"Fischer?"
"Fischer?"
"C'mon buddy wakey wakey."
"Fischer?"
Fischer's eyes slowly rolled around in his head, his skull throbbing like he'd just been hit with a baseball bat. Without even moving he could feel his eyes burning like were being stabbed with a thousand tiny red hot needles. Slowly opening them, he managed to just make out the figure of Spatch in front of him, or at least the blurry brown and purple mess that he thought was Spatch.
"Ow. . . ow. . . w-what happened?" He croaked, rubbing his head gently.
"You knocked yourself out cold there. Been asleep for a little while. How you feeling?"
His teeth clenched and his eyes squinted as he replied with another "Ow."
"Right, that makes sense. Hold up just a second."
"Where are you going?" Quin asked as he turned away and headed down to the kitchen.
"Just grabbing some water for him. Might help clear up all the fog."
"Be quick. I don't know what's down here and I don't want to stay long enough to find out. Get up kid, we need to move," Tonner grumbled as he loaded a fresh new cylinder into his revolver. His eyes peered out the window and quickly scanned the horizon, nothing but barren purple and crimson rock for miles.
"Where. . . where are we, exactly?" He mumbled as his head slowly stopped spinning.
"That's what I'd like to find out." Tonner stated.
"How is your head?" Ko's soft voice stole his attention and he turned to see her staring straight at him with worry plastered all over her face.
"It's uh. . . well once everything stops spinning I'll let you know for sure," he jested.
"Alright well you seem to be all fine for now. C'mon, let's get you up," Quin said as she reach out a hand to him. Taking it, she pulled him up out of his chair and on to his feet. At first he stood up fine, but it didn't take long for him to lose balance and stumble around, falling right into Quin.
"Woah woah, easy there mate," she laughed as she held him steady.
"Sorry, still trying to figure out which way is up," he chuckled.
Spatch came back shortly after with a glass of water in hand and a small pill in the other.
"Here, take this. Should stop the dizziness. Sorry for the rough landing but we didn't have much of a choice."
He downed the water and pill before rubbing his eyes one more time, waving the now messy hair from his face before readying himself up.
"Alright, alright I'm good. So. What now?"
"Now? Well now we find out why we're here. Tonner got us as close as he could to the darkhouse. Just a matter of getting to it at this point," Spatch said.
"We all ready?" Tonner asked.
"Wait, is the air breathable here? Where even is here?" Fischer remarked, his eyes now looking through the windows at the apparent barren wasteland they now found themselves in.
"We're on an asteroid. A big one, as to exactly how big I don't know. And yea, the air is breathable, did a scan before touching down. We should be fine. Tonner, if you could do the honours?" Spatch asked, gesturing towards the door.
With a firm hand, Tonner punched the button for the door release and a loud hiss sounded as the ship's interior slowly pressurised to match the outside. A few seconds passed before a cloud of white steam hissed and the door slid open.
Like back on the desert planet that they had found the temple on, this place's temperature immediately made itself known. But it wasn't hot this time, now it was stone cold. The air seemed to be frozen, like a cold winter morning back on Earth. It wasn't cold enough to warrant warm weather gear, but it was enough to make them feel the chill.
With his gun in hand, Tonner took the first steps out into the wild. Scanning his surroundings, he quickly made sure the area was safe before nodding his head to the rest. One by one, they trickled out from the Icarus and onto solid ground.
"Well. Isn't this just the dandiest of places?" Spatch grimaced with sarcasm as he looked around.
They group found themselves standing in the middle of what looked to be an endless flat plateau. As far as the eye could see was purple rock with the occasional dead tree sticking from the ground, almost like ghosts hinting of what used to be here but was lost to time.
"This place looks deader than a corpse. You sure we're supposed to be here?" Quin asked.
"No. Not really. But that riddle spoke about the darkhouse and this is the only place I know that has one. So let's move. Over there." Tonner pointed out across the plane to a small group of objects in the distance, barely visible through the fog.
"Is. . . is that a town?" Ko asked,she too eyeing the distant object.
"Looks like it. Lets go check it out," Spatch said.
--\/--
The town wasn't anything too special. Some very old looking stone buildings with extremely basic features. They reminded Fischer of pictures he'd seen of middle eastern towns on Earth with houses that were little more than glorified mud huts. These houses however appeared to be almost ancient in nature, the bricks on them cracked and chipped. They clearly hadn't been tended to in a very long time.
There was a main street that cut down the middle of the town and it almost seemed to be laid out in a similar fashion to old western towns.
"This place. . . this place has not had any visitors in a long. . . long, time," Quin stated with a hint of anxiousness on her tongue. She was holding her hands together and her posture was quite different to the happy, brave carcan they were used to.
"You can say that again. This place gives me the creeps," Spatch replied.
The whole town was covered in a thick violet fog, obscuring vision rather poorly and giving the whole town an ominous feel to it. The hairs on that back of Fischer's neck stood straight on end, his mind not absent from thoughts of what rid the town of its inhabitants.
Ko stood close to him, huddle in her cloak. Her horns were down and her eyes were wide, she too not exactly feeling comfortable in this ghost town. Fischer couldn't shake the feeling they were being watched. Not by a someone, but by a something.
"Does. . . does anyone else feel like. . . like we uh,"
"Like we're being watched? Yup. And I'm not a huge fan of it either," Spatch finished, his eyes darting all over the place.
"This place is long dead. The only breathing things here are us. Save your breath," Tonner stated.
The air was completely silent, almost uncomfortably so. There was no sound of birds chirping. No exotic wildlife buzzing around. No whistling of the trees in the wind. Just the sound of each other, their footsteps and their rapid heartbeats. If it weren't for the two huge armed aliens that stood in front of him, he'd be turning tail and hiding deep in the Icarus.
"What do you think happened here?" Quin asked, gazing around at the empty husks that she assumed used to be thriving homes that housed families and friends.
"Nothing good. My question is who lived here. And how long ago was it? This place looks like it hasn't seen life in centuries. Millennia even," Fischer added.
"Doesn't look like any architecture I've ever seen before. It almost looks. . ."
She paused as the group came across a large building in the middle of town that seemed to be some sort of community hall. Huge pillars stretched up from all around it and the whole place carried an immediate sense of urgency to it. Whatever this place was, it was definitely important to the people who used to live here.
"Angelic. . ." Quin finished, a stutter on her words.
The whole group froze at her idea. It didn't seem very far fetched.
"Angelic? Did we just stumble across an entire town built by the Angels?" Fischer asked.
"Possible. Architecture seems to match the temple. These huts however aren't something I've ever seen befo- ohhhh no no no no, fuck. That." Spatch suddenly exclaimed, pointing towards the steps of the huge building. The group followed his gaze and found themselves looking at what appeared to be chalk drawings on the stairs and pillars.
They didn't look like any type of paintings or symbols, instead they looked almost childlike. There were a plethora of pale colours, all depicting different scenes and locations. One of them appeared to have a blue tree sticking out and a small stick figure with two arms and what appeared to be wings sitting under it. A little higher up, one of the pillars had what looked like a stormy cloud that had a lightning bolt coming down from underneath it.
"That's not creepy at all," Spatch hissed.
Quin however had a different idea. Shuffling closer she kneeled down and ran her hand over one of the steps. The chalk was almost stained to the rock, not even smudging as she touched it.
"These drawings have been here a long time. It's like they've stained the rocks. Like they're just permanently imprinted on them now or something. I think we may have just found an ancient city that belonged to the Angels."
Ko bit her lower lip nervously as they all huddled around the entrance to the building. One thing was plaguing Fischer's mind however.
"Which Angels?"
Quin turned to him, his question also present in her mind. Something that may be rather important later on, considering they were standing in the heart of the city that belonged to them.
"They've been dead for thousands of years. Why does it matter?" Spatch queried.
Tonner turned towards the main building, scepticism in his eyes. "The legends say that the Fallen Angels went to war with the Archangels over the land in The Rift. We're not near the rift, we're in supposed Archangel territory. My money would be on this place belonging to them. But those are just tales, folklore."
"Where they the good guys or the bad guys?" Fischer asked sheepishly.
"Don't know. Supposedly yes. They were attacked without provocation. Their land was invaded by the Fallen Angel without warning. Or so the tales go. So we should be standing in relatively neutral territory. Not that it matters. Like Spatch said, this place hasn't seen life in ages. The fact all these trees are shrivelled up and dead tells me there was water here once, and whatever happened here took the water away, or it was all used up. Without water, life dies. This place is about as dead as it gets." Quin explained. Her eyes were still fixated on the paintings, her fingers tracking them around the ground. However she'd missed something.
"W-what are these symbols?" Ko piped up, her gaze fixated and a few drawings over to the left of the group.
There were the same crudely drawn stick figures on the ground, however they seemed to be separated into two groups. There was group to the far right standing on what looked to be a grassy hill, then a group to the far left that seemed to be flying down. Each of these groups had a symbol on the leading figure, the group on the ground having what looked like two curves that flanked a straight line running down. The group on the top right had a diamond like shape with two lines running from corner to corner in a diagonal pattern, a dot above the diamond.
"Well they certainly weren't the best artists," Spatch jested.
"Look like these are supposed to be the Fallen Angels. I've never seen these symbols before. Fascinating. It looks like they're attacking. I wonder if that's why this place is so barren. The Fallen Angels wiped everyone out?"
"Start digging. Who knows, maybe you'll find some bones." Spatch shrugged.
"I didn't bring my pick. And I don't think they'd take too kindly to us desecrating a mass grave like that."
"I mean they're long gone. It's not like they can do anything about it."
"The fact that Ko's hearing voices in her head that have directed us to locations important to them, twice now, tells me otherwise," Quin said with a stern tone.
Spatch quickly bit his tongue as he realised just what Quin was eluding to.
"Guys, eyes up. Found the darkhouse," Tonner stated, deadpan as always.
They followed where he was pointing, their eyes coming to rest upon a very faint silhouette barely visible through the fog.
And it was enormous.