Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Apocalypse

The bird had begun to flatten out its dive as the Corpus executed its massive seconds-long topple toward the ground, but had given off its ferocious squawking, and so Max had a chance for a quick glance around without the distraction of having his ears blown out at close range yet again. So it was that he caught the sight of one of the Corpus’ sliding feet, not yet significantly retarded by the fifty-foot earthen berm it had already shoved away from it, moving inexorably in a straight path that would shortly take it directly through the base of the Emperor’s observation tower. “BIRD!” Max yelled, and somehow the creature seemed this time to hear and agree, for it stood up on a wing and came out of its tight wheel driving hard for the end of the field.

Then, with a titanic rumble that seemed synonymous with the crack of doom, the remains of the Corpus slammed into the earth.

The surface of the field seemed to leap straight up in the air as the shockwave dashed outward toward the stands. The rising mud and dust did not completely obscure from view the network of fissures radiating from the long canyon the impact of the Corpus’ body had spontaneously hollowed out. The Corpus was still splitting apart, too, revealing a dense concoction of gore and carnage that was already mixing its own cloud of spurting red with the flying mud. It could not have been much more than a second after the impact, for all the time-slowing effect of viewing at first hand a great calamity, before the shockwave reached the front of the bleachers.

More dust rose. With the glacially slow movement that signals the onset of a great avalanche, the northern stands began to crumple toward the parade ground, first the field-box tier, than the middle, and so on up toward the top, seats and benches and shrieking masses rolling and tumbling until they were lost beneath the billowing dust. Perhaps other sections of stands were going down as well; perhaps the entire stadium was in the process of collapsing inward; but Max’s attention was now fixed on the tower - or rather on the remains of the tower, for although the fall of the Corpus had arrested the slide of the foot at the limit of its outstretched leg just shy of the tower’s base, the mass of the hill it had pushed ahead of itself had been enough to crack the tower in at least one spot below the center-point, and as a result the observation deck (impelled in addition by the large-amplitude tremors wracking the field) was spinning on its axis as it crashed down the snapping length of its ruptured pylon.

Max activated his second-quantum level vision apparatus as the bird glided slowly overhead, banking sharply to avoid the eastern bleachers and come around again for another pass. Roughly in the center of the wreckage of the observation level spread out across the top of the Corpus’ substantial hill Max had seen the yellow-green glow of a fully-activated personal protection field; the Emperor’s, most likely. Various other colors sparkled around it; here a cross-hatched pulsing that was probably some sort of amulet, there the fading orange of another protection field taxed beyond its limits, but there - in just about the right place, too - was the gold radiance of a god.

The bird came in low and slow and released him. Max crashed down fifteen feet, his usual litheness deserting him in the ridiculous black armor, but he managed not to break his ankle or land on anyone’s head in the process, or at least not on anyone who was in a condition to protest. He straightened up and shoved aside a pile of bashed-in chairs.

The gold shell revealed under the rubble contracted and faded out. Phlinn Arol, in an approximately fetal position, looked up at Max over his shoulder. Even with his protection field obviously jacked up to its maximum level, Phlinn Arol still appeared exceptionally haggard, not to mention the blood running freely from his nose and ears. His mouth was a bright frothy red and the whites of his eyes had gone entirely crimson. Still, he was clearly alive, a fact underlined when he sat up in a slow series of jerks, extending his hand back down to whoever he had been further protecting beneath his body and within the extended cushion of his shield. Leen came into sight, holding her head with her free hand. Whether the blood on Leen was her own or Phlinn Arol’s was not immediately apparent.

“I believe the blood is mine,” Phlinn Arol gargled to Max. “I didn’t want to survive all this only to have you hunt me down and cut off my head.”

“Good thinking,” Max told him. “You okay?”

Before either of them could answer, the ground shook again, and a section of structure not far away detached itself and went rolling away down the side of the hill.

“Down?” Leen said, deciding not to climb all the way to her feet. “Or up?”

“Let me check out up,” said Max. “Be right back.” He clambered his way over a knot of groaning Imperial guards, that decaying greenish-yellow glow beckoning the way to the highest point. Kicking aside an errant banquet table bearing only the stained remains of the refreshments it had recently displayed, the source of the radiance was revealed.

The Emperor was lying on his back, his arms outstretched, thoroughly dazed. Max creaked over to him, realizing that his black armor’s chest plate had been pretty well cracked in by the grasp of the bird. The Emperor rolled his eye at Max as he loomed overhead, and made a gargling sound.

“Yeah,” Max said to him, “so what about those terrorists?”

That must have been the Corpus, thought Shaa, watching the wood and iron scrap that was the remains of the circular staircase continue collapsing in front of him down the vertical shaft that was the exit from the tunnel. The horizontal section of the underground passage he had traversed a mere moment before was clogged with rocks and earth a few paces back, and for all anyone knew could have pancaked the whole way out to its start. It was quite annoying to have the whole long business grind to its climax in such a base manner, lacking all subtlety and grace, distinguished solely by a surfeit of mindless action, but there you were; and on the other hand it was not at all clear that all the climaxes had already been performed.

“If anyone has a plan,” said Shaa, “this would be a reasonable time to reveal it.”

Actually, the situation might not be as bad as all that. Svin, who had been here a moment before, was now gone, which meant he must have found a way down into the tunnel, which meant that the tunnel had not collapsed, not completely, anyway, although sections of the ceiling had clearly come down when the seismic shock had rolled through, and other areas were undoubtedly weakened and awaiting their chance to do likewise. Since that had also been the direction of the earthquake’s epicenter conditions were likely to be worse further along.

Not as much worse as they were ahead of him, though, where the circular staircase had largely fallen in. It was impossible to worm one’s way through the mangled wreckage to determine the condition of the vertical exit shaft itself. Still, lacking the always-pending development of a practical mode of levitation, whose realization seemed all the more distant given the current state of collapse of the magical environment, and lacking as well the services of a professional mountaineer, even if they could reach the chimney shaft and even if it did not immediately afterwards cascade down around their ears, there wasn’t much they could do but stand at the bottom craning their necks up at the sky. And then, of course, there was also the matter of the cast of characters they had here on hand.

This active cast was fewer in number than it had been even several minutes ago. In the brief moment that Shaa had had to examine his brother before the earth began to shake and the premonitory rumble of the circular staircase pulling itself free of its moorings in the rocks had led Svin to yank him clear with one huge grab-and-fling, it had been apparent that Arznaak was suffering from insults to multiple systems. Arznaak’s skin demonstrated widespread burns and surface trauma consistent with backblast from his own power beam being reflected onto him. The more significant affliction, however, and presumably the one that had brought him down in a seizure state alternating between rigor mortis-style rigidity, widespread clonic tremors, and primitive reflexes of forebrain-release characteristic, all beneath a face-full of writhing muscles of expression and rolling, vacant eyes, was whatever malign force was wracking his brain. It was mild to say Arznaak had no shortage of enemies, though, especially when one incorporated into their number not only the full roster of extant gods, however short that list might be, but the surviving population of Peridol to boot. Shaa was perfectly happy to have yielded the right of coup de grace to whichever one had laid him low. Of course, Shaa had been the one to be standing mere feet away as whatever remained of his brother had been entombed beneath a rain of stair risers intermixed with what was undoubtedly tons of wrought-iron supporting structure.