Escalation is Not a Kind of Moving Staircase
Holyrood Park, Edinburgh
The seven hills, that form a rough circle around the original settlement of Edinburgh were chosen by the ancients because they are connected by seven ley lines that once pulsed with magick power.
In the days when the dormant volcano, Arthur’s Seat, was called Àrd-na-Said it had been a supernatural lodestone where all the lines converged, attracting preternatural creatures from miles around, but as less and less people believed in magick, the fairies and their ilk had faded away, slowly dwindling into nothingness and the ley lines fell into disuse.
Today Arthur’s Seat is surrounded by Holyrood park, the roughly five miles in diameter nature reserve that sits at the heart of the sprawling city intersected by the road known as the Queen's Drive, about three hundred yards outside the eastern entrance is Duddingston Kirk, which had been consecrated when it was built in 1124 AD.
As the setting sun sank below the horizon, casting a red glow over the landscape, the ley lines started to thrum again with long-forgotten power, sending everything that could run, scuttle, crawl or hop towards the sanctuary of hallowed ground.
Brakes screeched and horns sounded as the stampede went around, over and under the rush hour traffic. Loud chirping and cawing from hundreds of birds filled the air as they took to the skies circling high overhead, like a dark, portentous cloud. Moments later, the high-pitch screech of bats echoed as they left their caves. Next came the butterflies, moths and the flying insects, as they all sensed the evil that was stirring deep inside the hill.
After a minute, calm was restored, and the traffic started to move again. As if it was waiting for that, the ground shook with an ear-shattering roar. Long, jagged fissures ripped the hillside open, sending gouts of noxious gas spewing into the atmosphere as debris rained down on the road below.
Drivers swerved frantically as an enormous boulder went through the soft top of a convertible, crushing it flat and reducing the driver to the consistency of strawberry jam before rolling passed, demolishing the iron railings at the side of the road and plunging down into Duddingston loch.
A smaller rock hit the bonnet of a mini going the other way. The car stood on its nose, tumbled forward and landed on the BMW in front of it, which jackknifed into oncoming traffic and right into the path of a Tesco delivery van.
The screeching of tortured metal filled the air as they both plunged through the fence to certain death, leaving the mini on its side in the middle of the road where a biker hit it, flew over the handlebars and smashed headlong into the hillside, his crash helmet shattering.
Vehicle after vehicle collided into the ones in front, pushing them ever closer to the deadly drop. Desperate drivers stood on their brakes and threw their vehicles into reverse. The screeching of brakes and grinding of gears was deafening as smoke billowed from tyres, filling the air with the smell of burning rubber.
Then… it was over as suddenly as it had started, leaving one estate car teetering on the edge of the drop as the driver gingerly climbed into the back seat and out of the back.
Moans of pain and weak cries for help came from some of those trapped in their vehicles as the luckier drivers and passengers staggered into the road, dazed and disorientated.
The tremors subsided, leaving the hill silent and devoid of all but plant life, then the sirens of the emergency services wailed in the distance, blending into a strange cacophony, growing ever closer as the people who’d escaped unscathed helped the trapped and injured.
Later, when questioned, most of the survivors would insist that magick had caused the accident, although they couldn't say why they believed such a preposterous thing so strongly.
The authorities officially put it down to concussion but had them temporarily sectioned, under the Mental Health Act, in a vain attempt to stop the story spreading.
Once the fire engines, ambulances and police cars had left, the park fell into an eerie silence, that was until the last chime of midnight dissolved the final strand of the slumberous spell that had bound Morrigan for one thousand years, freeing her to do more than merely cause small eruptions that a tiny amount of her returning power had allowed her to do as the spell holding her had weakened.
She reached out with her mind, from her prison of earth and rock, probing the world around her and found a place where her kind were long forgotten and magick no longer reigned supreme.
Her power came from being able to imbue belief and love for her into any sentient being of Celtic descent, and the more people who believed in her the stronger she got.
When she was vital and powerful again, the Earth would become the magickal realm it had been before, where humans were mere cattle to serve her or be slaughtered for her amusement.
But she couldn’t do that without thousands of believers getting close enough to build her strength back up and she had no way to do that alone, so she summoned her heralds; the vilest of demons with the career paths of professional cheerleaders.
Black clouds poured out of the fissures that were made of condensed evil and fuelled by pure hatred, swirling high into the atmosphere, scanning for soulless vessels to imbue with their essence, finding what they needed only a mile and a half away.
Descending on Teviot Place on that rainy, moonless night with the surrounding pubs, shops and flats shrouded in darkness, the amorphous blobs flowed under the locked doors of the University of Edinburgh Anatomical Museum and into the entrance foyer.
They looked like a blackened, oily ground mist as they passed between the skeletons of two elephants facing each other, the ghostly trails of ectoplasm rattling the bones as a faint trumpeting echoed through the halls.
Splitting up, each one seeped into a different glass and wood showcase holding a human skeleton, imbuing the old bones with an unnatural, cursed life. As the display cases filled with a foul stench, the sulphurous air sparked into little bursts of hellfire.
Outside a storm was brewing, clouds as dark as Morrigan’s heart gathered, thunder roared and forked lightning darted out like a serpent’s tongue, hitting one of the museum’s arched windows and blowing it in as the display cases exploded out.
Lightning and hellfire mixed, and every bone in the room jerked into life. Hands ran past on their fingers like Thing from the Addams Family as macaque and spider monkey skeletons climbed the burning shelves even as they were collapsing.
One of the outside walls shattered with a deafening roar, as hellfire hit it, shooting debris high into the air, alarms wailed as people ran screaming, some rushing to move the few cars that weren’t already on fire whilst others just wanted to get as far away as fast as humanly possible.
Skeletons of animals, covered in a green, ectoplasmic glow, spilled out of the burning building into the street as torrential rain beat down, re-enacting their violent deaths or last battles.
After them the human skeletons strode purposefully, bones click-clacking like knitting needles. They took their place in the middle of the road, forming a skeletal pipe band led by a pipe major, their instruments glowing a spectral green.
Twenty bagpipers lined up in four rows followed by a bass drummer who struck the drum that hung vertically from his fleshless neck with two drumsticks, "Boom. Boom. Boom," it went, then after a beat's pause, "Boom. Boom. Boom," again. Three tenor drummers joined in, adding their higher toned, faster drumming followed by two snare drummers with their staccato beat. The drum major held his long baton out in front of him, the rain stopping suddenly as the bagpipers started to play a battle hymn.
As they began the march to Arthur’s Seat, the skirl of the pipes was intoxicating, filling every member of the Celtic race within earshot with total devotion for a goddess they’d never heard of before and an overwhelming desire to defend her with their lives.
As they moved from street to street, people rushed to them, too much in love with Morrigan to be afraid of the ghastly sight that met their eyes. Out of tenements they flooded: young and old, fit and barely able to walk, it made no difference, their numbers growing with every passing second.
The closer they got to Arthur’s seat, and to her influence, the stronger, faster and tougher they grew, as love for their goddess filled their hearts, overwhelming their intellects, they chanted in one voice, over and over again, “Mor-ri-gan, Mor-ri-gan, Mor-ri-gan,” they cried out, their words echoing off of the surrounding buildings far louder than human vocal cords should have been capable of.