The entrance pod stopped with its white floor level with the sparsely grassy plain it had emerged from. The otherworldly architecture continued to hold all of my attention, even as we dismounted and walked the remaining distance to the circular wall of glass. As we drew close I saw the wall was composed of eight curved segments. When I was close enough to reach out and touch the glass, four alternating segments retracted a few centimeters and rotated until they were fully behind the four stationary segments. This left four gaps, each making up an eighth of the circle. A thick central stem in the centre appeared to be taking most or all of the weight of the ceiling and dirt above. The moment the walls ceased moving, a welcoming tone sounded from within the pod.
"In we go," Swipe said, and began wheeling she's spinnerbike forward.
There was ample room for six humans and our three bikes within the entrance pod. We switched off our magelights, as a ring of soft lights in the ceiling gave ample illumination. Other than the glass, everything looked to be a metallic glossy white. A feeling through my boots told me I wasn't entirely correct about that. I looked down and spotted a rubberised grid pattern to prevent slippage.
"Now what?" Scaff asked. "I don't see any way of telling it we're all aboard.
"Hey Skids, can you pass me my scryer?" I said, thinking I might be able to search for a method of magically signalling or controlling the pod.
A repeated warning tone told us that such intervention was unnecessary. Small red lights in the leading edges of the moveable glass walls began to flash in time with the tones, warning us that the pod was about to close. We all stood still as the walls returned to their original positions and locked back into a complete circle. The warnings ceased.
Instead of a scryer, Skids had fetched sa's aetherrailer, and was pointing it at the nearest wall. "If the ceiling or floor starts closing in on us..." sa explained, and prepared the weapon to punch a hole through the thick glass.
"Er, I don't think..." Scaff began, but was interrupted by another welcoming tone. Gently, the pod began sinking back underground. Its speed increased so gradually that I could only tell by the motion of the rock face on the other side of the glass.
"Surprise geology lesson," I joked, but I immediately regretted speaking due to how obviously nervous I sounded.
Broth filled the silence that followed, for which I was unbelievably thankful. "So the Titans built all this without it being torn down by demons. That's really impressive."
"All it really takes is a properly hidden entrance," Scaff said with a shake of jur's head. We'd taken our helmets off, so jur's lime green tufts of hair were free to writhe about like baby dangeropes. "Demons don't burrow into new areas without cause."
"That doesn't seem right," Broth said. "Digging a hole this deep underground without it being noticed is no walk in the garden. And this is just the entrance. We haven't seen the really impressive part yet."
Scaff shrugged in resignation. "Fair enough."
At some imperceptible point the pod began to slow. It became easier for me to watch the rock face as it rushed by, and I realised I was feeling a little heavier. As our falling speed came close to zero we dropped out of the circular borehole into a space of clean white surfaces. The pod touched down without the slightest jolt or an audible bump. The wall segments rotated open as they had before, allowing us to exit into the new space beyond.
Swipe said what we were all thinking. "I don't see any Titans. Or anyone. This place is abandoned."
"It's a minor stop with nothing scheduled for over half an hour," Punnt explained. "Not exactly a high traffic area."
At first glance, I thought we were in a long rectangular room, but more careful examination revealed that we were inside a horizontal cylinder with two flat walls, a floor and a ceiling hiding most of the curved surface. The floor was dotted with white benches supported by curved metal tubing, long enough to seat six people. Occasional framed posters decorated the otherwise stark walls. Near each flat end of the cylinder was a stairway leading down. The stairways were on opposite sides and faced towards one another. The bright features of the posters caught my attention and I was walking up to one for a closer look when Scaff reported an even more critical observation.
"Weird statues."
We all turned to look immediately, not wanting to miss anything interesting or potentially dangerous.
The statues were indeed weird, to the point of being downright unsettling to look at. They were reminiscent of a stick drawing of a human figure, but rendered in white metal tubes and an estimated two metres tall. Or they were like giant oversimplified skeletons. I counted eight of them throughout the room in a variety of neutral poses. Four stood on each side of the glass entrance pod, which was centered in the room. The most disturbing feature of the statues was the heads, which were featureless white cylinders supported by cylindrical necks, with domed tops. There wasn't anything suggestive of eyes, ears, nose or mouth. The limbs had no fingers or toes, but were long and jointed with exaggerated hinges. I figured that they could collectively reach most parts of the room, if not all. This observation concerned me.
"I'm not so sure that they're statues," I said.
"A correct deduction."
I barely bit back a yelp as the words came from all directions. Specifically, from every statue. The accent sounded simultaneously careless and formal, which made me even more uncomfortable. "Uh, hello?"
"Hello, and welcome to Loop Station Swan. What is your planned destination?"
We all looked to Punnt, though it was difficult to turn away from the talking statues. Small circles of green light had appeared on their heads in an approximation of eyes, and these pulsed in time with the spoken words.
"Titan Hub Gold," Punnt said. Dro tried to show a brave face but I noticed a waver in dro's voice. I didn't think I would do much better beneath the glaring green gaze of a roomful of giant talking statues.
"Then you'll be wanting the backspin line." All eight statues began to swivel their bodies and arms to point towards one end of the room. They moved at different rates but started and stopped at the exact same instant, as near as I could tell. "Please step this way and take the stairs to the platform. Your ride will arrive in thirty-three minutes. Don't hesitate to let us know if you have any questions, including mobility issues. Thank you for using the Loop."
None of us moved.
"Uh, that was..." Scaff began, but jur couldn't find the words.
"Something else," Punnt finished.
"Yeah." Scaff let out a deep breath, trying to release some of the tension. I did the same, and found it helped.
Swipe took a step in the direction the articulated, articulate statues were pointing. "Shall we get a move on?"
No one had any immediate objections, so we followed sheem to the top of the stairs. There were a lot of stairs, which would take us down through a diagonal cylinder into what looked like a larger space than what we were currently in.
"Uh, I don't think we should take the bikes down the stairs," Skids said, backing away.
"Yeah, we don't need to take them further," Punnt said, looking around in search of something. "There should be somewhere we can store them."
A previously unseen door opened in the wall beside us. "Your conveyances may be secured in this storeroom for later retrieval," the statues said, and moved to point their arms at the open doorway.
"Er... thanks," Skids said, and started the process of unpacking our luggage. The others joined in, and I helped as much as I could. My help was mostly limited to dragging bags further from the bikes so they were out of the way of the next bags. Before long the bikes were securely stored and nearly everyone was carrying a heavy backpack and a smaller shoulder bag. As I had Liberty's carrier to take care of, Skids was showing off by easily hefting a backpack in each hand.
The stairway led us to an even larger horizontal cylinder at right angles to the one above. The white aesthetic continued unabated. Technically we could only see the top half of the cylinder's interior, as the floor perfectly bisected it. A smaller concentric cylinder ran from end to end. The inner one was a complete cylinder, which I could see because its top half was transparent. I could see that it continued beyond the outer cylinder as a dark tunnel in both directions. While its radius was only a third of the room's, it was taller than any of us. It was taller too than the lanky white statues, of which there were many along the length of the room. There were more benches too, and the most vertical part of the wall featured posters as above.
My teammates picked benches and sat down heavily, but I chose to check out the posters. "Anything interesting, Charity?" Skids called after me.
"They seem to be advertising the different destinations," I said after examining a few of the posters. "The Stumps, The Bane, Titan Hub Iron, Titan Hub Gold, Duck Under, Cloudbase," I read. "From the little maps it looks like Cloudbase isn't any further from Wonambi than this waystation."
"The distance is about the same but this way is more direct and the riding is easier," Punnt explained. "And we get to ride the loop. I'm still not keen on meeting the Titans but the Loop is universally agreed to be impressive."
"Ah." That all made sense. Something about the posters still bothered me, however. "Who would want to visit a place called 'The Bane'? Everything about the poster looks rather frightening too. It's all very stylised but I can't tell if those figures in the back are meant to be human or some sort of creature. Demons, maybe?"
"Best not to think about it," Swipe said in a voice I was sure was meant to be reassuring. It wasn't.
"We'll be at Titan Hub Gold very soon, and it's reportedly very outsider friendly," Skids called from a further bench. "Looking at all the other travel posters will just make you imagine the worst and worry needlessly."
I reluctantly left the posters. Even though the content was strange to me, I liked the bold art style. "I notice there's as many Loop stops as there are hives, not counting the waystations like this one."
"Yeah," Punnt agreed. "But they're much smaller and their population's not even a tenth of ours."
"Interesting. The total Pure population is very close to yours, from the statistics I've read." Both groups accounted for a little over three hundred thousand people each.
"Yawn," Broth said rudely. "Can we play a game while we wait?"
"Any suggestions?" Punnt asked. "I only planned our route and the timing, not travel games."
"Yeah, I've got one," Scaff said. "I'll think of something in the room and you have to guess what it is. I'm thinking of something... white."
An indescribable sound announced that our wait was nearly over. It was something like a stifled whining scream that was imperfectly contained and shooting towards us rapidly. It seemed both like a high pitched ringing in my ears and a low rumble through the ground up my legs. "That's the Loop?"
"That's got to be it," Swipe confirmed.
The dueling pitches did something confusing that I decided meant the approaching whatever was slowing down. Moments later our ride slid into view, entering the inner cylinder from one end and stopping in the middle. It consisted of a pair of carriages, as starkly white as everything else we'd seen produced by the Titans. They were as round as the tunnel they moved in, with a row of wide circular windows on each side and three transparent doors spaced out along their length. The doors slid to the side and corresponding sections of the containing tube did the same.
"The Loop shuttle is ready for boarding," the voices of the statues told us. "This is the backspin line. The next stop is Titan Hub Gold."
"That's our cue," Punnt said, and strode forward. We all followed close behind.
"No more guessing games," I muttered. "Thank the Maker." I'd tried to use my scryer to distract myself from the extremely boring attempts at amusement, but they regularly broke down into pointless and highly distracting bickering.
We were soon all seated and the doors shut after a typical warning. "We're in for it now," Broth said fatefully, much to everyone else's annoyance.
"Is it really much different from the hive trolley?" I asked.
"Very!" Swipe said immediately. "The trolley uses aetherspinners to turn its own wheels along rails. The Loop on the other hand..."
Swipe's voice was drowned out by the rising of the spikey hum or wailing shriek beneath us, and we surged forward into blackness.