Disclaimer - "Transformers" and all related characters, events, and concepts belong to Hasbro, Takara, and any other related owners/distributors/producers. I get no monetary benefit from this. My benefit is the enjoyment of dealing with beloved characters.
Salted Wounds
by DragonDancer5150
Chapter 3 - Darkness
To Optimus, the trip took too long, the light from the factory above shrinking to a pinpoint all too quickly. He turned on the lights on his shoulders. Just how far down did this elevator go? The increasing heaviness in the air meddled with his sensors too, his internal gyroscope tilting and swinging enough to threaten to knock him to his knees with vertigo. He looked down at Fanzone, sitting on his cradled hands. The man leaned back against his chest with a look on his face like he was sick to his stomach.
Apparently, Bulkhead suffered the same. "I-I feel like I'm gonna purge," he murmured.
Prowl grimaced, even as he leaned on the construction-bot as if for stability. "At least wait until we're off the elevator, Bulkhead."
Finally, they reached the bottom, and rusted-out gates shrieked in protest as gears and pulleys ground to pull them apart out of the way, revealing a long tunnel. Electric lights flickered to life as if in response, several bulbs snapping and blowing out here and there along the length.
"Optimus, you can put me down now." Fanzone sounded annoyed on the surface, but Optimus could hear the unease in the captain's voice. He obliged, but the human grabbed a finger for support for a moment before he properly gained his balance. Then, without waiting, he headed off down the tunnel. Optimus followed, waving for his team to do the same.
The tunnel opened into blackness that felt at once claustrophobic and cavernous. It was like being deep under Lake Eerie again. Optimus pulled a road flare from his on-board emergency kit, ignited it, and tossed it into the darkness. It skittered, bounced, and threw disturbing red light dancing across rock formations until it fetched up against the far wall. Optimus tossed two more, one to either side, and finally the group could make out the cave before them. Parts of it had been mined, the smooth, flat wall and floor sections showing white and grey striations that glowed eerily in the sputtering red glow. The rest was rough and uneven, like ground after a landslide. The walls especially looked like they'd been covered with soap foam that had frozen and hardened, and the salt deposits on the stalactites overhead resembled hoar frost. Optimus shook his head - the overall effect was creepy, to say the least.
Fanzone reached into a pocket in his trenchcoat and pulled out a flashlight. He flicked the switch but nothing happened. He growled. "Oh, don't you-…you have brand new batteries, you piece of junk. Will. You. Just. Wor-!" He beat the head of the flashlight into the palm of the other hand with each word, and on "work", it finally flared to life. Huffing, Fanzone started forward into the cavern, the flashlight trained down at his feet to help keep him from tripping as he turned off the smooth stone onto the broken ground beyond.
Optimus gestured. "Autobots, spread out. There must be something down here to give us a clue about what's going on." The others obeyed reluctantly.
He couldn't blame them. It was silent and still down here. 'Unnaturally so,' he wanted to think, even as he recognized that it made sense to be still and silent in a cave. He shut his optics for a moment, fighting suddenly to re-center himself, as he realized that he'd only ever been subterranean once before in his life. Was it his imagination, or was he starting to pick up scratching, clicking sounds just on the very edges of hearing?
Something touched his arm and he yelped, spinning around and only barely catching himself from sending Ratchet sprawling to the ground. "R-ratchet." He passed a hand over his optics, forcing himself to calm down. "I'm sorry. What is it?"
"You didn't hear me call you, Commander." It wasn't a question. The old medic studied him for a long moment, frowning, but then let it go. "Bumblebee found something. I thought you should come see."
"Does anyone else feel like we're bein' watched?"
"Bulkhead, that's not possible. We're the only ones down here." Fanzone sounded much more certain than he looked.
Ratchet was looking around, visibly braced. "Afraid I have to agree with Bulkhead on this one, Captain. I feel like we're . . . surrounded."
It was Optimus's turn to study, frowning in concern . . . and growing dread. As a veteran of the Great War, Ratchet would know better than any of them what it felt like to be surrounded. Optimus couldn't deny it any longer himself. He felt gazes on him from all around, and they didn't feel friendly.
"Boss-bot?" Bumblebee's voice quavered as he waved for Optimus's attention.
Fanzone joined Optimus by the young repair-bot's position. There was an alcove of sorts in the wall of the cavern, filled with salt crystals cradling a ceramic jar, the lid next to it and the jar itself tilted forward. Optimus crouched down to see better as Fanzone shone his flashlight inside.
"That's weird," Fanzone muttered. "Just looks like a stained strip of leather in there, with a piece of wood stuck through it."
The police captain dug a pair of latex gloves from a pocket, pulled one on, and reached into the pot. Optimus felt the temperature drop lower, the oppression get more intense. A restlessness replaced the stillness in the air. Fanzone pulled out the strip of leather, half as wide as his palm and about twice as long. The leather was old and thin, cracking apart in Fanzone's hand. The wedge of wood fell free of its spot skewering the center of the dark stain.
A sudden howl shattered the silence, turning oppression to chaos. Optimus heard his team cry out in shock and pain even as he himself was thrown back and to the ground by some unseen force. Intense, unbridled malevolence washed over him and, for an instant, he feared Megatron had been killed and somehow come back for vengeance in pure spark form. But that wasn't possible . . . was it?
Suddenly, he was no longer in the cave but in a forest. A human dressed in leathers, with ruddy brown skin and long black hair, struggled with a dense black mass. The man turned and looked at him, shouting, "Pierce blood with winterberry. Hurry!" He gave a strangled cry as the shifting mass seemed to start gaining the upper hand.
Optimus cast about for something, anything, that he could use to help the human. His fingers closed on nothing more than dirt and pebbles, but he turned and threw them into the twisting blackness anyway. If he could just distract the entity, whatever it was, long enough for-
He flinched, gasping at a shriek of agony that threatened to short out his audio receptors. When he looked again, he was back in the cave, but the black mass still hung over him and his team.
"That's it!" he heard Fanzone cry from somewhere to his right. "Salt! Everyone, throw salt at it!"
Optimus looked, hand going to the spot on the ground from which he'd just pulled what he'd thought was soil or gravel. There was a section of salt deposits dug from the layers on the ground. Sitting up and twisting, he scraped two more handfuls and threw them at the mass. So did Ratchet, Bulkhead, and Bumblebee. Fanzone lobbed loose crystals. Prowl used his jump jets to hop up and throw his shurikens, breaking salt-encrusted stalactites free to fall through the mass from above.
The entity roiled and writhed, its piercing wails echoing throughout the cavern and ringing everyone's hearing. Then it vanished. The sudden silence was almost as deafening as the noise had been.
"W-whoa." Bumblebee pulled himself shakily to his feet, one hand pressed to the side of his helm. "That was intense! Did anyone else just have a vision of a forest and-"
"Is it gone?" Bulkhead wanted to know. "Did we kill it?"
"Doubtful." Prowl clicked his shurikens back into place on his legs.
"First of all," Ratchet put in, "I don't think that thing was alive to begin with. And secondly, if it were that simple, I'm sure that shaman would have destroyed that . . . whatever-it-was way back when."
Not gone.
Not defeated.
Not dead.
Never alive to begin with.
Just regrouping.
Optimus felt more than heard the words, looking around for the source. Spotting it - them - he bolted to his feet with a harsh gasp, his plasma axe in hand almost before he was aware of pulling it from its casing on his back . . . even as he realized that it would probably do him no good at all.
They were surrounded. The Autobots and Fanzone shifted and gathered until they were huddled back to back, staring at the scores of intangible figures hovering, half-formed within drifting mists, all around them. A few still retained some measure of their appearances in life, but most were skeletal, with ragged clothes clinging to their bony frames, what hair was left to them hanging thin and limp from their skulls.
"Miners." Fanzone's voice was low and awed, staring at the ghostly skeletons. "Most of these guys look like they were miners."
Ratchet shook his head, still half in disbelief even as he gaped at what was right before his optics. "These must be all the victims that have died here over time."
One ghost separated from the rest to reach for Fanzone, a little girl looking so normal in comparison to her companions that Optimus thought she must have been among the most recently deceased.
Fanzone gasped, recoiling. "M-miss Hugo…"
Help us!
Free us!
The rest of the ghosts crowded closer too, desperate, frightened, in pain.
"How!?" Bumblebee yelled back, sounding like his nerves were shot.
Reset the trap.
Remake the spell.
Restore the binding.
"That container," Prowl murmured with dawning realization.
Ratchet nodded, his expression thoughtful. "When the mining operation started, someone must have found that jar, took off the lid, and freed the demon, or whatever it is."
"So how do we get it back in that jar?" Optimus had rarely felt as out of his element as he did right now. There wasn't anything in his Academy training or any other experience that came even close. He almost wished for those horrific spiders from Archa-7 again. Or even Decepticons. At least then he knew how to fight what he was facing.
"I have an idea." Prowl crouched down to Fanzone, holding out his hand. "Captain, your belt."
Fanzone gaped at him even as he seemed to try to ignore the little girl pressing to his side as if for comfort. "My what?"
"Please! Just hurry. Trust me."
Fanzone looked at him another moment . . . and did as asked. Prowl took the belt, sliced off a length of roughly a foot with the blade of a shuriken, then turned and bolted back down the corridor towards the shaft.
Bumblebee glared after him. "And just where in the name of the All-Spark is he going?"
"C'mon, Bumblebee," Bulkhead reassured him. "This is Prowl. If he thinks he's got an idea, it's probably a good one."
Optimus hoped Bulkhead was right.