Chapter 11
Transference
Once the thought had occurred to him that he was, quite possibly, still alive, he forced himself to open his eyes, having clenched them tightly shut as he had stepped forwards into the shimmering brightness. At the same time he had taken a deep gulp of air, mindful of the fact that it could well be his last and, whilst he could, he remained determined to hold on to it.
The brightness no longer surrounded him, although the tingling sensation that had accompanied it continued to dance across the surface of his skin with the intensity of static electricity. It was neither light nor dark - rather he appeared to be surrounded by a dully neutral greyness which presented him with no aspect of either density of distance.
He realised that he was still putting one foot steadily in front of the other, although he sensed that if he were to cease doing so he would continue to be drawn forward regardless. If there remained such a direction as forward, that was.
He was suddenly overcome by an overwhelming and deeply embedded sense of loneliness, of abandonment. Was Perry behind him still? Could he turn himself around in order to find out? He attempted to do so, calmly at first and then somewhat frantically, as he realised that no matter how he twisted and turned he remained bereft of any sense of direction and encapsulated quite totally by the uncompromising greyness of this place, if place it was. The only sensations detectable to him were the static tingle and that of the steady tug upon his being that was drawing him through this nothingness.
And he was alone! Of all people that he would wish to have as company at this very moment, Sean Perry would be pretty far down on the list, but any company at all right now would be extremely welcome, would perhaps ease his mounting panic and lower the rate of his heart, which was beating so manically that he could feel it palpably in his ears - like being underwater somewhat, he thought.
His lungs were burning now and he realised that he could hold his breath for only a few moments longer. Perhaps he would be able to breathe here anyway, he wondered, although he remained resolute to hold on until the very last second. In order to relieve the pressure that was mounting within his chest, he allowed a small quantity of air to escape through his tightly pursed lips. Instead of emerging as tiny bubbles as it would if he was below water, however, it formed into wavy streamers which snaked out before him for a second or two before dissipating into the grey void.
The tingling continued to play across his skin, up and down his arms and legs and at the nape of his neck. At the same time that he felt its intensity increase, he noticed a change in his surroundings. He was quite sure that the greyness was not quite as grey as it had appeared just moments earlier. How long he had spent here he could not tell. He was capable, perhaps, of holding his breath for a couple of minutes in total, but it felt as if it had been a hell of a lot longer than that. Something was changing now though, he could both feel it and see it, and so he strengthened his resolve to hold onto his precious air for just a few moments longer.
The change in brightness was now increasing with noticeable rapidity and then, suddenly, he was surrounded by a whiteness so intense that he was forced to screw his eyes tightly shut once again. The next thing he knew, he was being forcibly ejected in what was most definitely a forwards direction. He could feel a solid surface beneath his feet, although the suddenness of its arrival coupled with its uneven nature caused him to stumble forwards, resulting in a trip which sent him sprawling onto his hands and knees. He opened his eyes instinctively to see, through blurred vision, solid stone and gravel beneath his grazed palms. Still, he held onto his breath, even though his lungs were at bursting point and he was quite sure that his face must, by now, be a swollen purple grimace of exertion.
“Breathe, Sleet, breathe!” The voice was distant and strangely muffled. He was quite sure that it was one he recognised but, although he could not actually place it, his brain registered it as being one not to be trusted and he shook his head defiantly from side to side as he scrabbled around in the dirt.
“You must!” Perry said, “you have to!”
Perry. It was Perry. He turned to face the younger man who had a hold of him by the shoulders, attempting to shake him into the belief that he could breathe once more.
Perry was breathing! And talking! He looked normal, if a little blurry. Which meant....
Sleet’s lungs finally gave out and he opened his mouth to blow out his remaining air before taking a deep, ragged, inhalation. What he received, however, was far from the air that his respiratory system was accustomed to. He spluttered and coughed upon the viscous substance which had suddenly invaded his throat and lungs, gagged violently in an effort to expunge it from his system. In doing so, he became light headed and was only faintly aware of the fact that he was on the verge of blacking out.
“Again, Sleet!” Perry urged desperately, “you can breathe this stuff, just give it a chance!”
Breathe this? Sleet’s mind conjured with the concept as it rattled around the edges of consciousness like a roulette ball on a steadily slowing wheel.
“Come on, again!” Perry, slapping him on the back repeatedly.
“You’ll have me to answer to!” Helen, framed by the doorway, wagging her finger at him reproachfully.
“So," Sky snarled at him, “you think you can do a better job, eh? Is that what it’s about?”
“I see a red door and I want it painted black.” Jagger’s vocals blaring throughout the interior of the armoured car, Rawlings grinning at him toothlessly as they bounced along the track on the final push to Baghdad.
He giggled to himself in his delirium, coughed and snorted, the substance now permeating his nasal passages and filling up the empty cavities of his lungs. He gasped suddenly, eyes bulging open, then again and again.
“That’s it,” Perry encouraged, “keep it going, that’s the way.”
And, like a fish thrown back into the pond, he was breathing once again. He flopped over onto his back, his head throbbing and his chest a mass of pain, slowly breathing in and out whilst his fingers grasped at handfuls of the gravel upon which he lay.
“Above him was rock. And he could still feel the solidness of the stone beneath him, also. He felt immediately nauseous as his head began to swim. Where was he?
“Where am I?” he managed, although his voice sounded trapped within his skull, as if his ears were blocked.
“You’re here, Sleet, on the other side.” Perry’s words seemed to emanate from afar. “Sit up, you’ll feel better.” And he felt Perry’s arms reaching beneath his own, assisting him into an upright position from which he could better assess his surroundings. His vision remained somewhat blurry, but the sickness, at least, subsided as he realised that he was within some kind of a cave, an extremely brightly lit cave. He turned his head to one side and found himself confronted by a blinding circle of light identical to the one he had stepped into, what felt like a lifetime ago.
He pushed himself away from it, desperately. “No, I .....”
“It’s okay, Sleet, we’re through now. You don’t have to go back in there.”
He remained focused upon the shimmering anomaly, however, and he was instantly rewarded by the appearance of another figure emerging from it. A hulking, great, leathery skinned figure with the face of a devil and the wings and tail to match.
From bad to worse! Again, he attempted to skitter away, but his hands and feet failed to gain any meaningful purchase on the slippery scree which covered the floor of the cave.
“Perry!” he blurted, “what’s that doing here?”
“You mean Uvall?” Perry chuckled to himself, “he’s meant to be here, Sleet. He’s come home!”
Home? Sleet wondered. Where the hell had they brought him, and what the hell for?
He remained focused upon the monstrous hulk of the Shadow Master, as it swayed somewhat from side to side whilst making throaty gargling noises. Whilst it was doing this, Sleet noticed further movement beyond as two more of the creatures emerged from the glittering brightness, slightly lesser in proportion than the giant specimen that stood somewhat ponderously before him.
The two which were holding the door open?
He became certain of the correctness of this assumption as the massive bright disc shrunk rapidly towards nothingness before winking out of existence altogether with a slightly underwhelming ‘pop’.
The cave was plunged into immediate darkness, leaving Sleet alone with the incessant hacking of the three demons as they acclimatised themselves to their surroundings. They’re managing it a good deal better than I bloody did, that’s for sure.
“Perry?” he called out, “you still there?”
“I’m here, Sleet, don’t worry. Look this way.” And Sleet felt himself being turned to one side until he was facing the faint outline of what he guessed was the entrance to the cave. At first, the cave mouth appeared barely any brighter than the darkness of his surroundings, but gradually his eyes became accustomed to to the dimness, enough for him to assess that it was probably night-time out there. If this place even had a night, perhaps it was that dark all of the time.
As he stared towards the mouth of the cave he heard a flapping sound and felt a matching vibration upon his cheek, through the substance which served as air. He ducked instinctively, but at the same time he could just about make out the silhouettes of the two smaller creatures as they took flight in the direction of the cave’s entrance, momentarily obscuring all light once again, before they vanished into the beyond, wherever that might be.
Sleet took another deep intake of the thick gloop, finding it difficult to digest the fact that he was actually able to breathe it and, as a result, was still alive.
“What kind of air is this?” he asked, never taking his eyes from the vague bulk of the monster which shared their subterranean location. What did Perry call it? Uvall?
“It’s odd at first, isn’t it?” Perry replied, “funny thing is, we actually appear to be less effected to the change than they do - once you know what to expect that is!” He laughed. Sleet found it difficult to tell whether Perry was simply amused by the fact, or whether he was finding some kind of scornful merriment in Sleet’s current incapacitation. It was always difficult to tell with Sean Perry.
“I’m no chemist,” Perry continued, “but whatever it is, it obviously contains oxygen - and plenty of it, I guess. It’s kind of like breathing water the first time, isn’t it?”
“You don’t say,” Sleet spluttered, still attempting to get used to the sensation of the foreign substance slipping up and down his windpipe.
“Don’t worry, you’ll come to terms with it.”
Sleet’s eyes had become accustomed to the gloom now and, as he stared about himself, he could make out far more clearly the features of Perry and, to one side, the horrific visage of the Shadow. Perry was crouched on his haunches, just slightly before him, obviously intent on playing his nursemaid role to the full.
Sleet felt decidedly more steady now, his throbbing headache having subsided somewhat and the preceding events on the other side of the portal having re-assembled themselves in his awareness. He could do nothing to quell the sudden rush of blood that overcame him next.
“Are your glasses broken?” he asked, fully focused upon Perry’s face.
“Broken?” Perry lifted them off his nose in order to inspect them as best he could.
Sleet launched himself up and forwards as rapidly as he could and lashed out with his fist, catching Perry in the right eye with some conviction, sending him sprawling backwards across the floor of the cave.
“This is your doing, Perry!” he accused, “all this, and what happened to those girls!”
He heard a deep gurgle and the sound of uncertain movement from the creature behind his shoulder. He ignored it, full of rage as he was.
I wonder if they’ve ever seen the likes of us fighting each other, he thought, and then immediately recalled his first encounter with the creatures, when they had interrupted what could well have become another fight, the one between himself and his brother. That served to sober him up somewhat and he returned to his seated position.
“You never should have done it,” he said, quietly, unwilling to let Perry off the hook so easily.
The other man lay there, one hand clutching the side of his face, gasping with pain which Sleet could not bring himself to be sorry for inflicting.
“I...I couldn’t help it, Sleet. I’ve told you that already.”
“That’s no excuse,” Sleet scowled, “you should have been stronger.”
“What, like you, you mean?”
“Maybe, yeah. All this ‘I had no choice’ stuff is beginning to wear a bit thin.”
“But, I wasn’t in control,” Perry insisted, “I was compelled by them to do the things that I did. And what happened with the women wasn’t my idea.”
Sleet seized immediately upon that. “But that’s not exactly true, is it Perry? From what you’ve told me, they’ve been reading your mind, your inner thoughts. All they’ve done is encourage you to go through with things that you’d already thought up all on your own. You’ve just become a more real, less cowardly version of yourself, face it!”
Perry’s voice betrayed a trembling lip. Sleet could almost imagine that he had a tear in his eye as he continued to defend himself - in the good eye that was, not the one which he had punched. “Well, that’s not how it feels to me, that’s all I know. And I’m sure that everyone has dark thoughts that they’d never even contemplate acting upon, including you.”
They were interrupted by a shuffling and a grunting from out of the dimness. The creature had obviously reached some state of agitation.
“It’s time to go,” Perry announced, rising from the floor of the cave, “Uvall’s getting impatient.”
“Impatient for what, and time to go where?” Sleet pressed.
“Out of here, for a start,” Perry replied, “come and look.”
Sleet pushed himself to his feet and followed Perry toward the caves mouth, where he could see the creatures outline framed by what he presumed to be the sky beyond. They stepped out onto a rocky ledge from which Sleet took in the vista which lay before them.
They appeared to be very high up on the face of a near vertical cliff. He overcame a sudden feeling up vertigo to strain his neck upwards and estimated that the cliff continued above them just as far as it descended below them. It stretched both to his left and his right for as far as he could see through the dense gloopy air. It could well have been an optical illusion, but it seemed to curve away in both directions. Beneath them, a panoramic purple expanse spread out to the horizon. Whether this was a vast empty plain or the canopy of some immense forest, it was impossible to tell. In the distance, though, he thought that he could just make out some tall mass, a mountain perhaps, but again, his eyes, together with the the all surrounding viscous substance, could well be deceiving him.
It was what hung in the sky above them, however, that caused the sticky air to catch in his throat. To both the far left and right it was deeply black, unpunctuated by a single star. The sky became lighter, however, as it reached towards it’s zenith above his head, shifting through shades of indigo and violet before meeting at this brightest point which streaked off into the distance directly ahead of them. Following along this course was the source of the brightness itself - a shimmering chain of countless tiny pearls which split the mauve sky straight down the middle, sparkling and winking as they moved towards him in a steady procession, prior to disappearing over the top of the cliff edge way above their heads.
The only thing that appeared to despoil this perfectly balanced vision was a sickly looking yellow slash which cut though the sky like an ugly wound far off to the left hand side.
All in all, what lay before him was at the same time amazingly awe inspiring and incredibly daunting.
“What...?” was all that he could manage.
“I know,” Perry said, “wacky, isn’t it?”
Not the word I’d have chosen, Sleet thought, it’s beautiful.
“This way,” Perry called out, and Sleet turned to see him picking his way down a narrow pathway which he hadn’t previously noticed, unsurprisingly. The Shadow Master was just a little way ahead of him. Regardless of it’s bulk and it’s ability to take flight, it appeared to have chosen to lead them by foot along the precipitous track.
“Perry, hold up. There are things you haven’t told me yet!”
“All in good time, Sleet. For now we’d be better off just watching how we tread, if we want to get down in one piece, that is!”
Sleet gazed up once more at the miracle which hung above him, before turning to catch up with his unlikely companions.
The brightness no longer surrounded him, although the tingling sensation that had accompanied it continued to dance across the surface of his skin with the intensity of static electricity. It was neither light nor dark - rather he appeared to be surrounded by a dully neutral greyness which presented him with no aspect of either density of distance.
He realised that he was still putting one foot steadily in front of the other, although he sensed that if he were to cease doing so he would continue to be drawn forward regardless. If there remained such a direction as forward, that was.
He was suddenly overcome by an overwhelming and deeply embedded sense of loneliness, of abandonment. Was Perry behind him still? Could he turn himself around in order to find out? He attempted to do so, calmly at first and then somewhat frantically, as he realised that no matter how he twisted and turned he remained bereft of any sense of direction and encapsulated quite totally by the uncompromising greyness of this place, if place it was. The only sensations detectable to him were the static tingle and that of the steady tug upon his being that was drawing him through this nothingness.
And he was alone! Of all people that he would wish to have as company at this very moment, Sean Perry would be pretty far down on the list, but any company at all right now would be extremely welcome, would perhaps ease his mounting panic and lower the rate of his heart, which was beating so manically that he could feel it palpably in his ears - like being underwater somewhat, he thought.
His lungs were burning now and he realised that he could hold his breath for only a few moments longer. Perhaps he would be able to breathe here anyway, he wondered, although he remained resolute to hold on until the very last second. In order to relieve the pressure that was mounting within his chest, he allowed a small quantity of air to escape through his tightly pursed lips. Instead of emerging as tiny bubbles as it would if he was below water, however, it formed into wavy streamers which snaked out before him for a second or two before dissipating into the grey void.
The tingling continued to play across his skin, up and down his arms and legs and at the nape of his neck. At the same time that he felt its intensity increase, he noticed a change in his surroundings. He was quite sure that the greyness was not quite as grey as it had appeared just moments earlier. How long he had spent here he could not tell. He was capable, perhaps, of holding his breath for a couple of minutes in total, but it felt as if it had been a hell of a lot longer than that. Something was changing now though, he could both feel it and see it, and so he strengthened his resolve to hold onto his precious air for just a few moments longer.
The change in brightness was now increasing with noticeable rapidity and then, suddenly, he was surrounded by a whiteness so intense that he was forced to screw his eyes tightly shut once again. The next thing he knew, he was being forcibly ejected in what was most definitely a forwards direction. He could feel a solid surface beneath his feet, although the suddenness of its arrival coupled with its uneven nature caused him to stumble forwards, resulting in a trip which sent him sprawling onto his hands and knees. He opened his eyes instinctively to see, through blurred vision, solid stone and gravel beneath his grazed palms. Still, he held onto his breath, even though his lungs were at bursting point and he was quite sure that his face must, by now, be a swollen purple grimace of exertion.
“Breathe, Sleet, breathe!” The voice was distant and strangely muffled. He was quite sure that it was one he recognised but, although he could not actually place it, his brain registered it as being one not to be trusted and he shook his head defiantly from side to side as he scrabbled around in the dirt.
“You must!” Perry said, “you have to!”
Perry. It was Perry. He turned to face the younger man who had a hold of him by the shoulders, attempting to shake him into the belief that he could breathe once more.
Perry was breathing! And talking! He looked normal, if a little blurry. Which meant....
Sleet’s lungs finally gave out and he opened his mouth to blow out his remaining air before taking a deep, ragged, inhalation. What he received, however, was far from the air that his respiratory system was accustomed to. He spluttered and coughed upon the viscous substance which had suddenly invaded his throat and lungs, gagged violently in an effort to expunge it from his system. In doing so, he became light headed and was only faintly aware of the fact that he was on the verge of blacking out.
“Again, Sleet!” Perry urged desperately, “you can breathe this stuff, just give it a chance!”
Breathe this? Sleet’s mind conjured with the concept as it rattled around the edges of consciousness like a roulette ball on a steadily slowing wheel.
“Come on, again!” Perry, slapping him on the back repeatedly.
“You’ll have me to answer to!” Helen, framed by the doorway, wagging her finger at him reproachfully.
“So," Sky snarled at him, “you think you can do a better job, eh? Is that what it’s about?”
“I see a red door and I want it painted black.” Jagger’s vocals blaring throughout the interior of the armoured car, Rawlings grinning at him toothlessly as they bounced along the track on the final push to Baghdad.
He giggled to himself in his delirium, coughed and snorted, the substance now permeating his nasal passages and filling up the empty cavities of his lungs. He gasped suddenly, eyes bulging open, then again and again.
“That’s it,” Perry encouraged, “keep it going, that’s the way.”
And, like a fish thrown back into the pond, he was breathing once again. He flopped over onto his back, his head throbbing and his chest a mass of pain, slowly breathing in and out whilst his fingers grasped at handfuls of the gravel upon which he lay.
“Above him was rock. And he could still feel the solidness of the stone beneath him, also. He felt immediately nauseous as his head began to swim. Where was he?
“Where am I?” he managed, although his voice sounded trapped within his skull, as if his ears were blocked.
“You’re here, Sleet, on the other side.” Perry’s words seemed to emanate from afar. “Sit up, you’ll feel better.” And he felt Perry’s arms reaching beneath his own, assisting him into an upright position from which he could better assess his surroundings. His vision remained somewhat blurry, but the sickness, at least, subsided as he realised that he was within some kind of a cave, an extremely brightly lit cave. He turned his head to one side and found himself confronted by a blinding circle of light identical to the one he had stepped into, what felt like a lifetime ago.
He pushed himself away from it, desperately. “No, I .....”
“It’s okay, Sleet, we’re through now. You don’t have to go back in there.”
He remained focused upon the shimmering anomaly, however, and he was instantly rewarded by the appearance of another figure emerging from it. A hulking, great, leathery skinned figure with the face of a devil and the wings and tail to match.
From bad to worse! Again, he attempted to skitter away, but his hands and feet failed to gain any meaningful purchase on the slippery scree which covered the floor of the cave.
“Perry!” he blurted, “what’s that doing here?”
“You mean Uvall?” Perry chuckled to himself, “he’s meant to be here, Sleet. He’s come home!”
Home? Sleet wondered. Where the hell had they brought him, and what the hell for?
He remained focused upon the monstrous hulk of the Shadow Master, as it swayed somewhat from side to side whilst making throaty gargling noises. Whilst it was doing this, Sleet noticed further movement beyond as two more of the creatures emerged from the glittering brightness, slightly lesser in proportion than the giant specimen that stood somewhat ponderously before him.
The two which were holding the door open?
He became certain of the correctness of this assumption as the massive bright disc shrunk rapidly towards nothingness before winking out of existence altogether with a slightly underwhelming ‘pop’.
The cave was plunged into immediate darkness, leaving Sleet alone with the incessant hacking of the three demons as they acclimatised themselves to their surroundings. They’re managing it a good deal better than I bloody did, that’s for sure.
“Perry?” he called out, “you still there?”
“I’m here, Sleet, don’t worry. Look this way.” And Sleet felt himself being turned to one side until he was facing the faint outline of what he guessed was the entrance to the cave. At first, the cave mouth appeared barely any brighter than the darkness of his surroundings, but gradually his eyes became accustomed to to the dimness, enough for him to assess that it was probably night-time out there. If this place even had a night, perhaps it was that dark all of the time.
As he stared towards the mouth of the cave he heard a flapping sound and felt a matching vibration upon his cheek, through the substance which served as air. He ducked instinctively, but at the same time he could just about make out the silhouettes of the two smaller creatures as they took flight in the direction of the cave’s entrance, momentarily obscuring all light once again, before they vanished into the beyond, wherever that might be.
Sleet took another deep intake of the thick gloop, finding it difficult to digest the fact that he was actually able to breathe it and, as a result, was still alive.
“What kind of air is this?” he asked, never taking his eyes from the vague bulk of the monster which shared their subterranean location. What did Perry call it? Uvall?
“It’s odd at first, isn’t it?” Perry replied, “funny thing is, we actually appear to be less effected to the change than they do - once you know what to expect that is!” He laughed. Sleet found it difficult to tell whether Perry was simply amused by the fact, or whether he was finding some kind of scornful merriment in Sleet’s current incapacitation. It was always difficult to tell with Sean Perry.
“I’m no chemist,” Perry continued, “but whatever it is, it obviously contains oxygen - and plenty of it, I guess. It’s kind of like breathing water the first time, isn’t it?”
“You don’t say,” Sleet spluttered, still attempting to get used to the sensation of the foreign substance slipping up and down his windpipe.
“Don’t worry, you’ll come to terms with it.”
Sleet’s eyes had become accustomed to the gloom now and, as he stared about himself, he could make out far more clearly the features of Perry and, to one side, the horrific visage of the Shadow. Perry was crouched on his haunches, just slightly before him, obviously intent on playing his nursemaid role to the full.
Sleet felt decidedly more steady now, his throbbing headache having subsided somewhat and the preceding events on the other side of the portal having re-assembled themselves in his awareness. He could do nothing to quell the sudden rush of blood that overcame him next.
“Are your glasses broken?” he asked, fully focused upon Perry’s face.
“Broken?” Perry lifted them off his nose in order to inspect them as best he could.
Sleet launched himself up and forwards as rapidly as he could and lashed out with his fist, catching Perry in the right eye with some conviction, sending him sprawling backwards across the floor of the cave.
“This is your doing, Perry!” he accused, “all this, and what happened to those girls!”
He heard a deep gurgle and the sound of uncertain movement from the creature behind his shoulder. He ignored it, full of rage as he was.
I wonder if they’ve ever seen the likes of us fighting each other, he thought, and then immediately recalled his first encounter with the creatures, when they had interrupted what could well have become another fight, the one between himself and his brother. That served to sober him up somewhat and he returned to his seated position.
“You never should have done it,” he said, quietly, unwilling to let Perry off the hook so easily.
The other man lay there, one hand clutching the side of his face, gasping with pain which Sleet could not bring himself to be sorry for inflicting.
“I...I couldn’t help it, Sleet. I’ve told you that already.”
“That’s no excuse,” Sleet scowled, “you should have been stronger.”
“What, like you, you mean?”
“Maybe, yeah. All this ‘I had no choice’ stuff is beginning to wear a bit thin.”
“But, I wasn’t in control,” Perry insisted, “I was compelled by them to do the things that I did. And what happened with the women wasn’t my idea.”
Sleet seized immediately upon that. “But that’s not exactly true, is it Perry? From what you’ve told me, they’ve been reading your mind, your inner thoughts. All they’ve done is encourage you to go through with things that you’d already thought up all on your own. You’ve just become a more real, less cowardly version of yourself, face it!”
Perry’s voice betrayed a trembling lip. Sleet could almost imagine that he had a tear in his eye as he continued to defend himself - in the good eye that was, not the one which he had punched. “Well, that’s not how it feels to me, that’s all I know. And I’m sure that everyone has dark thoughts that they’d never even contemplate acting upon, including you.”
They were interrupted by a shuffling and a grunting from out of the dimness. The creature had obviously reached some state of agitation.
“It’s time to go,” Perry announced, rising from the floor of the cave, “Uvall’s getting impatient.”
“Impatient for what, and time to go where?” Sleet pressed.
“Out of here, for a start,” Perry replied, “come and look.”
Sleet pushed himself to his feet and followed Perry toward the caves mouth, where he could see the creatures outline framed by what he presumed to be the sky beyond. They stepped out onto a rocky ledge from which Sleet took in the vista which lay before them.
They appeared to be very high up on the face of a near vertical cliff. He overcame a sudden feeling up vertigo to strain his neck upwards and estimated that the cliff continued above them just as far as it descended below them. It stretched both to his left and his right for as far as he could see through the dense gloopy air. It could well have been an optical illusion, but it seemed to curve away in both directions. Beneath them, a panoramic purple expanse spread out to the horizon. Whether this was a vast empty plain or the canopy of some immense forest, it was impossible to tell. In the distance, though, he thought that he could just make out some tall mass, a mountain perhaps, but again, his eyes, together with the the all surrounding viscous substance, could well be deceiving him.
It was what hung in the sky above them, however, that caused the sticky air to catch in his throat. To both the far left and right it was deeply black, unpunctuated by a single star. The sky became lighter, however, as it reached towards it’s zenith above his head, shifting through shades of indigo and violet before meeting at this brightest point which streaked off into the distance directly ahead of them. Following along this course was the source of the brightness itself - a shimmering chain of countless tiny pearls which split the mauve sky straight down the middle, sparkling and winking as they moved towards him in a steady procession, prior to disappearing over the top of the cliff edge way above their heads.
The only thing that appeared to despoil this perfectly balanced vision was a sickly looking yellow slash which cut though the sky like an ugly wound far off to the left hand side.
All in all, what lay before him was at the same time amazingly awe inspiring and incredibly daunting.
“What...?” was all that he could manage.
“I know,” Perry said, “wacky, isn’t it?”
Not the word I’d have chosen, Sleet thought, it’s beautiful.
“This way,” Perry called out, and Sleet turned to see him picking his way down a narrow pathway which he hadn’t previously noticed, unsurprisingly. The Shadow Master was just a little way ahead of him. Regardless of it’s bulk and it’s ability to take flight, it appeared to have chosen to lead them by foot along the precipitous track.
“Perry, hold up. There are things you haven’t told me yet!”
“All in good time, Sleet. For now we’d be better off just watching how we tread, if we want to get down in one piece, that is!”
Sleet gazed up once more at the miracle which hung above him, before turning to catch up with his unlikely companions.