Mike Wild - Engines of the Apocalypse

Kali couldn't take it all in, let alone make any sense of it, especially in the state she was in, and she crouch-walked along the platform until she found the blessed relief of a safe spot. Here, she felt able to crawl forward and peer down over the lip of the platform.

The machine room went far deeper than she had envisaged, burrowing down into the natural, rocky depths, so that the whole place was the shape of an upturned teardrop. Rising from that rocky depth was the reason 'the hub' had been built here, a narrow and tapering pinnacle of rock that disappeared into the confusion above, forming the centre around which they turned. The rock seemed, somehow, to be exerting an influence on the objects, keeping them afloat and in motion, and even from where she studied it Kali could feel the force it was emanating, as if she were leaning into a strong wind. She realised suddenly what it was she was dealing with here. The pinnacle of rock was an unimaginably massive lodestone — a giant, natural magnet — and its satellites had to be magnets, too, repelling and attracting each other in a geological dance choreographed by unbelievably complex forces. By the gods, they said the dwarves were masters of the very rocks themselves but this… this was incredible. It was magnetism on a massive scale, a peninsula-wide field controlling the Engines of Apocalypse.

Kali shook her head, another wave of dizziness hitting her, and, as she did, she caught a glimpse between the gaps in the revolving magnets of something else — something perched on top of the lodestone secured by bent struts. Some kind of platform, with what appeared to be a control panel on it. There was something else on the platform, too, and Kali felt a knot of dread in her chest as, through increasingly wavering vision, she made out four of Bastian Redigor's soul-stripped, at their feet another wrecked spider. They had clearly been despatched to activate the Engines, and as far as she could see it would be impossible to access the controls without them detecting her presence.

But wait. There was something not right about them. The soul-stripped were less than animate when not under the direct control of the Pale Lord but these four seemed to be not so much standing at the panel as slumped there. But that didn't make sense. Wouldn't Redigor would have kept them alive to ensure the continued operation of the Engines, or at the very least to stop anyone coming along to turn them off? What, then, was going on?

Kali swallowed as the brief glimpses of the soul-stripped the revolving magnets permitted her revealed more about their state. The soul-stripped were not moving because they could not move. Each of them was quite, quite dead, rivulets of blood congealed beneath their mouths, ears and nostrils. Where their eyes had been were simply empty sockets still slowly oozing gore. It was as if some external influence had taken hold of their heads and squeezed until they popped.

Kali raised her fingertips to her own nostrils, and they came away red and wet. The dwarves had established no defences here because no defences were needed. The spider machines had been built to maintain the hub once it was running because the dwarves knew the overwhelming magnetic forces at play would prove deadly to any living thing, including themselves. While Redigor's puppets were no longer strictly alive, their bodies were still flesh and blood, subject to the same physical vulnerabilities as anyone.

Kali wondered if Bastian Redigor had felt the agonising pain that must have accompanied the soul-stripped's deaths. And she wondered, more resilient than most or not, how long it would be before she started to feel her own.

She had to reach the control panel.

Get the job done and get out of there fast.

Kali stood and found herself staggering, forced to steady herself on a nearby strut. Oh, that was just great. Under normal circumstances getting the job done might have involved a couple of daring leaps across the magnets and then onto the control platform, but in her current condition there was no chance of that. She had to find an alternative route.

Kali studied the chamber and its central platform. Once upon a time it had to have had some kind of access walkway but that had clearly been removed once the structure was finished, meaning there was no direct way to it. The pattern in which the magnets orbited it, however, did present one or two moments when protrusions of the rotating stones almost touched the platform. If she could get onto one she should be able to make the jump across. There was no way onto them from this side of the chamber, but on the other side one of the objects that passed near the platform also passed near the edge of the chamber, and that distance, too, looked jumpable. It sounded easy enough — A to B to C — but the only problem was that getting to B would involve having to hitch a ride on the accelerator. The very, very, very fast accelerator.

Kali looked down. There was some kind of access hatch beneath her feet and she bent and flipped it open, staggering back as a wave of velocity seemed to slam through the gap. The accelerator lay directly under the hatch, as she'd hoped, but there was no way she could drop onto it while it was in motion. Kali swallowed, watching it ram first one way and then the other, each transition marked with an almighty clang. Gods, it was fast — the moment in which it paused to change directions fleeting — and her timing would have to be perfect. She waited while it stopped once, twice, and on the third time dropped without hesitation, flattening herself and grabbing hold as tightly as she could before it started again.

Thankfully, the accelerator was layered with tiny ridges and these afforded Kali a better grip than she would otherwise have had. Even so when, a heartbeat later, the accelerator punched back into life, she was almost ripped from its surface like a leaf. Kali skidded backwards, grabbing at the ridges to slow herself, and heard herself screaming, partly in exhilaration, partly in shock. She felt her teeth bared, her cheeks flapping and the flesh of her face rippling against her skull as she was carried around the perimeter of the chamber at unimaginable speed, the room blurring. The ride was over almost in an instant, however, and Kali screamed again as she found herself flipped heels over head, her grip snatched away, skidding helplessly forward on her back. She had only a second to react and she clamped her fingers onto the ridges and, with a grunt, flipped herself over, grabbing them once again.

The accelerator punched itself in the opposite direction once more, and now Kali found herself travelling backwards, her bodysuit almost torn from her body. She suddenly hadn't a clue where in the chamber she was and, for a moment, nearly panicked. Then her eyes fixed on the central control platform, the only constant in an ever changing blur, and she kept her gaze trained on it, marking its position and the magnets around it each time the accelerator stopped. At least she was no longer being thrown, having splayed herself over the accelerator like a human limpet.

Kali had to endure another five of the sudden punches while she waited for the floating magnet to rotate into a position where she would be able to reach it. It was hellishly slow and, by the time it finally did come round, she felt as if she'd been locked in a stable with a rampaging bamfcat. She simply wanted to lie down and die. This was hardly the spot to do so, however. If she relaxed, even for a second, her only memorial would be a Kali Hooper shaped hole in the chamber wall which no living thing would ever see.

Kali rode the accelerator for what was hopefully the last time, slowly and very, very carefully lifting herself into a crouching position. With even her hair whipping at her, she was almost torn free before the accelerator even stopped — and in that position certainly would be when it did stop — but her plan was to make the leap between accelerator and magnet in the split second before it did, using the speed and angle to propel herself to the target. Despite her calculations, this was going to be a leap of faith and the last thing she needed was the sudden, dizzying pounding in her head. Kali didn't even have the strength to curse, and certainly not the strength to hold on any longer, so she simply allowed herself to be thrown into the air.