The Rule of the Shrykull
Act One: The Fall
Chapter IV
I was spinning in an inexplicable black void. At least I think I was spinning – I certainly felt disorientated and nauseous, but that could be a common reaction to what it was I was going through.
Suddenly, I stopped, and just as suddenly, all feeling of nausea disappeared. Unfortunately the disorientation remained. I think I was lying down, once again going over the prior events in my mind, trying to get a grip of myself, but I know I was on a rough hard and black material – concrete. My clothing was ripped by the concrete in the lower back area, and my face still stung from the earlier fall – and though I had no sense of time in the black void, it obviously didn’t take very long if I was still feeling earlier small wounds.
Instinctively, I looked around for an adversary or a friend, a paramite or a mudokon, but I found none. In front of me was a massive forest of black and grey instruments and machinery rhythmically pulsating whilst belching great clouds of black smoke. As if in response to the smog, I coughed loudly and realized that it not only was expelled from top and rose, but it seemed to be coming from every crack in every metal structure. Furthermore, it created an awful dark fog, partially obscuring everything a few rows of metal structures away.
As such, I couldn’t see what was in the distance, even though I could hear the ear wrenching (yet surprisingly easily blockable) sounds of enormous metal gears screeching and crashing into each other. I also heard what I was sure was the sound of large pumping machinery along with the instantly recognizable sound of a giant well, somewhere in the distance.
Naturally, my first feeling was fear, I backed up slightly and spun around, but there was literally nothing behind me, as far I as could see through the smog, anyway.
I turned back and guessed that Big Face had obviously planned for me to come here. What for? I couldn’t possibly imagine, but the only way forwards was, well, forwards. I took a step ahead onto the rough concrete, and weak loose stones crunched quietly under the wood of my sandle.
I took another few steps, and as I got closer to one of the structures, I heard the faint sound of small machinery. It sounded smoother, and it had a definite pattern to it – I thought I recognized it. There seemed to be four cycles as it got fainter, and then it stopped for a couple of seconds. Just afterwards, it began four cycles again becoming slighter louder and thus more clearer, before stopping for a couple of seconds.
I stopped to listen to it, but it just repeated over and over again, and it seemed implacable.
I moved forwards, as I did, the stones once more crunched, this time more loudly, beneath my feet. As I got closer to the nearest metallic structure, I could make out a bright yellow insignia of a certainly evil face. If I had known then what I know now, I would have probably turned and ran; perhaps I would have chosen a different route, but the patterned metallic noise intrigued me.
I moved slowly even closer, instinctively grabbing the handle of my rough slingshot, stupidly, perhaps. I squinted, and through the fog I saw a robot. Or was it? The bottom was certainly robotic, and I had been told stories about robots many times before… But the top, well, the top was green, living – I could feel its innocent life – and moving in a truly organic way. It held something like a weapon.
I heard a piercing shout, in a garbled language that I took to mean “Freeze!” and instantly, instinctively, I turned ninety degrees and ran. There was the unmistakable sound of piercing gunfire, “Ra-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta!”
I saw myself from three hundred feet directly up, easily through the smog. A simple light-ish figure on a vast black plain. Obstacles, there, there and there, each large and cylindrical. Between two of them was an even smaller figure, darker, who was running on metallic legs after me. Zipping in between the large structures, bullets ricocheted of structure after structure, black, sinking liquid, spitting from the holes.
Back to ground level, I didn’t know which way to go. I was blinded by the smog stinging my eyes, and it incensed my throat so that I involuntarily coughed, keeling, whilst running.
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