James Maxey - Greatshadow

“It will only get hotter as we descend,” said Relic.

The air cooled as Aurora whispered a prayer. “No sense in being uncomfortable.”

“Menagerie, you take point,” said Tower. “Heat shouldn’t bother you as a snake. Aurora, you’re next. Keep cooling the air as it passes you. Deceiver, you and No-Face stay close behind her. Father Ver and myself will follow.” He looked to Relic. “You and the War Doll will watch our backs.” He glanced down the corridor, holding his hammer high, his eyes searching the shadows. “Everyone stay alert. We have no idea what we might face down here.”

“There’s a damn dragon, for one thing,” muttered Zetetic.

Tower nodded to Menagerie, still in his boa constrictor form. “Move out.”

The giant serpent slithered off down the hall much faster than anything without legs should move. Aurora trotted after him, and everyone fell into place behind her. I floated next to Relic and said, “So, have you really been here before?”

Does it matter? thought Relic.

“You said you hate Greatshadow. I thought if you really did come from the Vanished Kingdom, and Greatshadow destroyed civilization back then, it might explain your grudge.”

A reasonable theory.

“But is it right?”

Relic shook his head. Without the primal dragons, there would never have been a Vanished Kingdom. Humans lived as little more than animals before three thousand years ago. But, as the primal dragons merged with their various elemental forces, previously untameable aspects of nature suddenly possessed intelligence. Men had always prayed to gods; they adapted to pray and make offerings to dragons. Luckily for man, dragons respond well to flattery.

“Then what did destroy this place?”

Men themselves. You saw Father Ver destroy the sun-disk. His is not the first religion ever to loathe other religions. In the final days of the Vanished Kingdom, a god called Nowowon rose in power. He was a god of destruction. You find his image throughout the kingdom carved in obsidian.

“I’ve found a lot of obsidian statues, but they’re always of different creatures.”

Nowowon had no fixed form. He took the shape of each follower’s greatest fear. His followers hoped to avoid their own destruction by destroying the worshippers of other gods to appease him. In the end they wound up destroying themselves as the entire civilization collapsed; self-destruction gave Nowowon his greatest pleasure.

“And Greatshadow just moved into the ruins?”

Greatshadow was always present. No civilization can exist without the use of fire. In his earliest days as a primal dragon, Greatshadow enjoyed the respect given to him by humanity. But as the Vanished Kingdom aged and grew corrupt, Greatshadow grew increasingly disgusted with mankind. Once the Vanished Kingdom fell, Greatshadow decided he preferred the wilderness that surrounded him to the company of men. He’s stopped every attempt to restore advanced civilizations on this island. The pygmies escape his notice by living in harmony with their surroundings.

I was intrigued by this news, and had a dozen questions, but before I could ask them the passage we traveled opened into a huge, circular chamber a hundred yards across, ringed with columns. We all craned our necks as we entered, looking up at the high cone-shaped roof. A checkerboard pattern spiraled up the steep walls, producing a feeling of vertigo.

In the center of the chamber was a raised platform. Upon this sat a mirrored glass pyramid roughly ten feet along the base. Sitting upon this, perfectly balanced, was a cube of what looked to be black, seamless iron the same height. Perched atop this was an equally large sphere of polished jade, seemingly carved from a single block of stone. My ghost heart skipped a beat as I looked at it. I couldn’t even begin to guess its value.

Finally, on top of these three, perfect solids, sat a throne of gold.

“Muh fuh uh,” said No-Face, softly.

“It’s magnificent,” whispered Zetetic, sounding awed as he looked at the tower of geometric shapes. “I wonder what these objects must have meant?”

The boa constrictor rose up next to him, its eyes glazed. “I can tell you what the throne meant,” he said. “The man who ssssat upon that throne ruled the damn world.”

Father Ver spat on the dusty floor. “The man who sat on that throne is dead. No one remembers his name.”

As dazzled as I was by the wealth before me, Father Ver’s words struck me. What did wealth mean if you could afford to build something like this, then vanish so completely from memory? The man who sat upon that throne had probably thought he was pretty important, but time had swept him away completely. Since everything a man might do with his life would be erased by time, perhaps my grandfather was right. Maybe the only sensible path was to live naked in a tree, eat fruit and bask in the sun. Not that this had been Father Ver’s point at all.

Menagerie, however, had different feelings on the matter. He slithered across the room, his serpentine belly somehow finding purchase on the smooth surfaces of the pyramid.

“Don’t climb it!” cried Zetetic. “It’s precariously balanced!”

“Precariousss my assss,” said Menagerie as he zipped up the cube and slid over the sphere to the throne. “There’sss an iron rod or sssomething ssstuck through the middle to hold everything in place.”

He slid his chin on the throne itself. The boa pulled loop after loop of his body onto the seat. In a flicker, Menagerie’s human form appeared on the throne. “I know you said the debate about treasure was over, but look at this! We have to take measures to protect our finds. We can’t leave this here for Hookhand to just walk in and grab!”

“No one is going to grab it,” said Tower. “The sheer weight will protect it from being stolen.”

“Are you really willing to take that chance? If you come back tomorrow and it’s gone, you’ll hate yourself.” Menagerie rubbed his hands along the golden arms of the throne.

“I assure you, I’ll be able to sleep in peace,” said Tower. “Come down at once and let’s move on.”

Menagerie ground his teeth, glaring at the knight. Then he said, tersely, “As you wish.”

He clamped his hands around the armrests as he stood up, his feet on the jade sphere. As he rose, there was a loud click. From beneath the floor, there was a ticking sound, like the world’s largest clock counting off seconds.

“That can’t be good,” said Zetetic.

Menagerie picked up his hands from the armrests. “Nobody panic. It’s probably just-”

Before he could finish the sentence, the ticking stopped. The jade globe snapped open, a wedge widening into a giant mouth full of saw-edged green teeth. The mouth proved larger than the footprint of the throne. The golden chair dropped straight down into the maw, carrying Menagerie with it.

The jaws clamped shut with a loud clang that bit right through the throne. The metal posts and backrest spun off through the air, flying twenty feet before clattering loudly on the floor. Menagerie’s torso from the belly-button up tumbled through the air. His legs were completely gone. The sphere spun around to face the rest of the party with an eyeless face, as its mouth once more opened in a toothy smile.

Menagerie’s torso bounced once on the floor. His left hand flopped limply against a small squiggle tattooed behind his ear and he suddenly vanished. I blinked, wondering where he’d gone, but had no time to dwell on the matter.

The sphere, the cube, and the pyramid had all separated, hovering in the air, spinning to face new targets. The jade sphere shot toward No-Face as a deafening, high-pitched scream erupted from within. With only inches to spare, the faceless mercenary leaped from the path of the green ball, leaving the toothy maw aimed at Father Ver. Yet as No-Face dodged, he let his iron ball and chain trail behind him. The giant mouth snapped down as the weapon passed through its mineral lips. Shards of jade sprayed out as the teeth snapped on the iron links. With a grunt, No-Face planted his feet and jerked the chain taut. The jade orb spun dizzily as it cut an arc, narrowly missing Father Ver. Infidel dropped her pack and leapt into the curving path of the spinning sphere, drawing back her fist.