Mike Wild - Engines of the Apocalypse

Kali set to work.

Kali made the rendezvous that evening, helped along by three jumps from Horse, the last of which brought them atop an escarpment overlooking the dark border of the Sardenne. The forest stretched to the west and east as far as the eye could see, as did, about half a league back, the Final Faith cordon. Dotted by campfires along its vast length, it was as yet impossible to make out the individual figures waiting around them, but the numbers involved were staggering. Bolstered now by legions from both the Vossian and Pontaine militaries, the force represented the first time the two armies had come together since the Great War, and the first time ever that they had done so in peace. It was a reflection of the seriousness of the threat they faced. As Kali watched them from on high she felt almost like a party pooper knowing she had to tell them they had no choice but to stay their arms.

Her gaze rose into the azure twilight. As massive as the cordon was, the escarpment afforded a ringside view of something even more daunting — something now utterly unavoidable. The thick pillar of souls rising from deep within the Sardenne was now twice the height it had been when Kali had last seen it. A vertical maelstrom that swirled endlessly and chaotically and, whether it was her imagination or not, seemed to scream out at the darkening sky. Maybe the poor souls trapped within sensed their time was coming, Kali thought, because the pillar appeared, from her perspective, to be already piercing the outer layers of Kerberos, actually making contact with the gas giant itself. It wasn't — yet — but at the rate the pillar was growing she reckoned she'd been more or less bang on with the deadline she'd estimated.

Tomorrow was when it would happen.

Kali bit her lip and spurred Horse gently on, walking him down the hillside and to the perimeter of the central camp. Two Faith guards nodded in acknowledgement and parted to let her pass. She tethered Horse near a gathering of tents, clustered around a crackling campfire. A few acolytes were clustered around the fire, where Slowhand was fleecing them in a game of quagmire. By the look of his upturned cards, the archer had just stymied his opponents with a five-card plop and was raking in a handful of silver tenths.

"Hooper, how you doing?" He said casually as she approached. He nodded to the acolytes, a request for privacy, and they left shaking their heads and pulling less than pious faces.

"Oh, you know. Been introducing the pure of heart to the evils of gambling?"

Slowhand inclined his head to the east. "Didn't fancy a walk in the woods."

"Understandable." Kali sat herself down beside him and cracked open a bottle of thwack from her backpack, downing two thirds of it and heaving sigh.

"Introducing the pure of heart to the evils of drink?" Slowhand countered.

"Nope. It's all mine."

Slowhand smiled.

"Besides, there's no such thing as evil drink, only evil empty bottles." She took another swig and then upturned the one in her hand, scowling. "See."

"Rough couple of days?"

Kali shrugged. "No more than usual. Discovered Bastian Redigor is an elf, travelled a few thousand years into the past, give or take a teatime, almost got sliced apart by spectral hags, and then nearly turned into a doily by magnets the size of farking mountains."

"Right."

"Oh, and I had a kebab."

"Ooooh. There's that death wish again. But I take it the elf thing is what I should be paying attention to?"

Kali nodded. "I need to talk to the others."

"Well, Freel's patrolling the camp. Fitch is off somewhere, avoiding me. And Dez — sorry, Gabriella — is in her tent. I think she's… you know, the thing with the hands."

"Praying?"

"That's the one."

"For once, it might not do any harm. Which tent is she in?"

"The one behind you," DeZantez said. She was folding up a shnarlskin prayer mat as she exited, appearing casual, but by the look of her Kali had risen in her estimation for having returned. "Did I hear you say something about an elf ?"

Kali stood. "I think you'd better get your people together."

Gabriella studied her, then nodded.

A few minutes later she, Freel, General McIntee, Fitch and assorted other senior officers were gathered in war council, listening to what Kali had to say. The relief of the magic users following their realisation that magic was, as it were, back on line, dissipated when Kali told them what she had discovered. There was almost universal silence, the only person to speak Gabriella DeZantez. And perhaps because what she heard conflicted so much with her own faith — everything she believed about the sanctity of souls and Kerberos — the only word she was able to utter was an incredulous, "What?"

"The return of the Ur'Raney," Kali said. "It's what the Pillar of Souls is for. To act as a conduit between Twilight and Kerberos, allowing the exchange of the human souls Redigor has taken with those of his dead elves. One for one, every one of his subjects reincarnated, right here, as an army, in the bodies of the soul-stripped."

"The bodies of farmers and their wives, their children?" General McIntee said doubtfully. "I do not see how they could pose much of a threat."

"I seem to remember them being pretty threatening under your cathedral," Slowhand countered. "To say nothing of the shit that's been hitting the fan everywhere else."

"Actually, the general's partly right, Liam. When the Ur'Raney inhabit the soul-stripped they will be alive again, and physically vulnerable as a result. But it's my guess that during whatever ritual Redigor is going to conduct he'll also transfer some of the physical essence of the Ur'Raney to alter the hosts." She turned to McIntee. "If I'm right, General, they'll be transformed, and you won't be facing farmers, their wives and their children, you'll be facing thousands of elven biomorphs."

"That's the bit I don't get," Slowhand said. "This necropolis you mentioned. It's got to be just bursting with pointy-eared stiffs, yes? So why doesn't Redigor just 'ritualise' the Ur'Raney back into their old bodies?"

"That, I don't know," Kali admitted. "Maybe it's just been too long."

Freel took a pensive breath. "You called them Redigor's 'subjects,'" he said. "Are you saying Redigor was some kind of elven king?"

"King, no. Lord, yes. The elves had no monarchy as such. What they did have were elven 'families' or courts — the Ur'Raney, Pras'Tir, Var'Karish and others — each autonomous but led by their Lord and twelve lieutenants who made up a kind of high council called the rannaat."

"Coincidence?" Gabriella pointed out. "The Anointed Lord and the other dignitaries who were taken by the soul-stripped?"

Kali nodded. "I think Redigor has them marked as hosts for his lieutenants."

"Except thirteen were taken," Freel pointed out. "Thirteen, not twelve."

"Yes, well," Kali said slowly.

She had her own theory on that particular discrepancy and her mind flashed back to the portrait in Redigor's tower. Makennon's resemblance to his one time mu'sah'rin must have seemed to him to be a gift from the gods or, at least, his gods.

Because, at one and the same time, the 'First Enemy' had the opportunity to behead the Final Faith of its leader and humiliate them in a way only the Ur'Raney knew how. The effort of reactivating the Engines of the Apocalypse might have been worth it to him for that alone.

"I think I can explain that," Kali continued carefully, considering the loyalties and sensitivities of the company she was in. "The Ur'Raney had little respect for the females of their court and I don't think Makennon has been taken to be one of his lieutenants."

"Then what?" Fitch queried.