Mike Wild - Engines of the Apocalypse

DeZantez nodded. "Fine. Who's doing what?"

"I'll tackle the machines, with Dez," Slowhand volunteered.

"Nice, but how about you tackle the Pale Lord and Gabriella and I take the machines," Kali corrected. It had been a while since she had seen the archer go into a sulk, but he did as he was told, and a few minutes later three heads were buried deep inside books.

The hours began ticking by. Kali hadn't been wrong when she'd said it was going to be a long night, and the reading table was soon stacked high with tomes from all sections of the library. Most offered nothing, and a few gave snippets of information useless by themselves. Gradually, however, and after Slowhand had been kicked twice for snoring, some snippets began to correspond and a sketchy picture emerged.

It seemed that during one of the bloodiest times of their later history, having been routed by the increasingly powerful magic of their elven enemies, the dwarves had constructed a number of weapons or deterrents — the meaning wasn't exactly clear — said to be capable of nullifying the magic of the elves, effectively interfering with the threads manipulated by their song-magic. That interference, Kali guessed, had to be caused by the sound the machines emitted; it was possible that the sound could also interfere with other types of magic, including the barriers to the cathedral's railway tunnels, whose magical origins lay with the elves in the first place. One thing puzzled Kali, however. Although there were several references to the machines there was no subsequent mention of them having been used successfully against the elves. History, in fact, recorded that there was no such change of fortunes in the elf/dwarf wars and that they had soon after declared a truce that was to be the starting point of their third age of existence, where the Old Races had advanced their civilisations in peace. But if that was the case, one obvious question needed to be answered — why hadn't the dwarves used the machines it had clearly taken them a great deal of time and effort to develop?

It was Gabriella who found the answer. Or at least something that pointed to an answer. Records from around the time of the machines' development spoke of severe upheaval across the peninsula, of unnatural storms and quakes, and of coastal settlements being consumed by the sea. It didn't take much of a leap to imagine that perhaps the cause of these phenomena lay with the machines themselves — that perhaps they affected more than just the threads and the dwarves had inadvertently, created some kind of doomsday weapon.

The theory gathered credence when Gabriella came upon one further reference. It needed to be translated from the dwarven by Kali but this one gave the machines a name.

The Engines of the Apocalypse.

Kali sat back with a sigh. They had discovered what they were dealing with, but it was now all the more imperative they find out how these engines were controlled, and from where.

A further number of hours research produced little on the former, but eventually Kali lit upon, of all things, a number of dwarven engineers' requisition forms buried amongst other preserved papers. Sometimes it was the small things, Kali reflected. The requisitions were for heavy construction materials, all of which were to be delivered to a particular location. The materials by themselves were no proof of any connection but the fact that the location was smack bang in the centre of the three groups of machines and had, from somewhere, acquired the name 'the Plain of Storms' sounded somewhat more promising.

They were, however, not yet done. The more she learned, the more Kali became convinced that the Pale Lord had to be planning something other than a simple invasion of the soul-stripped. After all, what could he possibly hope to gain from a devastated peninsula inhabited solely by the near-dead? No, Redigor's use of the engines to take Makennon and the others as well as render their mages powerless against his army was part of a greater plan, she was sure, and anything they could find out about the man himself might have a bearing on it.

"Anything, Slowhand?" Kali asked.

The archer shook his head. "I've been through a hundred books and other than the usual guff about the Pale Lord being banished from Fayence for meddling with necromancy, then buggering off into the Sardenne to form his army of the soul-stripped, there's very little. But there is this one phrase that keeps recurring…"

"Oh?"

"Here they lie, still," the archer quoted.

"Here they lie, still?" Gabriella repeated. "Any idea what that means?"

"Reputedly, they were the last words spoken by Redigor before he entered Bellagon's Rip," Slowhand said, consulting a passage. "But who 'they' were and where they 'lie still,' nobody records."

"Could he have been referring to the engines?" Gabriella mused. "Maybe the dwarves moved them to the Sardenne? Their equivalent of decommissioning them?"

"Maybe," Kali said, biting her lip. "Anything else?"

Slowhand shook his head and thumped another large, dusty tome down in front of him. He had no sooner opened it, however, than he stopped with a start, his gaze flicking to Gabriella sitting opposite him. The archer coughed, squirmed slightly, then smiled and gave her a sly wink.

"Are you all right?" Gabriella asked suspiciously.

"Fine," Slowhand answered, squeaking and clearing his throat. He jerked his head towards Kali, occupied with a new book, conspiratorially.

"You sure?"

"Oh, I'm sure," Slowhand said, leaning forward and whispering in Gabriella's ear. "Only I thought you weren't interested."

"Interested?"

"Your foot," Slowhand breathed, "on my thigh."

Gabriella's eyes narrowed. "Mister, believe me, the only place you'll ever find my foot is between your thighs, but you'll be too busy peeling your gonads from the ceiling to enjoy it."

"Funny," Slowhand purred, "that sounds just like something Hooper would say."

"What sounds like something Hooper would say?" Kali joined in.

"Oh, nothing," Slowhand said. He turned to give Gabriella another knowing glance but she'd already stood to replace some of the books on the shelves. He glanced quickly under the table, where 'her foot' was still at work.

"Er, ladies…"

Kali glanced up, stood and pushed back her chair with a curse. Beside her, Gabriella unsheathed her twin swords with a metallic ring that echoed throughout the vast library.

" Shhh!" came an admonition from beyond the shelves.

Kali ignored it. "What the hells?"

The book which lay open in front of Slowhand, who was leaning well back and staring at it warily, was exuding something from its spine. A number of thin, black tapers were curling from the top and bottom of the book, growing by the second, one of them now fully curled around Slowhand's thigh. Multiplying and thickening, accompanied by a dry, sinister hiss, they were redoubling their interest in the archer.

"Hooper, one of 'ems heading for my — "

"Slowhand, get up slowly," Kali said.

"That might be a good idea," he responded. It took him a second to react, however, the tapers having a strangely mesmeric effect on those who watched them, and it was only when the taper made a sudden dart for his crotch that he stood and kicked his chair back with a "Whoa!"

It was, unfortunately, a little too late, and before Slowhand knew what was happening twenty or more of the things had wrapped themselves around different parts of his body and were holding him in their grip. The archer struggled against them but, with as echoing thud, they tipped him off his feet and slapped him to the floor.

"Mmf… ooper?" Slowhand said, his eyes wide, as one of the tapers wrapped around his jaw. "Youf wanna helf me ouf here?"