Mike Wild - Engines of the Apocalypse

"Bloody hells," Kali said at last.

"Not exactly welcoming, is it?" Freel added.

"It's going to be less welcoming in a second, if we don't move it." Slowhand nodded towards the top of the threshold.

While the three of them had been examining the necropolis, the ranks of soul-stripped had continued to file towards it, into it , and now the very last of them were being absorbed by the blackness within. The entrance began to seal, a mountainous stone slab rumbling slowly down. The three of them were still some two hundred yards away from it.

"Shit!" Kali cried, and began to run, Slowhand and Freel hot on her heels.

Negotiating the tangled floor of the gorge at speed was not easy, however, and the entrance was half closed before they had covered a third of the distance.

Kali continued to pound along the gorge, shouting to Slowhand and Freel to move, move, move! The two men were already slowing behind her. Kali struggled for a few more steps before she, too, was forced to accept that the attempt was hopeless, and she roared in frustration. As the last of the soul-stripped vanished, the slab closed with a rumble of ground-shaking, deafening finality. She pounded on the door as the others caught up.

"Hooper, it's useless…" Slowhand said.

Kali continued to pound, staring up at and around the slab as she did. "Dammit, I will not be stopped now!"

"Miss Hooper, I fear the archer is correct."

"No! There's a way. There has to be a way."

Slowhand slumped with his back to the slab. "Well, we're open to suggestions…"

Kali stared at him, hot, angry, and breathing hard. She was about to bite his head off when she suddenly turned away from the slab, staring back down the gorge, toward the forest.

She began to stomp off, Slowhand giving her a curious glance.

"Hooper, where the hells are you going?"

"Redigor's not going to stop me now," Kali reiterated. "You two stay here, do what you can."

"And you?" Slowhand shouted after her.

"Plan C!"

"Which is?"

"We have a locked door, right?" Kali yelled. "Then what we need is a key!"

Slowhand and Freel watched Kali work her way back down the gorge and into the undergrowth with a mixture of puzzlement and concern. The archer thought he caught sight of her a few minutes later — of all things, climbing trees — but he couldn't be certain and his attention was caught by Freel, anyway. The Faith enforcer had been studying the huge, statue-covered frame of the slab, apparently working out a way to climb the incline. Now he seemed to have decided where to start and lashed his whip upwards so that it wrapped around one of the lower statues, then, with a grunt, began to pull himself up towards it.

"Where the hells are you going?" Slowhand said.

"Doing what I can. Looking for another way in."

"Hooper will get us in there, Freel. Trust me."

"I believe she will try . But in all truth this whole operation has been a disaster so far, though through no fault of your Miss Hooper. And now she's out in the Sardenne, alone. Face it, archer, there's no guarantee she'll be back."

" She'll be back . She always comes back."

"And if she doesn't come back this time? Like Jenna didn't?"

The question completely threw Slowhand. "I — "

"I knew Jenna had been assigned to the Drakengrats," Freel said. "And I didn't know why, or for how long. But you sense, somehow, when it's been long enough, and then you start to wonder. I wondered, in fact, until Makennon summoned me, with news. The news came from the one survivor…"

"Freel…"

"You love her, don't you?"

Slowhand hesitated, momentarily unsure whether Freel meant Jenna or Kali, until he realised that he'd spoken in the present tense.

What had brought about these sudden revelations, he wasn't sure, nor why he was about to again be so candid with the man. Was it because of what had happened to Jenna at his hands? Did he feel the need to justify himself, giving Freel the full picture of the circumstances, and his place in them, that had brought about his sister's — and Freel's wife's — death?

"Sometimes I love her. And sometimes she annoys the fark out of me. And sometimes I wonder whether I'm in way out of my depth. I'd follow her anywhere and do anything for her but one thing's for sure — she isn't the innocent tavern owner and sometime adventurer she was when we first met. Something's happening , Freel, but whatever it is, she won't let me anywhere near it."

Freel nodded. He lashed his whip around a second statue now, and began to haul himself up. "You coming?"

Slowhand looked back down the gorge, but if he had indeed seen Kali she was now gone. He nodded and, without hesitation, unslung Suresight, attached one of his whizzlines, and fired it towards a statue above Freel. A second later he had hoisted himself to a position where he waited for the enforcer to catch up.

"Useful toy," Freel commented. "But this isn't some kind of competition…"

"I know. I'm just trying to get the job done."

Now that they had bypassed the initial lip of the slab's frame, where the statuary was sparser, there was no need to continue using the whip or Suresight, and the pair were able to pull themselves manually from one statue to the other. The going was slow. Some of the grotesque figures were unstable in their settings, and needed to be negotiated with the utmost care. When, finally, they reached the halfway point of the incline, the men paused, breathless and sweating.

"How did you meet?" Freel asked. "You and Miss Hooper."

Despite himself, Slowhand smiled. "On the Sarcre Islands. I'd bought passage with a pilot named Silus. He, in turn, had been hired to pick up a female passenger from one of the outlying islets — but I don't think he knew what he was going to get. Hooper came running at us out of the jungle, down the beach, dropping ancient artefacts as she ran, she was trying to carry so many. She yelled at us to rig for top knots, and a mob of angry natives poured out of the jungle after her. All of a sudden about a thousand fire arrows came arcing through the sky and Silus had no choice but to get the boat out of there. I was pitched overboard and ended up on the beach, with Hooper, surrounded by the natives. Turned out what she'd thought was an Old Race site was actually a temple to their fertility god… Rumpo-Pumpo, or something." Slowhand paused and shrugged in the manner of someone convinced the name couldn't be quite right. "Hooper was new to the game, then."

"You obviously lived to tell the tale."

"Just. The two of us ended up stripped and dumped in a pot to be blanched for the native's supper, jammed together thigh to thigh. Only got out when I told them we had the hic."

"That would do it. You actually sound as if you enjoyed yourself."

"Ohhhh, yes. Took Hooper back a year or two later when the natives had started dabbling in tourism. Room with a hot tub. Wasn't my fault the native eldress recognised us. Hooper almost got stuffed and I… well, I was cursed."

"Cursed how?"

"Something about me always being dressed for dinner. Never could work it out myself."

Freel looked at him sceptically. He'd read the report of the number of times Slowhand had been arrested for losing his clothes, so it was either an astounding set of coincidences or the man was in complete and utter denial.

"Let's move on," Freel said.

He grabbed the base of the next statue and heaved himself upward. Slowhand was about to follow when, with a crack, the statue broke away from its base. Freel tried to throw himself free but was snagged in the statue's hands and found himself tipping over the edge of the buttress. The statue dropped another foot with a sharp jerk and the remainder of its base began to crumble. Slowhand steadied himself and thrust out a hand but couldn't reach.