Free Doctor Who: Shining Darkness by Mark Michalowski Page B

always exciting, weren’t they? Lots of fighting and shouting – and maybe some killing (although, as a rule, the Jaftee weren’t that keen on the killing, unless it was particularly spectacular and showy killing). And Heaven, of course, which the Jaftee particularly loved – mainly because Heaven was another of those things for which there was no proof whatsoever. Which meant that you could make it as fabulous or as strange as you wanted to, and no one could ever prove you wrong.
    ‘And how can we help the Gods of Shining Darkness?’ asked Enchikka, loving the fact that there were lots of capital letters. Capitals were good when it came to religions.
    ‘Oh faithful followers,’ intoned the three-legged one again (more cheering). ‘Your faith is so pure and strong that our enemies would never dare to intrude into your city. For that reason, we wish to entrust to you a Sacred Artefact—’
    At this point, the three-legged one (whom the Jaftee later discovered was called ‘Mesanth’) was completely drowned out by an almighty roar of Jaftee voices. This was a
really
good one: Sacred Artefacts were just the dog’s doodahs. You could put them on display, worship them, kiss them, charge money to touch them. You could hide them away and let only the High Priests see them, which made them all the more special. If you could be bothered (and, frankly, the Jaftee usually couldn’t because by that point they’d normally moved on to something else) you could ‘lose’ the Sacred Artefacts and then spend ages having quests to find them.
    The Gods of Shining Darkness seemed particularly pleased at this response from their faithful Jaftee. And, within hours, they’d brought down from Heaven (the Jaftee thought it best not to let on that they knew the Gods were probably flying around in the sky in some big, metal box and hadn’t actually come from ‘Heaven’) a whopping great circular thing, all crusty with bits of metal and glittering crystals. As Sacred Artefacts went, it was the business!
    The Jaftee – with lots of bowing and murmuring and wailing – helped the Gods to install it at the centre of the meeting pit on a stone pillar. It looked fab, especially when they’d installed a few extra flaming torches around it – sparkly and just a bit tacky.
    ‘Keep our faith,’ said Mesanth gravely. ‘The faith of Shining Darkness.’
    The Jaftee hollered and waved their hands in the air, each holding a little burning stick. They liked this religion.
    But, as was the way with the Jaftee, mere weeks after the Gods of Shining Darkness had returned to Heaven, promising to return for the Sacred Artefact at the Appropriate Juncture, one of the Jaftee discovered a crack in a wall that bore an uncanny resemblance to a particular constellation in the night sky. And so the Adorers of the Fractured Stars were born, the Gods of Shining Darkness’s Sacred Artefact was dragged off its plinth and shoved in a storeroom, and the Jaftee forgot all about it.
    The first that Enchikka knew about the return of the Gods of Shining Darkness was when someone spotted Mesanth – or, at least, someone very like him – along with two others, wandering through the city’s passages. It seemed that they’d managed to get past the temple beast (which was no great surprise, since the temple beast wasn’t actually that impressive, despite all the noise it made) and were on their way to the meeting pit. They were considering letting the temple beast starve to death, to be quite honest. It kept killing the Jaftee sent to feed it, and it was getting harder and harder to find people willing to do it.
    ‘Have we still got it?’ Enchikka asked one of his underlings breathlessly as soon as he could find her.
    ‘Have we still got what?’ Narucchio seemed puzzled – although her attention was clearly divided between answering Enchikka’s question and adjusting her feathered headdress (a chicken had, reportedly, been heard to say that the end of the