Hello! Before you read this, I took inspiration for this next part (the Escher-esque part) of Danny's lair from an author on this site named HiddenAuthor. They wrote this really awesome (completed) DP fic called Exceptions way back in 2006. They haven't been active in ages, but their stuff is good, and I've never been able to imagine Danny's lair without a little bit of Escher since I read it. If you guys like my stuff, you should check out theirs.
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Chapter 25: Contradictory Spaces
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They passed eight more windows on their way down. The moon (not-moon?) was clearly visible through each one, except for the last. This in itself wouldn't have been too odd, except that a) the moon had been overhead when they came down, and b) it was shown in a different phase in every window.
It was really too bad that the windows were too narrow to lean out of. (Well, Danny could have managed it if he tilted himself sideways, but 'get beaten up by overprotective friends' was not on his to-do list). Danny would have liked to see the outside of the structure they were in, and whether or not there was anything outside, other than the stars and moon. There was no guarantee that the window wasn't simply a frame floating in the ether, from an outside perspective. Tucker, Mikey, and some of the other students who were interested in video game design, were getting into a conversation about sky-boxes and whether or not the stars really 'existed' in this world.
Then they reached the bottom of the stairs, and Danny walked into one of the strangest rooms he had ever seen.
Most of the room was made of the same dark stone as the stairs, carved in various, fantastic patterns. To the left, the wall was a gallery of airy arches that let in bright, blue-white moonlight and lead to what looked like a wide balcony. Directly next to those arches, sitting in front of, and parallel to them, was a long, stone table that seemed to rise, seamlessly, from the ground. Arrayed around it were stone benches and chairs. In the center of the table, there was a vase full of those glowing blue flowers.
To the right, there was another long stone table, this one taller, solid, more of a counter. An island. Against the right-hand wall, there was another long counter, this one with open-faced cabinets both above and beneath. There was a gap in the center of the upper cabinets, where water ran along the wall from the ceiling to a basin in the counter. Another set of counters stood to the side, these without shelves beneath them, but instead had balls of pale gold fire. Next to these, there was a dark cavity in the wall, a relief of flames carved into the stone around it. On the other side of the shelves, there was a narrow doorway, that lead into a dimly lit room that Danny thought contained more shelving.
The shelves themselves were stocked with jars and plates, cutlery and bowls. Forks, knives, spatulas... This was a kitchen. A rather odd kitchen, and Danny couldn't quite tell how the stoves and oven worked, but it was definitely a kitchen.
In between the kitchen and what Danny was tentatively labeling a dining area, there was a sitting area. A set of couches and armchairs grouped around a stone coffee table with another vase of flowers on it, this one a little more elaborate. In addition to the glowing blue poppies, there was something that looked like baby's breath, and what looked like especially vivid forget-me-nots.
Farther along, on the opposite end of the room, there was balustrade, overlooking what appeared to be a larger space. There was a gap in the railing, perhaps signaling a stair descending, and another gap nearby, with a stair going up. It looked like the balustrade had a walkway next to it that extended left and right beyond the room, as well.
What earned the room the label of 'strangest,' however, was what hung from the ceiling. Fixed to the ceiling were dozens, no, hundreds, maybe even thousands, of wind chimes. There were all kinds of chimes. Some were shiny metal, copper, bronze, steel, silver, and gold. Others were dull, or even rusted. There were all sorts of ceramics up there, terracotta, china, bisque, raku. All sorts of shapes, too. Danny thought he spotted bones and bells as well.
The wisps immediately began to play among the chimes, setting them off. Danny desperately wished that he could float up to join them, but even if his class and parents hadn't been there, his ghost powers had been completely offline since the thing with the shadow. He hadn't even been flickering around the edges. In some ways this was a good thing, it kept people from asking untoward questions, but Danny was scared. His core was curled so tightly in his chest that it was physically painful... At least, it felt like it was curled. Danny wasn't sure whether or not a core could curl. Cores were crystalline structures, so curling would be a bit difficult for them.
It was getting a bit loud up there, with all the chimes, and Danny absently noted that some people were complaining. People did tend to get more irritable when hungry and tired, and he didn't doubt that some of them were nurturing stress headaches. Still, he wasn't inclined to ask the giggling wisps to stop. They were so happy. So he didn't.
Instead, he walked, slowly, his legs were burning from the long descent, to the kitchen part of the room. His eyes scanned the carvings next to the stove-tops and oven. There were words etched into the wall alongside them, cleverly hidden in the larger carvings. (Did all of this really come from his mind? It was a good thing he was too tired to be embarrassed.)
He examined the counters, and then the shelves. The jars and boxes were neatly labeled. Most of the labels were in English, but others were labeled in Latin, Greek, or Esperanto, a few were in French, one bottle of red pepper was labeled with Chinese characters, and several labels were written in ghost languages. Many were items were labeled twice. The salt, interestingly, was labeled almost a dozen times. Danny tilted out a container labeled 'pancake mix.'
They could make pancakes.
Danny pushed the container back onto the shelf, and kept walking. He passed the doorway on the other side of the counters, and smiled absently as he felt the chill that emanated from the room beyond it. A refrigerator, then.
There was something on the other side of the room that drew him. He walked to the balustrade, and looked into the space beyond.
He blinked, then smiled. "Wow..." he said, awed. Thrilled.
The balcony he stood on looked into a space filled with stairs, hundreds and hundreds of stairs, that connected stone platforms and walkways, many of which were set at impossible, or at least, uncomfortable, angles. Every surface was covered with windows that revealed a starry night, complete with dozens of moons. The silver light from the windows provided more than enough light for Danny to see clearly, although it might be dim for the others, and some of the angles were odd. At irregular intervals, lanterns full of ghostly fire hung on chains, dangling in every direction, showing that gravity really was that strange here, and giving more light. There were no doors that Danny could see, but there were doorways, archways, and paths that bent tantalizingly out of sight. A river wound along one floor, only to jackknife upwards into a waterfall. Elsewhere, a walkway full of fountains spiraled and corkscrewed. Danny could see a set of Penrose steps in the distance, and another pathway seemed to twist into a Mobius strip.
This was so cool!
(Potentially problematic, highly problematic, but cool! He'd deal with how this place was likely more of a maze than Pandora's Labyrinth later.)
(He had always liked Escher.)
"Oh my gosh."
Danny looked away from the tableau to examine Sam. "You don't like it," said Danny, wilting.
"What?" said Sam, looking at him, wide-eyed. "No!" she denied. "No, no. It's cool." She looked back over the balustrade. "I'm just surprised, that's all."
"Yeah."
Danny turned around to look at Tucker. "Are you okay?"
"Just a bit of vertigo," Tucker said, waving Danny off. "But, yeah, surprised. I mean, dang."
"No, no," said Jazz. She was standing just to the other side of Tucker. "This all makes perfect sense."
Everyone (really everyone, the other students and the adults had also made their way over to the railing at this point) stared at the young woman as if she was on drugs.
(Hey! Maybe they were all on drugs! That would make much more sense than what was actually happening.)
"Think about it, what with everything that Phantom deals with on a daily basis, he must feel that he's made of contradictions. He fights ghosts to protect humans that are always persecuting him, he's friends with the children of the people who hunt him most often... And I've always said that he's more complex than most people think." She frowned. "This is Relativity, isn't it? At least partially. The Escher print. That makes even more sense... perspectives..." She trailed off mumbling.
"How the hell is that supposed to help us get home?!" exploded Rebecca suddenly. Everyone flinched away from the dark skinned girl. "Do any of you see this mess? It's a damn maze! We're never going to get home!" She burst into tears. Her friend, Ashley, tried to comfort her, but it was clear that she was upset, too.
"Hey," said Jazz, softly. "Rebecca, look at me. We're going to take this one step at a time. We have food now," she gestured at the kitchen, "and the wisps said that there were beds around here, too, right, Danny?"
"Um, yes," said Danny, shaking off his momentary paralysis. "Yes." He whistled up to Leader. Leader whistled back. "Yes," he repeated. "Off that way," he pointed along the balustraded walkway. There were some doorways set into the wall, there. A few were covered with curtains. "They also said something about 'small rooms with lots of water.' I guess that could be bathrooms?"
"Bathrooms?" The word was uttered by a dozen voices.
"Yeah. Maybe."
There was a rush in that direction.
Danny sighed, rubbing his eye. He didn't feel the need to go, and he could wash his hands in the kitchen waterfall just as well. Maybe he could start on pancakes, too. That would probably cheer everyone up.
"Daniel?"
Danny looked at his teacher, startled. He hadn't noticed Mr Lancer staying behind. "Yes?"
"Can I talk to you privately for a moment?"
