Martyn Vaughan - The Cave of Shadows

‘You will go no farther. You have angered me greatly. I had hopes for you and you have turned that hope against me. In your ingratitude, you have earned my just wrath which I will now visit upon you. I could have given you a swift death, a release from agony but you have caused me to turn even from that boon. So here is your reward.’

And with that, it started. Pain began in every part of their bodies: their fingers, their hands, their legs, their eyes. There came a host of intangible, esurient blades slicing through soft skin, slicing deeper and deeper, passing through the bone, the marrow; peeling the flesh off in thin, bloody sheets. It was pain no mind could tolerate; the only escape was into red madness.

But something started to happen. In the cores of Jon and Shana’s being a small sphere of peace, of quietude, began to form. In each person it grew faster and faster, driving the agony before it and dressing the wounds with healing balm. The spheres of influence met each other and merged.

And Jon and Shana together threw off the ripping claws of the clinging pain and stood up again.

They were free and pain was just a bad dream. And then it was nothing at all.

Shana stood facing the enigmatic column and raised both her arms in triumph.

She shouted in a voice that carried strength and hard-earned authority.

‘Korok! Whoever you are! Whatever you are! Jon and Shana are coming for you!’

They glanced at each other briefly, held hands briefly.

And then Jon and Shana entered the Gate of Light.

Jon felt that he was at the bottom of a vastly deep volume of black water and that it was absolutely imperative that he get to the surface as quickly as possible. But how? – he was unable to move any part of his body or even open his eyes.

It was no good trying to struggle for it was literally impossible to do so. He must be dead. This was what death was like. This was eternity.

But then he was somehow conscious of a kind of movement, a kind of upward motion. He could not explain it even to himself but it was as if he was indeed moving rapidly upward through that tremendous depth of starless blackness, up to the unknown surface.

And then he broke through that surface and was instantly aware that there was light, a harsh bluish light, burning through his eyelids. It took every atom of strength that his body possessed but he forced the eyelids open against a sticky, clinging resistance.

Light! Was there anything more beautiful, more glorious than light!

And yet he realised that there was still liquid above his eyes, a thick colourless liquid that was causing the light to streak and ripple. Panic returned but even as it did so he saw that the liquid was slowly draining away and his head was emerging into air.

After what seemed an age it had all disappeared, with just a few slowly moving drops adhering to his skin. Still all was not well; there was a sick, rubbery taste in his mouth, caused he suddenly realised by a tube that was taking up most of its volume. And his nostrils were closed firmly shut by a small clamp. He pulled the pipe out of his mouth and tried to remove the clamp from his nose but under his grasp it crumbled into tiny particles of dust.

His nostrils were almost blocked by glutinous mucus but eventually he was able to draw great draughts of air into his lungs. But the air tasted bad; it tasted of metals and artificial materials and somehow of senescence; as if the air itself was very, very old.

He tried to rise but hit his head on a transparent covering. He was in some kind of box that had various outlets in its sides into which various pipes and wires were slowly retracting. His body he noticed was covered in little indentations where presumably those implements had been attached until recently.

Once again panic returned as he realised the nature of his incarceration and he began to push desperately against the transparent covering. To his gratified surprise it immediately yielded and rose up, allowing him to step out.

He stood outside his box or casket and looked around and was astounded beyond description to see that he was in a huge room made apparently of a dull grey metal, whose walls and ceiling were both staggeringly distant. But that was not the greatest wonder: his casket was not alone; it was one of a large number that stretched in all directions.

He began to cross to the nearest and was stopped by a stab of pain from his legs. It felt as if he was attempting to push himself through thorn bushes on legs made of stone. He was forced to lean on that casket for some time until the pain in his limbs began to subside. When he eventually looked into the casket he wasn’t entirely surprised to see that it contained the figure of a being very similar to himself but with many thin pipes and tubes apparently entering the body. The eyes were shut and a pipe was firmly attached to the mouth. And the somnolent body was floating in a liquid that looked much thicker than water.

Jon looked around the room trying to estimate how many of these bodies there must be but his head was too fuzzy and he gave up. Hundreds certainly.

But more importantly – he was the only one who had emerged from its strange chrysalis: he was alone in a huge room full of comatose beings. And also, he finally realised, he was completely naked. And there was another oddity: between his legs was a bulbous sack with a fleshy tube hanging down. He touched it and could feel the touch: it was definitely an integral part of him. Most odd.

Completely at a loss as to what to do, he began to walk up and down between the caskets to see if he could determine what was the purpose of all these structures. Initially he looked into each one as he passed but soon became bored by the repetition of motionless forms floating in liquid, all completely oblivious of him, or anything else for that matter.

But as he walked he gradually realised that his movements were becoming easier; he could feel strength and suppleness very slowly returning. But as his vitality returned he also became aware that he was ravenously hungry. Ravenously hungry in a cavern of grey metal.

He leaned back against a casket and tried to remember how he had got here. Were there memories further back than just a few minutes ago? He couldn’t recall any. Had he just been born, born from an artificial womb of a mechanical mother?

It was just as he had reached that dispiriting conclusion that he felt a vibration in the substance of the casket that was leaning against. He spun around to see that the liquid inside was draining away and that the pipes were pulling away from the figure inside. Fascinated he watched the person’s eyelids flutter and open. The figure pulled the pipe from its mouth and began to toss its head from side to side in obvious anxiety. Jon tried to catch the person’s attention but to no avail. He stood rapidly aside as the cover made a groaning vibration and then slowly rose up.

A figure stood up as the cover finished its retreat and slowly stepped out. Jon stared in amazement at what was revealed. It was something not too dissimilar from himself in that it possessed legs, arms and a head, but the body was constructed entirely from curves and the head was topped with a mass of amber-gold hair, formed into a kind of cap by the residual liquid. And there was also amber-gold hair between the legs, as well as an indication of some kind of indentation in the centre.

She, for such the being obviously was, stood there blinking in the unaccustomed light, rubbing her eyes to get rid of the residual liquid. Then as she turned she saw Jon for the first time and started. Her hand flew to her side with fingers searching for something that she expected to be hanging there but was not. Then her eyes widened in joy and amazement.