Mike Wild - Engines of the Apocalypse

Kali sat herself against the wall and made a flubbing sound. If she were going to make the rendezvous with DeZantez and the others, she did not have the advantage she normally might in such circumstances — to take as much time as she wished to ponder the problem. Frustrated, she plucked stones from the cave floor around her and began to lob them towards the hole. If she listened carefully, she might at least be able to determine how deep the farking thing was. It was then that she noticed two things — one, a thrumming from below that was barely audible over the lightning strikes outside and, two, the fact that the stones she had lobbed at the hole hadn't fallen in.

What the hells? Kali picked herself up and moved to its edge, leaning forward to grab one of the hovering stones from mid air. It seemed to contain metallic ore. As she leaned forward, she felt a resistance, placing her hand in a soft pillow, and stood back, her heart thumping. Did that mean what she thought it meant? That if she — ?

Kali stripped off her backpack and threw it out over the seemingly bottomless drop, raising her eyebrows as it, too, bounced about as if tossed by currents of air. But this was not air she was dealing with — she felt nothing on her flesh, on her face, in her hair — it seemed instead to be something that warped the air.

Perhaps, even, the same force that kept the Engines of the Apocalypse aloft?

Okay, what's the worst that can happen? Kali thought. If I step over the breach I end up hovering there and have to claw my way back.

But what if the only reason that the rocks and backpack were hovering was because they were lighter than she was? What if this resistance, whatever it was, allowed the gradual descent of something with more mass — the objects that had scored the floor of the cave, perhaps? What if the strange force warping the air acted as some kind of invisible elevator?

Kali stepped forward, her foot wobbling slightly on the air, and then drew herself over the hole. She stuck her arms out straight like a wire walker and giggled as she floated. Then, very slowly she began to descend. Instinctively, Kali took a deep breath, but then smiled to herself. This wasn't water she was dealing with, this was something else entirely, and it had so far proved to be harmless, so she saw no reason why she shouldn't enjoy the ride.

Down she went, slowly down. At long last, Kali felt solid rock beneath her feet once more.

She stared at a solid rock wall. Disappointment threatened to overwhelm her once again. But then she turned around.

Kali smiled. Hello, hub, she thought.

Stretching away ahead of her, cut to the same dimensions as the vertical shaft, was a tunnel running horizontally through the rock, disappearing into the distance. Kali took a step forward, shrugged away a moment of giddiness, and waited while her eyes adjusted to the dim light of the underground.

The smooth, curving walls here were not bare rock, but lined with a softly-glowing metal, as was the floor, both inscribed over every inch of their surface with thousands upon thousands of delicate etchings. There were far too many of these etchings for Kali to be able to make sense of them as a whole, but they were undoubtedly dwarven in style and, what was more, of a kind that she had never come across before. The archetypal dwarven symbology was, of course, usually to do with war but Kali didn't see a single battleaxe, anvil or roaring dwarven visage. Instead, the fine etchings were flowing, swirling patterns — millions of them, perhaps — that reminded her of mathematical or algebraic symbols, all interlocking and sweeping in every direction and along the curving walls, combining as a whole into a thing of beauty. But were they just decorative or did they serve another purpose? Kali placed her palm on one small area of the etchings and immediately snatched it away, her flesh jolted, tingling and numb. Well, that answered that. Whatever they were, they were more than just decorative.

The answers lay ahead, they had to, and Kali began to walk the tunnel's length. She moved with caution, her concerns about the lack of traps playing on her mind. Again, though, there was no sign at all of anything threatening. The one thing that made her slow in her tracks turned out not to be any kind of hazard at all.

Lying on the floor of the tunnel, apparently torn apart, was the remains of some kind of machine. Multi-limbed, with appendages that resembled tools, it reminded her of some kind of giant spider.

Kali took a wide berth around it, just in case, and proceeded along the tunnel.

With all of her concentration focused on detecting traps she felt sure should be there, she found herself suddenly caught off guard, her progress impeded not by any trap but an unexpected wave of dizziness and disorientation that threw her off balance and sent her staggering.

"Whoa," Kali muttered.

Her head thumped, the passage seemed to spin about her, and she felt suddenly very hot with a wash of tingling saliva in her mouth, and a wave of nausea. Palms pressed against the passage wall, Kali swallowed and shook her head, feeling it buzz as she did and bringing a sudden stabbing pain behind the eyes. What the pits was going on? She suddenly felt as if she had the hangover from the hells. The previous evening had been a little heavy, even for her, but it felt all wrong. There was a throbbing heaviness of the head there, for sure, and an acid biliousness in her gut, but she knew what a hangover felt like and this wasn't it.

There was only one other conclusion. Something about — something in — this place was messing with her insides.

The sensation passed as she moved a few feet further on, and returned once more as she drew nearer to the end of the passage, before inexplicably disappearing again. Thrown, Kali continued, experiencing a few minutes of normality, before, abruptly, the debilitating sensation hit her once more. And if anything, it was worse than before. The resurgent feeling slapped her like a wave and, never mind her stomach, she felt as if her brain itself was sloshing about in her head. This time Kali buckled and actually did throw up and for a few seconds remained on her hands and knees, trailing spittle and groaning. She didn't want to get up but she knew she had to, that the sensations were connected to particular spots in the passageway and, perhaps by extension, in the whole place. Unless she wanted to suffer an ignominious death by a thousand heaves, she had to find a safe spot, and quickly.

Kali picked herself up, her vision wavering and blurring, and, her brain feeling like one of Slowhand's balloon animals, weaved like a drunk towards the end of the passageway. The current section seemed to have no safe spot whatsoever. She was dimly aware of passing another couple of the wrecked, spidery machines — in fact, almost tripping over one of them in her reduced state — and tried to think more about what function they might serve but found her concentration slipping away from her, unable to focus on anything but placing one foot in front of the other.

As bad as she felt, however, she could not help but react to what she saw as she reached the end of the passageway — even if for a second she thought it might be some vision induced by her delirium. Once more, Kali fell to her knees, not due to the disorientating effects of the place but because she was so staggered by the chamber she found herself in.

No, chamber was not a word that did this place justice. Spectacular as it had been, chamber was a word that described the lower level of Quinking's Depths, but this was…

Kali was kneeling on a platform overlooking a vast dwarven machine room, its metal-ribbed heights soaring as high above her as they plunged into the depths below. It was a vertiginous, spherical world of a place that made her feel as if she had stepped into the very core of Twilight itself. Great, irregularly-shaped metal objects rose and fell in the centre of the massive sphere, other smaller devices hovering around them like the satellites of metal moons. Other masses simply hung in the air, rotating slowly, while around the edge of the sphere, along its equator, a massive band of metal spun constantly, alternately clockwise and anti-clockwise, blurred by its speed — some kind of accelerator. And working on and around all of it — skittering on, about and around the devices — were spidery machines like the ones she had seen wrecked in the tunnel.