Mike Wild - The Clockwork King of Orl

The creature remained silent for a second. We chose our agent badly… everyone makes mistakes.

But why would you do that?

The balance had to be -

Maintained? Kali shouted in her head. What balance — why the hells are you talking abou -

She suddenly choked and realised that, once more, her breathing conch was near to exhausted, something that her conversational partner had also spotted.

I would suggest that you have time for one more question.

One more question, Kali thought, and despite the fact she had a thousand in her head — about the balance, about this undersea creature, about the Old Races — she knew exactly what it had to be. Because, somehow, she knew it was relevant.

Do you know where I come from?

The creature laughed — not laughed in her mind but actually, physically laughed — and was suddenly obscured in a cloud of bubbles that came either from whatever orifice it used to breathe or simply from the stirring of the water created by its thrashing reaction. Wherever the bubbles had come from, when they went away the creature was gone.

Damn you, Kali thought. Whoever or whatever you are, damn you.

More rock fell about her from above, and with her last lungful of air she began to swim upwards, kicking and kicking until at last she passed through a fissure in the ceiling of the throne room and up, out into the sea. She broke its broiling surface and began to swim towards the shore. Slowly, wearily, she ascended the steps, glancing down at the jetty and the stilled warriors that would remain there now, until the weather of the area simply wore them away.

Slowhand, Horse and the ogur were assembled above. There was, however, one member of the party missing.

"Where's Makennon?"

"She skedaddled when the army stopped. Probably halfway back to Scholten Cathedral already, licking her wounds. Glad to see you made it, Hooper. But then, I should have known you would."

Kali waved him away, too knackered to speak. Her banter with Slowhand would, she knew, resume some time soon. There were, after all, things to do, among them find his sister and a cure for Merrit Moon.

Before that, however…

Kali patted Horse and took a bottle of flummox from his saddlebag. She drank deeply, and burped.

And then she stared down at Martak. At the sea. And she thought of what she had just encountered in it.

There were more questions to be answered than ever before. It was good, then, that she liked a challenge. In fact, she felt a renewed determination to discover the secrets of Twilight and the ultimate fate of the Old Races. And in doing so, she knew, she would leave nothing unexplored, nothing undiscovered, nothing untouched.

Nothing, now.

No stone unturned.