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Solid Gone, Chapter One

By Doc Sherwood

By Doc SherwoodPublished 3 years ago 6 min read
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Towering torches of stone dispelled the subterranean darkness with their relentless fiery glare, while the vast cavern rang to its high-vaulted ceiling with the booming beats of funereal drums. Across the mountainous shale prairie that spanned the distance between one encircling cliff-face and its far-off neighbour, rock-men ranged, sturdy of body and grim of visage. Once there had been millions of this warrior-people and they had ruled the underground land in a mighty empire, but now the paltry thousands assembled in this place were all that was left of them. They had much to look grim about, from the misfortunes of their race to the sorrow that was specific to today.

The throng broke into deep-voiced sombre chanting to a man, swelling the noise of the drums’ heavy pounding. Eight of their number had appeared on the igneous hillside at the centre of the cavern, around which the rock-men were congregated and at which they were staring with somehow even more stoniness than might be expected. As their weird doom-ridden song intensified the small party embarked upon a trudging climb to the summit, carrying with them the flat stone slab that rested on their huge shoulders. There, the splintered spindly body of The One Below lay lifeless and unmoving.

Deep beneath the earth as they were, there were places far deeper. The summit of the hill was a volcanic pit whose shimmering heat and coiling fumes the pallbearers were approaching, and its gaping shaft seemed to drop to the lava that boiled at the planet’s core itself. The chorus mounted to a roaring bass crescendo as the procession gained the peak, knelt as one on the rim, and ceremoniously tipped the bier forward. Then the eight rock-men watched through glittering unblinking eyes of jet as their master’s remains spiralled down, a frail skeleton of stone etched for an instant against the flame-tinged dark, and then gone forever into that from which, untold eons ago, he had come.

The chanting ceased. Murmurs began to pass through the multitude, and it seemed the ritual was over. Slowly the gathering dispersed and lumbered off from the volcano’s foot, disclosing in their midst a small but highly conspicuous group of guests. It was Joe, Bret, Dylan and Neetra, The Four Heroes.

“This is one funeral I never thought we’d get invited to,” stated Dylan.

“Yeah, but The One Below was odd like that,” Bret said thoughtfully. “Honour-bound to the very last...which quite a few of our early enemies were, of course, but him even more so. When we were here before we gave him our word we'd leave him in peace to live out what was left of his life, seeing as he was dying anyway like everything else down here since their war. Knowing him, this would have been his way of acknowledging that.”

“His rock-men need to find a new way of sending out invitations, though,” Neetra declared. “I was in the middle of hanging out my knickers on the washing line when that pterodactyl flew by overhead and dropped a big stone pillar in our garden with the news, the date and the time carved on it! Scared me half to death!”

A group of mourners came over to them, and with the silent courtesy typical of their culture showed The Four Heroes to an area that had been set aside for what looked like a wake. It was true that the tables and chairs were more like flat-topped boulders, and the only refreshments took the form of a colourless steaming liquid that reeked of minerals, but as the rock-men were not slow to help themselves to large quantities of this our heroes felt it best to join them. Soon they were seated on the rocky furniture, each holding a gigantic rough stone cup full of the lively beverage. Joe raised his aloft.

“The end of The One Below,” said he. “Among the first who opposed us, and one of the old breed of empire-builders, despots fuelled by vaunting ambition, would-be conquerors of the world. Their dreams of absolute power helped define the formative days of our career, and enemies such as he will not come again.”

The other three heroes solemnly lifted their cups, and they drank the toast together. About three minutes later, once they’d all recovered from the taste, their conversation resumed.

“Joe’s right, you know,” said Bret, still gasping for breath a little. “Practically all our old bad guys are gone. Clayton Hawkman, the Grand Master Robot and General Banthal are dead. Iblis Tolomaq might as well be too for all we’ve seen of him since he disappeared, hard as it’s been to get rid of his old henchmen! Carmilla and Doctor Mendelssohn joined our side a long time ago. And now here we are, sending off The One Below too…”

“We’re getting old,” Dylan remarked.

“But who’s going to take their place?” Bret went on. “Sure, that crew had their armies and their plans to destroy civilization as we know it, but you knew where you stood with that. These days it’s all solitary psychopaths brooding over some twisted personal agenda, which half the time we barely understand. That’s all we’ve seen lately, anyhow, and from what we’ve seen of the future it looks like that’s going to be the theme from now on. Phoenix Prime, Harbin…”

“Gala,” Neetra added firmly.

The Four Heroes did not need any words as they paused for a moment, united in agreement with this pronouncement, regret that it must be so, and acceptance that at least now they knew for certain it was.

“You are correct, my loved one,” Joe said at last. “Long did I hope against hope we could find accord with the Next Four – too long, as I see well enough now. For it appears Gala’s objectives have indeed been insane ones from the outset, as all of you suspected, all of you realised, while I did not allow myself to.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Joe,” Dylan said reasonably. “I’m pretty sure no-one could have guessed what exactly it was she wanted you for!”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Bret declared. “Can’t believe she just came straight out and told you over dinner that you’re destined to have a child by her! I almost wish I’d been there – the look on your face would have been something to see!”

Joe slowly shook his head in a gesture of enduring disbelief. “There has been no contact ever since I made all haste from that encounter,” said he. “How could there be, after such a proposal? What could I say or do, were she to seek me out again?”

Neetra took his hand. “You think the best of people,” she told him gently. “You try to see goodness in everyone. That’s just who you are. If it weren’t so, I wouldn’t love you as much as I do.”

Joe squeezed her hand gratefully. “Still it troubles me, Neetra, how far she managed to lead me into her wild designs,” he said. “I will freely own that on learning she fought to liberate Nottingham in the days of the first Dark Advent, I was all but ready to accept that her cause and ours might be closer than it seemed…”

He checked himself mid-sentence, and smiled reassuringly at his fellow heroes.

“From that, and the handful of adventures we shared with her, some natural lingering doubts remain,” said he. “That is all they are. Pay me no heed, my friends.”

Neetra’s feelings for Joe were such that she knew when he was hiding something. Even if this had not been so, she was all too aware that through the most unwanted of coincidences, Gala’s incredible request could only have exacerbated doubts and fears with which Joe was already wrestling due to an unrelated matter, one that had to do with their relationship. Neetra would not have wanted to discuss this last in front of Bret and Dylan, so she merely held her boyfriend’s hand a little tighter and said: “You can tell us everything, Joe.”

So addressed, he sighed and lowered his gaze to the rocky table-top.

“There is more,” confessed Joe. “A question I cannot reconcile, try as I might.”

END OF CHAPTER ONE

Sci Fi
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Doc Sherwood

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