by Scott Beith
I assumed Vallah was going to cause a scene by leaping to my defence, drawing unwanted attention to ourselves. That just like I had seen before in the meadows, she would again protect me from the immediate danger I could have faced while I dared to gulp and stare back into the desert scorpion’s big beady bug eyes, but after looking backwards, after the incident had already unfolded, I saw the most defensive and scared spider I’d ever seen in my life.
So trying to peek inside the rich carriage window of the reinforced wagon being tugged by that beast, it was just one of the many supervising goblin oppressors that Anara and I had seen on the pier just prior. I assumed he must have been one of the founders of this place, considering how much money it must have taken just to capture and tame such a merciless and wild animal like the one he had chauffeuring him around. But it was there and then that I realised why Vallah had become so threatened and scared. Scorpions were one of only five other known creatures said to be stronger and deadlier than the spiders we efficiently cultivate back at home.
“Try not to get in anyone’s way,” Anara whispered to me, pulling me back into the crowd while we watched the wagon pass. The wagon was moving directly towards the pyramid ahead. The artificial stone mountain towering above all three boardwalk tiers of shops and houses on either side of the main waterfront.
The scorpion was paving its way towards the one outstanding attraction of this town; the pyramid’s streetlights glimmering in a sequence near hypnotic, dampened by artificial jungle gardens that directed and guided us towards one of its many base level doors. In my opinion, the building was much like the deep-sea anglerfish that uses strobes of mesmerising light to lure unsuspecting prey towards it, with the only difference being that this building never had to close its mouth to feed.
For what we saw before us was a pristine hotel complex that overlooked the entirety of the beautiful lagoon-style bay. It was a giant triangular obstruction embedded into the very ocean, like a mountain and its jungle, obscuring the whole sewer system city that resided directly below it on the lower levels. Luckily for Anara and I, who had coats lined with gold coins, the place only became classier with every single inch we were granted to walk further and further into.
“This way,” Anara said, directing Vallah and me on a different path to the main party cluster, taking us into a side alleyway entrance of the establishment. Her keen knowledge of the place proving successful as we skipped the mafia guards performing customs inspections on the crowd. Instead, we moved straight through the unseeable blackspot doors of entertainers and staff that were hidden inside the fake greenery of vines and scrubs that covered the base of the pyramid’s walls.
The inside of this grand establishment was just as crazy and enormous: inside it was a tall monumental stone casino thriving with promoters and advertisers at each side door, designed to lure tourists towards the various level precincts that all had their own custom versions of paid decadence and vice.
Scared or not, though, I had to admit it was all quite marvellous. I stared up at the roofing of this base level and was beyond impressed by how high the ceiling was from the floor. ‘Skyscraper’ was the only word that could describe this place, as it was something so large and monumental it seemed as if it had been built by a more advanced race.
On just the outside, the pyramid rose up like an old island volcano, shooting upwards towards the roof of the hive, but as it climbed, it always thinned out so it was never directly overshadowing the primitive harbour town beneath its base.
What was crazier than anything else, was what could not be seen until someone like me physically ventured inside. Half of the pyramid’s complex was buried under the water, with many extra basement levels rooted so far below the visible coastline that the building itself must have been merged or anchored with the floor of the lake’s bedrock.
Inside the place was hand moulded from a mix of thick ceramics weaved and threaded together by bundles of branchy microbial lichen fibres. Serving as an alternative means for silk roping, these grassy dark forest vines were dimly glittering like fairy lights as they were imbued with bricks and were able to pulsate like neon lights that surged with energy, originating from a power source somewhere downwards in its foundation levels, where it must have kept its geo-thermal heart and core. Those moving and flashing lights automatically directing customers into all of the pyramid’s various side shops and souvenir stalls along each wall. The main foyer level we entered into being the linking shop platform that connected all travellers to the merchant department stores they wished to see and buy from.
Anara, Vallah, and I shuffled alongside another new group of wide-eyed travellers, moving past pylons of spurting kontiki flames and rainforest-themed palm groves as we arrived to the unorganised beat of this place’s peak hour shopping rush, the three of us were thrilled and fascinated over all monuments and attractions on centre display.
But entering into a whole new cell of long stone chamber halls, I ignored the buskers and Broadway promoters stationed around the flat venue of the entertainment district. Anara, on the other hand, was virtually a resident and local, choosing to pick up every pamphlet and brochure. My only mission being to find a room and avoid all the traps and lures of this infamous sin city.
I was amazed by the diversity of tribes and cultures that were present, with nymphs varying from the spoiled and privileged, to the downright desperate and poor. Despite those difference, however, and contrary to what I first thought, it seemed like once inside, everyone here was equal and welcome to participate in whatever they wanted.
There was a fascinating array of undecipherable hieroglyphs engraved along the walls and ancient displays. I could tell from the very tours being advertised to take place, that this was a building prehistoric in nature, and was quite possibly a type of hallowed temple that might have predated the very city and bay sitting around it.
Its halls continuing the theme for the entire environment of the ground floor pathway. The greenery was made to look like a dark rainforest: fountains and vines all compiled together to create the grand illusion that we were living in the heart of a thick tropical setting – a rather homey feel for Anara and me as we both looked up to see The Hotel Capricorn’s front entrance sign.
In my very brief travels with Anara and her family, I have stayed in only a few inns and taverns before. But the building we were in was out of this world; it was an estate so tall and large that each floor had its own group of smaller hotels and ecosystems.
Like living inside Aristotle’s elemental compass, I saw sparkling signs red like volcano fire or blue like glacial ice, each separate sign offered free access to stairways that led towards the hotel’s lower level whirlpool spas, or at least discount pricing for various theatre halls on its second tier ground level. There were fire pits, ice restraints and levitation rooms leading up and down from special side wall conveyor stairways, seeming to be something unique for every type of guest possible. Each traveller in our own wild downwards convey had slowly begun separating towards different activities, while Anara, Vallah and I continued always straight ahead, keeping out of the novelty guest shops and vacant bars of that lengthy ground floor as we looked for a more hidden place to stay.
We headed down a long stone staircase, descending under the ceiling kelp of their staged seabed basement level, watching through some glass dividing walls and floorboards a piece of the bay’s blue coral-reef and its rocky bottom side-surface.
To great surprise the ocean outside and bedrock levels were dangerously accessible through interconnected and underlying cave pool systems. It was like an overrun aquarium of patrolling electric eels and glowing amphibious phyto-fish plankton that could swim inside and out of the complex freely as they illuminated the bedrock level. An apparent safe-haven level to them as well, seeing as outside in the ocean awaited a full diversity of roaming shrimps and seahorses feasting on animals hiding in clam-shells or caught in the corals that weren’t so lucky to find access inside.
It was only getting larger, wider, hotter and drier the more we travelled downwards, eventually we were left completely alone, left to navigate our way through the sandy sea-corners or a near waterless drainage desert under level.
It was as if we were suddenly under the very ocean floor, following poorer handcrafted signs through a decaying floral stone hallway of desert canyon ridges. The moisture in the air was still more suitable for amphibious or fresh water creatures of the world, as a spout of separate ferny oases seemed to still abundantly pop up and cater to whatever sea-nymphs must of decided to live in the various underwater corner cave pockets of this greatly forgotten world.
I paused to touch one of the branchy wet living beach vines as it moved and tangled along the drying hallway corridor, there were a lot of holes it was growing around, covering over the fractures of minor cracks most likely made from rowdy guests before us. Biomechanical walls healing themselves literally years ahead of our time and technology.
Everything in the sunken sub-basement level was extraordinary; it was once as cool as a crypt, yet as we head inwards became more windy and dry. Each movement away from the pyramid’s corners, where all the staircases were, was putting us further inside a new, hotter and dry deserted world. I found it far too exquisite and hard to believe that pirates and privateer contractors could have constructed such a marvel.
Upon checking a sign before the main two ridged canyon pathway, we had found ourselves in an actual desert of fierce heat and sand. It was called ‘The Valley of Kings’, although that was more of a cruel irony to those on low income then any testament to luxuary. Our decision to blend in and lay low meant out of all the exotic and unusual climates available to us, we chose to move away from the walls and find real estate options closer to the heart of the pyramid’s sub-basement core.
And so, having to trek through what was virtually a sandy Badlands desert, we followed the aisles paved with old stone statues depicting mythological sea-maiden warriors, who had gills, tails and wielded large tridents. Even though I was in the middle of the desert, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Milena’s water garden oasis, if only thirty times its size.
I then touched the siren monument as I tried to learn more about its origin by feeling its delicately carved stone. My fingers were able to glide over the pillar like polished metal, it was that well smoothed. What’s more was there was a subtle cleverness of its design. Much like the lichen-clay composite that made up the walls and pipes, it was made by the same breathing fungal stone that this ancient palace and empire must have been built with.
The hard rocky mould that glazed its surface was like a coat of glue protecting the aqueous photosynthetic algae that sat underneath it. The sculpture was living material made of microbes that generated energy like firestones as it fed off the very carbon in the air, sharing its food source with the mould that encased it protectively. Two organisms working symbiotically in order to survive in an growing arid desert-type terrain of all places. I didn’t think such things were possible until I saw it for myself, but, just as some of the most famous scholars had talked about, all those siren pillars were linked like power couplings that lined each desert path like simple road posts but were more like statues that allowed for us to breathe the underground air as well as glow and illuminate our way upon the gradual setting of an unknown invisible sun above.
Personally, I would have loved to spend more time examining each different siren mermaid sculpture that paved the sandy valley road of the empty sub-basement level. But until we had a room to rent, I considered myself in hostile terrain and was reliant on my speedy royal guide and the pace of our fast stepping spider ride to determine when I should stop. Right up until we successfully manage to find an adequate deserted desert inn at the tail end of the rocky twin canyon road and bypass the last few short valleys of sand before we knew for sure that the doors to the house weren’t just a mirage.
Sand had turned to warm tiled outside flooring as we finally exited the brief open desert expanse during their artificial sun-setting sequence, passing authentic looking cacti and tumbleweeds as they rolled over small side hills to our right and lead us inwards to the torn old front entrance veranda and its partially frayed flyscreen doors.
But just before we could go inside the main lobby and function room, we stopped by one last special concrete replica. The last of its kind; this statue was at the front of the hotel’s palace doors. One specially designed to look like the other sirens; although this one was of a male instead.
Noticeably fake – it appeared to be an amateur’s attempt at copying the other stone statues. Carving the portrait of a pointy-nosed imp in a crisp slender outfit. Engraved with the name of this hotel’s particular owner and self-proclaimed ‘curator’; a narcissistic representation of all previous antique relics, only more crude and jagged, the craftsmanship lost to it, as it was only a close recreation of the inspiring images we’d seen along the track before it.
Looking at the statue, it appeared this place was owned by some greedy entrepreneur named Belial: a warlord with an insatiable desire for wealth. Another greedy goblin-like figure just like any other tyrannous overlord, determined to test the limits of how far backhand business deals and extortion based personal profits could lead him and his ‘siren’themed empire.
“Don’t let his small size fool you. This guy was a major player once,” Anara said to me while I lingered to look at it, glancing at the statue strangely and unsurely. “However, today he’s the only one of them we shouldn’t have to worry about. Apparently, he’s been a shut-in here ever since his wife and son died in an avalanche,” she added, coming up close to Vallah and me.
“I guess money can’t buy everything,” I said back to her, reflecting on his family’s tragedy, while watching Anara attach a leash to the saddle above Vallah’s tall thin legs.
“That’s too true...” she announced in response. “Although for our sake, hopefully it’s enough to get our way through these doors,” she then added, moving me aside with her just before the turn of the front door and distant walk towards the empty foyer reception.
My head stayed beside an old worn window showcasing a foggy but large collection of shrunken heads in jars displayed on shelves, as well as bones, clay totems and other gross trophies put there to complete the whole jungle-savannah themed estate this place was mimicking.
“You’re going to have to do all the talking,” Anara told me, handing me almost all of the coins she’d taken from the vault.
“Why?” I asked in a panic.
“Because pets aren’t allowed in the rooms – and this place isn’t exactly going to break the rules for the more carnivorous ones,” she then explained, using her cloaking powers to hide herself and Vallah while leaving me exposed so that I could rent a room and obtain the keys.
A plan I had very little faith in, considering how hard it was to keep Vallah calm once Anara took away the light from her eyes and made her blind. The trace of them most evident due to the many wonky stumbles as Anara tried to coach Vallah through just the first door.
Although following the plan nevertheless, I too entered into the lobby of this desert inn, approaching a wooden desk that sat in front of the upper level stairs. Behind it was a rather disinterested receptionist, who was cleaning her nails and, luckily, taking very little notice
of me or the couches and coffee tables being bumped around by the invisible Vallah.
“Just a room please,” I said nervously.
A vase falling off the table in the corner and smashing against the sandy floor easily loud enough to fix even her attention, the receptionist and I both jolting initially before eventually lowering our concerns to reinitiate the conversation.
“Ok… So what size room?” she asked, with a slightly sceptical tone, perhaps wondering if I were a vagrant without any money, or a thief in need of quick refuge after a heist.
“Just for two,” I answered anxiously, dropping a whole pile of coins on the desk. I had no idea how many I needed to pay for the room, but I didn’t want to ask, afraid it would make her ask questions.
Once she saw the coins, her mood changed like the snap of one’s fingers. She suddenly became very accommodating, ignoring the furniture still being shaken around her while photographs and books mysteriously fell over near the far away side wall and bookshelf.
Given access and chauffeured through by another hotel concierge member, she was quick to flick over the keys towards myself; “This way dear,” a white and red-robed bellhop was then just as quick to say in approach, a shared secret look of excitement given between this young man and the older receptionist while they together got up to show me around.