Temple Escape

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here we have Scott and Mara trapped in a Shreen temple waiting to see if they would be rescued from Petal's oppressive atmosphere. They are about to get a memorable ride in a diving bell. This was also an earlier draft, the scene removed completely in the final due to more exciting plot changes.

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Scott’s resolve at holing up in an ancient Shreen temple until he ended up steam-baked wasn’t helped by the fact he already faced one mutiny.

“You couldn’t expect him to just wait here this long, could you?” Mara said from her seat on the ramp at the water’s edge. Having peeled her suit half off along with him, she didn’t look any more comfortable sitting next to the water than he did pacing the floor. Her face still bore blotched remnants of blisters, but Scott guessed she was no longer in any real pain any more than he.

He looked up at the roof’s hole, wishing for a bucket of ice cubes. The air was oppressively hot and humid to a point just shy of panicked gasps. Soon they’d both be forced to button up again. “Think he’ll find a way aboard a ship? Or maybe get us some decent suits?”

“I think he’ll end up shot,” she replied glumly. “All this because he owed your father? I thought that sort of thing wasn’t in a mercenary’s pack.”

Scott walked back toward the pool, trying to fool himself that the bathwater-hot water would be any better at cooling him. “I guess when you kill for money, you have to find something else of value.” He pause, his eyes widening. “Don’t move. No, don’t even look back! Just stay still.”

He’d first thought it was Water returning, but right behind the first crystalline face emerging from the dark pool came another. And two more. Lithe crystalline bodies rose from the pool, each displaying distinctive bioluminescent patterns in their rainbow displays.

Swallowing, Mara did what he asked, remaining ridged as four sirens emerged around her, brushing Mara with their pelvic fins as they slid on either side of her. One paused and turned to her. “Mara.”

She nodded.

Scott braced himself as two sirens glided across the floor, one of them all but pressing her face against his. “Scott.”

The fact that they spoke in heavily accented English suggested either some quick teaching on Water’s part, or something far more arcane. These creatures had to be freshly born, after all. Just to be sure, and polite, he returned in Air. “I am Scott. Where is Water?”

“With our Quan,” the siren said in a manner suggesting something more fateful than a simple meeting. “I am Question. You must come with us.”

He glanced toward the outside dome. “We have another we’re waiting for.”

The accompanying siren looked at Question and snapped open her cutting fins.

Question’s smile was augmented by a slight orange tinge to her dorsals. “My sister Uncertain wants you to come now. Our Quan demands this.”

“I think we’d better listen,” Mara said, trading looks with the Song Guard all but curled around her.

“I am Wondering,” Mara’s new companion introduced, plucking at Mara’s suit. She glanced at the other Song Guard waiting beside her. “Sorrow, they will need a Reunion carriage.”

“I have the memories,” the other assured, moving toward one of the glass bells secured in surrounding niches. “Uncertain, you have memories/”

The siren next to Scott nodded. “I will use the hoist. The carriage only takes them as far as the Song’s cradle. It was not meant for much deeper.”

Wondering put a clawed hand on Mara’s shoulder and then slid to her feet with an annoyed curl to her lips. “Then they must hold their breaths.”

Mara slowly rose and joined Scott in watching Sorrow and Uncertain pivot one of the “branches” toward a nearby bell. “Don’t have a choice, do we?” she whispered.

Scott shook his head. Water always talked of her Quan, but wasn’t much on description as much as adoration. Something at the bottom of the lake, much as some god or goddess perched on a mountain. That’s all he ever considered this Quan to be. Which brought up the uncomfortable idea of the whole “going to the Quan” being a euphemism for something very final. Four sirens. He looked at Question. “We coming back?”

She shook her head. “You will merge with us until ?’s sword has left the sky.”

He exchanged glances with Mara.

“We could run for it,” she suggested under her breath.

“Wouldn’t make it five steps,” he replied with a sigh.

The sirens affixed one of the glass-lined diving bells to a branch and swung the vehicle over the pool. A few turns of a crank and the bell settled halfway into the water. “All return to the Quan,” Question explained, pushing them forward.

“Don’t have to poke,” Mara growled.

“I am Song Guard.”

“We’ve heard that excuse before,” Mara retorted.

Braving a grin, Scott pulled off the rest of his emergency suit and tucked it under an arm. He stepped down the ramp and into the pool. The water was like a hot bath, but tolerable. Two sirens slipped into the pool across from him. Hands guided his dip beneath the surface and into the bell. He eased himself up on a wooden bench circling the stuffy interior, letting his legs dangle beneath the water.

Mara was next, tossing her suit up beside him before taking a seat. Her grimace acknowledged the stuffy air.

“Breath shallow,” he advised, tapping at the glass. The material felt heavy like thick crystal.

Question popped her head up and pulled back the crystalline filaments serving as her hair. She smiled much as a child might. “Do not come out until we say, or I will kill you.”

“You are Song Guard,” Scott replied dryly.

“I am Song Guard.”

“A little slow on the sarcasm,” Mara remarked toward the ripples of Question’s departure.

“They’re newly hatched,” Scott guessed. “Running on memories and instinct. That’s how Water explained her birth. “Yet these know English and even some of Water’s mannerisms. What the hell she do out there?”

Mara gripped the bench as the bell swayed, liquid darkness gurgling over their heads. “Guess we’re about to find out. Think they’re going to kill us?”

Scott shrugged. Outside, the four sirens gripped handles and pulled the bell down. Blue-and-green ripples ran up their fins, indicating good moods. They wouldn’t be so cheery if they knew what Jerimiah and the rest had in store for them.

The bell’s frame creaked ominously, but held its integrity during a descent through an underwater passage whose size and depth he could only guess at. Only when their travel took a decidedly lateral direction did Scott see a gaping blue maw ahead. Powerful pelvic fins pushing through the water, the sirens covered the distance quickly. The bell passed over the lip of a precipice and plunged toward what appeared to be a second tunnel looking like a sunken well. Bright glimmers from surface ripples played across crystal bouquets circling the entrance. Each shard through back a dazzle of reflections in every color imaginable.

“The Song’s cradle,” Scott guessed. “Dying Shreen come down here and probably have the same thing done to them as we saw in the village back on Sanctuary.”

Mara shuddered. “But we’re not dying.”

“No, we’re not,” Scott replied, as unconvinced as his statement sounded. What was left, now? If this didn’t kill him, Jerimiah and his goons damn sure would. Fine. Maybe Kenzie would somehow save the day and get Mara and him off planet. To what? No. This was better than nothing. He looked down at the water lapping at his knees. Better for him, but not Mara. She deserved her miracle.

Azure transformed slowly to a darker blue, the sirens tugging them beyond the shelf toward cobalt waters below. The bell’s air was oppressively thick, each occasional creak of the surrounding frame receiving immediate attention from them both. Scott looked toward the surface beckoning far above, feeling more than a little claustrophobic. No evidence of machines probing the depths. Not yet. Not with everyone probably scouring the abandoned city for their missing Reliquary.

The sirens’ bioluminescent colors became prominent once more, with only a light blue smudge above them to pierce the eternal night. The lake looked more like an abyss, and the bell’s squeaking complaints were constant. Scott ran a finger along a sweaty interior seam. One breach and no amount of held breath would save them. Outside, the sirens kept their pace, their pelvic fins steadily sweeping back and forth, pushing the bell further into the depths.

“Deep lake,” Mara muttered. “Feel the water? Cooler now.”

Scott peered through the inky blankness. “Okay, there’s something below and ahead. Lights. Lots of them in long lines. Looks like a traffic jam down there.”

“More sirens? Same colors as these guys.”

“Or a city,” Scott guessed. He counted at least six strings of blue-green beads climbing up a large slope. He guessed there were more illumination hidden by the hill’s curve. Stadium lights along the roof? Then it struck him. This thing looked like a huge replica of the diming Song. This thing wasn’t just huge, it was alive. And they were about to land on it.

The sirens drew close to one of the blue nodules below, the bell’s dim interior brightening. What looked like one of a chain of headlights expanded into a room-sized dome set within what looked like mottled gray rock. One of their escorts broke away from the bell, darting over the curved surface, her arms sweeping back and forth.

“She’s cutting it open,” Scott observed, watching the nodule split open like a blister to reveal a cavity whose floor consisted of the same blotched surface.

“That’s where we’re going?”

He nodded. “They’re pushing us into it.”

Bathed in the azure glow of the nodule’s interior walls, the bell came to rest against the bumpy surface. Looking up, Scott saw the sirens maintaining their distance above a rapidly healing roof except for the one whose slow chevron-like ripples identified her as Question. She remained inside with the bell. Within minutes the bell was fully enclosed.

“Water’s dropping,” Mara pointed out, her breath quickening. “This is like some sort of air lock.”

She was right. Streams of bubbles erupted from the rock beneath them, causing an air space to form and slowly push the water down the bell’s sides. Eventually his sodden pants dangled over emptiness, the floor below a grainy texture laced with tiny crystalline veins carrying their own tiny threads of bioluminescence. Scott slowly pushed himself from the seat. The stuff felt like rock, not being the least bit spongy. The air smelled different – an odd hint of metal and salt drawing into his nostrils. Breathable.

Question pulled herself beneath the bell’s stubby legs and rose to face Scott. She lightly tapped the pale blotch on his forehead. “You are ready.” She looked at Mara, who refused to move from the bench. Question pointed to the floor. “You must press yourself against our Quan. You will then be ready.”

Mara stared at her, then Scott. “No.”

Question’s cutting fins slowly rose along her forearms. “The Quan requires this, Mara Martinez.”

“Why?” Mara shot back, looking to Scott for support.

“She’s not like me,” Scott cautioned, wedging himself between the two. “She still has something worth living for.”

Question’s eye ridges crinkled in puzzlement. “There is eternal life with our Quan. ”

Scott closed his eyes. The only center he’d ever found in life was Water’s music, and Water. She’d never really left him, even after Sanctuary. Not until today. Everything was in here. “Then merge me and leave her be.”

Question spread her dorsals. “No.”

Scott grinned, having had Water threaten him more times than he could count. That threat display was always her last ditch effort to intimidate. “I could cut my throat on those lovely fins of yours, Question. Then what? How about I go in and we let the Quan decide?”

Question’s fins snapped shut with a clash of crystalline spines. “I will let our Quan decide.”

“Thought you would.”

Eyes brimming, Mara kissed him. “I should go with you, Scott. Nobody back there’s worth my life.”

Question pulled him aside and glared at her. “No.”

Scott smiled. “It’s just worth mine, Mara.” He knelt down and pressed his forehead against the stone. Oddly enough, it felt warm.