From: Mysoreans Abroad — News from the Benighted West.
27: Sri Nripendra Rao: The Ziggurats
Beloved Bapu-ji,
Following the interrogation of the Whithursts, they were promptly despatched to London and the Tower, accompanied by Mustard’s sahayak Tallow for security. This left us to recover and manage the manufactory along more responsible lines — a service the Whithursts did not deserve, but to visit their punishment upon the livelihood of partners and workforce would be invidious. Nor, indeed, would it be wise to let suffer the pocket-books of coffee-house patrons with the ear of the King.
Upon reviewing the tasks to which the workforce had been assigned, we remade the acquaintance of a certain mechanick, one Simon Banner, whom we had encountered once before in the matter of Headingham Hall, when we first discovered Master Sandiman’s meddling with engines… from Whithurst and Boulton.
We had treated fairly with Banner, whose part in those events was that of an employee, and recalling it he favoured us with his intelligence. For the main part this encompassed rumours of a project, akin to that of Headingham Hall but larger, and concealed at another site. This, it appeared, was Project 113, though it went by other names we had discovered — without detail — in numerous forms: the King Machine, Project Red, and sundry abbreviations of Red King.
In addition, he revealed to us the location of the Whithurst’s hidden records, the existence of which we had surmised from omissions, but which we had not yet discovered. A heavy bench, when moved aside, revealed a trapdoor below.
For Banners’ own sake, though it pained us to do so, we thrust him forth bodily as if he had defied us.
Descending the stairs below the trapdoor, our freshly-wound wards were tripped almost immediately. From high on the wall, a bright light with flickers of purple around the edges flooded the cellar until, upon our dispelling it, a tablet fell broken to the floor. Records in red folders revealed that Project 113 was to be found at Lowes Farm, Swarkestone — a place at no great distance, but secluded in the English countryside.
Hastening there, we found no ordinary farmhouse, but something resembling a ziggurat built by the side of one of the mounds in which the ancient English buried their fathers, and merging with it. Despite pursuit by inexplicably murderous farmworkers, we gained entry from a higher level to passageways that led us down, encountering in the original farmhouse beneath a cook who thought the date four years previous to its actual.
Given what we had learned at the manufactory, we were unsurprised to discover an array of gate engines, through which the engineers immediately fled. Not wishing to permit their escape, we cast aside reservations of the wisdom of the act, and pursued them.
At the other side of the gate, amongst a thin mist, was an even greater array, yet we had little chance to observe it. One of the engineers ran ahead of us down a passage. Most fortunately, we caught him as he emerged from the end and dragged him back. Not before we saw the place to which he had run.
It was a Loka we had not seen before. A misty glow suffused all, and stepped pyramids — ziggurats — reared toward a sky in which arose a black moon. Atop the pyramids, colossi stood tall against that oppressive firmament, seething — we knew it, though we knew not how — in the frustration of aeons. Throughout the plain marched brazen Turkish janissaries with glowing red eyes; and we only narrowly escaped the nearest. Other encampments of Turks — whether brass or flesh and blood — pocked this realm of the Anunnaki.
Dragging the engineer back in to the place of the gate array, his eyes glowed red also; and compelling the demon within him we questioned it. It referred contemptuously to the body it inhabited as “the vessel” and told us we could refer to it as “Red” — of a certainty, not its true name, but perhaps… it might itself be The Red King! It was concerned only with its own desires, of which the chiefest was freedom — to do what it willed. It told us little but that its “vessel” was known as Natter, and the other as Cuthbertson. It evinced no real knowledge of Whithurst or his machines, though it sought to reason from what our questions revealed as to what his role was and how it might use the machines that it termed an interesting advance. And it compared itself with The Others — the Anunnaki.
Seeking to tempt Colonel Mustard, it offered him first a city and then an empire if he would do the demon a favour. When Mustard denied such ambitions, it revealed its true nature by threatening to kill Natter — at which the Colonel commanded it to tell its name and it was destroyed or banished by the attempt to obey.
Natter, freed of the demon, was in poor state and confused but was revived by the administration of Dr Daffy’s Elixir Salutis. Though saying little at first, it appeared he had been instructed by Daniel Whithurst to build a great array that might test the boundaries of the world, and allow them to access the Land of Milk and Honey — much the same delusion that had driven Ashton and Mainborough to the madness of the first gate in the lands of the Turk, from which so much trouble has stemmed.
Cuthbertson was likewise freed of his demon, which referred to him as a “puppet” that it had been instructed to control in the service of the Red King. It had also been instructed by Daniel Whithurst to manage the gate array. Mustard commanded the demon to return Cuthbertson his memories and leave.
Between the two freed engineers we learned something of the gate arrays’ usage. The gate beneath the farmhouse-ziggurat was powerful enough to reach this far-distant Loka, while the even larger array here could be used — with adjustment — to reach multiple other Loka. Of these, a place of marching Turks, a green place, an icy place, and the Land of Dust were mentioned. Who can know whether others might be accessed; the adjustability of the controls suggested it might be so.
Such gates could not be left where anyone — most especially the Red King — might use them. The engineers advised decoupling the winder, to ensure that the gates would wind down, and to set charges to blow whilst the gates remained open, that “the Catastrophe Chain might reach everything”.
With this advice, we returned to Lowes Farm, freed the residents from the influence that had stolen recent years from them, then with explosives from Mustard’s regiment we set the plan in action. As best we might tell, it succeeded and the gates were destroyed.
The engineers also confirmed what we already thought we knew — that Daniel Whithurst had arranged maintenance of the Mainborough gate (through which the Turk had entered other Loka), extending its usage beyond its expected life. Daniel Whithurst, whether by malice or ignorance, has betrayed the land of his ancestors.
Namaste,
Your dutiful Nripendra