Empire of Fu Manchu

The Nameless City
Somewhere in the Rub Al Khali
Tuesday, June 18th, 1940



Dr Henry “Indiana” Jones ran deeper into the black depths of the primordial temple. He had turned of his electric torch in order not to offer so good a target to the Sonderkommando Hexen soldiers shooting after him.

The weak light filtering from the minute opening was barely enough to avoid the oddly low and squat altars, if that was really what the decorated stone slabs were. He considered hiding in one of the niches but rejected it out of hand – the SS would search through this place thoroughly if he just disappeared. His only hope of escaping capture was to find another exit – that, or outfighting a whole squad of SS troops armed just with a seven-shot Luger. He wasn’t sure which one was the better hope, all things considered.

The irregularly shaped temple hall grew funnelled into a wedge-like niche. It was now pitch-black, but when he reached the end, Indy’s hand touched only hard, unyielding stone. There was no exit: he was trapped as a rat!

Already feeling panic setting in and considering whether he perhaps should turn the Luger on himself rather than experiencing the cruel and humiliating death Duhrn had planned for him. Then he felt the slightest draught drawing past his lowered hands – but not his face. With renewed hope he searched the wall in front again, lower this time, and felt the edge of carven stone doorframe, as strangely low as the entrance had been. Hearing the shouts and steps of the Germans in the temple draw closer, he crouched and stepped through the opening, from complete darkness to utter blackness.

He almost tripped and fell. Beyond the low opening was not the floor of a corridor or a room, but a kind of staircase, or ratehr terraced ramp because the steps were so small and many. Muttering a curse under his breath, Indy began to half-climb, half-crawl his way down it into the Stygian bowels of the earth, deep under the Nameless City.

He had no way of knowing how deep the stairs went, but it wasn’t long before he knew the Germans were following him down. They even fired blind shots into the darkness, but fortunately for Indy the staircase wasn’t entirely straight, snaking left and right and becoming steeper or more gradual so there was no direct line of sight and the bullets just ricocheted harmlessly off the walls and steps above him.

For how long did he climb and crawl, sweating feverishly and blind as a mole while his enemies pursued him relentlessly into the subterranean night? Indy would never be able to tell – it must have been for several hours at least, which given the angle of descent put the depth of the place in the realm of the fantastic or incredible. Gradually, however, he began to notice an increasing draught running down the stairs, mercifully cooling him off. Then he saw dim light below and sensed that his descent had reached its end.

He was in a long corridor, so low that he could stand only crouching and lined interminably on both sides with great standing boxes, formed a little bit like coffins but without corners, all rounded and sinuous in shape. The domed front of each box shone like polished crystal from the faintest of lights coming from the distant far end of the corridor – it was not possible to tell anything of their nature in it, so weak was it, but to Indy it was like a beacon of salvation. Light in this place could only mean natural light, which might seem impossible but it might have been so that he had not descended so far as he had thought and that the corridor opened into the bottom of a deep ravine or gorge. The ever stronger current of air rushing toward that light seemed to confirm that it was indeed the exit to the outside Indy had been hoping for, and in any case, the Germans were not far behind, so he leaned forward and ran as fast as this posture allowed.

Not two minutes later he could hear the sinister voice of Günther Duhrn ordering his men forward. The Germans had no compunctions about using their electric torches, and when their beams began to play along the corridor and at the boxes, the amazed shouts of his pursuers made Indy pause and look around again – what was it that had startled them so?

The light ahead had grown gradually stronger, as incidentally had the draught, and now Indy could see more of his surroundings. The walls were painted with extraordinarily well preserved frescoes in bright colours. At first sight, their motif might have been taken for depictions of fables or myths, because instead of men, only strange clothed reptilian beasts appeared walking, fighting, travelling or building. But then Indy’s eyes finally perceived what the boxes held under their shining crystal lids – the mummified bodies of just such creatures as were depicted on the walls, still dressed in costly silks and adorned with jewellery in gold and other strange, bright metals. The things were hard to describe, since the they were clearly not crocodiles, nor seals, nor men nor a mixture of these, even though they had some characteristics common with each. But their skin was scaly, and their snouts were long and filled with sharp teeth while their legs and “arms” were short and crowned with clawed paws – and suddenly, the low altars, the minute steps of the stairs, the low ceiling all made sense to Indy. To one who had not witnessed the People Under The Mountain of Stregoicavar or read the inscriptions of the Elder Race in the frozen city of the Antarctica, perhaps the identity of the mummified beasts would not have been so obvious, but to Indy there could be no doubt: he was seeing the remains of the race that had once erected and inhabited the Nameless City!

The Germans quickly dominated their amaze and began advancing and shooting down the corridor after Indy, who forgot all about archaeology and began to run too, heading for the light. Over the now howling wind, he could hear bullets ricochet on the wall, damaging the antediluvian frescoes and wept inside, and others shattered crystal lids on impact. Others finally buzzed past Indy, urging him on in his frenzied escape.

Then, suddenly there came a series of panicked screams and the German fire redoubled in intensity. Indy looked back but could only make out wildly bobbing torch beams and gun flashes. The screams increased in intensity and pitch and then the guns stopped firing, the torches went out and there were only pitiful shrieks and sobs which soon ended too. Now, apart from the shrieking gale, only strange snarls and hisses could be heard, and strange whispers that really should not be audible over the din of the raging winds, but were.

Indy backed away, horrified, then turned and ran for the ever stronger light ahead. As he drew closer to it, he heard running steps growing behind. He looked over his shoulder and saw Güntehr Duhrn gaining on him, but the German was not pursuing, but fleeing. His face was a mask of panic, his tunic was torn and blood-spattered, and he too looked over his shoulder, paying Indy no heed.

Not wanting to know but suspecting what it was that came after Duhrn, Indy turned his face ahead again and pressed on, exerting every fibre of strength in his frenzied flight. The dim light grew stronger and stronger, and it soon became apparent that it came through a huge gate. Swung open against the left-hand wall was a massive door of brass-like metal, enormously thick and decorated with fantastic bas-reliefs in a similar style to those inside the ground-level temple.

Fighting to retain his balance, Indy stopped suddenly before that great open gate, because on the other side was not the ground of a deep ravine or depression, nor the open air visible from an opening in a cliff-side. No, the light came from a strange luminous mist, swirling about unnaturally on the other side of the gate, concealing after a few metres another miniature staircase leading down. Into this luminous realm the now madly shrieking wind gushed, so strong now that Indy had to exert some considerable effort in order to not be swept with it. But for some entirely unnatural reason, the wind did not sweep the sedately swirling mist of light with it, as it rightly should. It was as if the mist was made up of gaseous light, rather than illuminated gas and somehow Indy knew that it would be better for him to be torn to pieces by Duhrn’s followers than to cross that threshold into an alien realm of madness and misery.

Duhrn seemed to think so too. He reached the stupefied Indy and without pause, he threw himself over the archaeologist, raining blows over him. Indy tried to fight back, using the Luger as a club but the wild-eyed Duhrn had the advantage of surprise and grabbed the wrist of Indy’s right arm. He then felled the American with a sweeping kick to the back of his legs, prying the automatic pistol from him as he fell.

Indy landed hard, and expected to die, but Duhrn ignored his fallen opponent, and instead turned back towards the dark corridor, rising the pistol. And then Indy saw the nightmare crowd that had been chasing Duhrn – the snarling, snapping fiends from the glass boxes, not mummified as he had supposed, but living and breathing despite their hideous appearance. Shrieking, in their dozens, they bore down on Günther Duhrn who screamed right back and began to fire the pistol, without much apparent effect. Before having time to even empty his gun, he was overrun by that hell-host, but not immediately torn to pieces, but instead carried high by sharply taloned, scaly hands, screaming and writhing, through the open gate into the strange luminous mist.

Half-mad with terror, Indy curled up against the wall next to the door but the throng of fiends ignored him completely, all rushing through the gate. When the last one had slipped through, after levelling a stare on the prone archaeologist so full of boundless hatred and timeless malice that he broke down in racking sobs and the helpless tears of a frightened child, the wind increased further to well past hurricane strength and Indy had to fight with all his strength not to be swept with it through the gate. And then, with a huge, metallic clang, the brass door slammed shut and plunged Indy, alone in that mausoleum corridor, into the pitch-black stillness of the never-ending subterranean night.​