Bane of the Nibelings
Prologue.
Ancient beyond measure, the creeping strands of the thick, silky fronds swayed in the breeze; a breeze they had not felt for centuries perhaps, before succumbing to the realities of their old age, persevered, entombed and ensconced so many miles beneath the ground, decaying rapidly and falling into dust.
No light had come unbidden into this place, lost in the depths of the darkest heart of a forgotten Balkanese state since all Europe had been covered by the shadow of the dark age.
It was only fitting that, as darkness descended across the land once more, the rest of this forgotten crypt should be disturbed once more, bringing only a small light for comfort.
The Explorer took another tentative step, fleeing his foot again from the momentary captivity that a life-age of cobwebs and dust can induce upon the foot, and readjusted his flaming torch.
The black around him lay heavy in the air; it did not travel far being instead chocked by the invisible threads of woven darkness. From ahead, deep within this time-rent ruin, a slow rumbling whisper came, consistent, varying neither in pitch or tone.
Turning another corner, he became suddenly aware of space - larger, a cavern or open hole within this morass of tunnels and corridors.
A small shaft or strand of light, battling vainly against the darkness illuminated only a worn mirror wheel set within a bronze revolving holster along it's horizontal diameter. Even it turned it's face downwards away from the ceiling, there but ever invisible, and focused upon the rough uneven nature-ravaged ground.
And yet this chamber, abandoned so relentless to the wild, had been host to people once, and it was for their design that the halls and tunnels came to be, and once, long ago, this disk had a Purpose.
Drawing his gun from his holster, he aimed carefully. The shot came as the sudden storm within a silent night - there was a flash against the disk where the bullet hit, causing it's revolution and a sudden burst of white light as it spun through it's alignment with the ray of light, fulfilling it's intention and illuminating the room.
The dust rose into the air, and for a moment, the long slow sigh that rang through the chamber stopped.
But the moment passed and as it the disk slowed to a halt, night fell again, leaving him with the whisper ringing within his ears and naught but the light of his own waxing torch for guidance.
"Damn"
He shot again. Again, the bullet ricocheted off the mirror; the sudden burst of light dazzled, and this time it did not abate. He stared in the chamber unseen for countless generations, and it started back at him.
Where once the graven images of kings, kings of kings, and of their stewards had been, the slow work of the subterranean elements had decimated all accounts of features, of noses, eyes, ears or helms, instead smoothing and refining them, leaving row upon row of white, mildew-stained pawns surveying the scene with eyes and ears long since lost to time or reason.
Within their midst, a stone rectangular box of unknown design or make and standing tall and proud upon a sloping plinth above the remnants of the statues below.
About the cracked floor pouring through every crook and crevice, and across each of the stepped levels, their forked tongues lashing the air and their eyes blinkered, unaccustomed to the light were hundreds upon hundreds of -
"Snakes. It had to be snakes."
He yanked upon his fedora, jamming it resolutely upon his blanching white face, before stretching forth all his courage, and legs, and beginning the slow journey of transference from one tiny snake-free isle to the next working his way towards the prize at it's centre. The faceless jury watched his progress, marking ever slight stumble or slip upon the cracked, damp snake-infested floor.
He reached the summit, setting his torch against one of the silent spectres.. There was no point in any exclamation: he had long since left his expedition party, and the snakes seemed disinterested in the minor accomplishments of he who dared violate their home.
The large stone box was engraved with runes, many moss-covered or worn, but still miraculously visible: a tomb. Sighing with relief, he produced a small piece of note-paper from within his jacket pocket.
Examining it closely, he began the slow task of matching paper to stone, examining each in turn to ensure their veracity. Eventually, confident in his choices, he retraced his progress, this time pressing resolutely down upon each in their turn. Reaching the last one, he stopped expectantly.
For a moment nothing happened, then, from all around him came the haunting clanging to which he had become accustomed: the noise of ancient mechanisms stirring to life. He tensed himself, preparing the necessary measures he felt would be required to escape whatever devices had been set so many centuries ago for such an occasion. But the noise stopped.
Suddenly, the tomb belched forth a large cloud of black soot and dust which rose into an ominous fog surrounding him and clouding his thinking. With a clang the tombstone broke open, shattering into many shards which fell around and inside that which they were set to protect: had the civilisation that produced these mechanisms intended a solid defence, or had even the long years deceived them with their length encouraging policies and devices which had long since turned to dust?
So too, had the occupant of this aged crypt, and it was this grey powder that now had to be wiped off the true prize, which he raised now from where it had slept so long and held it within his line of sight, within it both gazing, yet not.
A perfect ball it was, as though the forgotten people it had outlasted had access to the very technology upon which our modern industry relies. It appeared to him in the manner of a ball of crystal, glassy, yet obsidian black. Somewhere untraceable within it's depths a small light glimmered, a door left half ajar between this world, and some other.
"Very pretty", he said to no-one in particular, placing it gently amongst layers of cloth, and adding it to his backpack. A single snake rose flinchingly at the sound of his voice.
*
The journey out was far easier than the journey in and mere hours later, he emerged from the tangled obscuring overgrowth into the free air of the backwaters of Taur-Hessia. The tomb itself was located above a cut in a cleft between the mountain range, and one sole mountain that stood out into the centre of the valley.
Although it rose in nine layers upon ruined overgrown steppes of near concentric circles. Upon the far side, a large part of the white, moss covered rock face jutted out into the valley, like the prow of some great old sailing ship. Down in the valley, a river flowed through vales of trees shining in the moonlight.
Night had long since fallen and the milky heavens stretched out endlessly from one horizon to the next, their small candles dimmed by that of the murky half-moon hanging low upon the horizon.
The trees rustled quietly and apathetically, and somewhere away in a deep cleft, a bird of the night cooed out few smooth low notes before falling silent. He was completely alone.
A twig snapped somewhere to his right. Not alone.
"Hande hoch! Hande hoch!"
Out of the shadows of the foliage, matched half a dozen soldiers in dark grey uniforms, their weapons glistening in the pale moonlight. The black on white double crosses marked their origin and allegiance. How could he have walked straight into this? With the barrels of their weaponry pointed resolutely at his face, he edged his hand slowly towards his holster.
"Hande hoch!"
To his left, a gun was discharged, the bullet wrenching the night air. In the distance a flock of birds took flight in panic. He withdrew.
"I vould tink bevore trying some ding like zat again, Herr Doktor."
Out of the trees to his left limped a small man with a tiny frame. His uniform marked him out as a Sturmbannfuhrer. His pale face was illuminated by the cold moonlight, which reflected in his glasses, made him and his mind hard to perceive, yet his identify was already, to all participating agencies, fully known.
"Otto Flick."
"Und eine good evening to you, Henry Jones." There was a momentary pause.
"Vell?" Herr Flick asserted, "Vot are ve vaiting vor? Ve both know vhy ve are here. Hand it over before I feel sie need to discharge meine powerful Gestapo vaygun." Herr Flick waved it, demonstratively. Jones said nothing in reply, he cast his eye quickly across the scene, surveying: No way out. In response to a gesture from Flick, one soldier advanced cautiously towards him.
"Ve vill have kein auf dein American tricks, danke"
With great reluctance, Jones handed him his backpack.
"Carevull vit it" cautioned Herr Flick, "Ich need nicht to remind-en sie of it's importance."
With a great sense of glee, the soldier returned it to Flick, who withdrew that which he had desired from within, unwrapping it from it's coverings . The light within it's depths flashed momentarily, creating a suddenly glimmer like the stars overhead. Flick examined it's exterior cautiously.
"So zis is really it? Ze legendary Shining Trapezohedron?" he said rhetorically before muttering under his breath, "Doesn't look like eine trapezoid. Now, how do-en vir work-en vis?"
Jones edged his hand, towards his holster again, seizing the moment whilst all were preoccupied.
"Hande hoch!"
Jones stopped, stretching his arms fully with a reluctant finality. Now was not the time.
"You could try looking into it", he offered as helpfully as possible.
"Do you tink me a fool?" Flick said, glancing back at Jones momentarily, his face glowing from the small light within the sphere. "Only ein idioten looken in ein object vich er versteht nicht!"
Herr Flick handed the sphere to a portly underling who had followed him from out of the overgrowth. He received it carefully and looked expectantly at Herr Flick for his orders.
"I vant sie to looken in der Trapezoid. Vhat you see. Vhat you hear, and vhat you know. You vill make deine report" The portly soldier looked back at him reluctantly, before turning his attention to the tiny flicker within the sphere. Herr Flick turned, limping towards Jones with a manic gleam of triumph in his eyes, barely obscured by their moonlit glow.
"Drop deine weapons, Doktor Jones. Ich denke sie know-en, sie ist mitt us ge-come-en, und ve vant keine unpleasant-er suprises".
Doctor Jones starred at him defiantly. Herr Flick continued to limp towards him, carrying the gleaming length of metallic weaponry to his chest.
"You vill do it, or you vill be feeling der pain auf meine Gestapo vaygun". With still no way out. Doctor Jones unhooked his holster from his belt and let the gun full to the ground.
"Und sie vip, Herr Doktor"
Glowering, Doctor Jones removed his trusted bullwhip from his inside pocket and threw it to the ground.
"Good". From the corners of his tight-lipped mouth, Herr Flick smiled. He turned back to his company, and to the chubby underling who had been staring desperately into the sphere, attempting to see or hear something, anything, that would satisfy his taskmaster.
"Vell?" Herr Flick snapped, "Make-en deine report!"
Beads of sweat rolled down his underling's bloated cheeks until finally his piggy little eyes slacked reluctantly. There was panic there, but when he spoke, his tone was measured, calm and considered.
"I see nothing. I hear nothing. I… I know nothing".
Flying into a rage, Flick throw himself down the slope, dragging his lame leg behind. Clubbing his colleague on the back of the head firmly with the butt of his raygun. Flick went to retrieve the sphere, and for a moment both men had it within their grips. Whether by coincidence, or in response to the onset of Herr Flick's virulent rush of emotions, the small bead of light rose to a tremendous flame, engulfing the interior orb within a veil of fire. Both men fell back in shock and the sphere circled violently into the air.
"Mein Gott! Die Hande! Die brennenden HANDE!"
For a moment, time seemed to halt. All could see the path that the sphere was taken would leave it dashed against the abundant rocks, yet none could move, riveted in horror. Doctor Jones began slowly crouching: third time's the charm. At the last moment, Herr Flick attempted to launch himself in a vain attempt to knock or deflect the sphere from it's fateful trajectory, his lame leg proving itself a hindrance, causing Flick himself to fall short against the rocks, dashing both his forehead and his glasses.
The sphere landed above him, but, the unknown craft that had made it had made it strong and resilient. This was no ordinary glass orb, and rather than the resultant crash, and subsequent deliverance into a thousand silver shards left to glint forever in the moonlight in this lost and forgotten corner of the world never happened. The solid stone rock itself chipped, and the sphere leaving small dents bounced off the rock and rolled away into the grassy verges before slowing to a halt.
The small dog sniffed it cautiously.
"Eine hund?" muttered Herr Flick from the ground, dazed and confused.
The white wire fox terrier barked appreciatively.
"Getten-sie deine hund!" roared Herr Flick to his men. Had Herr Flick had taken the moment to ensure that his chosen crack team of soldiers, deployed upon these secret missions requiring the uttermost skill and concentration where indeed selected from the best Germany had to offer, and not selected from Germany's Schwachkopfe, Herr Flick would in no doubt, not have found himself lying in the ground whilst every member of his platoon took off into the woods, following the cheerful barking of a young puppy-dog. He groaned, and got to his feet, he noted that behind him, now unfettered by the score of guns, Doctor Jones rose too, with his pistol in one hand and his unsheathed bullwhip in the other. Quickly, Herr Flick raised his weapon.
"Ich habe meine Gestapo vaygun!" he cried aloud.
Doctor Jones flicked his wrist and there was a suddenly crack in the air. A moment later, Herr Flick's hands were empty, his weapon disappearing into the rushes.
Giving Doctor Jones one last, terrified look, Herr Flick turned and ran into the foliage. Jones holster his gun. He couldn't shot an unarmed man in the back, even if he was a servant of Hynkel's regime.
"Indy! Mister Indy!" A voice whispered out of the foliage to his left in accented English.
"Chang! Boy, am I glad to see you. Where's -?"
"This way Mister Indy, we must hurry!"
The voice belonged to a young tanned Chinese boy, garbed in green and with a mess of black hair crowning his wide beaming face. He had hid in the bushes about, now leaping to his feet. Doktor Jones made to dart down the landscape towards the orb which simmered softly in the grass below.
"No time! Wrong direction! This way, Mister Indy!", Chang raced off deeper into the woods. Taking one last look at the treasure he had retrieved, Jones followed him.
"Wa- Kid! Slow down! The dog, what about the dog?"
"He knows where to go. We must hurry whilst this opportunity presents itself."
The woods were, as far as woodland goes, not as dark as once might expect, but dense in their foliage. the ground smooth though in places it delved suddenly into dips and holes that made a smooth over ground escape challenging. Here and there, their path was strewn with the husks of dead trunks, their rotting hulk impeding their path necessitating they change direction, yet always Jones followed Chang, who homed in like a hawk on his destination. Away in the distance, they could hear shouting, always in German, carrying across the valley.
Eventually, they came at last to the river, a few short metres down from where they needed to be: a seaplane, a Grumman Goose, bobbing tentatively in the river's rapid current. A moving figure could be seen moving in the cockpit, checking readings and beckoning them hither. Boarding, they turned suddenly to hear the sound of gunfire. Out of the foliage came tearing, barking, the little white fox terrier, and behind a score of soldiers firing wildly dogwards.
Withdrawing his pistol, Jones fired a few token shots, hitting one, generating a momentary confusion whilst the small snow-coloured dog swam the short distance from the riverbank to the seaplane. Caught within a storm of bullets, the propellers begin their cyclic revolutions, and giving his final two shots, Doctor Jones shut the door. He ensured it's secure locking from the inside before falling backwards, tongue lolled out. He looked briefly at the dog whose position was no different. The lights in the interior flickered off, token of a lucky parting shot from the rabble below firing blindly towards them in the night. The moon drew long shadows across the seaplane's interior.
"Heck of a smart dog" he said to Chang, who nodded in reply.
"Is Milou okay?" called the young man from the front of the craft. His voice rang with the trace of a French accent, albeit one which was very consciously under the process of modification seeming to favour a more universalistic European tone. In the back of the plane, they stumbled slightly as the plane jerked upwards lifting itself bodily out of the water and into the high aethers.
"Sure. We're fine too - thanks for asking", Doctor Jones called back. Milou barked appreciatively.
"Did you get it then?"
"I did. But I don't have it no more. According to Mister Chang here, we couldn't spare even a moment to collect one of the rarest and goddamn shiniest things I've ever seen. Now those creeps have their hands on it."
"But it didn't work." Chang reminded him quietly.
"It had sentimental value, kid. If you ever spend several months trying to find something like that, you'd know what I mean"
"But Chang was right" called the young man in the front of the vehicle, "We were lax. They had followed us and we didn't even know and… oh… uh…" He broke off.
"What?" There was no response. The shadows outside broke the silver light of the moon leaving the vehicle in a cold shadow, "What?"
"I… think you had best come and see for yourself"
Doctor Jones pulled himself the length of the aircraft, and instantly saw the spectacle which had rendered the blond-quiffed pilot mute.
To their aft approached a Zeppelin... or was it? It seemed too big and heavy to be a mere Zeppelin, and across it's iron hull he could spy various batteries of propellers arranged either side of a large multi-storey conning tower, windows glinting on the side. The prow came forward like that of a great ship, and aboard the forward deck a great crane stood towering ominously into the sky overlooked by a unit of large windows about which many men could be seen scuttling illuminated their vessel's gaulish light.
Upon either side lay two vast vertical-propellers, augmented by burning forward motion-rockets. Beneath it's vast bulk existing three large and aligned cannons, that in the rear being larger than the forward two, a final large propeller which broke the glowing greenish light that hailed from the well above it stretching upwards towards the conning tower.
Further in the rear, two launch bays thrust downwards, visibly arrayed with the weapons which could be used to bombard the target below. The gastro burners lit at the back illuminated the twin crosses of The New Reich emblazoned upon it's tail. The hulking behemoth advanced upon the scatter broil of it's own making, released from many vents giving it a black mane of smoke as it roared through the sky.
"A Drachenflieger!" cried Chang in alarm, "What are we to do?!"
"I…haven't a clue. How can this be? The Drachenflieger were destroyed after the Great War. How can Germany have kept one secret all this time?"
"Something's not right." Doctor Jones scanned it carefully, "Apergy. Rocketry. This isn't some dusted-down -and-dressed-up relic of the Air Wars, this is something new. One of Merkwürdigeliebe's new toys."
"How can they have built something so… so vast in secret? In defiance of all the treaties -"
" -You're supposed to be the investigative reporter: you tell me!" Doctor Jones sighed, and then gesturing to the young blonde, bid him surrender the cockpit as he took control of the plane.
"Fortunately there's only one and I think we can outrun it". He flicked several switches, checked a few dials. Chang glanced back towards the dashboard and then froze starring firmly out of the cockpit dead ahead.
"There's another" he said softly. A tear silently falling down his face. Chang had grown up on tales of family members drafted and lost during the Air Wars.
There was a moment in which the three occupants of the cabin took stock of the small speck on the horizon that floated out from behind the towering heights of the Balkans Range. It was only small, but getting bigger with an ever increasing rapidity, formed a cordon to cut off their escape. The young blond grabbed Chang's hand and held it gently but firmly.
Caught in a pincer, they had only moments before they were accessible to the marauding vessels, agents of Adenoid Hynkel's Nazi regime.
The young blonde-hair teen kept his gaze with that which approached at their rear, gaining all the time. Across the hull he could see, swarming like dark spiders against the hull, the Nazis: Nazis setting up guns, Nazis manning existent defences and Nazis making preparation for midair boarding, a dozen rocketeering Nazis with jetpacks.
Doctor Jones sighed a long deep sigh.
"Oh… I have a very bad feeling about this…"