow arc’s beginning, but he couldn’t fathom how so little ambient light could sustain such a complex ecosystem. Seth made sure he kept the light in sight at all times. It was already quite cold in the shadow arc, but so far all his moving around and bursts of flame had kept him warm. After flying about fifteen minutes in one direction Seth started to wonder about how he would find his way back to Chos Garren. Seth turned to the direction of the central belt, still barely visible, and started flying back towards it to double check he could still pinpoint his position.
Closer to the edge where the shadow arc and the central arc came together, Seth saw a new kind of light he hadn’t seen before. He thought it must be a creature that lives half in the central arc and half in the shadow arc, so Seth decreased his altitude to investigate. Closer to the strange white light, it became apparent that it was merely a static pole, holding up a tiny white light source encased in a glass-like material, with a wire cage surrounding it. It looked artificial and not like something that had evolved here naturally. Finally, Seth thought. The resistance.
He dropped to the ground and instantly heard a noise behind him. Seth turned around to see a man wearing an extremely elaborate set of glasses, almost like a telescope strapped to each eye. Seth felt a sharp pain in his shoulder and he heard himself say “hoosh da whutch” as he slowly lost consciousness.
***
Slowly, Seth opened his eyes. His vision was blurry, so he blinked a few times. He looked around, now able to focus on his surroundings. He could hear a low humming and the smell in the air was very musty. There was a sharp pain in his left shoulder and his hands were bound behind his back. Surrounding Seth were three walls made from wire mesh, braided together to make a lattice of diamonds. The lattice was framed by solid metal poles. The fourth wall, against which Seth was propped, was solid concrete. There were blindingly bright white lights in two corners of his small room, and he could see several more outside of a small room beyond his cage. Seth stood up, hands still behind his back, and walked closer to the metal fence opposite him. His sandals made a scraping noise as he approached, alerting someone on the other side. A man wearing white clothes approached. He was clean shaven with a round chin and wide nose. His eyes were sunken with dark purple bags underneath, like sleep was a thing of the past for him. With his shaved head and pale eyebrows, in certain lights he looked completely hairless.
“Who are —” Seth asked, then stopped for a second, hearing the scratchiness of his voice. He cleared his throat.
“Ahem. Sorry. Who are you? Is this the resistance?”
The bald man waited about ten seconds.
“Well for an Inquirer you’re not very subtle, are you? What we want to know is why you are here.” The man picked his nose and flicked the nugget out of sight. Seth cringed after witnessing such nose mining in close quarters. Nonetheless, he replied happily, realising he had found the resistance:
“Oh! I know who they are! Well about them — no, I’m not an Inquirer, but this is the resistance, right?”
The man scratched his bald head in slight confusion.
“You know where you are. You wouldn’t have come so far into the shadow arc without a good stalusion. You were said to have been flying with a huge white flame coming out of your hand when you shaversed here. No one has technology like that except the Inquirers. If you are one of them, you won’t last long here, buddy.” The man turned away and started to walk down the concrete corridor away from Seth’s cage.
“No wait! I am friendly, let me show you!” Seth quickly exclaimed, causing the man
to turn around. Four metal hooks flew from behind Seth and clamped onto the wire surrounding one of the diamond-shaped holes in the mesh fence. The hole grew wider until there was an opening in Seth’s confinement big enough for him to step through. He crouched down to step over his hands so he could deal with whatever was binding them together. Unfortunately he fell over in the process, and looked rather silly lying on his back with his legs in the air. Seth’s warden started to walk back towards him but Seth quickly jumped up as his rope bindings were cut in half by a floating metal blade. He raised his hands in an acquiescent gesture to indicate he intended no harm.
“I could have done that a while ago, but I’m not here to fight. I want to speak with the resistance. You have a boss or something?” Seth asked, slowly backing away. He didn’t want to have to use his powers aggressively. The man stopped and grunted.
“How the in the absence did you mir that?” He raised both his hands, clasped tightly around a small metal device that Seth did not understand but assumed was intended to hurt, judging by the way the man held it.
Seth sighed and a blast of water threw the man face first against the ceiling. He released the metal device before his entire body fell back to the floor. He curled up as he groaned in pain, his hand grasping around for the metal tool. Seth pinned the man’s hand to the ground with a small azurite cuff, preventing him from moving. I am getting better at this, Seth thought to himself.
“Once again, I am not here to fight. As you can see, I would easily win. I just need to get some information. From what I heard, you guys here are very much in the know.”
The man was lying on the ground, veins popping out of his arm as he tensed it in an effort to stretch towards his metal device.
“How are you mirring this?!”
“Look, just take to me to whoever is in charge so I can explain why I’m here,” Seth said to the man as he watched him struggle ineffectively against Seth’s azurite binding.
The man looked at Seth and said nothing, his eyes quickly glancing towards something behind Seth. Seth spun around and saw two more clean-shaven men in aggressive stances, both holding metal devices, pointed at Seth. Seth commanded two azurite columns to grow from his hand, flinging the two men backwards and sending them crashing violently into the concrete wall behind them. One of their heads swung back and made a thunk as it collided with the wall, knocking him out cold. The other man suffered a luckier fate and just had the wind knocked out of him, but his metal device flew from his hand and slammed against the wall. BANG!
Seth’s vision was a little blurred from the shock. All he could hear was a high-pitched ringing in his ears as he stood blinking. The man in the azurite clamp managed to put one knee on the ground, struggling pointlessly. The other was holding his stomach as he sucked in large gulps of air. Seth summoned the metal device now lying on the ground with a blast of water. When he caught the tool, he almost dropped it; it was much heavier than he had expected it to be. Seth scrutinised it, holding it the same way he had seen the others hold it. It felt quite comfortable actually: a small ridge where he could put his index finger and — BANG! Seth dropped the weapon in surprise, his ears ringing again from the sudden blast.
“What in Io is that thing?!” Seth screamed, unaware of how loud his voice had become. He winced as a sudden movement had reminded him of the pain in his shoulder. The man behind him was standing again, slowly raising the metal weapon in his hand, but Seth encased the man’s hand and weapon in azuri
te. His hand suddenly fell back to his side, too heavy to keep elevated. Seeing how effective it was to bind their hands, Seth did this to the other two men to get the situation under control — although it was probably not necessary for the one lying unconscious on the ground.
The two conscious men were now in a resigned sort of stance.
“OK,” Seth said. “So, now can I see someone around here actually capable of counting past ten? It’s clear that I can very well kill you if needed, but I don’t really think that’s a good way to introduce myself. I am here to ask for help, not to cause trouble. You all forced me to this. I don’t know how you guys knocked me out, but that will not happen again.” Seth was still speaking somewhat loudly, as the ringing in his ears had not totally subsided yet. The first man that Seth had met had now somehow broken free of his azurite cuff.
“You definitely have some tricks; that’s exactly why we mir not trust you to meet Oxford.” He ran towards Seth, going low for a tackle, but again he was blown back by a sharp blast of water.
The man was still standing — barely — so Seth summoned several azurite bars around his body, preventing any movement. He fell over like a stiff board, his momentum throwing his bald head against the ground as his imprisoned body fell. Now Seth had two men unconscious on the ground.
“OK, I will take you to Oxford,” stammered the one man still awake. He led Seth down a corridor, hands still held together by bright blue rock.
“Could you remove this? If you’re not going to cause any trouble, then –“
The man in white almost walked straight into a tall bearded figure in official-looking grey and black clothing.
“Well well, someone has been causing quite a ruckus,” said the tall man, looking from Seth to the guard.
