by Scott Beith
The fact of the matter was… if we had any chance of getting out, we were going to have to be just as insanely cunning and smart as the architect who designed it was. Most unfortunate that the smartest one of us was the only one who wasn’t inside the flexing iron tomb.
And so with what little we had, we began working on getting ourselves out of. The prince lifted his agile sister onto his shoulders so she could touch the ceiling. Her palms spreading across it, radiating anti-light as she attempted to cancel out the opaque dense metal of the roof for the glossy varnish colour of things much more transparent, utilising her cold ability to make a small circle in the ceiling see-through and find Akoni, who stood above the pit’s floor on the other side.
Terror was still on his face as his mouth moved up and down, as if he had much to say to us. The princess couldn’t use hand singles or anything to communicate our situation, other than her face and frown, but she was doing her best to lip-read and understand what he was trying to tell her, eventually nodding in final agreeance while I began sluggishly climbing the steeper parts of the platform to reunite beside them.
“He has an idea,” Anara said calmly, jumping down carefully from her brother’s shoulders. “All we’ve gotta do is wait for him to flick some switches… Then he’ll knock twice on the ceiling to warn us when to be ready, and then we have to grip the ceiling for when the roof opens up again,” she explained. “Couldn’t be more simple,” she then added, smiling, pretending to be unafraid of our situation – putting on a brave face about what we had to do, considering it didn’t take a genius to know that when the roof was opened, the magnets would be forcefully removed and the whole platform would fall.
And so waiting, we watched the crystal glow as orange as the lava far beneath us, matching the colours of Arlo’s broad-sworded blade. The obelisk crystal we required was still with us, freely there for us to detach and take, but the task of removing it at the same time as the roof opening was going to be tricky. It was interconnected with the platform and the closer we got to it, the more rampant the changes of colour became. The crystal becoming red with rage upon Anara’s most gentle touch, almost as if it were possessed by the mad mind of Midas and self-aware of what we were trying to do with it.
Unable to defend itself anymore, however, rather remorselessly I was surprised how far Midas was willing to go in the deployment of his trap. The casualties of war being the very fiend-ish canine creations he allowed to fall off the edge along with us, sacrificing them into the lava pit as all of them had rolled off without any arms built on them that would have made them capable of clinging to the ledges like we did when we fell.
But sparkling with a hostile and vengeful attitude, the crystal embedded into the girder was imbued with some obvious form of consciousness, and with it, it held a certain disdain for us being trapped along beside it, beginning to turn heat fans and mechanics both inside and underneath the hill of the platform. Some form of security-measure being enforced in case of intruders like ourselves trying to claim it.
There was a crimson glow from stage lights activating from the magnetized roofing, creating a dimly-lit and cryptic atmosphere most would associate with areas linked to evil and malpractice, even if it were certainly ideal for me and my own levels of shadow-meld and sorcery.
By the top of the hill beside the sparkling vivid crystal, I was in a breeding ground for my servants to whisper and coalesce.
Ghosts drawn in towards me from all corner banks of each frame in the nearby roof, gaining enough to manually reinvent my overbearing protector and raise him back to life from the pool of darkness that was being funnelled beside my feet.
My choice to resummon and restore my protector meant consuming all of the natural areas I had at my disposal.
On the other hand, however, thanks to the glimmering pendant Akoni gave me, I always had the ability to make small fist-full of shade inside my cupped hands and build him back up like snow to a snowman. All I had to do was use my fingers to smother the glowing locket and partially block light from spreading so that the coils of wavy clawing shadows could enter out from immaterial absence.
More so, my benefit to the group was an ability to drop little seeds of darkness from my hands as if they were pollen-fruits falling from a tree, allowing the clever condensed areas of puppet-ing mist to plant themselves into the sandy soil and sprout in growth all down the slope, sprout-lings that rose as padded blades of grass and anchored us from slipping.
The others didn’t say anything about it as they watched me do it, but I could tell they were impressed, as with a small forest along the floor, at least for the time being we felt that maybe whatever Midas was next to throw at us was something we were going to be able to adapt and endure to while we waited for his son to save us.
Among loud pumps, cranks and other mechanisms of assembly and creation, we didn’t talk, as none of us wished to disturb the tomb anymore while it awoke and artificially came to life. The sucking sounds of metals being locked and grinded inside the girder platform as the insurgence of Midas’s robots seemed evident of re-return. And although we chose to pretend it meant nothing at first, that Akoni would save us long before their arrival, realistically, I think we all knew deep down that this was a problem we were going to have to deal with head on.
All at once they came spurting out from a spout adjacent to the obelisk stone. We all dropped to my black forestry floor as they shot out like cannonballs, striking and bouncing off the very roof in curled up mechanical sphere frames as they sneezed out from the platform’s middle snout. Like smooth silver rock boulders they rolled down beside us condensed into spherical barrels as we jumped and dived to avoid being squished and hurled off the edges along with them.
For the entire first wave of them, the majority of those recreated harvesting bots simply failed to open up out of the curled-up ball they were manufactured in, and hence unable to make anchor with their sharp paws to the bedding of the slope, all of us laughing at the ridiculousness of them just falling off the cliff and towards the lava.
Our amusement was short lived however, when we heard the sound of those falling beasts simply being magnetised back into undercarriage of girder platform. Re-constitutionalised and resurrected each time they fell off the cliff’s edge as they were broken down and reassembled by the fans underneath. Re-employed automatically from the suspended platform back up above in a never-ending cycle.
Too busy trying to avoid being struck by them as they rolled, before we knew what was what, more and more of these prowling creatures managed to survive and grip the platform. Fortunately for us, they were dormant of function and command. Humble clockwork creations spotted all around us in a seated and unmoved approach, sniffing the wind for stimulus, so far completely unaware of our existence so long as we didn’t move. A hard task to perform, considering the platform had lava spurts and rolling debris forcing us to move closer towards them at times.
One was only two feet away from my chest as it sat upright while detecting the air for some form of purpose.
“Don’t move,” Anara whispered to me and her brother, also figuring out that those bots ran on clockwork primarily responsive to motion, air-currents and sound. Our evasive movements having positioned us much more downhill than we could afford to spare, considering the roof we needed to be waiting beside.
“We need to stay near the ceiling,” I argued.
“The higher we are the more we risk being hit!” she argued, looking to her brother as he impatiently tested how far he could move before the nearest creature caught wind of him. The closest prowler pounced at him without warning, slicing itself into his sword as he kept it braced in sturdy defence.
We were in the very definition of a death trap. We couldn’t go down or up, but nor could we just stay still and wait to be bowled over by the bots or dropped with the platform.
Our fate was literally in Akoni’s hands – someone who had to undo fail-safes of high voltage conduit units with Midas and his maln
ourished army on his back.
Reluctant to leave our fate on hope, however, Arlo continued trying to move, sparking a bunch of the close clockwork bots to lunge at him with their thick serrated teeth and claws, the lot jumping at him from three lower corners of the hill all at once. Him and his sister, who stood too close to him, were tackled by them, only to be saved by one of the newborn boulders still tucked in like an egg as it randomly rolled down from the hill and collided with the others.
At this point, the beasts lunged at the beasts still wrapped up like boulders, chasing them down into others as everything started attacking each other in one giant frenzy!
My shadow stood at the forefront, blocking and pushing anything away from me as it climbed up the hill towards the crystal, becoming more puffy and condensed as it rose in size, catching and deflecting some of the curled-up metal eggs before they unfolded and revealed the next let of baby robots that stretched out like the newborns they were.
Anara was clubbing their silver craniums with her crystalline tiara, making them dizzy and disorientated just as they expanded beside her, getting them before they shook away their wonky newborn limbs and allowed their cold steel brackets and crystal brain sockets to warm up and settle. Her brother was kicking and bludgeoning the more mature ones as they fought off all the creatures perching up their hind legs for quick springing leap attacks.
With diamond brains glowing red with the crystal, the once shiny and cuddly looking pet companions had turned feral in less than a moment’s notice. From yawning whimpers to immediate barks of hatred and hostility, they snapped at us, shutting the spinning wheels of jawbone cranks and cogs closed as retractable knives for teeth locked together like a snapping beetle taking a bite.
They were provoked only by movement, but we all couldn’t help but move.
“Just stay still, Arlo,” Anara hissed to her brother, who had her tiara locked in the mouth of an aggressor.
“Screw that, just break them, girls!” Arlo shouted, ripping the bodies into their individual pieces, whacking them with the blunt side of his blade, dislodging limbs from their crumbling sockets and allowing metal fragments to rain and scatter down the hill and back off the edge.
“Arlo, stop it!” I quietly shrieked, knowing brute force wasn’t the way to solve this puzzle. “They will just come back.”
“I don’t care, we can’t simply sit here either!” he yelled, swinging his sword at the beasts, watching all the clockwork mechanics explode apart as he whacked the pouncing predators again and again in the exact same forwards swing.
“You’re not helping!” Anara said to him madly, keeping still as she and I came together and stood frozen, my shadow being ripped apart as it took the full force of everything heading our way each time.
“Uh,” Anara said, stifling to speak as she stared up to the roof for confirmation of what she heard.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Was that a… knock?” she unsurely asked. Neither Arlo or I heard anything in all the chaos of metal fragments bursting apart and being reassembled from below.
After she said that, though, Arlo finally stopped moving to listen. Three seconds passing before we all heard the distinct sound of someone knocking on metal once again.
“MOVE!” Arlo shouted, spinning his body into a glided whirlwind, using heavy movement to draw all attention to himself as the bots leaped and were sucked towards him like a hurricane. A wave of cannonballs spurting out more than they ever had before, due to all the revives he was causing.
We jumped and were struck by the top of the newborn rolling boulders, struggling as we stumbled to get up the very cap of the hill. The grass thickened to become entangling ivy vines that latched onto debris and ensnared the prowling beasts as we made our rushed getaway. Arlo was smashing everything around him while bluntly volleying scattered pieces of metal away as he arrived first to the top and stood in wait for us.
Metal was sprinkling like confetti down the slope and off the edge, he held his sword firmly over the spout, destroying the boulders as they burst upwards in quicker and quicker concession.
“Where’s Anara?!” the prince shouted to me as I reached the top next to him.
I turned around, trying to see past all the metal debris everywhere, the rapid assault of dozens of prowlers being pinned down by my rising forest shade. “ANARA!” I screamed out, my eyes searching for her in panic, believing she was behind me only to spot her unmoving body semi-buried in the loose pieces of scrap metal near the bottom edge, having rolled down the slope.
“I’m going after her,” Arlo stated to me, struggling to push past one of my risen shadows as it held him back. The light turning off as the magnetic pulses that levitated us started to dim, my protector returning without my consent as it pushed Arlo onto the slope and reframed him from moving. “What are you doing?” he yelled to me, held back by the shadow as it sucked up the grassy forest I had made and grew in shape and size.
I wanted to answer him, but I honestly had no time to explain, nor for that matter, any idea about what I was doing either. I had a plan, but I didn’t actually know what it was yet. I just knew that I had one. Something strange and unexplainable for me to verbally describe, but just like a moment of pure instinct, or perhaps a nervous breakdown of sought. Repressed dread had become too unbearable to remain locked inside me, and as a result it was at rupturing point.
I had become emotionless and surprisingly clear headed with clarity concerning what I needed to do; a subconscious overhaul of my mind as I battled to bring and control a million shadowing structures all at once.
My shadows grew upwards like a tree engulfing me and my prince, the size and density of them acting like storm clouds that blocked out exterior light, acting like a constant eclipse of light to spread darkness further as I funnelled my mystics in an overly concentrated state.
“What’s wrong with your eyes?” Arlo asked worriedly, a bright maple reflective glow gleaming off his own eyes as looked back at him while attempting to maintain my concentration.
Like dark ocean waves rising up, the tree dropped leaves that melted on the floor as it washed downwards, crashing and catching everything I could see. Tentacles made from its tree roots stretching outwards as they pulled the harvesting bots into its trunk, catching parts in free float as the platform finally gave out and dropped down into the volcanic core below.
The branches of the tree had spread and managed to grab the ceiling frames and hold on to the platform while I remained in that taxing and tormented state of thought. I wasn’t in control of my actions, I couldn’t have been. It felt more like I was possessed by something dictating my movements. I was moving so many things at once, my brain didn’t have the ability to process what I was doing, nor remember much of what was happening as I did it.
My heart still raced, and I could almost feel it about to give out. I was unable to move and instead had to use little saplings with legs to scour the platform in search for Anara, conjuring up branches from overhead that lifted up debris from the floor as it then swept it closer to its stalk while clearing the field.
I had risen Arlo and myself to the top of the tree. Together we were taken up higher by one of the barky branches as it bent its arm up towards the middle of the opening ceiling.
The tree fed on everything in sight, using its branches to grab and swallow litter inside a large middle gullet hole, relentless in its rampant search for our half-buried beloved young princess, but having less and less arms at its disposal as they had to be reemployed to hold on to the heavy platform as the lava and factory light began disintegrating the stalks that kept us from falling.
The earth jolted from above us upon the cracking of tree branches wrapped around the frames of the ceiling just as I found the princess down in all the bunched up scrap litter, all those branches collapsing as the roof opened up completely and the glaring light came at us, along with its associated free falling effect.
Our platform and the hanging crysta
l plunging down towards the melting fire. The arena we were stuck in splashed, sizzled and sunk rapidly downwards into the magma trench, starting to swallow up the platform from base to peak.
The stem that linked the tree together begun disintegrating with an immediate collapse, spewing out all the litter it had consumed just after pulling Anara up the hill before it was too late.
Light was intensifying as my little tree sapling soldiers rushed to tug my unconscious princess further and further up the platform before being vaporised themselves. Akoni jetted in under a barrage of rocks and mining tools being flung at him from above. Quick to realise his rescue plan wasn’t going as well as we had planned it in the beginning.
“Just grab her!” Arlo shouted to his friend, at least that was all I heard, as my hearing was distorted and my ears begun whistling, just as my sight became the colour of a bright heavenly white. The prince was shaking my shoulders as he tried to tell me something, but unable to break through my disorientating level of focus.
The concentration I had to maintain control of everything was unbearable. A debilitating numbness consuming me as I finally fell in collapse to the pressures of intense concentrating.
At that point I was starting to truly understand why Midas made sure everything he ever created was self-sufficient and automated, as no one alive could have the mental capacity and fortitude to endure the focus required to move multiple things all at once for an indefinite amount of time.
I surrendered to the agony of an intense throbbing head ache, everything becoming simply too much as I drifted in and out of consciousness.
The trunk of my dense scrap-metal tree had split from the bottom as it started timbering over towards the spurting lava already engulfing the lowest edges of our sinking platform.
I couldn’t even attempt to repair the tree, as the heat of the magma was only adding to the temperature of my burning migraine and because of it, I was on the brink of passing out altogether. Truly helpless as every part of my body felt like it was burning due to one blinding white light.