Mike Wild - Engines of the Apocalypse

He led the two women to some kind of bunker that, judging by the crates of belongings waiting outside the door to be removed, had recently changed hands. Kali recognised some of the belongings, particularly a small trolley containing a number of needlereeds and vials of viscous liquids and a duplicate of her own gutting knife. This must have been Konstantin Munch's hidey-hole when he wasn't torturing poor unfortunates in the holding chambers below. But as they passed through the door, no further evidence of the dwarf-blooded psychopath could be seen. Freel had put his own stamp on the office.

Kali's eyebrows rose. The bunker could have been an Old Race site, so much of their technology had been installed. Except that where most of the devices she encountered in such sites had been decayed and broken down, rotten after countless years of neglect, this stuff looked as if it had come straight out of the box. Amberglow light-panels illuminated an array of exotic machines of unknown purpose, security cages were sealed with runic arches and, most disturbingly, a raised platform in the centre offered views from a dozen Eyes of the Lord spheres, projecting goings-on in different parts of the Faith's empire. These images were being monitored by a handful of grey-robed men.

Gabriella DeZantez seemed discomforted in the presence of so much technology, as if it had no place in her vision of the church. Freel immediately dropped a few notches in Kali's estimation, too.

"Seems like there's a difference between my manipulating forbidden artefacts and your doing the same," Kali observed, nodding at the spheres.

"Oh, those things," Freel responded, "those weren't my idea." He signed a chit handed to him by one of his men. "The rest, though… well, the Faith has to move with the times. Even if, ironically, those times are the ancient past."

"Still meddling with things you don't understand," Kali said.

Freel paid her little attention, his face darkening as another man entered and read out the latest confirmed casualties — supply workers Bogle, Krang, Rutter and Flank, and an Eminence named Kesar.

The latter name seemed to shake Gabriella DeZantez.

"Rodrigo Kesar is dead?" She said.

The guard looked regretful. "The Eminence was supervising a… volatile incense shipment when the assault began, Sister. Was the Eminence a friend of yours?"

"No," Gabriella DeZantez said quietly to herself, and shook her head.

Kali looked at her, puzzled. The man had obviously been important in some way, but she had already said not as a friend. It seemed almost as if she had had some door slammed in her face. Maybe she'd ask her about it when she had the chance. For now, though, there were more important questions to be addressed.

"You want to tell me what the hells has been going on here?"

Freel guided her and DeZantez to the viewing area and, as he did, three other men joined them from across the room. "General McIntee of the Order of the Swords of Dawn, Cardinal Kratos," he said by way of introduction. "And this is the developer of the Eyes of the — "

"I know who this bastard is," Kali interrupted. "And I should have known. Hello, Fitch."

The psychic manipulator bowed slightly, his hands steepled. They were bandaged, Kali noticed. "Kali Hooper. What a pleasant surprise."

"What the hells are you doing here?" Kali demanded.

"Helping, Kali, just like you. All hands on deck, and all that."

"What — you run out of heads today?"

Fitch smiled and suddenly noticed the burns on Kali's neck. He tutted sympathetically.

Kali snarled.

"I suggest," Freel said hastily, "that we get down to business."

"No argument here," Kali agreed. "You said Makennon needed my help? That you feared she'd gone to the hells?"

Freel nodded. "The Anointed Lord has been taken."

"Taken? By which I presume you don't mean she's currently prancing through the clouds annoying the rest of the poor souls with Kerberos?"

"He means abducted," General McIntee said. "Here from the very heart of the Faith."

Kali pursed her lips, nodded. "Neat trick. So who's got her?"

Freel nodded to Fitch who promptly shut down all of the images being projected from the Eyes of the Lord. He then picked up an inactive Eye of the Lord from a nearby table and readied it for viewing.

With DeZantez, Kali found herself watching the horde's assault on the tunnels. She saw an overview of the grey figures pouring from the tunnel, zooming images of agonised or dying Final Faith soldiers and the flashes of the intruders' makeshift but lethal weapons. She had to disguise her shock as she saw Slowhand struggling in the grip of Faith guards. She had already met with indisputable proof that his mission to kill Fitch had failed, and now she knew why. Just like herself, events had overtaken him. Not for the first time, she reflected that she and the archer had a knack for being in the right place at the wrong time. It was almost as if, as Poul Sonpear had pointed out some months before, their presence in these places was somehow predestined. Now was not the time to worry about that, however, or Slowhand's current fate. If she were to make sense of what was happening before her, she had to give it her full attention.

Katherine Makennon was visible in the fray now, the armoured form of the Anointed Lord striding into the sublevel at the head of her men. Again, Kali caught a glimpse of Slowhand, trying to stop Makennon wading in. Wade in, of course, was what she did, and Kali had to give the woman her due — she could certainly bollock the bad guys. What happened next, however, was so unexpected and shocking that she wasn't at all surprised to see Slowhand and his captors reel from it.

Something hurtled out of the dark, darker than the tunnel from which it came. A thing of indeterminate shape, a storm cloud streak that moved at breakneck speed, whose outlines writhed before the eye. A shifting, octopus-like morass and an insane blur at the same time, as seemingly insubstantial as shadow as it shot straight at Makennon and whipped back towards the tunnel, wrapping about her as it did, absorbing her in its mass and carrying her away. In that instant — and only that instant — it was almost identifiable, as a black carriage drawn by wild-eyed, snorting horses from the pits. A moment later the shape and Katherine Makennon with it were gone.

"Farking hell," Kali said, as the image from the sphere flickered and died.

Gabriella DeZantez was a little more controlled. "What in the name of the Lord was that?"

"Interesting, isn't it?" Freel said. "All I can say is that it — and the preceding events — were repeated at twelve other locations across the peninsula. And in each case the leader of that community was taken by that… thing."

"By previous events, I presume you mean the attack from the soul-stripped?" Kali said.

Fitch looked surprised. "You know of the First Enemy?"

The First Enemy, Kali thought. Only the more senior of the Final Faith called him that, those who remembered . DeZantez seemed not to be one of them, and so for her sake -

"Why don't you remind me, Fitch?"

Fitch shrugged. "The result of a conceit of the first Anointed Lord, Jeremiah Nectus Dunn. He mistakenly believed the teachings of the Faith could be taken to the farthest reaches of our empi… of the land."

"The Sardenne Forest you mean."

Fitch nodded. "But Dunn was wrong. The people who live in that forsaken hinterland have greater things to fear than the Lord of All, as our people discovered to their cost."

"My, my, Querilous Fitch, that's almost blasphemous," Kali chided.

Fitch could have been talking about any of the multifarious creatures that called the Sardenne home, and it would have served Dunn's missionaries right if they had encountered them and not come home as a result. But he wasn't talking about them, she knew. It wasn't the bogarts and beasties of the great forest coming out of there that they had to worry about — the assault on Scholten Cathedral was far too coordinated for them. This was without doubt the work of the one ruling intelligence that called the Sardenne home. In an area called Bellagon's Rip.