Mike Wild - The Clockwork King of Orl

That, though, was when it had all gone wrong. Moon had descended from the hills, certainly, but the man he had caught in his ambush had borne scant resemblance to the man he had been when he had inserted his blade in his chest and guts and, in fact, had borne less resemblance as the ambush had progressed. Clearly, something had gone wrong with the scythe-stone process, which was tragic for the old man but even more so for him — for how was he meant to use Moon as a hostage when Hooper would be unable to recognise her mentor at all? No, unless this strange transformation reversed itself — which of course it might, which made it unwise to slaughter the beast — all he was stuck with was a sideshow freak, good only for the circus when it came to Ramblas Square.

Munch growled again and turned away from the holding wagon, wincing with pain. His injuries from the ogur attack were… troublesome and he ought to get them seen to. He turned to the mage he had left with the base party, intending to solicit some relief, but then saw that the woman was concentrating hard and staring into the distance in the way that those blessed — or cursed, he thought — with telescrying abilities did. Still, they did make life in the field somewhat easier.

Munch waited until she had finished, returning to reality hollow-faced, and with a shiver and a sigh.

"Well?" he asked.

"News from Scholten, sir. From the Anointed Lord. She wishes to inform you that she is in possession of the fourth and final key."

Munch drew in a deep breath. At last.

"There is something else, sir. A location where she wishes you to rendezvous with her party — the site known as Orl."

Munch laughed. Yes, Orl, he thought. Orl indeed.

He ordered his remaining people to break camp, and mounting the holding wagon instructed its driver to move out.

Towards the Final Faith's destiny.

Towards his own.

Everyone seemed intent on hot-footing it to Orl, and that included Kali Hooper. It was just that for the moment — oddly self-defeatingly — she was telling Slowhand not to move. Not an inch. In fact, she would have preferred it if he didn't even breathe.

It was nothing personal. Granted, it might have been very personal at one time but, since his recent reappearance, Slowhand had been somewhat helpful so the least that she could do was try to save his life.

The lava lake had calmed somewhat and was no longer belching out angry plumes of fire, but it was continuing to rise. It had almost reached them now and, any second, threatened to bubble over the lip of the rock on which they stood, at which time they would be hot-footing it whether they had escaped or not.

Thankfully, all was not lost — and, in a manner of speaking, Orl was not lost, either. The pair of them stood no longer on the island but on a small shelf of rock behind and across from the dome, on the opposite side to the incinerated bridge. They had managed to reach it through a combination of her gymnastics and Slowhand's ropes and arrows, an exercise in teamwork that had resulted in a couple of embarrassing tangles but had got them there in the end, she with a sprained thigh and he with a smile on his face.

The shelf, though, was a precarious perch, only a few inches wide and crumbling in an ever-increasing number of spots beneath their feet. But it did lead to a way out. Possibly.

Kali's reasoning that there had to have been an original entrance to the dome had, in their time of need, led her to seek it out as an escape route and, while successful in doing so, the tunnel she had found was blocked as she'd suspected it might be, manifesting itself now as a vague tracery of rocks beyond the remains of a long-collapsed stone bridge, some of the component parts of which had been visible as tiny islands in the lava before they had been consumed by the bubbling mire. Kali wasn't sure that the tunnel behind the tracery of rock was going to be passable and the only way she could find out was by removing the rocks from the tunnel mouth. The problem was, she had to do it very, very slowly and very, very carefully, otherwise the resultant rockslide would sweep them both into the hottest — and last — bath of their lives.

"You have to think of it like a jigsaw," she said slowly and quietly to Slowhand. She gently removed a rock with an archaeologist's hands, dropping it into the burgeoning lava with a plop. "Each piece dependent on the other to construct — or, in this case, deconstruct — the whole picture without forcing any one piece."

"Really?" Slowhand said, nodding, his arms folded tightly against his chest. He would have smiled at the way her tongue stuck out between her lips as she worked, other than for the fact the lava had reached the soles of his boots and they had begun to sizzle slightly. "Is this an easy jigsaw?"

"Urrm… somewhere between medium and challenging?"

"Right. Like a bowl of fruit with a binyano, an apple and a pear?"

"I guess so," Kali said. She removed another rock and dropped it away, freezing as the collapsed rocks left behind in the fall settled slightly. "If they've all been tipped on the floor and trampled by a betwattled cyclops."

"Fine. You are good at jigsaws aren't you?"

Kali's hand hovered over another rock before changing her mind and extracting the one next to it. Again, she dropped it away. "Nope. Never could stand the things."

"Oh, that's great. Hooper, look, how about that one there? No, that one. That one looks — "

"Will you stop waving your hands about and stand still?"

Slowhand hopped from foot to foot, his soles sticking and stringing whenever they made contact with the rock.

"Getting — a — little — difficult — to — do — that. Could you please get a move on?"

"I'm trying, all right!" Kali snapped. The sweat running off her now had as much to do with pressure as the heat of the lava. She bent and dropped a heavier rock, regretting snapping when Slowhand took the opportunity to wipe her brow.

"Just one more…" she said through clenched teeth. "Easy… easy…"

There was a sudden shift in the rockface, and then a low rumble, and Kali spun herself away from the front of the fall to flatten herself against the wall to its left. Slowhand needed no urging to do the same and, at the very second he spun to the right, the whole pile of rubble collapsed away from the tunnel mouth, avalanching down into the rising lake.

Behind the fall, the tunnel was clear.

"Go, go, go!" Kali shouted, and just in time. The sudden and dramatic fall of rocks into the lava had disturbed its recently calm rise and it began again to spurt and belch. Unnoticed by Slowhand as he darted into the shadowy tunnel mouth, a patch of the molten fire spattered onto his trouser leg, burning into the cloth, but before it could reach his skin Kali followed him in and tore the offending patch away.

"Don't get excited," she said. "That's all that's coming off."

"Hey, flesh happens," Slowhand retorted, and stared at her heavily perspiring form. "Hot stuff."

Kali shook her head — the man could never resist. She followed him into the dark, making out a winding tunnel that curved away into the rock. She hesitated to think when last it had been used, but for a second thought that she caught a stale whiff of whatever had been the last thing to tread the passage, something overtly male — the smell, perhaps, of dwarf? Her eyes adjusted further to the dark and all her instincts cried out for the time to examine her surroundings — especially as she could now see this was no mere cave but a constructed tunnel complete with those X-shaped dwarven runics — but that was simply not to be. The avalanche that had stirred the lava back into angry life had, it seemed, disturbed more than just the lake, perhaps ruptured another vent beneath the dome and, as she watched, the lava began to bubble into and then sweep with increasing acceleration up the tunnel behind them.