Hollywood or What?

Level 3
The Catacombs Of Kekarce

L O A D I N G . . .

Ginny landed heavily and rolled, springing back on her feet as Clough landed flat on his face beside her. He rolled, slowly and painfully, onto his back, blinking against the flare as the vortex closed. His eyes slowly focussed, then grew wide as they settled on Ginny.

“Oh... bollocks...”

Ginny glanced down, looked questioningly at Clough, then did a double-take and glanced down again.

Her... how shall I put this... Well, she could no longer see her feet. Her view downwards was, shall we say, pectorally obscured. A quick rummage around beyond visual range, and she found that her clothing had once again changed, her wench dress replaced by... she wasn’t too sure. Some ugly turquoise thing, anyway, and brown shorts that ended almost before her legs had a chance to start, and a bit further down... what the hell were those...

Her fingers met cold steel and polished leather, which she somehow knew was laminated over form-pressed thermo-plastic... A smirk crossed her face.

Clough skittered backwards, scrabbling across the eroded granite.

Her thumb, through some muscle memory she didn’t know she had, rocked the shroud forward, and she drew a heavy, stainless steel Kimber TLII – how in buggery did I know that? she asked herself – released the safety catch and loosed a heavy, copper-jacketed .45 round – what the... - into a pool behind Clough. He spun and ran towards a tunnel hewn into the rock at the other end of the cavern.

Ginny’s smirk widened.

“Ready or not, tosser. Here I come.”

Guns akimbo, with a predatory grin across her face, Ginny loped off after him.

* * *

Harry had no idea how he had ended up in this situation. Indeed, he was not entirely certain that he had, strictly, got into it – just one moment he was in oblivion, and the next he was here.

“Here”, as a place, was not intrinsically bad. Indeed, in terms of pure ergonomics, he was fairly comfortable. He had a comfortable seat, a well padded backrest, and perfectly placed footrests. No, the problem was what the rest of the world was doing.

At the moment, it was whizzing past him at exceedingly high speeds. Like his seat, this was not in itself a bad thing; on a broom, not that he remembered brooms, he would have thoroughly enjoyed himself.

In this rusting, careening mine cart, it was less pleasant.

He paused his screaming momentarily, long enough to take a breath; then he resumed.

The endless downhill seemed to be levelling out, and he got the impression that the cart slowed slightly. Perhaps, he thought, it would stop.

His next thought, as he saw the solid wall of rock before him, was a fervent wish that he wouldn’t stop quite that quickly. Thinking fast, he spotted a set of ancient, decaying points ahead; in their current setting, the tracks would take him straight into the wall.

He grabbed a rock from the cart, hefted it in his hand, and flung it at the lever. It missed.

With mere seconds to spare, he hurled a second rock; this time, it hit its mark.

The points ground into their second position, and Harry...

...came to the corner.

“Oh sh...” he began, clamping his battered brown fedora down on his head, before the breath was pushed out of him by the centripetal force as his cart threw itself round the corner.

Round the corner waited yet another unpleasant surprise: the incline suddenly increased again, and the cart picked up speed, its rusty wheels whirring and clattering on the shaky rails.

Harry frantically kicked the footbrake. It seemed to work, for a second...

...then, with a shower of golden sparks, the brake pad fell off. It ricocheted off the tunnel wall, narrowly missing his head, and pinged off into the darkness. Harry gawked at it for a moment, then stared dumbly straight ahead.

He blinked.

Then he stared again. Depressingly, the world had failed to adjust itself to a more accommodating configuration.

And the track still ceased at the top of the cliff edge that was rapidly approaching.

Harry gripped his seat with both hands, knuckles whitening, screwing his eyes shut.

“I’m gonna die, oh god, oh god, I’m gonna die, I’m toast, I’m gonna die,” he chanted to himself through clenched teeth.

Something about the timbre of the clicking wheels changed, became oddly hollow, then...

...there was silence.

Every sound had stopped, except an ominous windy hiss, like cycling on a windy day.

He opened his eyes.

The cliff, with its tracks, was far behind him. He chanced a glance downwards.

Far below him – indeed, his inevitably imminent destination – lay an enormous underground lake.

He screamed then, and continued to do so until he hit the water several seconds later.

Thus it was a wet, bedraggled, and severely bruised Dr Potter who dragged himself from the lake twenty minutes later.

He staggered up the rocky beach and sank down on a smooth boulder. He planted the now battered and wet fedora on his head and fished in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He wasn’t sure why – he couldn’t remember ever smoking the things – but it seemed the right thing to do.

He flicked open the packet and tipped one of the sorry-looking cylinders into his hand. It was soaked.

“Should have bloody known,” he muttered to himself, flinging the useless pack into the lake. He leaned his chin in his hand and pondered his situation. There was a lake in front of him, though no chance whatsoever of getting out the way he had come in. The lake seemed to exit through a low tunnel to his left, but he had had enough of water for one day. The only other exit, then, was the cobwebbed, tattered, but clearly man-made passage behind him. It also had the advantage of leading up, which seemed to Harry to be an excellent idea.

And so, standing painfully and double-checking the revolver on his belt, Harry set off towards the temple.

(Wait a minute. Temple? You never said anything about a temple. /Harry)

(I’m sure I did, you know. /Torak)

(You bloody didn’t. You said “a passage leading upwards”. That’s what I signed on for. Not a bloody temple. Temples are full of traps and things. I’ve already been half killed today, I don’t want to finish the job. /Harry)

(Just get on with it, or I’ll write in a great white shark, too. /Torak)

(Fine. Bastard. /Harry)

Harry carefully made his way up the passage, cautiously sneaking round piles of rubble and sweeping cobwebs out of the way with his machete. Almost half an hour later, as he rounded a corner, he stumbled over something. He lowered the flaming torch in his hand...

(Where did I get the torch, then? /Harry)

(It’s Hollywood. Shut up. /Torak)

...and found that what he had tripped on was a human skull.

He edged forward, and soon found its associated body. It lay several yards forward, and had clearly been decapitated with some force. Harry stepped slowly forward, approaching the skeleton, and noticed a disturbance in the air ahead of him.

Whatever it was swept through the air, slicing effortlessly through the ancient cobwebs. Harry barely had time to register it, before his head joined the skull on the floor.

Meanwhile, in a vast cavern almost a mile away, Ginny –

(Whoa, wait, hang on just a bloody second. /Harry)

(Now what? /Torak)

(YOU KILLED ME! /Harry)

(What’s your point? The first person down that corridor always dies. That’s how the audience knows it’s dangerous, so they’ll be more impressed when the hero manages to... Oh. /Torak)

(You... you... /Harry)

(Whoops. /Torak)

(You utter arse. /Harry)

(Oh, fine. Whining little bugger, moaning about a little scratch. /Torak)

(MY HEAD CAME OFF!!! /Harry)

(Fine then, if you’re going to be like that about it. Back a bit. /Torak)

(Thank you. Now stay the hell out of my story, OK? /Harry)

(Hmph. /Torak)

He edged forward, and soon found its associated body. It lay several yards forward, and had clearly been decapitated with some force. Harry stepped slowly forward, approaching the skeleton, and noticed a disturbance in the air ahead of him.

Whatever it was swept through the air, slicing effortlessly through the ancient cobwebs. Thinking quickly, like the smart-arse little adventurer that he is –

(Oi! /Harry)

(Oh. Sorry. /Torak)

– as can be expected from a highly-skilled and inhumanly qualified adventurer-archaeologist, he dropped to the ground and heard the razor-sharp blade swoop harmlessly overhead. A quick examination revealed a recessed track in the wall, hidden behind centuries of dust and cobwebs. Now that he knew what to look for, he continued on his hands and knees, crawling to the end of the corridor until he saw that the track had ceased.

He stood, dusting himself off, and continued carefully onwards to the temple.

The temple of DOOOOM! BWAHAHAHAAAA!

(What did we say? /Harry)

(Sorry. Won’t happen again. /Torak)

...and continued carefully on towards the temple.

* * *

Ginny jumped from the altar, bounded off a ledge, leapt to another, and wedged herself into a corner, clinging to a small crack in the stonework. Her keen eyes scanned the ground below her, easily picking out the hungry creatures prowling below. With her free hand she drew one of her pistols and casually embedded a hollowpoint bullet in the skull of one of the slavering beasts.

A few more shots, and they lay dead, bleeding out on the coarse stone floor. Ginny leaped from her perch with a somersault, landing lightly into a crouch. She glanced around – the coast was clear.

She reached for the altar and grabbed the brass key lying on it; then, swearing under her breath at the lead Clough had gained, she jogged off down a corridor.

The corridor eventually ended in a heavy mahogany door; a twist of the brass key opened it to reveal a broad spiral staircase, winding upwards. The downwards stairs had crumbled long ago, and the shaft descended into thick darkness. Far above, a speck of light suggested that somewhere, the surface still existed – not that the staircase led that far. She took the stairs two at a time, climbing up to the next level at a brisk clip.

The stairs ended at the entrance to a wide limestone hallway; the staircase had once continued, but the slabs it had consisted of lay, shattered, somewhere in the depths of the shaft. Left with little choice, she set off cautiously down the hall.

She approached a large doorway; beyond, limpid green light drifted from above, a light mist seeping in from somewhere. She stepped through...

...before her lay a vast cavern, a quarter of a mile across, bisected by a wide chasm. A matching fissure stretched across the great domed ceiling, a hundred feet up, through which a constant cascade of thin mist poured in from the jungle floor above, tinted an ethereal green by the light filtering through the foliage. On the other side, barely visible through the haze, lay what she knew had to be her goal; the colossal limestone façade of the great temple of Molteplexl, where the god of light and shadow had once been worshipped by the now long-gone civilisation that had dwelt here...

...and with a great SLAM, a solid slab of rock dropped through a slot in the ceiling, fracturing flagstones and effectively blocking her return. There was no turning back now.

She gingerly stepped forward, making her way down the grand staircase to the enormous concourse. The elaborate edifices carved into the rock all around it suggested it had once been some kind of forum or marketplace; now they stood empty and corroded. Where crowds of people had once gone about their business, now vines and moss were everywhere, as nature crept in through the crack in the ceiling to reclaim its territory.

Nothing assailed her as she made her way to the chasm, though she thought she caught fleeting glimpses of movement and the glint of eyes in some of the prehistoric shops. None of the flagstones dropped from under her, no blades rushed through the air. Nothing broke the sepulchral silence bar her footsteps, and the quiet chittering of small animals hiding in the shadows.

Eventually she reached the centre of the cavern, or at least the near edge of the chasm. There, crossing from one edge of the gorge to the other, stood a row of pillars, perfectly circular and fashioned so that even now, the joins between stones could barely be seen. Their bases were shrouded in the shadows of the abyss, but their purpose was clear; stepping stones to pass from one side to the other.

Ginny sized up the path. The gaps were wide, but easily within her capacity to jump. And so, with a short runup, she leapt to the first pillar.

It swayed, slightly, as she landed; at perhaps four or five feet across, the column was far taller than it was wide, so this came as no surprise to her. Compensating instinctively for the sway, she planted her feet firmly on the surface, which still bore faint marks of long-eroded gripping textures.

She lined up her next jump, retired to the edge of the column to afford some degree of acceleration, and leapt once more; again, the leap offered little trouble. She continued the same way until she was only two platforms from the far side. Three more leaps, and she would be across. She retired, ran, leapt for the penultimate column.

But this pillar stood directly below the edge of the great schism in the ceiling, whence had dripped water onto it for hundreds of years; over the centuries it had developed a thick, healthy coating of wet, slippery lichen. Ginny’s foot slipped, and she staggered momentarily on the edge, trying to regain her balance, before a monumental CRASH echoed from somewhere in the cave...

...and she tumbled off, into the rift.

She fell for several seconds into the darkness, and then, just when she thought she would keep falling for ever –

– the jagged, rocky base of the chasm appeared, growing closer by the second.

And so, with a muffled but curiously sensual “oof” and a wet, conclusive thud, Ginny Weasley died.

* * *

Harry’s journey had been uneventful. He had found no more traps after the decapitation hall, and was finally making good time, jogging through the anonymous corridors and briskly but cautiously climbing any stairs he found that wended their way upwards.

He finally reached a long corridor, at the end of which a pale green light drifted in. He set off, at a jog. But before he had taken a dozen paces...

click

In the silent hall, the quiet sound shot through him like the crack of a rifle. That sound could only mean bad news. Then... a low, penetrating rumble reached his ears. He looked around, trying to establish where it was coming from, but without success.

The noise was getting louder, and was now clearly coming from somewhere behind him. He looked back.

Then, swinging into the corridor from a curved side passage, a vast spherical boulder rolled into sight.

Harry’s eyes widened, and he froze for a fraction of a second.

“Bollocks...”

Then he ran.

He ran for the light, ducking storms of poison darts, hurdling fallen masonry, his feet pounding the stone floor as he sprinted for the exit.

It was close, perhaps only a dozen yards away. But the boulder was gaining on him fast.

He stumbled on something – a femur, though he had no time to notice – and fell to the ground just as two racks of razor-sharp spikes swung across the corridor mere inches above him and withdrew. Oblivious, he scrambled to his feet and resumed his run.

The exit was only feet away, but the rolling ball of death behind him had not been slowed by any of the corridor’s traps, and at one point one of his swinging arms swung back and touched it, leaving a nasty scrape.

He sped up, reached the exit, and dove out to the side, letting the boulder pass.

It shot out of the exit, sweeping a cloud of dust behind it. The heavy, coarse stone dust dissipated quickly, leaving Harry able to see the vast cavern he was in. A chasm ran through it, and halfway across it, on a pillar, stood...

“Ginny?”

He goggled in amazement as she leapt to the next pillar, then hauled himself to his feet and started running towards her. On the other side of the cave, the boulder that had chased him finally came to a stop, crashing loudly into one of the old shops.

Ginny stumbled, and fell.

“Ginny!” Harry screamed, and ran; but when he reached the precipice she was nowhere to be seen.

He sank back onto the edge, staring into the blackness in forlorn disbelief.

“Ginny...”

He was shaken out of his reverie by a sound; looking up, he saw Clough staring at him from under the obsidian marquee of the temple in the distance, then spin on his heel and slip inside.

A rage overtook him, and he glanced around for some way – any way – to get across. And he found it.

Sprinting to the edge of the chamber, he clambered up onto the crumbling storefront nearest the chasm. He tore a vine loose from the wall, tested its strength, and swung out over the pit.

The liana took him almost halfway across, but there the arc ended. Unthinking, he jumped at the apex of the swing, barely snagging another hanging vine and continuing his pursuit.

A third creeper, and his feet hit the limestone floor on the other side. He rolled to absorb the impact, and followed Clough into the labyrinthine innards of the temple of Molteplexl.

* * *

She blinked. The world faded into view before her, and she found herself once again standing, feet squarely on the ground, shoulder blades to the solid stone door, at the entrance to the vast cavern, looking out over the chasm. A track of crumbled flagstones ran across the floor, ending in a demolished shop where enormous jars of ancient maize spilled around a massive round boulder.

That must have been the crash, she realised, though she saw no signs of anyone else in the great chamber.

On a sudden thought she glanced down. She appeared to be intact, and rather less two-dimensional than she’d expected after a fall like that. Curiouser and curiouser, she thought, before jogging down to the great crack in the floor. She approached the chasm more cautiously this time, and looked down into the abyss. She perused the row of pillars, then turned her attention to the rest of it. And there, in the dim light at the edge of the cave, something caught her eye.

Something was wrong with the rock walls of the rift. They seemed to shift as she moved her head; she experimentally shuffled sideways several feet, and true enough – a bar across the yawning gap moved differently from the rock around it.

She walked over there, testing her footing at each step, until she stood directly above the anomaly. Looking down, she saw nothing out of the ordinary; the vast pit remained, the inky darkness unbroken.

She drew a small sandbag from her backpack and threw it straight out. It curved up, then fell into the abyss... and stopped.

It seemed to hang in mid-air, halfway across. Cautiously, she lay on the edge and reached down – sure enough, a rough stone surface met her fingertips. There was a bridge across, cunningly camouflaged to be invisible in the eternal twilight of the cavern.

She sat on the edge and gingerly moved her weight onto her feet. One foot in front of the other, feeling her way with her toes and forcing herself not to look down, she edged her way across.

Several nerve-wracking minutes later, her feet finally touched solid ground once more. She fell to her hands and knees, panting and quivering from the exertion. Then, when she had pulled herself together, she rose.

The temple beckoned to her. Somehow, she knew that her goal lay within. She set off.

Barely had she set off, however, before a birdlike screech shattered the silence. She halted, scanning left and right for the source of the sound. Then came another, slightly different in pitch.

Suddenly, three reptilian creatures, bounding on their hind legs, burst from the shadows and ran towards her, beady eyes burning, teeth glittering.

Ginny’s eyes widened. In one fluid motion she drew her pistols and pumped round after round into the monsters.

One dropped, its small brain liquefied. Dodging its mates, she dived behind it, using its corpse for cover as she shot a second. She spun, drawing a bead on the third...

...and her gun clicked. Both slides were locked back, the magazines empty. And the creature, sharp foreclaws flailing, was approaching fast.

She thrust the guns back in their holsters, letting the slides ride forward onto empty chambers a fraction of a second before she rocked the shroud back over them.

But this left her with no time to dodge the final beast’s attack, so she did the only thing she could. She drew the long, Teflon-coated combat knife bolted to the shroud of one of her holsters.

The beast lunged.

She dropped, supine, to the floor, and the beast’s charge carried it over her.

She thrust the knife up into its neck, and the creature’s momentum carried it forwards on the blade, slitting it from skull to sternum.

She rolled to the side, avoiding the torrent of blood, and drew her guns again, instinctively slapping new magazines into them and racking their slides. She held them aimed on the beast’s head, just in case...

It screeched, a high, keening cry, trying to get up.

She shot it, and it screeched no more.

She tucked the guns back into her holsters and permitted herself a grin. This place had thrown everything it could at her, and...

An answering bellow came from within the bedrock.

A bricked-up shopfront burst open, and a vast reptilian monster emerged. Its head alone was longer than Ginny was tall, its vestigial forelegs carried razor-sharp claws, and it crunched lazily out onto the concourse on its massive rear legs.

It yawned at her, a dull hungry rumble emanating from the depths of its gullet. Then, with a roar, it started loping straight for her.

She stood, stunned, for a moment. She thought about her pistols, and the trouble they’d had killing the smaller creatures.

“Bugger this for a game of soldiers,” she muttered, and ran.

She darted for the entrance to the temple, aiming for the cover of the vast obsidian marquee.

The monster gave chase, its earth-shaking footsteps echoing in the cavern.

The marquee drew closer, and Ginny’s keen eyesight picked up a crack along its top, where it joined the temple frontage. She reached into her backpack with one hand and withdrew a small, heavy metal object. She yanked the pin out and continued running, clutching the spoon tightly.

By now she imagined she could almost feel the behemoth’s breath on the back of her neck, and with a final sprint she reached the marquee. A deft flick of the wrist, and the grenade sailed up and onto the glossy protrusion.

She ran, dived, rolled into the foyer of the temple, spun to look outside.

The monster had just reached the edge of the marquee, crouched to reach inside, sticking its head in as if to follow her...

...and the grenade went off.

The gleaming black slab, twelve tonnes of solid obsidian, crashed down onto the terrible lizard, burying it and blocking the entrance to the temple. A few razor-sharp chips of obsidian rained down, and then there was silence.

Ginny looked around, scanning her torch around, taking in the interior for the first time.

The floor was highly-polished obsidian, as were the walls; a thick layer of dust coated everything, though through it gleamed the rich gold of... well, gold. It was everywhere. Railings, decorations, furniture – all golden. The beam of light from her torch went passed from gold object to gold object, each grander than the next.

Doors left the foyer on every wall, and wide, curving staircases stood on either side, still ready after all these centuries to carry worshippers to the inner sanctum of Molteplexl. Then she saw it.

A line of footsteps, pounded into the thick dust. They went up the main staircase, even grander than the side stairs, at the far end of the foyer.

She glanced back at the entrance; it was completely demolished.

“There’d bloody better be another way out,” she muttered, as she headed for the inner sanctum.

* * *

Harry was lost. He’d stumbled around the temple for what felt like hours, and got more and more confused. There had been side temples, ranging from small chambers to large halls, all with rows of stone pews facing a blank and whitewashed wall. Each temple had an ornate pulpit at the very back, sometimes in a booth of its own. But none of them had held Clough.

He was making his way back to the foyer, intending to investigate the next door in line, when he heard the roar. Then there had been an explosion, and he had set off running.

As he swung into the foyer, he could have sworn he saw...

Ginny?

He blinked; sure enough, there she stood. But before he could catch her attention, she had run off to the far end of the foyer.

He ran for the curving stairs, and followed her.

* * *

The inner sanctum was huge. Not as large as the cavern outside, but large nevertheless; a quick glance at the pews suggested that it could have seated several hundred people, if not a thousand. A second glance revealed that there was a second level, a sort of balcony, which presumably could seat several hundred more.

It was dark here, lit only by vents in the side walls that let in dim shafts of light from the world outside; how the light was conducted there, given that they were underground, eluded Ginny, but she had bigger fish to fry.

The sanctum was, although Ginny could not know it, much like the smaller chapels Harry had seen, though on a much grander scale. The pews were coated in a reddish slime, which on closer inspection proved to be the mouldering remains of deep red upholstery. The floor sloped gently downwards, interrupted here and there by low steps, each adorned with an edge of pure gold.

At the front was a stage, and from a hemispherical pit in front of it came a flickering yellow glow, as though someone were standing in the pit with a candle.

Ginny drew one of her guns and stepped fully into the chamber, the torch in her other hand shining from beside the pistol, leading her way.

“Clough?” she called. “Come out of the pit slowly, and keep your hands where I can see them!”

She came to the forward edge of the balcony and, on an impulse, let the beam of light play upwards. There, above her, hung the largest chandelier she had ever seen, thousands of long-dry oil lamps bedecking a vast frame of rusty iron and dusty gold.

“Blooooody hell...” she breathed. Then she turned her attention back to the pit. “Clough! Are you in there?”

She hadn’t expected a reply, but she got one; she was startled, however, to find that it came from behind her.

“No – but a single candle is.”

A blast of actinic light seared past Ginny, several feet away, and the vast flat wall at the head of the chamber burst into gleaming, roiling life. In two long bounds, barely slowing, she leaped onto the row of pews and made for the front, springing from seat back to seat back.

With Clough behind and vortex in front, she ran.

Clough leapt from his seat in the back row and followed her, screaming in rage as she dived into the vortex.

* * *

Harry rounded the corner into the vast chamber in time to see Ginny swallowed up by the pulsing wall of light. He stumbled, exhaustion starting to take its toll, but ran on, gaining slowly but surely on Clough – but not fast enough. He was barely into the auditorium when Clough bolted up the stairs onto the stage, and into the vortex.

Its master through, the vortex started to close; its edges receded slowly from the edges of the wall, and it became clear that, while Harry would still be able to fit through, he would be unable to reach even the lower edge, let alone enter the vortex.

The familiar weight of the kangaroo-hide whip slapped against his thigh as he ran, and a thought struck him. He rounded on his heels and scrambled up the stairs, three steps at a time, to the balcony.

He ran down the balcony’s centre aisle, panting Ginny’s name under his breath, the thought of her spurring him on and helping him to focus on what had to be done.

He unhitched the whip, held it in his hand, ready to strike, pushed himself up and onto the burnished gold rail along the front of the balcony without breaking stride –

– and launched himself into space.

In the fraction of a second before he reached the apex of his leap, and the downwards plummet to the floor thirty feet below that would inevitably follow, his arm shot out, and the lash of the whip uncoiled at supersonic speed.

Its tip caught the ancient iron rim of the vast chandelier, which had hung undisturbed for centuries in the gloom, and wrapped solidly around it.

Clinging to the whip for dear life, Harry fell. His fall was, however, arrested by the whip and turned into a great deal of forward momentum, which carried him in a long arc, the chandelier creaking ponderously along above him.

He fell, down, forwards, slightly up again...

He let go.

His momentum propelled him forwards, into the rapidly-shrinking square of curling light, and he was gone.

Behind him, the vast and ancient chandelier, its long-rusted bolts and chains shaken loose of their precarious mounts, dropped. The recoiling chains in the loft above it struck the two-ton keystone holding the great dome over the auditorium, which was knocked out of place...

...and dropped. Having barely escaped the vast chain reaction that ensued, neither Harry nor Ginny would see the total collapse of the catacombs of Kekarce.