CHAPTER5: “Great Leaps”
Tharne Stumbled backwards as the small landing they stood on began to tremble, shaking slightly and detaching itself from the wall behind them, the door disappearing into the dim light as they were torn away towards the centre of the room. Gears around them shifted into different positions and large arrays of sharp metallic spires began crackling with discharged arcs of blue white electricity. The panel which had activated the gear systems began to glow more brightly, neon beams littering its surface as its sides extended to encompass the entire platform in a spiralling railing of glowing crystal segments.
“What’s happening” yelled Nima as she grasped the railing tightly.
Slowly the platform moved forward, great mechanical movements clicked and whirred into place around it and the panels of the roof began to shift apart. Curving around them, the panels seemed to engulf them in a hollow cylinder, spinning and twisting as they travelled, they caught glimpses of the gears and mechanics one last time from the ends of the tube and then darkness engulfed them and the entire platform and tube locked into place with an echoing boom, seeming to last forever. The gears silenced and the darkness final, the only sounds He heard for what seemed an eternity were the long desperate breathing of Nima and Ivy somewhere nearby.
“Tharne?” Ivy’s questioning voice sounded through the darkness. “Are you there”
“I’m right here” He answered. “Although I cannot see anything at all”
As if in answer the tube suddenly whirred and a stream of lights clicked into action above them. Click, click, click, click came the rhythmic sounds of the lights switching on. First the ones above them and then flowing away either side of them. However, instead of stopping at the end of their narrow dark tube, the lights continued down a long tunnel either direction twisting and turning until the ends were out of sight.
Then silence once again encompassed them in its stifling existence.
“Ok that is enough!” Yelled Nima at the roof of the tunnel. “Before you do A-NY-THING else you better warn me first you stupid tunnel!”
“I am sick of being tossed around and left in the dark!” she added, her lips twisting into a grumpy pout which Ivy found so comical that she sniggered.
“What are you laughing at?” Nima yelled, a smile creeping back into the corners of her mouth and she poked her tongue back at Ivy.
Tharne turned and walked over to the strange panel which shared their small platform, the glowing panel seemed to display in itself a three dimensional model of hundreds of small branches erupting outwards from a central shaft of smaller and more intricate spiralling lines. Along these lines at intervals were glowing orbs outlined with strange characters and symbols which tested Tharnes memory as if he should recognise them.
Reaching forth he gently brushed the surface of the panel and the image spun and magnified on the area he had touched. Questioningly he touched one of the small glowing orbs on the display. Suddenly, its colour shifted from dull gold to a brilliant green and before he knew what was happening, the entire platform began to move once again except this time it began to accelerate along the tunnel itself.
“What did you do Tharne” Cried Ivy, dropping to her knees and grasping desperately at the platforms railing.
“If We survive this I promise I will kill you” muttered Nima, her face displaying a violent green colouring as she sat in the corner and tried to hold herself still.
Looking ahead, the platform began to increase in momentum until the lights above were flashing by so fast that he could barely differentiate one from the next. The tunnel twisted and turned as it appeared to spiral upward and upward further and further from the safety of their small and safe kitchen.
“So much for small steps” he thought to himself as he crouched over the controls and tried to avoid looking at the twisting path ahead.
Then as suddenly as it had started, the platform began to slow and stopped altogether. Heavy breathing came from behind him and he was sure he felt the burning eyes of both Nima and Ivy scorching from behind him.
Turning around he was confronted by a pair of determined expressions violent enough to melt ice. Opening his mouth to apologise he was immediately cut off by a soft sound above them as the huge panels shifted and formed an opening above them. They all stood in shock and awe at the incredible scene displayed before them as the platform moved slowly up and locked into place.
A great glass dome circled in a strange twisting form above them, held in place by immense beams of black metal stretching into the floor itself. Twelve great statues stood at intervals around the room, their arms outstretched towards each other forming a great circle of pointed fingers at the centre of the room itself and below this sat a huge table formed entirely from a magnificent and old tree. The roots burrowed directly into the stone floor itself forming into twelve seats around the trunk which spread flat as a great table top and then out into branches which spread out and then up like a huge dome around the seats and twisted together above the middle of the table to form a crown of immense golden green leaves of the size of dinner plates frosted with small infinitely spiralling flowers of every colour.
Astounded as they were by the immense room, they all moved as if in a daze toward the immense windows between the statues and pillars and stood together looking out upon the scenery below them.
“Well” said Nima. “I guess we know where we are now”
“Although” whispered Ivy. “I am not really sure where here is”
Nima nodded slowly, her mouth gaping. And Tharne walked forward, bracing himself on the great Pillar closest to him.
Out beyond the window spread a wasteland of volcanic explosions and shattered mountains in pieces stopped in mid motion as if spiralling toward them. Huge suns and planets and moons frozen in mid collision above them scattered the heavens and even the fabric of space itself seemed to be torn to pieces in some places, as if a giant creature had rent the sky itself with its great claws.
Yet inside a small bubble, yet still stretching kilometres around them, stood an incredible cityscape, sloping downward from their lookout to drape the land in an array of towers and stretching buildings and bridges navigating great dark chasms and rivers. Spires stretched and spun around them as gardens and small forests seemed to spread forward from themselves to engulf entire blocks of the city itself. Finally encircling the Great Glass Citadel itself was a huge wall of bright white stone, glowing delicately as if resisting the horrors outside.
“What do you think this place is” Said Ivy, her small voice sounding soft yet echoing in the chamber.
“I am not sure” Tharne said, still coming to grips with what he was seeing before him.
“More importantly I can’t see anyone else out there. There are no signs of any movement or any fires burning, no maintained structures or cleaned streets out there. It looks like the entire place is wild.”
“So if that is the case” muttered Nima, “How did we get here and where did all the people go?”
“Surely we can’t be the only ones left”
Scanning the landscape, Tharne suddenly frowned, there was a pattern here he had seen before”
Suddenly eyes wide, he leapt back toward the panel on the platform they had arrived on. Ignoring the cries for explanations he quickly waved his hands over the panel and managed to display the entire network of lines on the display. After a second, a smile broke out across his face.
A shaking hand drew him back from his thoughts to see Nima grabbing his shoulders, and a very worried Ivy clasping her Orange Sceptre tightly.
“Have you gone nuts?” screamed Nima. “Running off like that without a word! Touching things you don’t understand! You could collapse the entire place with that stupid thing for all you know!”
“But I do understand it Nima” He said in return, his smile now displaying bright cross his face. “These are all tunnels” he said pointing at the display, ‘and we can get anywhere down there or in here using this, this platform thing, see” he pointed at the display.
Twisting the image around to be viewed from above, the great mass of tunnels formed a huge disc of interlocking lines and sections stretching out from the central mass to spread to a circular border.
“It all makes sense if you look at where those forests have overgrown the city” he said. “See where these blank patches on the map are? They match the shape and position of where the city is over run”
“Compare it yourself” he said, moving to the side to allow Ivy and Nima access to the panel.
A short time later, Ivy nodded.
“He is right Nima I am sure of it” she said.
“I guess it makes sense” Nima replied “But if you think I am getting on that thing again you are mistaken!” “I will walk back to the kitchen if I have to!”
As they stood processing their new position, a low sound began to reverberate around them. Quiet at first they were not even sure it was real but it soon grew into a terrible ripping and screeching sound from somewhere above them. Searching they all drew their weapons and cautiously gathered together in a group preparing for attack.
“There” yelled Nima, pointing up to the sky above them to the left and they all ran to the far window of the great dome and stood with astonishment and awe. A great black sliver of glass was rending its way slowly through the bubble around the citadel like a blade driving through skin, its curved and jagged edges sparking and grinding against the immense forces above.
Then, it fell, plummeting toward the city for what seemed an eternity, it drove deep into a cluster of buildings and shattered into a great cloud of black soot and smoke sparked with green and red flashes in the blackness. Suddenly, Dark beasts of every shape and size coalesced into life from the cloud itself. A pack of six of them in all with incredible shifting forms gathered and moved together, clear yet small from this distance, they stood almost as tall as a building in the shattered remnants of the wound the crystalline shard had rent in the city. Suddenly the pack all turned, appearing to sniff at the air around them and then, with bestial howls which could be heard from all the way in the tower where Tharne, Ivy and Nima stood they shot off toward an area of the city nearby, burrowing and searching as if for something they desperately wanted.
“A Shadow birthing” Nima muttered. And then shook her head in shock. “I am not sure how I know that” she said “But that is what that is called, and they are after something or someone”
Shattered Cosmos 
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