Geological Thinking, Chapter Two

A purple twilight greeted The Chancellor as he opened his eyes. It was a stranger and more lurid illumination even than that of the catacomb, and the many faces peering down at him with looks of mingled sympathy and fear were just as strange. He sat up. All around were rock-people, but of a very different race to any our heroes had previously encountered. These stood only two feet tall, with slight bodies that were pale and translucent like marble. Their huge globose eyes sparkled in their heads like precious gems.

“Welcome, tall stranger,” the foremost rock-man announced with great courtesy. “Though times are hard, you are an honoured guest in our land.”

The Chancellor stood. Their land appeared to be a vast circular valley rolling as far as the eye could see in every direction, ringed on its farthest horizons by sheer peaks, and he and his companions were at the very centre. Scattered groups of the diminutive folk were visible in the distance, where they appeared to be scraping the sparse lichen from the rocky walls, while everywhere around played the weird purplish glow that had been the first thing The Chancellor noticed. It did not take him long to locate its point of origin. Directly above their heads, hundreds of feet high, a radiant sphere of the unnatural light hung like a bloated subterranean sun. Close at hand was a towering wooden platform, apparently built by the tiny marble men, with steps winding all the way up to this ominous orb’s corona.

Meanwhile, a small cluster of the underground people had started to timidly proffer handfuls of the lichen to The Chancellor. “Please, tall stranger, you must be in need of sustenance after falling such a distance,” said the spokesman.

“No thank you,” The Chancellor replied. “It would not nourish me, and from the looks of things, there is little to spare. I would rather hear more of your land. It has not always looked this way, I take it?”

The spokesman’s large jewel-like eyes became enormous. “You are wise, tall stranger!” he exclaimed. “How do you know of the coming of the Vengeful One?”

“I do not, but I know of natural valleys, which this is not,” The Chancellor declared grimly. He had seen enough bomb-craters in his lifetime to recognize one when he was standing in it, even if it was bigger than any he had ever laid eyes on before, and even though the bomb’s epicentre was somehow still burning long after detonation. Some decisive moment in the underground war had happened here – indeed, The Chancellor was starting to suspect he’d stumbled upon the very source of the unspecified radiation and geographical distortions they’d detected earlier. He wondered to himself what quirk of these stone-based people’s science, so different to that of his own organic race, could have created such a weapon? At the same time, it struck him how his kind and theirs were depressingly more like than unlike, in that it seemed both could so often find nothing better to do with their intellect than invent new ways to kill each other.

“Much changed after the coming of the Vengeful One,” the spokesman said gravely. “It sank our once-beautiful land into this inescapable pit. It withers all but the barest few of our crops. And gradually, it drains the heath from our very bodies. But at long last, we found a way to appease its fury.”

“Oh? And what was that?” The Chancellor inquired.

“The time for it draws close. You may observe, tall stranger, but pray do not interfere lest it angers the Vengeful One,” replied his companion. All across the giant crater the rock-people were converging upon them, the farming parties laying down their tools as the nearer ones gathered at the base of the high wooden platform. All were beginning to chant as the crowd steadily swelled, and though The Chancellor’s small interpreter did not leave his side, he wasted no time in joining in.

A group came forward, supporting with them a woman who clearly numbered among the oldest and sickest of the community. Her marble skin was dull and fissured, and her tiny form stooped almost double. She placed her shaking feet on the lowest step of the platform, at which her escorts took their hands away. Slowly, with tottering gait, she began to proceed up the stairway.

The chanting intensified as the old woman wound her weary way heavenward, and the higher she climbed, the more the emanations from the violet sphere worked their effects on her. Before The Chancellor’s eyes her body began to crack apart, streams of stone fragments breaking free and trailing back as she fought ever upward. By the time she was close to the platform’s summit, half her mass was gone and what remained looked as if a breath would shatter it. But still she walked, step by painful step, one trembling skeletal hand outstretched to the ball of light, until finally the end came and there was nothing of her left but a cloud of dust drifting away on the gravitational wind.

“If it takes one whole, it is more merciful for a short time,” the Chancellor’s guide explained in a whisper.

The Chancellor turned from the gruesome ritual. Reaching into his bandolier, belt and coat pockets, he took out all the technical apparatus he was carrying and set about cobbling the devices together into a crude scanning mechanism. Hard data on what exactly was going on in this bizarre place was clearly indicated.

“It is time I got to the bottom of this,” he muttered to himself.

Joe, Gala, Dylan and D’Carthage surveyed the wreck of the Drillmobile, out of which they had lately dragged their battered and bruised selves. Half of it was embedded in the cliffside, and what little could be seen was no more tangled chunks of metal charred almost beyond recognition.

“Well, I guess she wouldn’t be a Four Heroes vehicle unless she got trashed on her first time out,” Dylan remarked, and knelt down to see what he could make of the ruins.

“And no deaths, at least, which is something else to be thankful for,” Gala went on, turning to face the direction from which they had come. “According to my psychic powers all four of our allies are alive and well, but our descent carried us many leagues from where they are now. We need to get back to them, as swiftly as we can, and from there start restoring this shambolic mission to some sort of order.”

Joe bent down to Dylan. “How fares our transportation, my friend?” he asked.

The magenta light of Dylan’s powers was fluctuating uneasily from his palm as he held his hand out to the ruined Drillmobile. “It’s not looking good,” he declared. “Too much was destroyed in the explosion for me to be able to rebuild her using what’s left. Ordinarily I’d substitute the missing matter with what I could draw from the local surroundings…but whatever was done to the rocks in this place has affected the metallic ores bound up in them too. They’ve mutated into a state so unlike conventional metal that my powers won’t work on them.”

“In short…?” Gala prompted.

“In short, we’re walking,” Dylan replied pleasantly, standing up. The four of them looked out upon the road ahead, which was a seemingly endless prairie of reddish-brown dust dotted with mangled ungainly mountains and boulders that glowed like giant coals. D’Carthage strode to the front of the group, a huge sparkling smile spreading quickly across his bronzed face.

“At last,” he declaimed, bursting out into grandly joyful eloquence as appeared to be his habit after long periods of silence. “The untamed frontier, horizons never before glimpsed by man, the great outdoors…in a manner of speaking! Adventures such as these I was born for. Come, my fine gentlemen and lady, new worlds await us!”

So saying he struck out at once for the plain, with the air of one enjoying himself immensely. Dylan, Joe and Gala, though they could not quite equal the enthusiasm of their fellow pioneer, followed.

The barbarians’ village was a sprawling jumble of rude stone huts set deep in what might have been the gloomiest cavern of the whole subterranean world. Bret, Neetra and Steam had recovered consciousness and were receiving a full guided tour of its winding labyrinthine alleyways, as they stood shoulder-to-shoulder in chains upon a wheeled wooden trolley that bumped and rumbled along the unpaved ground. Their captors, who had stabled their pterodactyls, hulked around the cart and guarded it closely as they towed it to their destination, while gathering around them was a steadily-growing entourage of villagers emerging from their huts to join the sombre procession. Most were carrying flaming brands or unpleasant-looking flint farming tools.

“I always thought me local on a Friday night was a bit rough, but it’s nowt to this!” Steam remarked to his companions. “Neetra love, any chance of a quick exit?”

“Sorry, Steam, but that crash-landing took it out of me!” Neetra whispered back. “I won’t be up to teleporting three in one go for a while. We’ll just have to hang in and see where they’re taking us!”

“What is with all this lost tribe stuff?” Bret exclaimed, looking around him as far as his bonds would allow. “It’s nothing like the civilization that was here when we last came. How could one war change things so much?”

“I don’t know, but something’s sure sent them back to, well, the stone age,” Neetra agreed. There was something else too about the villagers which our heroes could not help noticing, and that was the advanced physical deterioration of the older ones. Their warrior-escorts and the other young rock-people seemed healthy, but their elderly fellows were crumbling and decrepit just as the old woman seen by The Chancellor had been.

“I don’t know how long these guys normally live for, but something tells me whatever was done to the landscape’s taking its toll on the population too,” Bret observed. “Mutated geography, premature aging, and social development in reverse…just what the heck is going on here?”

“And another good question,” Steam added. “Why have they got a problem with us?”

The trolley rounded the final corner. Before our heroes’ eyes stretched the village square, a wide open expanse bordered on the far edge by what appeared to be the high outer wall of a great amphitheatre. Seated in a row of thrones at its foot were what could only be the tribe’s leaders, their withered rocky bodies adorned with magnificent headdresses and jewels. All was lit by flickering fires that blazed not only from the many torches positioned around, but also that which towered over their heads against the arena wall. It was a gigantic effigy of Phoenix Prime, the wings crafted as long hollow crucibles that sustained an everlasting inferno. Steam’s question felt at least partially answered, as stone percussion began to beat out a refrain that sounded disturbingly sacrificial in nature.

“Ravager!” boomed the High Elder, thrusting his hand above his head towards the great statue. “Ravager return to our land! But this time, Ravager our prisoner! This time, Ravager will pay for evil she did!”

“Ah, I see,” Neetra began. “Understandable mistake, but the Ravager wasn’t me. Would you believe it was my long-lost twin sister?”

A deafening roar rose up from the assembled tribe, and their drums rattled in a frenzy of bloodlust. “Ravager no hide behind words!” the Elder howled. “Legend say Ravager kill millions of our people in time of chaos! And after Ravager came the Wasting, kill many more! Nothing spare Ravager now from tribe’s deserved vengeance!”

“I’d guess not, then,” Neetra muttered.

“Ravager’s powers…gone! Her wings of flame…lost!” the High Elder continued. “She will fight for life in equal test of strength! Thus will tribe be avenged!”

“Too much talk, mate! If you want to hurt her, you’d better plan on going through me first!” Steam shouted bravely. The High Elder crashed his staff down on the ground for silence.

“Ravager and both her followers fight! Ravager and both her followers fall!” he decreed. “But honour of destroying Ravager go to greatest champion. Old warriors no use, all weak because of Wasting. Youngest shall fight! Youngest mightiest of whole tribe now!”

A rock-boy who looked about Neetra’s age, girt with golden sword and shield, stepped forward. His skin was vivid red and smouldered like lava as he glared at our heroine out of volcanic eyes.

“Cheer up, Neet, at least it’s not another arranged marriage,” Bret pointed out.

The High Elder raised his staff aloft. “Prepare the arena!” he commanded. “Let battle to the death be done!”

The Chancellor had divested himself of his military greatcoat and hat in the steady heat of the underworld, and clad in just trousers, boots, braces and shirtsleeves completed the last of his tests. He stood up and called the tiny marble people to him, who obediently came in one massed assembly. A sea of wide jewel-like eyes gazed up at The Chancellor in wondering silence.

“Hear me,” he began. “The tests I have just run confirmed my theory. Your Vengeful One is nothing more than the lingering after-effect of a bomb apparently detonated during the recent war; the weapon that not only sank your homeland, but also mutated and distorted the gravity and geography of this entire realm. Radiation from the blast-site above us is what has killed all but a few of your crops, and it is gradually killing you too.”

“The Vengeful One’s anger has been great indeed, tall stranger,” The Chancellor’s guide agreed timidly. “But thanks to the sacrifices…”

The Chancellor held up his hand to silence him. “Your sacrifices are achieving nothing,” said he. “At the heart of the blast-site the radiation is at its most intense – it dissipates the further it expands from the epicentre, such that its effects are not felt so severely here on ground-level. The sacrificial victims are destroyed immediately because they walk into close proximity with it, but this has no bearing on how the rest of you are affected. My scans of the wear on your bodies reveal that if you remain in this crater you will all be dead within months, even if you do not starve first. However, if you leave, and begin anew in some other region far from the blast-zone, you would all have many years yet.”

A long mute stare was as much response as The Chancellor received to this. Either the tiny stone folk did not understand his announcement, or his blasphemy against their angry god had shocked them beyond the power of speech. Deciding it would be best to continue, he directed his audience’s attention to the sacrificial platform.

“We will dismantle it, and rebuild it against the side of the crater,” The Chancellor declared. “Using it as a staircase, you, and I, shall escape this stricken place.” He turned to his guide. “Come.”

The rock-man stepped meekly over to him.

“This operation shall proceed in accordance with proper military discipline,” The Chancellor said to him. “You are now my lieutenant, and I shall address you only as such. You will address me only as ‘Chancellor.’ I shall communicate my orders to you, and you will relay them to your people without delay. Let us begin.”

“Tall stranger…we…I…our people have the utmost respect for any, for all guests in our land,” the guide stammered in obvious distress, “but the Vengeful One…its fury will be terrible when it learns we are working against it, and…and…what you propose…”

Without preamble The Chancellor took out his gun, loaded it, and levelled it at the rock-man’s head.

“This is called conscription,” The Chancellor explained. “What it means is that you follow my orders, or I shoot you. Are there any further questions?”

There were not. With a breathless burst of: “N-No, tall str – erm, I mean…Chancellor, it-it shall be done!” the newly-appointed lieutenant scurried over to his countrymen and began organizing them into ranks at once. The Chancellor holstered his weapon, strode over to the platform, and gripping one of its lower struts in both hands made the first move in tearing the towering structure down.

END OF CHAPTER TWO