✎ Fel's Creative Journal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tinfoiltennis) wrote2011-01-16 12:01 pm
tinfoiltennis) wrote2011-01-16 12:01 pm
✎ chapterfic - hetalia/ebz - it was not meant that we should voyage far [7/?]
Title: It was not meant that we should voyage far. [7/?]
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia/Echo Bazaar
Characters: Every nation ever at one point or another. This part: England, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, and a few random extras.
Rating: PG-13 for this chapter.
Summary: An Echo Bazaar crossover AU. Fallen London: once capital of the British Empire, now home of the Bazaar, a mile underground and a boat ride away from Hell itself. Deep. Dark. Expensive. Marvellous. Here you can find everything from immortality, to unnervingly good mushroom wine.
Or so the stories go.
But stories can rarely be trusted, and all the wildest stories in the world couldn’t have prepared Alfred and Matthew Jones for what they would find when they descended into the fallen city on a journey that would lead them right into the heart of a rebellion against the Masters of the Bazaar themselves…
Word Count: This part: 5394
Notes: Once again, the continuation of the long haul that started as my NaNo project for last year. :'> The title is from an HP Lovecraft quote, “We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” Also: it really is possible to create a domino effect with something as big as a large bookshelf. There’s videos of it up on youtube. :’D
Warnings: General warnings: A crossover with a (very addictive) online game, a lot of speculation and elaboration on my part on the universe of that game, human!AU, the occasional bit of 1800s sensibilities, and later on in the fic, a lot of OCs. :’> This chapter: a bit of NaNo quality writing.
✎ ✎ ✎
As it turned out, they were a full hour behind schedule by the time they had pulled clear of the Stolen River and finally arrived out at zee, and it took all of what Terra and Arthur between them could coax out of the Elizabeth’s small engine to bring them back up to speed. Even then, it was late afternoon of the following day by the time they reached the small chain of islands just off the Carnelian Coast where they would be doing business.
The islands themselves weren’t part of the colony proper, and even London’s colony itself, small and mysterious as it was, wasn’t well-known or widely discussed by anyone outside of the zailing community and the top brass of the Shuttered Palace and the Bazaar. But they were an excellent place for traders from all shores of the Unterzee to meet and trade what wares they had. Sometimes some of the Carnelian Colonists, as they were known, made the short trip from their small lands to the largest of the island chain to share goods and stories, and most zailors agreed that the colonists were a strange lot even by the standards of a lifelong Fallen Londoner. There was something in the water there, or so the story went. Something that made them just a little more mad than the rest of the Neath’s human population.
Maybe that was true, thought Arthur, but mad or not, they still paid handsomely in their strange trinkets and oddly-shaped currency in exchange for London’s glim, which in turn meant a tidy profit for himself and his crew. Not quite as handsomely as the people who were also in the business of smuggling things in and out of London, but then, that was why that sort of business was still traditionally done at night, when the last of the daytime markets had finally packed themselves away for the night. It was easier to be shadowy that way, even in the perpetual near-darkness of the Neath. Or perhaps all smugglers still had a hidden love of the theatrical and mysterious; the opinion of most scholars of criminal behaviour and thought was still up in the air over that one.
There were only two pubs on the main island, and only a certain class of customer ever frequented one of them. The White Raven was a small, slightly draughty building located a short walk away from the island’s main town, above a network of natural caves that had been there since before the Bazaar was between stars. It was also a haunt of smugglers and other people who preferred to dodge the law, and had several rooms below ground for that purpose. The somewhat less-than-respectable establishment was run by a Chinese man who had a tenuous connection to the Gracious Widow, the ringleader of the most powerful smuggling ring in London, and he was more than happy to turn a blind eye to anything illegal that went on under his roof.
It had been Zhi that had first introduced Arthur to this haven of a smuggler’s paradise. Arthur would have been surprised if it weren’t for the fact that Zhi’s elder brother, Wang Yao, was the head of a rather influential Chinese family that also held the reigns on a smuggling operation of its own. Fallen London was immensely profitable if you knew who to talk to and what to sell, after all, and over two decades underground hadn’t robbed the residents of their love of surface comforts such as silk clothing, non-hallucinogenic honey, and tea. As such, it was Zhi that helped Arthur handle the more shadowy transactions that they made, as well as being the ships’ resident firearms expert – Arthur didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone manage to create such a volatile mixture for arming a cannon with before in his life. But there was no denying how effective it was.
It was tea that they were smuggling tonight, smuggled into London from the surface by the Gracious Widow’s people and out of the city to the Carnelian Coast by Arthur’s crew. Tea had a heavy tax on it that everybody was keen to avoid if they could, which made it the ideal thing to make a profit on.
Not quite as profitable as the business of smuggling souls, of course. But Arthur refused to deal in souls.
The two of them were waiting at one of the pub’s cramped tables with their precious cargo stowed away carefully in Zhi’s bag, waiting for their contacts to appear so that they could begin bartering. The tiny place was rather quiet tonight, with less than half of the tables full of people minding their own business or pretending to be asleep while they minded other people’s, and even the bartender looked as if he’d rather have a brawl on his hands to sort out. He’d been wiping the same glass in monotonous circles for the past ten minutes at least.
Arthur had to admit, he would rather have been one of the people in that hypothetical brawl right now. Zhi was a hard worker and he was pleasant enough company when he wasn’t playing pranks in his own quiet way, but he wasn’t always the most thrilling source of conversation. And Arthur couldn’t afford to drink as much as he’d like to until after the job was finished – he needed to have his wits about him, after all. So it was with a rather disgruntled look on his face that he was running a finger around the top of his empty tankard and glancing around the barroom at the other patrons.
It was on his third or fourth sweep of the room that he noticed that one of them was the quiet deviless from the docks the day before. She wasn’t alone, either; a couple of devils sat with her with their strange imposing hats, and they were also joined by a young girl with dirty blonde hair and a serious expression, and a tired, nervous-looking young man with his brown hair tied up loosely at the back of his head. Altogether, they made a very odd-looking group, and Arthur might have left them to their own curious business if he hadn’t managed to catch a wisp of their conversation.
“So then, I take it there’ll be no trouble with picking up tonight’s stock?”
“None whatsoever,” said the girl flatly, brushing down her midnight blue skirts. Her voice had the faintest hint of an accent – somewhere from Eastern Europe, perhaps? “You should know by now you can trust my brother to keep his word on these things.”
“I’m only checking, dear,” purred the deviless. “After all, you know how delicate these things can be. We prefer to take them all in nothing less than perfect condition.”
Souls. They had to be talking about souls. They were the only things that Hell imported in bulk, after all – they sometimes bought human music or man-made curiosities, but those were souvenirs more than anything else. Souls were what Hell had always dealt in, and that was its real business. And the fact that that this little group were sitting in the White Raven to do business meant that the man and the girl were spirifers – soul traders without a license. Not that Arthur really saw the need to make the distinction between the licensed and unlicensed – souls were souls, after all, no matter how prettily you tried to dress the whole ugly business up.
He could feel his jaw involuntarily setting itself at the thought, and he knew he ought to stop listening. He couldn’t afford to get involved in some sort of mess, he had a job to do and a crew to think of. He simply couldn’t afford to let his emotions get the better of him just because of part of an overheard conversation. But no matter how much he reasoned with himself, he just couldn’t stop himself from continuing to listen in. Maybe he was just that much of a masochist.
“I’m sure that you’ll find nothing wrong,” the nervous man was saying now with an unsteady smile, after the silence at the table had grown dangerously awkward. “You know that Mr. Braginski values your satisfaction, so…”
“I’m sure that we will find nothing wrong,” one of the devils agreed with a jaunty smile. “It’s in the same place as always, yes?”
“Y-yes,” the man nodded with the tiniest of stammers. The girl remained silent, impassively watching the three devils while her hand rested on the scabbard of a sword that Arthur hadn’t noticed before, belted securely around her waist. “We can go anytime you’re ready.”
“Then let’s go, shall we?” said the deviless evenly. She rose from her seat and her two fellow Hellish denizens rose with her, gazing at the two humans expectantly. “Do lead the way.”
“Of course. Right away,” the man replied tiredly, almost seeming to wilt slightly as he stood. The swordswoman was already standing, looking just as impassive as she had throughout the whole conversation. Arthur’s right hand was now clenched tightly around the handle of his tankard. They were going to leave to carry out the rest of that in private, then. And that was fine. At least it meant that they were away from him and he didn’t have to listen to any more of it; for him, it ended as soon as they left the pub. It wasn’t as if it meant anything to him.
Which was complete bollocks, of course, and he couldn’t even lie to himself about that. The whole conversation, short as it had been, had crawled right under his skin. He didn’t want it to end there. After all, if it ended there, then that meant that they all got away with it. Moreover, they all got to profit from it, and where was the justice in that?
“Arthur?” He almost jumped at the sound of his own name, finding Zhi looking at him with something like worry in his dark eyes. “Is something wrong?” The young man’s eyes flicked almost imperceptibly down to where Arthur’s hand was still so tightly clenched around his tankard that the knuckles had turned white. Arthur followed his gaze and quickly relaxed his grip. Then, before he had a chance to change his mind, he stood.
“Take care of things here for me, would you?” he asked in a low voice, his eyes following the small group as they made their way towards the door. “I just want to look into something quickly.”
Zhi frowned, looking for a moment as if he was about to rise from his seat himself. “Captain, what are you –”
“Don’t argue with me,” Arthur said, glaring fiercely at him, and Zhi settled back down in his chair, perhaps recognising the steely tone in Arthur’s voice for what it was. Do not mess with me right now. “I won’t be long. If the people we’re supposed to be meeting show up, just do business with them as usual and say I’m elsewhere. Make something up, I don’t know. I trust you to handle this on your own, so don’t worry about me.”
Zhi looked up at him, a steady frown still on his face. “Arthur, what is this about?”
“I thought I told you not to argue with me?” Arthur shook his head. “Look, it’s just a passing curiosity, nothing more.” He craned his head – the back of the last devil was vanishing out of the door now. If he didn’t follow them now, then there would have been no point to even thinking of this mad idea. He turned back to Zhi and whispered furiously, “If I’m not back by tomorrow morning, and only by then, you and Emma are in charge, alright? Don’t let Terra or Connor do anything stupid.”
“Are you about to do anything stupid, Captain?” Zhi said flatly, but there was a hint of impatience and worry in his words. Arthur stopped mid-step and looked back at him.
“Yes,” he said bluntly. “Very.”
And with that, he was out of the door before Zhi had the chance to even call out for him to stop.
✎ ✎ ✎
The night air of the Neath was never cold; at least, not at this time of year. Damp, certainly, and a little cloying, but not so cold that one would freeze in it. Nevertheless, after the closed-off candlelit space of the pub, Arthur felt a chill run through him as he came out of the pub into the faint glow of the cavern’s moonish light. The small knot of people were a short distance ahead of him now, heading down a small, winding path that he supposed lead to the coastline underneath the cliff face. Arthur had never had cause to go there before tonight, but tonight was different. He just hoped that the path didn’t have any hidden pitfalls that he wouldn’t catch in time with only the light from the Neath’s ceiling to guide him.
He remained a few feet behind the back of the last person in the group, moving as quietly as he could in case one of them turned around. He’d heard that devils had exceptionally good night vision, and he had no desire to put that rumour to the test at a time like this. Luckily, the path, while unpaved, was more or less even, and Arthur found that as long as he stuck to the cliff face as it snaked its way downwards, he could keep quiet while he followed the group.
Really, the whole business of sneaking around after them would have been made infinitely easier if there had been conversation in front of him to cover up any possible sound he might make. But no, instead both devils and humans were quiet, almost completely silent as they unwittingly lead him down towards the mouth of a large cavern. Arthur stopped a short way behind them this time, waiting until they had all vanished into the darkness before he followed them himself, even more cautiously than before. His heart was beginning to beat faster in his chest. If there had been a time to abandon this mad venture, then it had now long since passed as he made his way further inside, feeling his way along the rugged cave wall as he went.
The path seemed to be leading further down, now, even deeper underground, and as accustomed to the darkness of the Neath as he was, Arthur still found himself wishing for a torch or a lamp of some kind. All he had to follow was the faint glow of the lantern at the front of the group, far away, and he daren’t get any closer for fear of being spotted. He concentrated on keeping track of the various twists and turns in the passage instead, mindful of the fact that he still wanted to get out of this place after everything was said and done. Finally, after what seemed like an age, the tunnel began to widen out into what appeared to be a very large chamber. Arthur drew back once again while he waited for the five people he was tailing to get a fair enough distance inside. Then, as silently as he could, he inched along the wall closer to the opening, until he could crane his neck to see inside.
What he saw almost made him forget himself and gasp aloud, and it was only remembering what that might result in that stopped him.
First of all, the chamber the others had lead him to stand outside was truly colossal. About as large as a theatre’s auditorium, or perhaps a large ballroom, it was filled with row upon row of wooden shelves. And on those shelves –
Souls. Thousands upon thousands, row upon row of the softly glowing, barely there green things, moaning gently in their stoppered glass bottles. They were curled up in on themselves, their faintly humanoid forms clearly cramped, too large for the small bottles that held them captive.
Arthur had never even seen one soul in person before, let alone so many of them just piled up in storage like these were. The sight made him feel somewhat nauseous.
“Like, oh my gosh, you took forever up there!” A heavily accented, fairly obnoxious-sounding voice jolted Arthur out of his thoughts, and he glanced around the corner again to see a blonde man, his hair tied up in a similar way to his brunette companion’s, greeting the small group with his hands on his hips. “You’re totally getting slow, Toris!” After flashing the nervous man – Toris, was it? – a toothy grin, the blonde’s smile, and indeed his entire demeanor, became more polite and business-like. “Nice to see you again, ma’am. So like, what can we do for you today?”
“Only the usual,” the deviless replied with a gracious nod of her head; or at least, Arthur assumed that it was a nod, as he could only see the back of her from his vantage point. “Perhaps you’d like to take us around the stock so that we could choose?”
The blonde man nodded, his smile completely gone now. “Sure thing. I like, know how much you like to pick out the best ones, so I totally arranged it so that the better ones are up near the far side where it’s like, safer for them. At least, I think they’re the better ones. I like, totally have no idea, but Mr. Braginski seems to think so, and he’s the expert, right?”
As the man was coming to the end of his little spiel, the quiet girl’s arm suddenly flew out to hit him lightly in the chest. “Maybe you should watch your words and simply show the customers what they want, Feliks,” she said tonelessly, but her expression had shifted; her eyes were like hard little daggers as she glared at him. He swallowed and physically shivered a little – Arthur could see it – and laughed nervously.
“Relax, Nataliya, I was just getting there! Alright, right this way, ma’am, sirs,” he continued, waving his arm to lead the three devils further on into the cave, past the rows of shelves and out of Arthur’s sight. The girl – Nataliya – followed suit, her eyes never leaving Feliks’s form, and Toris wearily followed along behind them, his shoulders slumped as he muttered something that Arthur couldn’t quite catch, something along the lines of Feliks pushing his luck too far again. And then, as the noise of their footsteps and conversation receded, there was only silence.
Silence and a temporarily empty part of the chamber, just waiting for someone else to step inside and throw a spanner into the works of this little smuggling ring.
Truthfully, Arthur hadn’t had a concrete plan in mind when he’d made the decision to follow the spirifers and their customers down here; it had been a choice made on pure instinct, nothing more or less, just a desire to try and do something. But as soon as he’d seen the shelves of trapped souls lining every spare inch of this place, an idea had sprung into his head, and he’d known what he was going to do. He wasn’t even sure if it would be the most effective way of doing what he had in mind; he knew for definite that it was extremely foolhardy. But foolhardy or not, he was going to do it, because it was the least thing he could think of doing. And after following them so far down here, he couldn’t very well leave and do nothing, could he? Even if he would have been inclined to report them to the authorities – which he wouldn’t, not in a million years – the only thing that would happen would be that the spirifers would be caught on a charge of trading without a license. The souls themselves would simply be confiscated and re-sold legally.
With these thoughts in mind, Arthur stepped warily into the chamber and chanced a quick look around. The room’s other occupants were nowhere in sight. Good. That meant he had a chance of a clean getaway afterwards. As far as he could see, the one flaw in the whole brilliant plan was this: he couldn’t see anything heavy lying around that he could use to smash the bottled souls open with.
He supposed that meant that he would just have to improvise.
He wasn’t even sure if smashing the bottles would do anything, if he were to be honest with himself. But it was the easiest and quickest way he could think of to release the pitiful things. Not that he was entirely certain what a soul could do once it was freed – did they have free will or even the ability to move independently to go and find the body that once belonged to them, or would they just hang about uselessly? Either way, one thing he was sure of was that quick and sudden freedom would probably hurt a lot less in the long run than continued imprisonment and anticipation of whatever horrible fate awaited them in Hell at the hands of the devils.
Looking at the whole situation a second time, and he glanced along the length of the room again to check that he was still undetected, it was probably a good thing that he couldn’t go through with his original idea of smashing as many of the damned bottles as he could by hand. He wouldn’t even get through a tenth of them before they came running back and caught him. His eye caught the edge of one of the wooden shelves, sitting slightly at an angle on the uneven ground. Now, what if the shelves could be pushed? That would probably be a lot more effective.
Well, there was only one way to find out, and he didn’t have much time left before he would definitely get caught. Mind made up, he quickly crossed the room to stand in front of the nearest shelf and looked up at it, biting his lip in thought. There was nothing for it but to get it over and done with quickly, he thought – and so he placed both palms on the lip of the shelf in front of him, braced himself, and gave the thing an almighty push. It was surprisingly light considering how many bottles were stacked up on it, and it swayed easily before coming down hard onto the next shelf in the row, scattering bottles that smashed open on the ground below. He winced a little at the hollow thud as the shelf hit its companion and the ear-splitting sound of breaking glass, overwhelmingly loud after the near-silence of the cavern before. There was a faint shout of surprise from the other end of the cave.
The next moment, the next shelf, knocked awry by the force of the first shelf’s fall, also fell forwards, and from then on, the entire effect just span out of control. Shelf after shelf began falling, smashing open bottles and sending them tumbling to the floor, while their contents filled the air, unfolding themselves into a swirling mass that seemed to float dazedly around, as if unsure of where they should go or what they should do. There were footsteps now, running Arthur’s way, and he decided that now would probably be an excellent time to make himself scarce. The poor things would have to find some way to fend for themselves – and he wasn’t even sure what he could do at this point anyway. Did souls even use language the same way they did when they had physical bodies?
No time to think about that now. He’d done something, he hadn’t just left them to their fate, and that would have to do. Besides, as the sounds of splintering glass and thudding shelves got further away, the sounds of footsteps were getting closer. He dashed towards the exit, his boots crunching on the broken glass beneath his feet, just as someone else came running to a stop through the seething mass of souls in the air, breathing heavily. Arthur glanced towards the new arrival in alarm, his heart skipping a beat – shit, he should have been faster, should have been on his way out of there already – but his would-be captor looked more shocked than he was, blue eyes stretched wide in surprise and mouth lying open. Toris, then. For a moment that seemed to stretch on into infinity, the two looked at each other, the souls twisting and moving about their heads. Then Toris suddenly seemed to regain his ability to speak, straightening up and swallowing before he whispered, “Go. Quick, run away now, before any of the others see you.” He glanced over his shoulder nervously as he said it.
Maybe normally, Arthur would have stopped to question him about that; the last thing he would have expected from a spirifer was to let someone who had just freed a good amount of their stock go, after all. But this moment was not one of those moments, and he would take whatever chances fate threw at his feet. So instead, he just nodded once and took off as fast as his legs could carry him, back up the passage as he heard Toris say in a clearer voice than before, “There’s nobody here, they must have already run away! Or perhaps it was just a freak accident.”
“No. No accident,” said the voice of the girl vehemently. “Someone was here, and we shall go after them. They can’t have gone far.” Arthur gritted his teeth and willed his legs to carry him faster, trying to concentrate on remembering the twists and turns that would lead him back to the relative safety of the island and the quick escape route of the Unterzee. Some of the freed souls seemed to be floating lazily on above his head almost as if they were following him out, but he barely even noticed. He wasn’t usually one to run from a fight, but better to run and live than stay and die for no good reason.
Besides, he’d said to Zhi that he’d be back. It hadn’t quite been a promise, but he wanted to make good on it nonetheless.
He glanced back over his shoulder to see if he was being followed, unsure whether or not he’d heard another set of footsteps or was simply imagining it thanks to adrenalin – and swiftly threw himself forwards to avoid being caught on the back by the sword that came flashing out of the darkness.
He landed hard on the ground, skinning one of his palms in the process, but he barely felt the pain of the impact, too focused on rolling to the side in case he was attacked again as he jumped back to his feet. A few feet in front of him, glaring down at him fiercely with her ice-cold eyes and holding her sword at the ready with all the poise and grace of a master fencer, stood the young female spirifer from before.
Arthur scowled and cursed, reaching for the knife he kept strapped to his leg. It was hardly any match for a sword, of course, but it would serve well enough for defending himself. Fucking hell, this was exactly the last thing he wanted, a bloody fight. This was just what he got for being impulsive and acting on his feelings like this. Nothing but trouble, and it was his own damned fault to boot.
“You should not have followed us down here,” the girl said, her voice tight and clipped.
“No,” Arthur agreed, “But I bloody well did anyway, didn’t I?” As soon as the words had left his mouth, he ran straight for her, hoping to catch her off-guard and take her out as easily as possible. But her reflexes were good, and she parried his blow effortlessly with her sword, steel meeting steel with a resounding clang. Arthur set his jaw as they struggled for a moment, testing each other as her sword pushed against his knife. Damn it all, that sword of hers definitely wasn’t just for show. This was going to turn out to be a big problem, especially if any back up showed up on her side. He was certain that he couldn’t expect any of his own. Which meant that he was going to have to get creative with this.
For now, he backed off for the moment, jumping backwards to free himself from the deadlock and keeping his knife raised in case of a strike. She held her own weapon tightly, staring at him as she began to step sideways, trying to circle him, to get the measure of her opponent. He stepped with her, refusing to be outdone, but his ears were straining all the while for the sound of more footsteps from the passageway. He had to end this quickly, or he might never get out of the mess he’d landed himself into. But unless he could get close enough to her…
He rushed at her again, breaking their circle of steps, and once again she parried, this time forcing his arm to roll with her movement as his knife slid harmlessly off her sword. Immediately she lunged forwards with a strike of her own, and he ducked, the blade missing the top of his head by less than an inch. Seeing an opening, and hit by a sudden flash of inspiration, he lunged forwards himself in the same movement, sweeping his knife across in a deep, wide arc. She gasped and cried out as he caught her across her shins with it, not deeply, but enough to make her lose her focus for a few vital seconds as she stumbled back a step. Enough for him to sweep his leg across and trip her before she could regain enough poise to strike out at him again with her sword. Enough for her to fall backwards, losing her balance as her feet were knocked out from underneath her. Enough for her to strike her head on the wall behind her, her sword clattering from her hand onto the floor next to her.
Arthur didn’t bother to check if she was alive or dead or out cold or simply just dazed; he knew a chance when he saw one, and turned to run, not even bothering to sheath his knife as he scrambled back to his feet. As he did, though, he stopped dead in his tracks as he came face to face with the charming deviless from before. He stared at her, his heart pounding; he hadn’t even heard her coming, hadn’t heard the slightest hint –
She smiled thinly at him, as if amused by his shock. “I wondered if it would be you,” she said with the air of someone commenting on the weather. “You seemed like the type.” She nodded at the passageway behind him, still wearing that thin smile. If Arthur wasn’t already unnerved by her sudden appearance, he certainly was now. “Go on then,” she said softly. “Run along now. It won’t matter. The Brass Embassy will find some fitting way to make you pay for this, you can be sure of that.” She spared a glance for the prone body of the girl lying limply against the stone wall of the cave. “Although if you’re going to run, I’d do it before she wakes up if I were you.”
There was nothing Arthur could say to that, really. Nothing that wouldn’t make things even worse at any rate, and at that moment he realized now that he shouldn’t have stopped so long, regardless of whether she’d surprised him or not. He’d just made the colossal mistake to end this night of colossal mistakes; he’d let her get a good look at his face. Which meant that there was really only one thing left that he could do.
Run.
So he did, turning tail and running back towards the entrance of the cave, cursing himself for a fool as he wondered just what he’d managed to bring upon himself and the people around him.
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia/Echo Bazaar
Characters: Every nation ever at one point or another. This part: England, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, and a few random extras.
Rating: PG-13 for this chapter.
Summary: An Echo Bazaar crossover AU. Fallen London: once capital of the British Empire, now home of the Bazaar, a mile underground and a boat ride away from Hell itself. Deep. Dark. Expensive. Marvellous. Here you can find everything from immortality, to unnervingly good mushroom wine.
Or so the stories go.
But stories can rarely be trusted, and all the wildest stories in the world couldn’t have prepared Alfred and Matthew Jones for what they would find when they descended into the fallen city on a journey that would lead them right into the heart of a rebellion against the Masters of the Bazaar themselves…
Word Count: This part: 5394
Notes: Once again, the continuation of the long haul that started as my NaNo project for last year. :'> The title is from an HP Lovecraft quote, “We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” Also: it really is possible to create a domino effect with something as big as a large bookshelf. There’s videos of it up on youtube. :’D
Warnings: General warnings: A crossover with a (very addictive) online game, a lot of speculation and elaboration on my part on the universe of that game, human!AU, the occasional bit of 1800s sensibilities, and later on in the fic, a lot of OCs. :’> This chapter: a bit of NaNo quality writing.
As it turned out, they were a full hour behind schedule by the time they had pulled clear of the Stolen River and finally arrived out at zee, and it took all of what Terra and Arthur between them could coax out of the Elizabeth’s small engine to bring them back up to speed. Even then, it was late afternoon of the following day by the time they reached the small chain of islands just off the Carnelian Coast where they would be doing business.
The islands themselves weren’t part of the colony proper, and even London’s colony itself, small and mysterious as it was, wasn’t well-known or widely discussed by anyone outside of the zailing community and the top brass of the Shuttered Palace and the Bazaar. But they were an excellent place for traders from all shores of the Unterzee to meet and trade what wares they had. Sometimes some of the Carnelian Colonists, as they were known, made the short trip from their small lands to the largest of the island chain to share goods and stories, and most zailors agreed that the colonists were a strange lot even by the standards of a lifelong Fallen Londoner. There was something in the water there, or so the story went. Something that made them just a little more mad than the rest of the Neath’s human population.
Maybe that was true, thought Arthur, but mad or not, they still paid handsomely in their strange trinkets and oddly-shaped currency in exchange for London’s glim, which in turn meant a tidy profit for himself and his crew. Not quite as handsomely as the people who were also in the business of smuggling things in and out of London, but then, that was why that sort of business was still traditionally done at night, when the last of the daytime markets had finally packed themselves away for the night. It was easier to be shadowy that way, even in the perpetual near-darkness of the Neath. Or perhaps all smugglers still had a hidden love of the theatrical and mysterious; the opinion of most scholars of criminal behaviour and thought was still up in the air over that one.
There were only two pubs on the main island, and only a certain class of customer ever frequented one of them. The White Raven was a small, slightly draughty building located a short walk away from the island’s main town, above a network of natural caves that had been there since before the Bazaar was between stars. It was also a haunt of smugglers and other people who preferred to dodge the law, and had several rooms below ground for that purpose. The somewhat less-than-respectable establishment was run by a Chinese man who had a tenuous connection to the Gracious Widow, the ringleader of the most powerful smuggling ring in London, and he was more than happy to turn a blind eye to anything illegal that went on under his roof.
It had been Zhi that had first introduced Arthur to this haven of a smuggler’s paradise. Arthur would have been surprised if it weren’t for the fact that Zhi’s elder brother, Wang Yao, was the head of a rather influential Chinese family that also held the reigns on a smuggling operation of its own. Fallen London was immensely profitable if you knew who to talk to and what to sell, after all, and over two decades underground hadn’t robbed the residents of their love of surface comforts such as silk clothing, non-hallucinogenic honey, and tea. As such, it was Zhi that helped Arthur handle the more shadowy transactions that they made, as well as being the ships’ resident firearms expert – Arthur didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone manage to create such a volatile mixture for arming a cannon with before in his life. But there was no denying how effective it was.
It was tea that they were smuggling tonight, smuggled into London from the surface by the Gracious Widow’s people and out of the city to the Carnelian Coast by Arthur’s crew. Tea had a heavy tax on it that everybody was keen to avoid if they could, which made it the ideal thing to make a profit on.
Not quite as profitable as the business of smuggling souls, of course. But Arthur refused to deal in souls.
The two of them were waiting at one of the pub’s cramped tables with their precious cargo stowed away carefully in Zhi’s bag, waiting for their contacts to appear so that they could begin bartering. The tiny place was rather quiet tonight, with less than half of the tables full of people minding their own business or pretending to be asleep while they minded other people’s, and even the bartender looked as if he’d rather have a brawl on his hands to sort out. He’d been wiping the same glass in monotonous circles for the past ten minutes at least.
Arthur had to admit, he would rather have been one of the people in that hypothetical brawl right now. Zhi was a hard worker and he was pleasant enough company when he wasn’t playing pranks in his own quiet way, but he wasn’t always the most thrilling source of conversation. And Arthur couldn’t afford to drink as much as he’d like to until after the job was finished – he needed to have his wits about him, after all. So it was with a rather disgruntled look on his face that he was running a finger around the top of his empty tankard and glancing around the barroom at the other patrons.
It was on his third or fourth sweep of the room that he noticed that one of them was the quiet deviless from the docks the day before. She wasn’t alone, either; a couple of devils sat with her with their strange imposing hats, and they were also joined by a young girl with dirty blonde hair and a serious expression, and a tired, nervous-looking young man with his brown hair tied up loosely at the back of his head. Altogether, they made a very odd-looking group, and Arthur might have left them to their own curious business if he hadn’t managed to catch a wisp of their conversation.
“So then, I take it there’ll be no trouble with picking up tonight’s stock?”
“None whatsoever,” said the girl flatly, brushing down her midnight blue skirts. Her voice had the faintest hint of an accent – somewhere from Eastern Europe, perhaps? “You should know by now you can trust my brother to keep his word on these things.”
“I’m only checking, dear,” purred the deviless. “After all, you know how delicate these things can be. We prefer to take them all in nothing less than perfect condition.”
Souls. They had to be talking about souls. They were the only things that Hell imported in bulk, after all – they sometimes bought human music or man-made curiosities, but those were souvenirs more than anything else. Souls were what Hell had always dealt in, and that was its real business. And the fact that that this little group were sitting in the White Raven to do business meant that the man and the girl were spirifers – soul traders without a license. Not that Arthur really saw the need to make the distinction between the licensed and unlicensed – souls were souls, after all, no matter how prettily you tried to dress the whole ugly business up.
He could feel his jaw involuntarily setting itself at the thought, and he knew he ought to stop listening. He couldn’t afford to get involved in some sort of mess, he had a job to do and a crew to think of. He simply couldn’t afford to let his emotions get the better of him just because of part of an overheard conversation. But no matter how much he reasoned with himself, he just couldn’t stop himself from continuing to listen in. Maybe he was just that much of a masochist.
“I’m sure that you’ll find nothing wrong,” the nervous man was saying now with an unsteady smile, after the silence at the table had grown dangerously awkward. “You know that Mr. Braginski values your satisfaction, so…”
“I’m sure that we will find nothing wrong,” one of the devils agreed with a jaunty smile. “It’s in the same place as always, yes?”
“Y-yes,” the man nodded with the tiniest of stammers. The girl remained silent, impassively watching the three devils while her hand rested on the scabbard of a sword that Arthur hadn’t noticed before, belted securely around her waist. “We can go anytime you’re ready.”
“Then let’s go, shall we?” said the deviless evenly. She rose from her seat and her two fellow Hellish denizens rose with her, gazing at the two humans expectantly. “Do lead the way.”
“Of course. Right away,” the man replied tiredly, almost seeming to wilt slightly as he stood. The swordswoman was already standing, looking just as impassive as she had throughout the whole conversation. Arthur’s right hand was now clenched tightly around the handle of his tankard. They were going to leave to carry out the rest of that in private, then. And that was fine. At least it meant that they were away from him and he didn’t have to listen to any more of it; for him, it ended as soon as they left the pub. It wasn’t as if it meant anything to him.
Which was complete bollocks, of course, and he couldn’t even lie to himself about that. The whole conversation, short as it had been, had crawled right under his skin. He didn’t want it to end there. After all, if it ended there, then that meant that they all got away with it. Moreover, they all got to profit from it, and where was the justice in that?
“Arthur?” He almost jumped at the sound of his own name, finding Zhi looking at him with something like worry in his dark eyes. “Is something wrong?” The young man’s eyes flicked almost imperceptibly down to where Arthur’s hand was still so tightly clenched around his tankard that the knuckles had turned white. Arthur followed his gaze and quickly relaxed his grip. Then, before he had a chance to change his mind, he stood.
“Take care of things here for me, would you?” he asked in a low voice, his eyes following the small group as they made their way towards the door. “I just want to look into something quickly.”
Zhi frowned, looking for a moment as if he was about to rise from his seat himself. “Captain, what are you –”
“Don’t argue with me,” Arthur said, glaring fiercely at him, and Zhi settled back down in his chair, perhaps recognising the steely tone in Arthur’s voice for what it was. Do not mess with me right now. “I won’t be long. If the people we’re supposed to be meeting show up, just do business with them as usual and say I’m elsewhere. Make something up, I don’t know. I trust you to handle this on your own, so don’t worry about me.”
Zhi looked up at him, a steady frown still on his face. “Arthur, what is this about?”
“I thought I told you not to argue with me?” Arthur shook his head. “Look, it’s just a passing curiosity, nothing more.” He craned his head – the back of the last devil was vanishing out of the door now. If he didn’t follow them now, then there would have been no point to even thinking of this mad idea. He turned back to Zhi and whispered furiously, “If I’m not back by tomorrow morning, and only by then, you and Emma are in charge, alright? Don’t let Terra or Connor do anything stupid.”
“Are you about to do anything stupid, Captain?” Zhi said flatly, but there was a hint of impatience and worry in his words. Arthur stopped mid-step and looked back at him.
“Yes,” he said bluntly. “Very.”
And with that, he was out of the door before Zhi had the chance to even call out for him to stop.
The night air of the Neath was never cold; at least, not at this time of year. Damp, certainly, and a little cloying, but not so cold that one would freeze in it. Nevertheless, after the closed-off candlelit space of the pub, Arthur felt a chill run through him as he came out of the pub into the faint glow of the cavern’s moonish light. The small knot of people were a short distance ahead of him now, heading down a small, winding path that he supposed lead to the coastline underneath the cliff face. Arthur had never had cause to go there before tonight, but tonight was different. He just hoped that the path didn’t have any hidden pitfalls that he wouldn’t catch in time with only the light from the Neath’s ceiling to guide him.
He remained a few feet behind the back of the last person in the group, moving as quietly as he could in case one of them turned around. He’d heard that devils had exceptionally good night vision, and he had no desire to put that rumour to the test at a time like this. Luckily, the path, while unpaved, was more or less even, and Arthur found that as long as he stuck to the cliff face as it snaked its way downwards, he could keep quiet while he followed the group.
Really, the whole business of sneaking around after them would have been made infinitely easier if there had been conversation in front of him to cover up any possible sound he might make. But no, instead both devils and humans were quiet, almost completely silent as they unwittingly lead him down towards the mouth of a large cavern. Arthur stopped a short way behind them this time, waiting until they had all vanished into the darkness before he followed them himself, even more cautiously than before. His heart was beginning to beat faster in his chest. If there had been a time to abandon this mad venture, then it had now long since passed as he made his way further inside, feeling his way along the rugged cave wall as he went.
The path seemed to be leading further down, now, even deeper underground, and as accustomed to the darkness of the Neath as he was, Arthur still found himself wishing for a torch or a lamp of some kind. All he had to follow was the faint glow of the lantern at the front of the group, far away, and he daren’t get any closer for fear of being spotted. He concentrated on keeping track of the various twists and turns in the passage instead, mindful of the fact that he still wanted to get out of this place after everything was said and done. Finally, after what seemed like an age, the tunnel began to widen out into what appeared to be a very large chamber. Arthur drew back once again while he waited for the five people he was tailing to get a fair enough distance inside. Then, as silently as he could, he inched along the wall closer to the opening, until he could crane his neck to see inside.
What he saw almost made him forget himself and gasp aloud, and it was only remembering what that might result in that stopped him.
First of all, the chamber the others had lead him to stand outside was truly colossal. About as large as a theatre’s auditorium, or perhaps a large ballroom, it was filled with row upon row of wooden shelves. And on those shelves –
Souls. Thousands upon thousands, row upon row of the softly glowing, barely there green things, moaning gently in their stoppered glass bottles. They were curled up in on themselves, their faintly humanoid forms clearly cramped, too large for the small bottles that held them captive.
Arthur had never even seen one soul in person before, let alone so many of them just piled up in storage like these were. The sight made him feel somewhat nauseous.
“Like, oh my gosh, you took forever up there!” A heavily accented, fairly obnoxious-sounding voice jolted Arthur out of his thoughts, and he glanced around the corner again to see a blonde man, his hair tied up in a similar way to his brunette companion’s, greeting the small group with his hands on his hips. “You’re totally getting slow, Toris!” After flashing the nervous man – Toris, was it? – a toothy grin, the blonde’s smile, and indeed his entire demeanor, became more polite and business-like. “Nice to see you again, ma’am. So like, what can we do for you today?”
“Only the usual,” the deviless replied with a gracious nod of her head; or at least, Arthur assumed that it was a nod, as he could only see the back of her from his vantage point. “Perhaps you’d like to take us around the stock so that we could choose?”
The blonde man nodded, his smile completely gone now. “Sure thing. I like, know how much you like to pick out the best ones, so I totally arranged it so that the better ones are up near the far side where it’s like, safer for them. At least, I think they’re the better ones. I like, totally have no idea, but Mr. Braginski seems to think so, and he’s the expert, right?”
As the man was coming to the end of his little spiel, the quiet girl’s arm suddenly flew out to hit him lightly in the chest. “Maybe you should watch your words and simply show the customers what they want, Feliks,” she said tonelessly, but her expression had shifted; her eyes were like hard little daggers as she glared at him. He swallowed and physically shivered a little – Arthur could see it – and laughed nervously.
“Relax, Nataliya, I was just getting there! Alright, right this way, ma’am, sirs,” he continued, waving his arm to lead the three devils further on into the cave, past the rows of shelves and out of Arthur’s sight. The girl – Nataliya – followed suit, her eyes never leaving Feliks’s form, and Toris wearily followed along behind them, his shoulders slumped as he muttered something that Arthur couldn’t quite catch, something along the lines of Feliks pushing his luck too far again. And then, as the noise of their footsteps and conversation receded, there was only silence.
Silence and a temporarily empty part of the chamber, just waiting for someone else to step inside and throw a spanner into the works of this little smuggling ring.
Truthfully, Arthur hadn’t had a concrete plan in mind when he’d made the decision to follow the spirifers and their customers down here; it had been a choice made on pure instinct, nothing more or less, just a desire to try and do something. But as soon as he’d seen the shelves of trapped souls lining every spare inch of this place, an idea had sprung into his head, and he’d known what he was going to do. He wasn’t even sure if it would be the most effective way of doing what he had in mind; he knew for definite that it was extremely foolhardy. But foolhardy or not, he was going to do it, because it was the least thing he could think of doing. And after following them so far down here, he couldn’t very well leave and do nothing, could he? Even if he would have been inclined to report them to the authorities – which he wouldn’t, not in a million years – the only thing that would happen would be that the spirifers would be caught on a charge of trading without a license. The souls themselves would simply be confiscated and re-sold legally.
With these thoughts in mind, Arthur stepped warily into the chamber and chanced a quick look around. The room’s other occupants were nowhere in sight. Good. That meant he had a chance of a clean getaway afterwards. As far as he could see, the one flaw in the whole brilliant plan was this: he couldn’t see anything heavy lying around that he could use to smash the bottled souls open with.
He supposed that meant that he would just have to improvise.
He wasn’t even sure if smashing the bottles would do anything, if he were to be honest with himself. But it was the easiest and quickest way he could think of to release the pitiful things. Not that he was entirely certain what a soul could do once it was freed – did they have free will or even the ability to move independently to go and find the body that once belonged to them, or would they just hang about uselessly? Either way, one thing he was sure of was that quick and sudden freedom would probably hurt a lot less in the long run than continued imprisonment and anticipation of whatever horrible fate awaited them in Hell at the hands of the devils.
Looking at the whole situation a second time, and he glanced along the length of the room again to check that he was still undetected, it was probably a good thing that he couldn’t go through with his original idea of smashing as many of the damned bottles as he could by hand. He wouldn’t even get through a tenth of them before they came running back and caught him. His eye caught the edge of one of the wooden shelves, sitting slightly at an angle on the uneven ground. Now, what if the shelves could be pushed? That would probably be a lot more effective.
Well, there was only one way to find out, and he didn’t have much time left before he would definitely get caught. Mind made up, he quickly crossed the room to stand in front of the nearest shelf and looked up at it, biting his lip in thought. There was nothing for it but to get it over and done with quickly, he thought – and so he placed both palms on the lip of the shelf in front of him, braced himself, and gave the thing an almighty push. It was surprisingly light considering how many bottles were stacked up on it, and it swayed easily before coming down hard onto the next shelf in the row, scattering bottles that smashed open on the ground below. He winced a little at the hollow thud as the shelf hit its companion and the ear-splitting sound of breaking glass, overwhelmingly loud after the near-silence of the cavern before. There was a faint shout of surprise from the other end of the cave.
The next moment, the next shelf, knocked awry by the force of the first shelf’s fall, also fell forwards, and from then on, the entire effect just span out of control. Shelf after shelf began falling, smashing open bottles and sending them tumbling to the floor, while their contents filled the air, unfolding themselves into a swirling mass that seemed to float dazedly around, as if unsure of where they should go or what they should do. There were footsteps now, running Arthur’s way, and he decided that now would probably be an excellent time to make himself scarce. The poor things would have to find some way to fend for themselves – and he wasn’t even sure what he could do at this point anyway. Did souls even use language the same way they did when they had physical bodies?
No time to think about that now. He’d done something, he hadn’t just left them to their fate, and that would have to do. Besides, as the sounds of splintering glass and thudding shelves got further away, the sounds of footsteps were getting closer. He dashed towards the exit, his boots crunching on the broken glass beneath his feet, just as someone else came running to a stop through the seething mass of souls in the air, breathing heavily. Arthur glanced towards the new arrival in alarm, his heart skipping a beat – shit, he should have been faster, should have been on his way out of there already – but his would-be captor looked more shocked than he was, blue eyes stretched wide in surprise and mouth lying open. Toris, then. For a moment that seemed to stretch on into infinity, the two looked at each other, the souls twisting and moving about their heads. Then Toris suddenly seemed to regain his ability to speak, straightening up and swallowing before he whispered, “Go. Quick, run away now, before any of the others see you.” He glanced over his shoulder nervously as he said it.
Maybe normally, Arthur would have stopped to question him about that; the last thing he would have expected from a spirifer was to let someone who had just freed a good amount of their stock go, after all. But this moment was not one of those moments, and he would take whatever chances fate threw at his feet. So instead, he just nodded once and took off as fast as his legs could carry him, back up the passage as he heard Toris say in a clearer voice than before, “There’s nobody here, they must have already run away! Or perhaps it was just a freak accident.”
“No. No accident,” said the voice of the girl vehemently. “Someone was here, and we shall go after them. They can’t have gone far.” Arthur gritted his teeth and willed his legs to carry him faster, trying to concentrate on remembering the twists and turns that would lead him back to the relative safety of the island and the quick escape route of the Unterzee. Some of the freed souls seemed to be floating lazily on above his head almost as if they were following him out, but he barely even noticed. He wasn’t usually one to run from a fight, but better to run and live than stay and die for no good reason.
Besides, he’d said to Zhi that he’d be back. It hadn’t quite been a promise, but he wanted to make good on it nonetheless.
He glanced back over his shoulder to see if he was being followed, unsure whether or not he’d heard another set of footsteps or was simply imagining it thanks to adrenalin – and swiftly threw himself forwards to avoid being caught on the back by the sword that came flashing out of the darkness.
He landed hard on the ground, skinning one of his palms in the process, but he barely felt the pain of the impact, too focused on rolling to the side in case he was attacked again as he jumped back to his feet. A few feet in front of him, glaring down at him fiercely with her ice-cold eyes and holding her sword at the ready with all the poise and grace of a master fencer, stood the young female spirifer from before.
Arthur scowled and cursed, reaching for the knife he kept strapped to his leg. It was hardly any match for a sword, of course, but it would serve well enough for defending himself. Fucking hell, this was exactly the last thing he wanted, a bloody fight. This was just what he got for being impulsive and acting on his feelings like this. Nothing but trouble, and it was his own damned fault to boot.
“You should not have followed us down here,” the girl said, her voice tight and clipped.
“No,” Arthur agreed, “But I bloody well did anyway, didn’t I?” As soon as the words had left his mouth, he ran straight for her, hoping to catch her off-guard and take her out as easily as possible. But her reflexes were good, and she parried his blow effortlessly with her sword, steel meeting steel with a resounding clang. Arthur set his jaw as they struggled for a moment, testing each other as her sword pushed against his knife. Damn it all, that sword of hers definitely wasn’t just for show. This was going to turn out to be a big problem, especially if any back up showed up on her side. He was certain that he couldn’t expect any of his own. Which meant that he was going to have to get creative with this.
For now, he backed off for the moment, jumping backwards to free himself from the deadlock and keeping his knife raised in case of a strike. She held her own weapon tightly, staring at him as she began to step sideways, trying to circle him, to get the measure of her opponent. He stepped with her, refusing to be outdone, but his ears were straining all the while for the sound of more footsteps from the passageway. He had to end this quickly, or he might never get out of the mess he’d landed himself into. But unless he could get close enough to her…
He rushed at her again, breaking their circle of steps, and once again she parried, this time forcing his arm to roll with her movement as his knife slid harmlessly off her sword. Immediately she lunged forwards with a strike of her own, and he ducked, the blade missing the top of his head by less than an inch. Seeing an opening, and hit by a sudden flash of inspiration, he lunged forwards himself in the same movement, sweeping his knife across in a deep, wide arc. She gasped and cried out as he caught her across her shins with it, not deeply, but enough to make her lose her focus for a few vital seconds as she stumbled back a step. Enough for him to sweep his leg across and trip her before she could regain enough poise to strike out at him again with her sword. Enough for her to fall backwards, losing her balance as her feet were knocked out from underneath her. Enough for her to strike her head on the wall behind her, her sword clattering from her hand onto the floor next to her.
Arthur didn’t bother to check if she was alive or dead or out cold or simply just dazed; he knew a chance when he saw one, and turned to run, not even bothering to sheath his knife as he scrambled back to his feet. As he did, though, he stopped dead in his tracks as he came face to face with the charming deviless from before. He stared at her, his heart pounding; he hadn’t even heard her coming, hadn’t heard the slightest hint –
She smiled thinly at him, as if amused by his shock. “I wondered if it would be you,” she said with the air of someone commenting on the weather. “You seemed like the type.” She nodded at the passageway behind him, still wearing that thin smile. If Arthur wasn’t already unnerved by her sudden appearance, he certainly was now. “Go on then,” she said softly. “Run along now. It won’t matter. The Brass Embassy will find some fitting way to make you pay for this, you can be sure of that.” She spared a glance for the prone body of the girl lying limply against the stone wall of the cave. “Although if you’re going to run, I’d do it before she wakes up if I were you.”
There was nothing Arthur could say to that, really. Nothing that wouldn’t make things even worse at any rate, and at that moment he realized now that he shouldn’t have stopped so long, regardless of whether she’d surprised him or not. He’d just made the colossal mistake to end this night of colossal mistakes; he’d let her get a good look at his face. Which meant that there was really only one thing left that he could do.
Run.
So he did, turning tail and running back towards the entrance of the cave, cursing himself for a fool as he wondered just what he’d managed to bring upon himself and the people around him.