Mike Wild - Engines of the Apocalypse

If she did say so herself, there was no doubt that she had saved the best for last.

As the two tensioned vines stretched across the gorge floor were snapped by the Juggennath's staggering feet, a complex series of weights and counterweights were set rapidly in motion, and the two overhanging trees that Kali had tied back using ropes and pulleys sprang out from the gorge wall and slapped it hard in the back, somewhere in the region of each shoulderblade. Flung forward, the Juggennath roared and swung its mighty arms, trying to regain its balance, but its enforced momentum had already tipped its centre of gravity, and its mass was far too great to recover from such a complication in time to save it from its inevitable fall. It careened forward head-first, the heavy and uncontrolled pounding of its feet travelling up its body and shaking Kali to the bone, and she knew it was time to leave. She turned away from the eye and began to scramble down the back of the beast's neck, then unexpectedly flipped forward with a yelp, suddenly halted in her flight.

What the hells? She thought, and twisted her body, struggling to look above and behind her.

She saw that her foot had become entangled in a knot of the Juggennath's hair and she was now dangling from it like some kind of decoration.

Oh, that was great. Just great. Just farking great. How many seconds did she have before her plan came to fruition? Three? Two? One?

Roaring herself now, Kali flipped herself upward, tugged at the constraining mass of hair and then, realising she could not get free, instead heaved herself around the side of the Juggennath's neck as far as she could go.

One, in fact.

The last thing she saw with any clarity were the figures of Slowhand and Freel on the upper lip of the sealed entrance to Bel'A'Gon'Shri, their mouths agape. Then she saw the two of them throw themselves out the way.

By an odd coincidence, her cry echoed their own.

" Ohhhhhh, shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit…"

The Juggennath struck the sealed entrance to the necropolis like a battering ram, cracking the thick stone. For a moment it seemed that that might be it, that the slab would give no further, but the Juggennath's vicious spikes had embedded themselves in it. Clinging still to its neck, having at last managed to kick loose from its hair, Kali felt the Juggennath strain and lurch as the spider-web cracks widened and the slab crumbled before it. The Juggennath let out a last great roar of pain and protest and fell through the gap, hitting the floor with a force that rocked the very foundations of the necropolis. The Juggennath tried to pick itself up, but the remnants of the broken slab broke free and crashed onto its helpless form. It seemed unlikely that it would rise again.

A dusty, coughing figure picked itself up from next to the crushed, bloodied mass and stared into the darkness ahead. It wasn't exactly how she'd planned to make her entrance admittedly but, what the hells, the end result was the same. She'd promised Redigor she was coming and here she was.

"Knock, knock," Kali growled.

The first thing Kali noticed as she moved into Bel'A'Gon'Shri was how old the necropolis felt. It wasn't the usual sense of age she experienced when finding Old Race sites, but a feeling that she had somehow stepped backwards in time — not into the past exactly, but certainly out of the present. It was as if, when the place had been built, it had somehow clung onto its time and never been willing to let go.

Her world seemed suddenly far away and she was therefore grateful to see Slowhand and Jakub Freel silhouetted in the entrance, descending together on one of the archer's whizzlines. The pair climbed over the debris to join her.

"Quite the entrance," Freel commented.

"That?" Slowhand countered. "You should have seen how she got into the Hoard of the Har'An'Di."

"The lost artefacts of the forgotten tribe? I'm sorry I missed that."

"Don't be," Kali said. "They collected thimbles."

They fell silent as the dust settled. A vaulted corridor stretched away into the distance, as high and as broad as the massive door itself, and lined with carved representations of those in whose honour it had been built — statues as high as a house.

"The Ur'Raney, I take it," Freel said.

"The Ur'Raney," Kali repeated.

Freel nodded. "Nice."

In every case, the statues depicted the Ur'Raney inflicting some kind of torture or pain on helpless victims, ranging from dwarves to ogur, humans to fish-like creatures. The carved victims were shown as far smaller than their torturers. Freel slowly unwound his chain whip, keeping it at the ready, as they moved on through the avenue of horrors. He had a point, Kali and Slowhand realised, and unsheathed their own weapons, gutting knife and Suresight alike.

The silence that had met them at the entrance gave way to an unsettling chanting in the distance, that sounded as if it were coming from human mouths yet did not chant human words, and a chorus of agonised and desperate cries that could only be coming from the Chapel of Screams — the same tormented sounds that Slowhand and Freel had heard on the necropolis's roof, here amplified by its stone corridors until the whole place seemed to be suffering.

As they moved along the corridor no horde of soul-stripped came to meet them. Bastian Redigor did not stand threateningly in their way. The business now occupying him, it seemed, was being conducted deeper within. Their only company the leering statues, they came at last to an ornate double door and Kali halted them.

"Trapped?" Slowhand wondered.

"Can't see anything," Kali said, scanning the door and its frame.

"Maybe Redigor put all his faith in the slab back there," Freel guessed.

Kali nodded. Tentatively, she pushed the massive golden door with her fingers and it opened with ease.

The path became a bridge beyond the door, crossing a vertiginous chamber carved wholly out of some substance that looked disturbingly like bone. From the floor of the chamber to the ceiling on either side — and it was a long way up and a long, long way down — the frontages of countless tombs could be seen, each of them inscribed, in elven script, with the name of its occupant. Kali tried to count them but gave up after the third ledge of tombs, but there were thousands here. These were Bastian Redigor's people. This was the final resting place of the Ur'Raney.

But there was something wrong with the whole picture. Kali couldn't immediately put her finger on it but something was very wrong. Straining to read the script on the tombs, for the most part ignoring the names, her eyes flicked from one to the other until what was nagging at her clicked into place.

It was the dates accompanying the names. They were all the same.

"Yantissa 367, Interlude Third," she whispered to herself.

"Something wrong, Miss Hooper?" Freel queried.

"Yantissa 367, Interlude Third," Kali repeated more forcefully. "It's elven chronology. According to these tombs, all of these elves, thousands of them, died on the same day."

"So?" Slowhand said. "I thought it was generally accepted that the Old Races were wiped out in one go. Maybe that's when it happened?"

Kali pondered. "If it was, I'd be ecstatic, believe me, because we'd be able to pinpoint the end day exactly. But I don't think this date has anything to do with that."

"Why?"

"Think, Liam. If that was the day the Old Races were wiped out…"

"Who buried them?" Jakub Freel finished.

Slowhand looked from one to the other. "Redigor?"

"One man, all this?" Kali mused. "Even with an eternity to play with, I don't think so."

"Okaaay," Slowhand said. "So maybe Yantissa 367, Interlude Third isn't a day. I mean, I know your elven history is better than mine but as you admit yourself, you've still a lot to learn. Maybe Yantissa 367, Interlude Third refers to a period of time, and maybe it took the Ur'Raney a while to die out?"