Adventure VII – Episode 2


“What have you found that’s so interesting?”

Sapphire and Silver turned to see Steel standing at the top of the stairs.  He looked drained from the mere act of climbing them as he leaned heavily on the wooden rail.

“Journals,” Sapphire told him with a smile.  “Only they don’t seem to belong.  Whenever we touch them, they crumble into dust.”

Recovered, Steel took two long strides across the landing.  “Are any of them open?  Can you read….” 

His words became a scream as he stepped inside the room.


“Steel!”

Sapphire’s shocked cry barely scratched the wall of sound pressing in on Steel’s mind. 

The pain that he’d felt as fire in the first bedroom was so much worse here. 

White-hot shards of agony pierced his every thought until his only escape was to claw at his eyes to release the pressure inside his skull.

He was unaware that he was making a sound, but the cries that were being torn from him were terrible to hear.

Silver leapt at him, capturing his wrists and forcing his hands from his face where he’d already started to draw blood from deep scratches around his eyes. 

Once captured, Silver started to bodily force him out of the room, backing him out onto the landing, not caring if he stamped on a foot or crushed a toe. 

These body parts didn’t belong to Steel, didn’t mean anything.  Just his mind.

Sapphire was the only one who could stop whatever was happening.

Moving behind Steel’s thrashing form, she clapped her hands to the sides of his head and concentrated, pushing the inhuman pleas from her thoughts and ripping into his mind, searching for whatever was attacking him.

She saw swans.

Just an image, she reassured herself, one his brain had attached to the emotion of fear after the attack by the Time Entity outside the time capsule somewhere in their history.  Or possibly their future.

There were hundreds of birds now, all pecking at his neural pathways, screeching as they pulled at him, tearing neurone from neurone. 

Sapphire flung herself at them, knowing she was hurting him, knowing she was being too brutal but knowing also that it was her only chance.  She was his only lifeline.

Outside, he was desperately trying to get his fingers into his eyes.  He clawed and scratched at Silver’s hands, leaving deep red welts, now and again cutting through skin to raw flesh beneath. 

Silver detached himself from the physical sensation of pain and watched, frightened for both his companions as the silent mental battle went on under the awful screaming.

Cold and beautiful she reached for the birds.  Every one of her thoughts became a shard of sapphire so sharp they slid easily through feather and flesh.  Swans died and vanished.  At first more came to replace the dead. 

Sapphire never tired.  She stabbed and sliced at the white, screeching mass.  She drenched herself in the blood of the birds, fighting for Steel’s life inside the very core of what made him. 

Despite everything she did, the destruction she wrought upon them, they didn’t once turn and fight back.  But neither did they cease in their unending attack, tearing at the vulnerable, unguarded mind. 

Then, after an eternity, gaps began to show in their lines.

The weakening gave Sapphire the renewed strength she needed and with a mental cry she dragged the razor-sharp slithers of her self through a line of swans, cutting deep into them, dismissing them quickly, depleting their numbers savagely.

Suddenly, with no warning at all, they all vanished and silence surrounded her.

Silver caught Steel as he collapsed.


Sapphire retreated from his mind as gently as possible, leaving behind chaos, leaning hard against the banister, her heart pounding, her head aching.  She could only watch as Silver lowered Steel’s unconscious form to the floor. 

Silver ensured that he kept his ward out of the bedroom, following him down until the man’s damaged head rested on his leg.

Sapphire too slid down to sit on the floor -boards, leaning against the wooden posts, assessing Steel’s condition but unable to do anymore for a while.

There was blood running in small but steady streams from Steel’s ears, nose and from the corners of his eyes.

Taking his handkerchief from his pocket, Silver dabbed at the thick red liquid until it slowed then stopped and started to dry.

They sat for a long time, waiting, healing.

Silver peered back into the bedroom now and again but saw nothing that might give him a clue about what had attacked the operator.

Glancing back at Steel, he eased a couple of strands of silken hair behind his ears and watched the rise and fall of the man’s chest.

When he looked over at Sapphire for the fourth time, she managed a smile for him.

“Better?” he whispered.

And she nodded. 

“What was it?”

“Fear, I think.  Not his.  Theirs.”

Her tone worried him.  “Theirs?”

“The men I sensed in the living room.  They were in his mind, but not in their true forms.”

“What did you see?”  He kept his voice low.

She hesitated.  “Swans.”  It took a couple of minutes to explain and her voice seemed to rouse Steel. 

He opened his eyes, sticky with blood, and took a moment to work out where he was.  Everything hurt.

Silver’s hand was still absently keeping his wayward hair from the blood around his ears and for a few long moments Steel just savoured the soothing contact. 

“Steel?”

Sapphire leaned over and stroked his cheek with the backs of her fingers.  She smiled when he next opened his eyes.

“Welcome back.”

He swallowed, unsure if his voice would work, surprised when it did.  “Thank you.” 

Hesitantly, he tried to sit up.  Silver gave him a hand, steadied him as he pulled his knees up and leaned forward to find his balance, wrapping his arms around his legs and dropping his forehead carefully forwards.

Neither Silver nor Sapphire spoke. 

Silver’s hand remained where it had steadied Steel, rested now on his back, just below his right shoulder.

They gave him time.   He would need lots of it.

“I have a headache,” Steel declared finally into the space between his chest and his legs.

“You will have,” Sapphire told him gently.  “You need to heal.  You should go back.”

Steel raised his head and Sapphire looked into his bloody face.  “Back?”

“You need to.”

“I’ll be all right.”

“It was a vicious attack, if it happens again it might….  It could kill you.”


Silver listened to the exchange with deepening concern.  Glancing down he saw Steel’s blood on his trousers and although these bodies were mere forms, their minds were what made them. 

Would they cease to exist if the mind died?  What would the consequences of their deaths be?  Could they even be destroyed?

He unconsciously tightened his fingers on Steel’s shoulder and the man turned to look at him, red eyes questioning.

Silver said nothing, but fetched a clean handkerchief from his suit pocket and handed it to Steel. 

“You might need this,” he offered. 

Steel accepted it, wiped the blood from around his eyes and mouth.  “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.  The very least I could do.”

He grinned, keeping up the act they both expected from him.

In the past it had been Sapphire who paid him the attention.  But her mind was on Steel now and his wellbeing.  And Silver could hardly blame her.

Steel, however, was still regarding him thoughtfully, as if this time he wasn’t buying the old, familiar lies.

Eventually, though, he turned back to her without further comment.


“I’m staying.  Whatever’s here, I’m sensitive to it.”

“Sensitive to it?!”

“Yes.”

//You call this sensitive?//

The moment the words touched his brutalised mind the pain in his head magnified exponentially and he almost completely failed to bite back his indignant shriek.

Kneeling up quickly, Silver put his arm around the trembling man, one hand on each shoulder, keeping him upright, pressing the heat of his body to the chilled back.

“Stop it!” he yelled at Sapphire.


But she’d already stopped.  The words had been spoken to prove a point but she feared she’d gone too far. 

Reaching out, she touched his hair where it had fallen back across his face when he’d bowed his head in pain.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.

He took several deep breaths before lifting his head.  Red tears were falling from his eyes.

“Please don’t do that.”

“I am sorry.”

He swallowed and nodded, feeling Silver at his back, not minding the pressure at all, a part of him enjoying the warmth.

“We know the living room’s safe, I’ll stay in there until we know more.”

Sapphire looked as if she was going to argue her point but finally she nodded.

“All right.”


It was another ten minutes before Steel was able to get to his feet, even with Silver’s assistance.

Carefully they descended to the first floor of the house, leaving Sapphire up in the second bedroom.


She stood in the centre of the small room, focusing beyond this time, on the past and the future, searching for whatever had attacked Steel.  But she couldn’t sense anything.

The place existed but something within it did not.  That much she’d fathomed minutes after her arrival.  They were somewhere that existed only within given parameters.  It didn’t make much sense now but once they worked out what those parameters were it would enable them to work out what to do.

Unfortunately that was Steel’s domain and she wasn’t sure he was going to be able to work in this house.

She realised that she had no idea why Silver had been sent.  He was an engineer, he dealt with gadgets, physical problems that needed to be solved to get them to where they needed to be.

But if she was sure of anything it was that the house itself was stable.  Something inside it was in flux.

Letting out her breath slowly and evenly, she went deeper into the dark surrounding them.


Steel stepped into the living room and stopped. 

Silver walked straight into him.

“What…?”

“Look!”

Steel was staring at the two empty chairs in front of the fire.  All Silver could see was two empty chairs in front of the fire.


Steel gazed at the two men sitting there, knowing they belonged there in some fashion, knowing that in another, they didn’t.

They were dressed in the right style for the period.

One was tall, lanky.  He was sitting back in his chair, his legs crossed, foot bouncing in time with a private rhythm.  He was smoking an elaborate pipe, the smoke curling up in front of his smiling face.

The second man was shorter, which would have made him – Steel guessed – average height for the time.  He had a beard, heavy eyebrows and his smile was sparkling.  There was a cigarette between his lips from which he took a long drag before plucking it away.

They were speaking to one another.  Their lips were moving, but Steel couldn’t hear the words.  There was no sound.

“Silver?” he whispered urgently. 

“What?”

“You don’t see them?”

“Who?”

Steel took a step forward.

“Wait.”

Another step forward.

Silver hovered behind him, unsure whether to touch him, remembering how he’d been stopped from touching Sapphire earlier when she’d zoned out on them.  Silver didn’t quite understand that.  Engineers didn’t need many mental skills.  They had other talents, usually twice as useful because of their practicality. 

Operators fixed anomalies in time.  Engineers got them in and out.

“Steel…!”  Silver whispered harshly, still unsure about disturbing him but wanting nothing less than to watch his companion start bleeding again.  “Steel!”


Nothing.  There was nothing. 

Sapphire couldn’t sense anything malevolent or malicious.  What she did feel was a deep affection, a warmth emanating from the very foundations of the house.

Usually she was the receptive one.  She was the one to communicate.  She drew the entities, she fought the mental attacks.  She had the defences.  Not Steel.  She knew better than anyone or anything how open and vulnerable his mind was.

Silver believed they kept him out when they spoke without the use of their voices, but it was Sapphire who provided that privacy.

If he wanted he could step into Steel’s mind as easy as she could. 

But here she had opened herself by degrees until she was completely accessible to whatever was in this place.  And nothing had touched her.  Nothing had spoken to her.

Whatever had attacked Steel was either gone or was hiding from her.

Why would it hide?


Reaching out, Silver touched Steel’s shoulder with his fingertips.

In front of Steel’s eyes, the men faded from reality.  He blinked but they were gone.  And his headache was back with a vengeance.

Swaying slightly, falling back for a moment onto Silver’s steadying hand, Steel reached his hand to his head and crossed to sit down in one of the chairs the two men had just vacated.

“You didn’t see them?” he asked quietly, willing the throbbing pain in his head to stop.

Silver perched on the edge of the other chair.  “No.  I saw two empty chairs.  These two.  What did you see?”

Glancing up, Steel set his jaw.  “Two men dressed in period clothing, sitting where we’re sitting now, talking.”  He described them, each one, pulling details from his perfect memory. 

“Are they the same two Sapphire heard talking?”

Steel considered that.  “I don’t know.  Possibly.   Two men shared these rooms.”  He looked around.  “This is the anomaly.  They’re the anomaly.  They’re out of phase with their own time.”

“You think this is their time?”

“They belong here.”

“You said they don’t exist.”

“I know.”

“Sapphire said this place doesn’t exist.”

 “I know.”  He closed his eyes for a moment, sitting back in the chair. 

A moment turned into seconds, into minutes. 

He shifted, suddenly startled by a touch to the side of his face.  Opening his eyes he saw Silver standing over him, watching him carefully.

“What?”

The other man sat back in his chair.

“Just checking.  We don’t usually sleep.”

“I think my mind’s healing.”

Silver nodded.  “Right.  Sorry.”  Smiling, he stood.  “Think you’ll be all right for a while?”

His question was met with a wry smile.  He nodded again and left Steel to recover.


Sapphire met him on the stairs.  She didn’t say a word, just checked Steel was still sitting in the living room and opened the door to the first bedroom.

This time she did feel something.  A shiver.  The ghost of a touch to the back of her neck as she stepped inside the room.

“Steel saw them,” Silver told her, “sitting where he’s sitting now.”

“Did they speak to him?”

“No, he couldn’t hear them, only see them.”

“Images,” she explained.  “Not real.  Just….”

Downstairs, the front door opened.

They glanced at one another, Sapphire following Silver quickly out of the room and down the first set of stairs, peering over into the hall. 

The door closed and an elderly lady called out, “Morning, Gentlemen!”


~ ~ ~

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