Disclaimer: I do not own the His Dark Materials series, all rights for the series belongs to Philip Pullman
As Lyra stepped through the window into another world, she had no idea what to expect. But, she had no reason to expect, or fear, anything from that action; as walking between worlds was certainly not common knowledge, and as far as she knew, Asriel was the only one who knew much of anything about the other worlds, but she understood that there was little chance her uncaring father would comfort her.
And it was for that reason in which Lyra confused herself by being nervous about stepping through to the other realm, she was not one to fear moving forward or facing challenges, and she contemplated why she was nervous doing this.
Lyra eventually settled on the fact that she was not nervous about transferring to a new world, but at the task she and Pan were taking on. She barely knew what it was at all, and had no knowledge of how to accomplish any of it, especially in a foreign world. The only thing she and Pan knew they were going to do was to find, all alone with no one to help, the source of Dust, the mysterious elementary particles whom no one knew much of anything about.
Lyra and Pantalaimon gasped as they penetrated the border between worlds, it was a very distinct border, yet it gave no resistance to its crossers.
The air felt distinctly different, it was much warmer and moist that the stale air of Svalbard. It felt as if the climate suddenly just decided to flip-flop, but Lyra and Pan knew it did not, they had realized they were traversing into a new dimension.
They stood in wonder at the vast expanse before them, they gazed across a great barren plain that stretched as far as their eyes could see. Their wandering eyes stopped after looking around for a short while and set upon a small dying tree a ways in the distance.
As if on cue, Pantalaimon morphed into a hawk and leapt into the air and flew a short ways up in hopes of seeing something in the distance, but his bond to Lyra forced him to swoop down shortly after and perch on Lyra's shoulder.
"See anything... or anyone?" Lyra whispered.
"Not much, but I did see a forest starting in the distance." Pan said as he transformed into a ermine and curled around Lyra's neck.
"Ya know, it is pretty warm here, I am dressed in heated clothing, and I am sweating a good bit, and you being a furry creature around my neck is not helping anything." said Lyra.
"Sorry," Pan said, uncurling from her neck, "I just... Lyra, what are what are we going to do?" Pan said.
"Well," Lyra glanced around looking for Asriel, "We may as well go into the forest, it will do us no good stayin' here." Lyra looked back at the window into her world, and said, "And there isn't a reason for us to go back, we already made up our minds to find Dust, and staying here certainly won't help us, so we may as well head to that forest. Which direction is it in?" Pan leapt off her while transforming into a fox and yelled while running toward the dead tree "This way!"
As they approached the forest after walking a good distance, they were disappointed to find that the forest was little more than a large grove of trees where nature had chosen to give them life in a small area. But the woods had nothing but the trees as far as they first could tell.
After looking around for a while, Lyra exclaimed, "Oh Pan, what are we going to do now? You said there is nothing around the forest when you last checked, and I'm thirsty"
Pan replied, "I don't know... I will check again." After a moment of flying around as a hawk, Pan screeched, startled, and stuttered out "Ll, Ll, Llyraa!" "I see some people, Asriel is definitely not with them, but they look like they are being attacked! I can't tell from what though! There are children and a few adults and they all are frantic and scared. The adults are running away and leaving the children behind! Lyra we have to help them!"
"Which way Pan!?" Lyra screamed, she had no idea what they could do, but she knew that they had to try and help somehow.
"This way!" Pan yelped as he touched down onto the ground changing into a leopard.
As they made their way towards the people, something they noticed shocked them quite a bit, and Lyra said in raspy voice, "Pan, where is their daemons?" Pan replied, "I... I dunno, you don't think they were... severed, do you?"
"I don't know Pan, but it scares me... maybe they just have no daemons in this world." Lyra said.
"But that doesn't make any sense! They are hardly human if they don't have daemons!" Pan exclaimed.
But when they reached the attacked people, whatever "attacked" them had left, but not without its results, something that shocked Lyra and Pantalaimon far more than when they noticed the people had no daemons. The 3 children, a boy no older than 7 years, and 2 girls, one that looked to be 5 years of age, and the eldest, around 10 years of age, were all weeping in a contraption that was pulled by a single quite skinny horse. The children either did not see Lyra coming, or they did not simply care. The two adults, presumably the children's parents, were standing a few yards away, not saying anything, just standing and moving ever so slightly. Their eyes did not wander to focus on anything, they simply stared off with a blank soulless look on their face. And this is what shocked Lyra and Pan the most, for the adults looked like Tony Makarios with his fish did, soulless and empty, they looked like they had been severed.
Lyra and Pan glanced around, looking for anyone, or anything, that could have severed these people and taken their daemons, but all they got in return was the empty grassland.
"I'm so confused Pan..." Lyra choked out, "These adults look like they have been severed, and their daemons taken, but why didn't we see anyone? And why would the children be left alone Pan? They obviously are not severed because..." she faltered out on the verge of tears from the shock of seeing more people like this.
Lyra rasped, "It just makes no sense Pan, what happened here? We even saw most of it, it makes no sense..." Pantalaimon had no response to any of this, they were both feeling and thinking the same think, they just couldn't wrap their head around what could have happened.
"We could try asking them." said Pan, gesturing to the weeping children.
Lyra slowly walked up to them and quietly asked, "I am really sorry for bothering you, but, what happened here?" The oldest girl looked up slowly, and what she said shocked Lyra and Pan.
"How DARE you! Pretending like you don't know what happened! We both know that you are just trying to get us to trust you so you can steal our belongings, and you know what! We don't care! Take our water, take our food, take our clothing! Just leave us alone!" The girl then threw a bunch of supplies at Lyra before yelling something and the horse attached to the wheeled contraption took off before Lyra could speak.
Lyra whispered "I... I..." before breaking off and staring in the distance at the dust that followed the direction of the children.
Lyra decided to consult the alethiometer, she simply asked it What happened to these people? and it only replied with Their other half has been taken, which did not help them, they had already realized that, Lyra asked again in a different way, but it would only give the one answer. Lyra and Pan simply sat at stared for a while, trying to think about what had happened, and they threw stupid little theories at each other to try and help them think less about what had actually happened, but none of them meant anything other than explanations to distract them about what actually happened.
After what seemed like a long time, Pan quietly said, "Well, you now have something to eat and drink, so we can try and see where those kids went, they certainly seemed to have a better of idea where to go than us..." They started rummaging through the supplies, and it took their minds off of recent events.
They found a few canteens of water, and some kind of wrapped up food that Lyra had no idea what it was, but she gobbled it up quickly nevertheless, and drank a good portion of the water in the canteen. Unfortunately Lyra did not really think about surviving for longer than the day, she was mostly a spoiled kid that lived in a College and ate what she wanted, after all. She realized her error a some hours, after the sun had set, and her stomach growled hungrily at her.
"We still need to get more food." She told Pan.
"I know," He replied, "We should head in the direction those children went after resting." Lyra nodded her head in agreement. She unfolded a small, but warm feeling, blanket from the supplies, and found a patch of flattened grass away from hard dirt to lay on. Pantalaimon morphed into an ermine and curled around Lyra's neck as she covered herself with the blanket, gave a soft yawn, and drifted off to sleep trying to comprehend recent events once again.
Lyra awoke with a jolt, not realizing where she was at first, and Pantalaimon squeaked in a high pitch at suddenly being thrown up and foward.
Pantalaimon hissed, "Ya know, you could have just said 'Wake up', but instead you had to throw me, thank you, thanks a lot."
"Sorry," Lyra said softly, "I was just dreaming about when we almost got separated at Bolvangar..." Pantalaimon whimpered as she said this, "Don't even think about it, nothing happened to us and nothing will."
They gathered the few supplies they had gained from the day before and set out into the direction of the fleeing children with their peculiar horse-contraption.
They walked for hours and hours, Lyra drinking some water every now and then, in the seemingly endless plain, until they finally noticed something that did not necessarily make them jump for joy, but made them happy as it meant there was at least a change of scenery finally. They could see the plain end in front of them, and open up to the sky, but that was all they saw, an end to the dreadful plain.
But there was another thing they noticed in the air, it smelled, felt, and tasted salty, which, both Lyra and Pan knew, meant they were near the sea, for better or worse.
As they moved toward the end, they realized what it was, a gigantic cliff that stretched for miles and miles to their left and right, making it seem as if the horribly endless plain just ended right there, making it feel like the edge of the world before anyone reached it. But as they got closer they also could see the sea, a vast expanse of darkened blue that laid stretched out in front of them on to infinity.
Lyra and Pan got very close to the edge of the cliff to try and hopefully see where the children had gone, but they had no idea where they had gone since they lost sight of the children far before the they saw the end of the plain. What they saw as they got a good look over the cliff was definitely not what they had expected. They saw a huge city that sat along the banks of the sea, and stretched for miles along the cliff side. The city was nothing like Lyra had ever seen before, it was completely made of strange buildings that she had never seen before, including large blockish ones that touched the sky higher than she would have ever thought possible. She could even see them sway a little in the wind, and she gazed in amazement on how they still stood, also making a mental note of never going into one. After a few moments of staring in amazement, both Pan and Lyra realized something very odd, they saw no activity in the city, none at all, they heard none either, the city looked to be in good shape and should have been filled with commotion, but as far as they could tell, they could sense nothing. They, without a doubt, had found where the children had been heading, they realized, although this was not what they expected, they expected the children to go to a small town, not a huge sprawling city that appeared out of nowhere for Lyra and Pan.
"Maybe the people just are all inside, we don't know how this world works..." Lyra suggested.
Pan said, "I dunno, it just doesn't feel right, it feels like the city is empty, but I don't understand why it would be, it does not look abandoned, and it is beautiful in its own right as well."
"Well, it doesn't matter, we will find out what is up with this city when we find a way down there, and we have to find a way down, because there is definitely food, and obviously shelter there!" Lyra stated.
"And how are we supposed to get down there? Jumping certainly is not the best idea, and you cannot fly like me if I wish too." Pan replied.
"There is going to be a way down somewhere, obviously there has to be some way down, even if it takes a while to get there, and you can transform into a hawk to try and scout the cliff side for pathways. How does that sound?" Lyra asked.
"It is certainly better than trying to see if we can jump down." Pantalaimon replied sarcastically, while transforming into a hawk.
It only took Lyra and Pan a hour or so to find a passage down into the city, Pan easily saw it after scouting for a little while with his sharp hawk eyes, although he had to stay close to Lyra, they managed to get to the passage downwards to the city in only a few hours after they started looking.
The passageway was a rough cutout from the cliff, if Lyra could guess, people had used explosives to make a rough path down the cliff that was relatively traversable. Lyra wondered where the children they had met got down at, as the passage they were on was far too rough, small, and sloped for their horse-contraption to get down on. It took them about thirty minutes of jumping down the cliff passage to finally reach their destination.
To their dismay, the city appeared to be just as desolate and bare as it appeared from the cliff side, and they got no answers as to where anyone was or what it is that had happened. Lyra and Pan walked in a street for a while and saw no one not a single person, no children or anything, which confused them even more, they expected someone to be here, how had the kids they had met on the plains not gone to this city?
"Well Pan, we may as well start looking in these buildings for food and water, and there has to be someone somewhere." Lyra told him, before pulling out the alethiometer.
All Lyra asked was Is there anyone who can help us in this city?
And its reply was Yes, there is a boy who can help you more than you thought possible...
Lyra immediately started asking it more questions out of curiosity, but it gave nothing of help to her, usually just repeating things about the 'helpful boy'.
After a few hours, Lyra and Pan had found nothing in any of the buildings in the city, which frustrated them greatly after they had felt like they searched seemingly countless houses. They could not find anything that resembled a food storage room or a kitchen from their world, and Lyra was getting quite frustrated from this, she was very hungry and thirsty, after using up all of the water many hours ago when coming down into the city.
"This was a big waste of time!" Lyra silently whispered to herself as she walked up the stairs of another building.
Then suddenly they heard a door slam from down the stairs, and both Lyra and Pan silently gasped in shock as their hearts started pounding in unison. Lyra ran into a closet with Pan on her shoulders as a small mouse, and swiftly shut the closet door, hiding her in the closet in the dark. Lyra silently cursed herself for being a fool by being so loud, and then as she thought a little more, she wondered why she was so scared, it could be a person, but with the fact that she had seen no one in the city, it felt more weird that there no could be a person in the city, and that scared her.
She and Pan held their breath as they tried to listen, but all they could hear was their hearts incessant pounding.
Badump, Badump, Badump, Badump, Badump, Badump, Badump, Badump, Badump, CLUNK!
Lyra and Pan both held their breaths at that sound, they sword they felt their hearts stop for a moment as well, before coming back to life at an even faster pace to the great annoyance of the members of the closet.
CLUNK, CLINK, CLUNK, CLINK, CLUNK, CLINK, CLUNK, CLINK, CLUNK, CLINK, the sound stopped, and Lyra realized the person had reached the top of the stairs. The steady clunking of the person's shoes got replaced by a tapping sound as they walked on the upper level floor, toward Lyra and Pantalaimon in the closet.
TAP, TIP, TAP, TIP, TAP, TIP, TAP, TIP, TAP, TIP, TAP, TIP, TAP, TIP, TAP, TIP, ..., silence.
Lyra and Pantalaimon both held their breath as they realized where the person had stopped. They were directly in front of them, just outside the closet door. Lyra knew that he was going to open the door, and she knew what she was going to have to do. She had to attack the person outside and get away as fast as possible.
They waited for what felt like an eternity to them, but was really only a few moments after the stranger stopped outside the door.
And then Woompff! They closet door suddenly whoosed open and thudded against the wall, revealing a yound boy around Lyra's age to the closet members, but Lyra did not have time to notice this as she lunged out to attack the stranger, and Pantalaimon started to transform madly into multiple forms out of anger, shock, and just being scared, he attacked the boy with Lyra and they all went to the ground with a loud THUD!
This is my first "posted" fanfic, so I hope you enjoyed it. It will only be this one chapter. I plan on adding some things to the body though, just to make it longer (It feels short to me) and feel like more of an adventure. I do not know when I will do that though. I would love your thoughts/comments in the reviews. Also if anything like the descriptions of the city don't match that of the series, deal with it, because that is how I visualize the city lol.