Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Apocalypse

“I’m afraid not,” said Shaa, backing away across the floor from the hatch, careful to avoid tripping over the submerged chair. “Perhaps you would be good enough to pry open the door in that wall, preferable without shredding me in the process.”

Gashanatantra let fly. His effort this time was rather more modulated, however, Shaa was pleased to see, and so rather than finding himself separated into an assortment of smaller pieces (which had of course been a distinct possibility) he was instead watching the basin of muck slump away from him through the punched-through door into whatever passage lie beyond. Watching, and feeling the viscous pull himself, so having little alternative he let himself be dragged forward.

Ten feet or so into the dark tunnel beyond the door the mud had subsided enough for Shaa to easily squelch his way free of it and continue carefully ahead. The sides of the passage could be brushed without fully extending his arms, and if the low ceiling had not already been swept free of dangling cobwebs by someone’s earlier traversal Shaa knew he would have been well-festooned in no time at all. The shaft ran straight back under the stands, and although it would undoubtedly angle up at some point to burrow up from the sunken level of the parade ground Shaa had not yet reached that location as he hurried along when he found himself stifling a yawn, his eyelids growing suddenly heavy. It was after midnight, and the last days had been characterized by a frenzy of activity at all hours and with precious little diversion for sleep, but still it scarcely seemed an appropriate moment for a nap. Behind the still-cascading roar of the crowd he suddenly thought he distinguished the barely musical skirl of a pipe somewhat closer to hand.

A pipe?

Feeling increasingly sluggish and clouded of thought, Shaa dug furiously in his pockets. Surely he still had them; surely they had not slipped out during one mad scramble or another; surely they were not buried with so much else beneath the mud of the parade-ground field - ah! here they were! - fouled with soggy grime no less so than the rest of him, but it was not a moment to stand on fastidious ceremony, he thought, cramming the plugs deep into his ears.

There was light up ahead now, too, actually in fact ahead and above, spilling down through a vertical shaft and picking out a strange latticework of intersecting lines; a circular stair, that was it, coiling itself upward toward the unquestionable sound of Jurtan Mont. Shaa began to creep carefully forward again, then paused, as he heard from behind him another rapid squelching of muck-laden footwear, turning from a deliberate jog to an erratic wobble, followed by Gashanatantra’s spacy utterance, heard distantly through the earplugs, of, “What - what is that?”

“Cover your ears,” Shaa hissed, watching the shadows shift at the base of the stair as someone came down it toward them. There were at least two of them moving, the one with the lantern and another one advancing below - and now that the light was becoming more distinct it became clear that there was another person in sight as well, this one slumped at the base of the staircase with his upper body trailing upward along the lowest curve. If one of the folks advancing down the stair was Jurtan Mont, it seemed likely the other would be Svin, and - leaving aside totally the matter of what they were doing here, and what had become of Dortonn along the way - it seemed reasonable to hypothesize that the fallen form at the bottom was that of his own erstwhile brother.

Shaa edged forward as behind him Gashanatantra’s efforts to block out his ears seemed to be proving inadequate to the need, judging by the clatter of him sliding limply to the ground. Shaa was almost at the upward branch of the tunnel when he realized, virtually simultaneously, several things.

First, the person reclining on the stairs was indeed his brother Arznaak; rather than displaying the usual limp and splayed posture of someone who had just encountered the music of Jurtan Mont unprepared, though, he appeared to demonstrate instead the rigidity of a cataleptic fit, complete to the rictus of open eyelids and eyeballs tilted firmly back. Second, as the people above descended the last coil and drew into sight, the first was indeed revealed to be Svin and the second - bearing both lantern and flute - was Jurtan Mont. There was, however, following just behind Jurtan Mont, a third.

“Stop the music,” this man commanded, adding a peremptory wave of his hand. He pushed past Jurtan and Svin, sparing barely a glance at Arznaak and his convincing imitation (however premature) of rigor mortis, and gazed instead past Shaa down the tunnel, where Gashanatantra, legs splayed on the floor, was leaning against the wall with the more characteristically groggy and slack-jawed expression of the Jurtan Mont-inflicted. A fairly unpleasant grin spreading across his face, the man advanced toward Gashanatantra and stood over him, his arms folded across his chest.

“So,” said the man, “Gashanatantra. I understand I have you to thank for spending quite an excessive amount of time inside a ring.”

The bird dove at the Corpus, its talons outstretched toward the giant eyes. Max, still grasped firmly within the other set of matching claws, pulled up his legs and tried to brace himself for impact. The Corpus was watching them come in with a singularly vague and disinterested expression. Its aspect was not necessarily so surprising when you considered that its cloak of Knitting was in the process of shredding itself apart ever more rapidly, the gouts of silver sparks chasing up and down around its skin like seam lines ripping away on an overstuffed pillow. Widening gaps were opening up in some places where the silver lines were pulling away from each other; in other spots the silver burnout effect was licking back along the skin itself, consuming it in vast sheets of shimmering flame that left a sparkling residue swirling like dust in the air. Along the seams and beneath the swaths could now be glimpsed the surface layer of packed bodies, wrapped around each other in contorted poses, some clearly in broken postures incompatible with life, their Knitting finery now tatters and rags stained liberally with blood, others clawing feebly for the open air, and a few (not yet the full avalanche that would obviously soon be seen) falling free of the matrix and beginning their tumbling trajectories toward the earth far too far below. With the bird executing its currently suicidal and unnecessary mission, Max fully expected to be joining them within the next few seconds.

But then the looming right eye focussed on them. Some residual trace of its basic operational reflexes made the Corpus take a half-step back; then, as the bird shrieked at it for good measure, it lurched away again, its head rearing back even faster than the body as it tried to get its face away from the imminent danger, the vast arms again coming up behind them and the hands bending in –

- when all at once the head jerked back and disappeared.

It had not of course actually disappeared, Max realized; what had happened instead was that the uncoordinated Corpus had simultaneously lost its balance and gone over backward, pulling its head rapidly earthward on its whip-lashing neck, and its feet (though still embedded to a good depth in the ground) had slipped out ahead, where they were now plowing two huge furrows through the field and sending tons of loam into the already well-clogged air.

Perhaps some of the captive Imperial functionaries making up the main mass of the Corpus would have a greater chance of surviving when the thing hit the ground, compared to the likely outcome of descending a hundred feet or so in free-fall, but by the same token those on the Corpus’ back were about to become nothing but thin-smeared marmalade. As for the stadium itself...