Mike Wild - The Clockwork King of Orl

She proceeded upwards, finding that the conduit levelled out some now, and as a result found her feet squelching in patches of alchemical waste that had not been fully flushed away. She avoided the muck as much as she could, stepped lightly and quickly through that which she could not, spurred to such action by the small skeletal remains of floprats who had chanced to crawl here. The remains of the rodents hadn't just been eaten away, their skeletons had been twisted and changed.

Her slightly increased pace made Kali no less aware of the danger around her, and she deftly avoided the triggers for another couple of traps — one apparently designed to release a cloud of living biomagical toxin into the conduit, another — which she purposefully triggered once she'd passed by — to make that section of the conduit momentarily discorporeal, meaning anyone unfortunate enough to be traversing it at the time would become part of the conduit on a permanent basis.

Pits of Kerberos! These guys really are bastards.

She continued on, relieved to find that at last the traps seemed to have stopped. Quite right, too, because anybody who had made it this far bloody well deserved to make it the rest. She couldn't relax until she was out of the conduit, however — the number of delays she'd suffered had eaten into the time she had for safe passage, and she reckoned she had less than a minute left before the alchemical laboratories were purged.

She hurried, the seconds ticking, and spied at last the access hatch marked on the map. The moment she reached it she heard dull, echoing rumblings from above, and grabbed quickly for the hatch wheel to swing it open.

Thread magic coursed through her, a crackling storm of blue energy that paralysed her momentarily before blowing her off her feet and slamming her into the conduit wall. Kali groaned and slipped to the floor, lay there stunned, bucking and spasming involuntarily as small discharges continued to spark off her body.

Dammit, one last trap. They'd lulled her into a false sense of security and caught her unawares.

One thing she couldn't help but be aware of, though, were the noises. The echoing rumblings from above had become a series of metallic clangs, and as she lay there she realised with a dull knot of fear that the drop-hatches from the labs were opening.

Gods! She had to move now! Only she couldn't, not an inch. Not even to thump the conduit in frustration. Annoyingly, all she could do was dribble.

Dammit, Hooper, come on, come on. You've been an idiot, but do you want to die here? Do you want to die and prove Jengo Pim right?

The conduit filled with the sound of sloshing.

Hooper, she screamed inwardly, do you want to fail the old man?

Kali roared with exertion and, consciously forcing every movement of her body, lurched forwards, twisted the hatch wheel and heaved the cover open just in time. The last thing she saw before she dived head first through the hatch and it clanged shut behind her was a raging torrent of rainbow sludge.

She plummeted with a yell and thudded onto the floor below as if she had just been birthed by a pregnant mool, embryonic, twitching and covered in splashes of gunk. After a second she thrashed the gunk away, but stayed down while her spasms subsided, coughing and retching loudly. Only then did she perceive where she was — the middle of a corridor in the first tower — and lying there exposed and all but helpless, it occurred to her that her entrance had not exactly been the stealthy one she'd planned. She comforted herself, however, with the fact that the last trap would have killed — or at least hammered the final nail into the coffin of — anyone less bloody-minded than she.

She frowned, wondering. Was it just bloody-mindedness that had got her out of there? Or was it something to do again with the changes happening to her, the things that made her able to do the things she did? One thing was certain — now was not the time to think about it.

Kali groaned and picked herself up. The corridor in which she'd landed was a shimmering, smooth affair and, thankfully, empty, though it felt oddly not so. The corridor thrummed quietly to itself, as if the power of the Three Towers were contained within its walls, and Kali had the uneasy feeling that, while she saw no one, she was not alone. She felt as if she were being observed from all angles, almost as if she were being watched by the building itself, which, considering the nature of the place, it was just possible she was. Nothing happened as a result of her feeling, though, and she wondered if perhaps it was just a magical suggestion that hung in the air, designed to unnerve anyone who shouldn't be here. Even so, it was pitsing creepy.

Pulling out Jengo's map, she orientated herself and crept slowly forwards, thankful for the fact there'd been no alarms. She'd had more than enough alarms in Scholten. She began to weave her way through a maze of corridors towards the stairs that would lead her upwards and from there, across the bridge, to the third tower and her destination. The Forbidden Archive.

Despite Jengo's concerns, she moved with relative ease. Now that she was within the outer defences, there was little to be wary of in the way of traps, and as most League members were busy blowing up or dissolving things in the labs she passed, they presented little problem. Those mages that she did encounter in her path she simply avoided, a task made easier by the fact that in their flowing and colourful patterned robes it was easy to spot them before they chanced upon her.

Those robes. She found it perverse how these bastards still garbed themselves in the garish showbusiness style of parlour entertainers when their business was no longer entertainment but death. Still, she couldn't help but think that one or two of them were wasted here in the towers and should actually put themselves up for sale as a nice pair of curtains.

As she moved steadily on, only one thing hampered her — here and there certain corridors were blocked by shimmering curtains of different coloured energy and, while the mages moved through them with ease, presumably having protected themselves against whatever the energies did, a stray floprat that attempted to follow ended up as a small puddle of fur and blood. Kali did not want to chance her arm — or any other part of her body — by emulating it. Instead, she found the bottom of the stairs by a different route.

Following echoing, whispering corridors, they appeared before her at last, and Kali looked up their spiralling heights and cursed. According to the map, the connecting bridge to the Forbidden Archive could be found on the thirty-fifth floor. There was no lift. The hells with a lift, she thought. These guys were mages so why hadn't they magicked some kind of… lifty-uppity zoomy tube. But they hadn't, had they? No. Knowing her luck, they probably just spouted some kind of incantation that stopped them getting absolutely bloody knackered.

She began the long ascent, but it soon became clear that she would never make it all the way up without being detected — the stairs were simply too busy with mages crossing between floors. There was only one alternative. Much as she hated the idea of having to take one on, Kali secreted herself in an alcove near the base of the steps, reasoning that the best way to tackle a mage would be to surprise him from behind. This she did, waiting until she caught one alone then, as he passed cracked him on the head and caught him as he dropped. His robe came off in one.

The body concealed in the alcove, and suitably attired, Kali continued quickly on. She did not want to be anywhere near him when he woke up.

Thirty-five storeys later she emerged gasping through an exit into the open air, which led directly onto the bridge she wanted. Thirty-five storeys was a dizzying height and Kali expected a worse buffeting than she had received above Scholten, but to her surprise the bridge was totally calm and silent, protected, she assumed, by some invisible magical canopy. Made sense, she thought, smiling. After all, if they needed to visit the archive the last thing the League's mages needed was a nasty draught up their robes disturbing their forbidden musings.