The Society of Dread (20 page)

Then followed a chilling moment of realisation. The creatures that had attacked the wall of living jelly could not pull themselves away. Theo watched, horrified, as a great Phytosaur found
its jaws caught in the sticky body of the colossal crelp. The reptile struggled, twisted its great bulk from side to side, but to no avail. The slime began to absorb it.

‘Retreat,’ shouted Colonel Fairchild. ‘Retreat to –’ He was given no chance to finish his words. Another tentacle, the size of a falling oak tree, swept the Orpheus officers aside like toy soldiers. Smoglodytes yelped, leapt and scattered into the shadows.

Theo looked around for Chloe but could not see her. Orpheus officers were taking cover, darting through the black smoke belching from the pits all around him. All was chaos. Theo turned to run, but could not move. Slime had oozed around his feet and held him firmly in place.

Theo felt the hideous jelly sucking him in. His hands were already covered in its slime before he had had a chance to summon his power. He wriggled desperately. In moments his head would be engulfed.

Theo focused. He refused to die in this way –
without the chance to face his own fate and to free himself from the threat of Dr Pyre. His friends needed him too. Everybody needed him.

Pain racked his body as the crelp slime began to crush him, sting him, attempt to break him down and absorb him.

No.

Theo dug deep within himself, beneath the fear, the loathing and the despair. Underneath all that, there was a spark in him – a flame of life that refused to be snuffed out.

It’s not your time,
he told the crelp, as if addressing it face to face.
This is not your world.

To his astonishment, the crelp answered him back – its thoughts inside his head.

‘You are like us now,’ it said in a huge, yet soft, voice, like the sighing of a great ocean. ‘There is only the crelp now – only I – we – us – but there is no Theo.’

Theo twisted his neck to see the face of Rakhim staring back at him, wide-eyed, mouth helplessly open, preserved like a fly in amber, trapped in the
swollen green body of the giant crelp. The slime was slipping over Theo’s chin now. He could feel it seeping into his nostrils.

Theo closed his eyes.

Life!
he called to himself, to the depths of his soul.
Give me life, not death. Give me life.

And then he looked at the world around him, filled with awe. He was now inside the crelp, swallowed, trapped, swimming in a world of glistening green.

But he was alive – unhurt – his body completely aglow.

I’ve become the flame,
he realised suddenly. He had surrendered himself to the
tripudon
energy, the power he usually held in check. Now it filled his body.

‘There will be no Theo,’ the soft crelp voice said. ‘There will be no humankind at all!’

‘Why?’ Theo asked, the question forming in his mind. ‘What do you want? Why do you serve Dr Pyre?’

The crelp shuddered and shimmered around
Theo, as if trying to find a new way to crush him. A strange feeling possessed Theo. He felt free – in a way he had never felt before in his life. He was free of his weak human body. Free of pain, free of fear. Now he was only . . . flame.

‘We do not serve Dr Pyre,’ the crelp replied. ‘We use him. We deceive . . . deceiving him. The human Pyre frees us from the Chasm so that we can serve him. He thinks we are stupid crawlers in the dark – scared of the light. He uses us to guard the tunnels, keep his foes at bay. He did not – does not know we can build skeletons – make armour – rise up to walk and claw and take the surface world for our own.

‘We defend Dr Pyre now, so he can release more of our kind. But soon we will need him no longer. With every human we absorb, we knowing – know more. Soon we will take him too, and then free all the crelp.

‘Goodbye, human Theo,’ the crelp sighed. ‘You will soon be gone – and your bright world will be ours.’

The crelp flexed its massive, gelatinous form to squeeze Theo out of existence. But, in his state of pure
tripudon
energy, Theo had no body to be crushed.

Goodbye,
Theo replied to the crelp.
You’ve made my decision for me.

A strange pang of wonder and fear shivered through the enormous crelp as it found it could not harm the little life it had absorbed. In fact, that life was growing stronger, brighter, more terrible.

From their hiding place in the cracks and crevices of the chamber floor, lurking in smoky pits and behind fallen debris, Chloe, Lady Blessing, the Orpheus officers and frightened smoglodytes peered out.

The towering monster before them began to glow. Dazzling, emerald green light spread outwards from a point in its centre to the fronded tip of every tentacle, to the glinting iris of every globular eye.

What’s happening?
Theo was lost in a mixture of wonder and bewilderment . . . losing his grip on
the world, as his own mind seemed to disappear. He couldn’t hang on to his own thoughts any more.

Who am I? What am I doing?

Where has all this light come from?

Then came the explosion.

‘W
e’re through!’

Slumped on his knees, Theo became dimly aware that people were shouting all around him. He felt like he had awakened from a dream. Chloe was standing over him, a mixture of fear and relief on her face. Black, searing slime was raining down from above.

‘I – I was happy,’ Theo babbled, ‘in a faraway place . . .’

‘No, you weren’t,’ Chloe said, grinning. ‘You were here – destroying the crelp all at once!’

She helped him to his feet.

‘All of them?’

‘Don’t you remember?’ Chloe asked. ‘They merged together into one giant crelp, in order to beat us – but your power was too much for them.’

Chloe sounded excited but there was a strange expression in her eyes.

‘What’s the matter?’ Theo asked. Chloe seemed slightly pale under her coating of fungus dust.

‘You – you haven’t quite come back to, err, normal,’ she replied.

Theo felt a little dizzy. He looked down at his hands and saw them suddenly as shapes of pure green light. He blinked and they reverted back to normal again.

Chloe gulped. ‘The – the same thing keeps happening to your face,’ she said. ‘You’re phasing in and out.’

Theo felt a pang of fear shoot through him.

The power took me over,
he thought.
It’s out of control.
He tried to mask his panic. He had beaten the crelp – that was all that mattered. He looked around and saw the beasts, including the Caspian Tiger, staggering back to life, shaking off globs of slime.

‘Rakhim!’ Theo cried out, delighted. The tiger roared back approvingly. ‘Where’s the Dodo?’ Theo asked.

Rakhim let out a low rumbling growl and nodded his enormous head towards a dark pit nearby. Black smoke and white-hot sparks flowed from the crack into which the Dodo had been hurled. Agitated creatures circled the pit wailing piteously.

‘He – he’s lost,’ Chloe said. ‘No one could survive down there.’

Lady Blessing stood on the brink of the pit, in conference with two of the keepers. She glanced over at Chloe.

‘You’re probably right,’ she commented, her eyes lowered. ‘But we have to do what we can. He – he’s still our pack leader. I’ll send the salamanders down to look for . . . what’s left of him.’

At that moment, Colonel Fairchild appeared, blood trickling from his brow, followed by a troop of ash-covered Orpheus survivors.

‘All this,’ he growled, ‘will have been pointless if we don’t stop Dr Pyre.’ He was trying to sound tough but he looked shaken to the core. ‘We have to press on to find these – these Wonderful
Machines!’ He spat out the last words bitterly.

Theo watched as the Orpheus squad stepped into the crater and headed down its stone stairway. He noticed that the men gave him a wide berth, some casting him anxious glances as his body glowed erratically.

‘We
did it,’ said Skun, scampering by, and beckoning his smog army to follow him. ‘I knew we would beat the crelp together, Theo.’

‘But what about the Dodo?’ Theo asked.

‘He’s a tough old bird,’ Skun remarked. ‘We will see!’

Theo became aware that the men who had raced so eagerly ahead had all stopped. There was no way forwards. They had reached the Great Furnace, only to be held back by a wall of flame.

‘It seems Dr Pyre wasn’t relying on the crelp alone to protect him,’ Chloe groaned.

The great power of the furnaces had been harnessed to create a final line of defence. Rising from fissures in the ground, a barrier of fire over fifteen feet high blocked their way. Chloe
covered her eyes against the glare.

‘To come all this way,’ Colonel Fairchild cursed. ‘And now this!’

A murmur of dismay rippled through the ragged army of injured smogs and wounded Orpheus officers. The men looked to their leaders.

‘Now we do need the Society of Dread,’ said Fairchild, turning to Theo and Chloe. There was desperation in his voice, and one of his eyes had taken to wandering slightly, unable to fix itself on anything. ‘My men can’t get through there,’ he added.

A quiet voice spoke up.

‘I can.’

Theo stepped forwards. He had been standing nearer to the flames than everyone else and now he strode closer, his hands outstretched.

‘Theo, no!’ Chloe cried out.

‘I – I can’t feel the fire,’ Theo said in a tone of wonder.

‘What?’ Chloe went to grab hold of Theo, but the heat from the blaze drove her back.

He reached out and held his fingers in the licking tongues of fire. ‘I can’t feel them – well, just a slight tickle,’ he said. For a split second he glowed bright green, then became normal again. Chloe bit her lip, scowling anxiously into the wall of heat.

‘What’s happened to me?’ Theo blurted out.

Chloe shook her head. ‘You’ve been flashing on and off like a dodgy lightbulb ever since you beat the giant crelp,’ she said. ‘Magnus might know about such things,’ she ventured, ‘but I don’t. It looks as if the
tripudon
energy has taken over your body. You aren’t – you aren’t just flesh and blood any more.’

Theo nodded, his face pale, yet luminous. He looked scared.

‘W-will I stay like this forever?’

‘No!’ Chloe said quickly.

‘You don’t
know,
do you?’ Theo probed.

For once, Chloe had no reply.

‘Very well, Wickland, go ahead,’ said Colonel Fairchild. ‘I believe Lord Gold anticipated a moment such as this. You must proceed alone.’ The
pale officer seemed strangely relieved. One or two of the men looked at Theo with awe.

Skun bobbed up and down behind Fairchild, with a lop-sided grin.

‘The smogs will be behind you, great Candle Hand,’ he said. ‘There might be another way through. Maybe we can squeeze through cracks in the ground like the hideous crelp,’ he muttered.

As the smogs slipped away, Skun glanced back at Colonel Fairchild.

‘Humans useless – as usual!’

Theo gave Chloe a hopeless look. The wall of flame crackled before him.

‘Well, I’m not human any more,’ he said bleakly. ‘I’m going in.’

‘Theo!’ Chloe cried out. But he was gone.

Theo had stepped forwards, and was now lost in the dazzle of the firelight. He felt half afraid, yet half thrilled by a strange feeling of freedom, of release from his human worries.

Suddenly he was through. His bright green form slipped between the flames like a phantom.
He had made it on to a shining metal pathway that led down into the pit containing the Wonderful Machines.

For the first time he had a clear view of the fabled machinery that Dr Pyre had unearthed. The vault was shaped like a great bowl. A ring of dark spires guarded the outer walkway. As the metal road curled downwards it passed through several levels. Many dark cables, snaking pipes and spidery webs of wire all converged on an enormous black dome at the bottom. Lights glimmering through slit windows suggested this was the centre of operations.

Theo walked on without fear. He seemed to have passed beyond it. Any danger that lay before him now held no terror.

After all, what could be more terrible than me?
he wondered.

Is this the destiny of the Candle Man? Is this what Lord Gold knew about me . . . that I would become a kind of living ghost? Is that why he thought Dr Pyre couldn’t beat me?

Theo had now passed under the dark web of wires. It was gloomier here. Energy crackled and spat around him; gleaming liquids bubbled in crystal tubes; a fine mist drifted about the iron columns and arches that supported the wheels and spires of the ancient machinery.

Suddenly, among the gloomy vapours, a strange sight met his gaze. There, in an alcove under the rock wall, stood an elegant golden cage.

And inside the cage was a hunched figure. As he moved closer, Theo could see inside more clearly. Holding on to the bars, stooped and sullen, wings folded, was his friend Tristus.

‘T
ristus! You’re all right!’ Theo cried. ‘I knew you would be!’

Standing before his friend, Theo studied the face of the stony creature, slightly puzzled. Something seemed wrong, but he couldn’t place what.

‘Theo,’ the garghoul said, without a hint of surprise. His slate-grey hands clutched the golden bars.

‘Oronium,’ Tristus explained. ‘The great secret of the alchemists. Mere strength cannot break it.’

Theo raised a hand to touch the gleaming metal. To his surprise it seemed to tremble – to come to life under his touch.

‘Forged by alchemy in ages past,’ Tristus said. ‘I am its prisoner, but the fire of your touch could unmake it.’

Theo watched as the metal began to dissolve into the air.

‘It – it’s time,’ said Theo. ‘It’s time to face Dr Pyre.’

‘Beware, Theo,’ the garghoul said softly. ‘I do not know if you are ready yet – ready to encounter him.’

‘Some have said that he is too strong for me,’ Theo replied. ‘I hoped you would be different.’