Chapter 24: The Ascent
It took a few confusing moments for Julia to stop yelling and orient herself in what was a most disorienting situation. The walls blurred by at a dizzying speed and she was glad that the lever at least centered her in the column before she pulled it so she wasn't losing skin sliding against anything. The tearing wind made her all but shut her eyes and combined with the funny feeling in her feet she determined something odd was happening. If she was right she was actually falling upwards. She wasn't positive but the wind was definitely hitting the top of her head first and not the other way around.
Forcing a hand through the considerable wind current to her face she tried to get a better look at the walls zooming past her. At this point she'd been...falling was the only word for it, falling for the better part of a minute. Whatever was going to happen to her when she reached the end of this trip the pilgrim figured that it wasn't going to be pleasant. With her present velocity there were few solutions to this problem that didn't end up with her flat as a pancake.
Another minute or so passed and she began to wonder if maybe she'd been wrong. Maybe she was falling, rising, whichever, into an abyss with no end. Perhaps it was eternal like the void under the bridge she'd crossed to get into the city. Maybe she would just fall until she starved and continued falling until her body decomposed in tiny bits mid air.
Just as she was visualizing her burial by sky dive she hit some kind gelatinous layer head first and plowed into a vat of warm goo. Everything went dark and a thick, viscous liquid filled her ears, nose and mouth. She did however slow to a halt like a bullet fired into a tube of jello after what had to be hundreds of feet. Her stomach flipped again and all the blood in her head started to rush down to her feet as the goop started to churn. Kicking wildly and unable to see Julia could do nothing but hold her breath while she had the vague sensation of being sucked down a drain. The swirling gunk quickened its motion and the pilgrim hit the side of a wall as she was funneled into a pipe. Tumbling head over heels through it at a high rate of speed she was on the verge of being unable to hold her breath any longer when she burst free.
Light erupted around her as she landed on a pool of the goo and skidded some twenty feet in a ball of arms and legs. Coughing out some of the fluid she gasped for air as she rolled on her stomach to try to expel the foreign substance. The muck was in her eyes and ears but she focused on breathing before wiping it away. Spending a minute laying there recovering she pulled the goo out of her orbital sockets with her fingers and looked around at her new surroundings with blinking eyes.
She had been ejected from an old looking brass tube that had ceased pumping out any more fluid. Wallowing in a greenish, somewhat solid but still runny substance the odd fluid strangely enough a slight plant smell to it. The goop was nothing compared to where it had landed her though. The chamber she was in, incredibly, was a massive, exotic garden. Meticulously cared for with paths of white gravel in orderly rows the plant life was something to behold.
Rare Earth plants and flowers were mixed in with flora not of this solar system. Fern like plants with purple spirals and neon green veins thirty feet tall rested under the swaying boughs of hundred foot trees with glowing white and purple tendrils hanging down by the thousands. A single, sail shaped blue plant rocked in the gentle breeze as it towered over sea anemone flowers the size of huts. The sound of running water was accompanied by the sun showering everything from above. Her nose was practically stinging with the sweet smells, odors and perfumes unlike anything on earth.
The walls of the chamber were covered in moss and other plants she couldn't even begin to classify. The greenery rose up farther than she could see to the shining ceiling above which poured a welcoming, soft light down. A short distance away at the center of the room suspiciously similar in diameter to the column that had brought her here was a swirling staircase that rose hundreds of feet into the air. Small viewing platforms had been built into the staircase which was made of a gleaming white stone that almost glowed in the affable radiance from above.
Climbing to her feet Julia looked down at her green soaked clothes and gave up trying to stay clean. Somewhere in her mad journey she'd lost her only weapon and was down to her fists. At this point Julia was surprised to still have her boots on but at least her much maligned pocket light was still there. Squishy with green stuff she peeled off her boots and then socks as well. The warm, inviting rocks did not hurt to walk on as she headed for the stairwell. That such a place could exist in Nothing's world was simply amazing given what she'd already experienced.
Walking along the beautiful and lush paths she stopped in front of an alien plant bearing a purplish red fruit the size of a basketball and shaped like a sunflower seed. Feeling it in her hands she discovered that it was not nearly as rough or hard as it looked. Hungry but not enough to eat an unidentified fruit she said aloud, "Probably make me sick anyway."
"Not so." came a voice in her skull. Immediately crouching and putting her hands up Julia whipped her head around for the source of the sound. In truth though there was no actual auditory sensation as she felt rather than heard the echo in her mind. There also didn't appear to be anything around her but the idyllic, calm serenity of the garden.
"Whose there?" she growled.
"I am." it whispered in her brain. "The fruit is quite delicious, Julia Stormson. It will give your lips a tingling feeling as you eat it from the gentle toxin that discourages insects."
"How do you know me? Where are you?" she demanded.
"You are the second most important person in Nowhere. It is my business to know." the voice said with just a hint of loftiness. "And you see me before you."
"You're...the fruit plant?" she gaped.
"I am Tower. I am the seat of Lord Nothing's throne and the apex of his might. There are no matters within my walls which escape my notice."
"Oh, the tower. A talking tower. Huh." Julia said thoughtfully.
"I do not speak in your phonetic sense but yes, I am sentient."
"Where's your master then?"
"At the top of the stairs before you, waiting."
"He couldn't just send me a taxi? I'm tired as hell." she sighed.
"Sky travel is excessively dangerous in my air space." it informed her.
"So's the ground route if you didn't know." she scoffed. "Is this thing going to kill me?" she pointed at the fruit.
"No, I was quite truthful about it." the building said indignantly.
"All right, it's your ass if anything happens to me." she said as she pulled if from the stalk. "Where's this bad boy from anyway?"
"Pandora."
"Uh...where?"
"A moon of the gas giant Polyphemus in the Alpha Centauri A system five light years from Earth."
"What...how is that even possible?" she made a face.
"All things are possible for the Spirit of the Night Air." it replied smugly.
"Except for a safe trip.." she rolled her eyes. Holding the fruit with both hands she continued towards the stairwell as she bit into it. Slightly tough but juicy it had a flavor that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Almost electric in sourness but with overbearing sweetness she could not compare it to anything she'd ever had before. Stopping in her tracks she tore into the strange fruit like a wild animal devouring its prey. The juice gently stung her lips and tongue which only added to the fruit's otherworldly zest.
"Whuff..." she took in a breath after a few seconds of cramming as much of the fruit down as she could.
"As I said?" the voice asked.
"You weren't kidding. Can I get some of this for the road?"
"That would be most difficult." it answered humorlessly.
"Why's that?"
"Your crossing over was dangerous enough."
"Crossing over...wait, am I dead!?" she freaked out.
"No! No. Apologies for using alarming nomenclature." the building hastily responded. "I was referring to the planar transfer initiated when you asked for help."
"Oh. Okay. Good." she said and tried to play off the sudden unsteadiness of her knees. "So um...I just have to ask to come here?"
"It is quite a bit more complicated than that, Juia Stormson. Your arrival benefited from good luck and timely resonances."
"What does luck have to do with it?"
"I fear it would be too technical and obscure to attempt an explanation."
"I'm not an idiot, Tower. Try me." she challenged.
"Very well. When we received your call for a planar transfer the Master initiated a bore hole style drilling through the appropriate cross-planar subverse, taking care to time the transfer with our own flux state. Executing a reality shift through what the Master has dubbed the 'psycho-kinetic dermal membrane' he aligned the traces of the Living Receiver's bio-wavelength with a location here and there and when the dualities lined up he moved you through the momentary rift-"
"Okay, you know what, never mind." she interrupted it. "I understand, it was hard."
"Much harder than moving you during your home town's own reality shift. When the membrane is already in motion it is considerably easier to both take from and return to Silent Hill."
"You're talking about the darkness coming."
"Precisely."
"Huh. Makes sense in a very weird way. I think."
Continuing up the staircase she passed by a beautiful statue of a minotaur teen feet high made of marble that would have been right at home in a museum of antiquities. "Why is this place even here? It's so...elegant. Lovely." she wondered.
"Not everything the Master creates is of darkness." the tower reprimanded her.
"Yeah, not sold on that quite yet. What can you tell me about him?"
"I cannot speak on such matters. You will have the chance to ask Him yourself soon enough."
"Can't or won't?" she queried.
"Cannot. Not only is Lord Nothing's word law, it binds this reality. I can no more defy his wishes than you can gravity."
"Except when gravity stops working right..." she said to herself. "Can you answer questions about yourself? Or Nowhere in general?" she asked as she climbed step after gleaming step.
"Yes."
"Okay..." she thought as she passed by a shrub that appeared to be made entirely of gold. "How many floors do you have?"
"Depending on your definition of 'floor', close to two thousand."
"Yeesh. How tall are you?"
"Five and a half malms."
"Uh...how much is that in Earth distance?"
"Apologies. Kilometers or miles?"
"Miles."
"Nearly five Earth miles."
"Dang. How is that possible? Wouldn't you...fall over or something?"
"Much of the district around me and my own composition is made of a unique material called darkstone. It is extremely strong."
"I drove through a wall of it earlier."
"No, that was a normal kind of rock erected by the denizens of Nowhere. Real darkstone would have killed you."
She raised her eyebrows in belated concern at the audacity of the two stunt drivers she met. "You gotta be kidding me...what about the air? Shouldn't it be super thin this high? Wouldn't wind be a problem?"
"On Earth, yes. The Great Kewahqu has decreed that changes in air pressure and content are not effective up to and some distance past my summit.."
"He can just...do that?"
"Without his orders the air here would be inhospitable to life. With them, we are at conditions identical to sea level on your planet."
"This gets crazier the more I learn." Julia shook her head. "What about all the fighting? The tolls, the bridges, the constant air battles? What's it all for?"
"Tensions are high because of the Lightening. It is a stream of coronal mass ejection that will temporarily dissipate the cloud layers around me but nowhere else. It is the one chance every solar year for residents of Nowhere to collect light."
"What the...coronal...what light?" she stammered.
"Light is the standard power source and currency of Nowhere. It is traded, bartered and stolen all year but for a few glorious minutes it is free in my immediate area. The many factions will be fighting for every inch of space in order to collect as much as possible. Currently there are four battalion sized conflicts on my floors to secure prime collecting space. I do hope my carpeting is not terribly stained." it explained.
Julia had to shake her head as she continued going up. Looking over the railing the view was spectacular. Of everything that she had seen she would regret not being able to explore this place the most. Stopping to rest at one of the look out points around the halfway mark she found another statue. It was an austere woman in a military suit of some kind who stood with a menacing glare and a hand hovering over her chest knife.
"Whose this?"
"The Boss. Soldier, female, second greatest of all time."
"Where did the statue come from?"
"The Kci-Athussos carved it himself."
"Really?"
"He is quite prolific. He also tends to this garden himself."
"Hmm...can you tell me if he gardens in Silent Hill too?"
"If you are referring to the hedges in your Rosewater Park, then yes." it revealed.
"Aha! Chuck was right!" she laughed. "I still can't see him with a pair of shears like some kind of evil landscaper though... you know, the more you tell me about your master the farther I am from figuring him out. Who would have thought that he was the one keeping up the park? Victor's going to be beside...himself..." she trailed off when she thought about him.
"Is something wrong?"
"No, I...I don't know if he's alive. I'm really worried about him and Chuck. The mercenaries got them and they would have had me too if I didn't come here...I just feel so helpless. I don't know what's happening to them."
"Have faith in the Lord of Obsidian, Julia Stormson." Tower advised her. "He will not fail you, will not falter. He would give his dying breath for the misty land you call home."
"You sound like you admire him." she said in surprise.
"He has stood alone against the darkness since before you were born. Not for fame or glory or pay but because someone has to. Is this not the definition of a hero?"
"A hero doesn't massacre people. A hero doesn't murder people for a blood ritual." she asserted.
"Then what about you, Julia Stormson? Would you take up the defense of Silent Hill and give your life to it? Or will you simply criticize the Master for doing it in your absence? I doubt you complained when Victor Rosencrantz was alive to repeatedly save you due to the benefactor you continue to besmirch."
She thought about it and could not give the building an answer. Who indeed if not her or Victor or Chuck? Who would even want to stay in Silent Hill to keep the cultists out? She had always harbored the notion that Victor wanted to return home for precisely this even after all the time they spent away from the ghost town.
"I apologize." Tower said remorsefully. "I was overly harsh. I am merely defending my lord's honor."
"No, you're right." Julia said. "Your master, he's a monster, no doubt about it. But a monster we can point at the bad guys at least."
Sighing the pilgrim climbed to her feet. "How much farther?"
"500 feet, Julia Stormson."
Wearily resuming her solitary sojourn she headed farther towards the top of the madman's mad home.
Ahead of him was a gray, expansive cityscape that swayed in unison like grass in the breeze. Coming down the cracked and broken street in a heavily reinforced car with a bulletproof, glass stall was a platypus dressed up like the pope. It waved its tail at him as he stepped into a phone booth ringing incessantly. Sure didn't see much of those anymore these days so he waved back and answered the phone.
Yes?
"You have to wake up! The more real you think this is the stronger their hold gets!" a very familiar voice said.
Who is this?
"Your higher thought process!" the shrill voice answered but he didn't know anyone by that name. Weirdo. Hanging up the phone he skipped out onto the sidewalk which was likely made out of candy. Ahead a tough looking goldfish was leaning against the side of a 50s car and talking to the driver. As he walked by the fish eyeballed him and said, "What are you lookin' at pinky?"
Walking quickly away to avoid an ichthylogical incident he went into the first building he could find. There he was in a small room with three men that seemed familiar though he was sure they didn't have faces.
"There's a hammer over there." one of them said.
Cool.
"Go ahead and pick it up."
Grabbing the hammer he felt the weight in his hands. There were also a few nails on the table and he picked those up too.
"Pound them into the wall there, would you kindly?" the man asked. Wondering why the faceless man didn't do it himself if he liked nails so much he nevertheless complied and joyfully pounded the nails in.
"Your name is Steve isn't it?" the man asked.
Nope, pretty sure it wasn't.
Trudging through a sewer he picked up a filthy newspaper. He read it for several minutes even though the words had been replaced by symbols he was both very familiar with and had never seen before. The sewer was well lit by a slightly green tinted light despite the odd fact that there were no noticeable lights around. In a moment he heard a clip clopping sound coming from down the tunnel.
A horde of knife wielding marionette puppets emerged from the gloom ahead. Their blank stares, inexplicable 18th century clothes and loose strings dragging on the ground behind them terrified him beyond anything he could imagine. Running the other way like a frightened animal he screamed as the dead eyed dolls sluggishly scraped along after him.