Mike Wild - Engines of the Apocalypse

"Hey," Slowhand said. "It was me speaking. Let him down, take me instead."

" You?" Redigor boomed. "Why should I wish a bedraggled commoner when I have Prince Tremayne of the Allantian First Family?"

Both Slowhand and Kali turned to look at their helpless comrade.

"You didn't know ?" Redigor said.

"Prince Tremayne?" Slowhand said. "My sister married royalty?"

"Indeed. So you see why I have absolutely no need of riff-raff such as yourself."

"Yeah?" Slowhand challenged. "Well, let me show you what riff-raff can do."

The archer released a clutch of arrows at the Pale Lord in blinding succession. Redigor managed to deflect four of them but two breached his defences, embedding themselves solidly in his right thigh. Redigor gasped and stared down at the protruding shafts in incredulous fury and waved his hand again. Slowhand was propelled violently backwards along the length of the Chapel, impacting with the wall above the entrance with a bone-cracking, sickening thud. The archer slumped there, held by an unseen force, one arm dangling at an unnatural angle through Suresight's string.

Kali stared at her helpless lover and swallowed, then turned back to Redigor.

"Nice party tricks. But when do we get to the main event?"

Redigor raised an eyebrow. "You seem strangely eager."

Kali shook her head. "Nope. But if we've a few minutes, I wouldn't mind the answers to a few questions."

Redigor steepled the fingers of both hands, intrigued. He nodded for Kali to continue.

Kali again looked at Slowhand and Freel. The questions she had in mind, she would not normally have raised in anyone else's presence for fear of burdening them with what she had learned at the Crucible, but both men had lapsed into semiconsciousness. Still, she wanted to take no chances, and spoke to Redigor in elvish.

"Now that we're alone," she said. "What's this all about, Baz?"

"What? You are trying to buy time, child. You know this already."

"Of course I know you're bringing your people back. What I'm asking is, why now?"

"Now?"

"I saw the charts in your tower in Fayence, and I know the intellect you possess. You know as much as I do that a darkness is coming — the same darkness that obliterated the Old Races — so why would you want to resurrect your people when the world's about to come to an end?"

Redigor stared at her and burst into laughter, as if she were a child who had said something profoundly foolish. Kali frowned and pouted.

"Forgive me," Redigor said at last, though his tone still quaked slightly. "Forgive me, but I believe I have overestimated you. All you know is that the darkness is coming, isn't it? But you don't know what the darkness is, or why it comes. You don't know anything about it."

Kali felt her heart skip a beat.

"I'm willing to learn."

"An exercise in redundancy, believe me. There is nothing you can do."

"No? Then what did your people do, Baz? They all died at the same time, I know that, but no other member of the Old Races — elf or dwarf — had the luxury of his or her own tomb. They were just… gone."

Redigor's lip curled in amusement yet again. "Your point being?"

"That somehow your people survived the darkness. That somehow they — "

Kali stopped, something in Redigor's expression and something in her own head making the truth click into place.

"My Gods, they didn't survive, did they?" She said. "They died before the darkness came."

"All of them on the same day," Redigor confirmed. "Thousands of Ur'Raney ascending to Kerberos to wait for this moment, the moment of their return. It was glorious."

Kali felt suddenly, intensely cold. "You killed them?"

"They died at my behest. A subtle, mostly painless poison."

"A suicide pact?"

"A survival pact, child!" Redigor's eyes flared as he spoke. "Though even in their tombs I knew they would not be safe. Still, I knew the darkness would find them, ravage their physical remains, reduce them to husks. Only I remained whole. I, their guardian, their leader, their lord, curled like a babe, cocooned deep beneath the surface, swaddled in the thick, protective wraps of magic older than time. Only in this manner could I conceal myself from what came."

The thought of even someone as powerful as Redigor having to hide chilled Kali to the bone. But a question nagged at her.

"Why kill your people? Why didn't you just let the darkness take them and then restore them from Kerberos?"

Another laugh bubbled up from the Pale Lord.

"Because, child, when the darkness takes you, your soul does not go to Kerberos."

"What?" Kali said. "What is it, Redigor? What is the darkness?"

"The Hel'ss."

"The Hells?" Kali said.

"The antithesis of Kerberos. The Other."

Kali staggered with the sheer weight of the revelation. But whether what Redigor seemed to be telling her — that the fundamental beliefs of Twilight's religions were correct and there were two places to which souls went, Kerberos and the Pits, or in other words, the Hells — was true or not, another question nagged for an answer.

"But if it's coming again, how do you intend to survive it this time?"

Redigor shook his head almost sadly.

"We do not have to survive it this time, child, because this time it does not come for us."

"What? What are you saying?"

"That the last time it came for the elves and the dwarves. And this time it comes for you."

"Humans?" Kali gasped. "Are you saying it chooses what it wipes out?"

"I am saying that there is an order to these things."

"So that's your plan, you bastard? To get your jollies from enslaving us humans before inheriting what we leave behind? You disgust me. You're vultures."

Redigor smiled. "No. Vultures are creatures of instinct, their pickings what they find. We, on the other hand, are creatures of refinement, and the pain we shall inflict upon you will be exquisite. Think of it, child — as the darkness comes and the screams of your race echo across the land, we shall thrive ."

"Not if I can help it…"

Kali roared and leaped for Redigor, unsheathing her gutting knife as she did, but her hand was caught in a vice-like grip and Redigor's eyes stared down at her, wide and wild.

"What is it you are trying to do?" He said, almost compassionately.

"You said it yourself, Redigor," Kali gasped as she twisted in his grip. "There's an order to these things and you've had your turn. The Ur'Raney don't belong here any more."

"And you intend to stop me how? By scratching me with your knife?"

"I'll stop you, you bastard."

Redigor released his grip, but Kali found herself frozen before him. The Pale Lord gazed at the pillar of souls and took a deep, satisfied breath. "This isn't a time for weapons, child, this is a time for celebration. Dance for me."

"What?"

" Dance for me!"

Kali didn't do dance, she didn't like dance, she didn't understand dance, but she danced. Danced for the Pale Lord. Spasming and twitching at first, trying to resist, her feet began to tap the floor, and then she began to spin, moving away from the Pale Lord, down the aisle, her body whipping around again, and as much as she wanted to, she couldn't stop — couldn't stop, didn't stop, until she reached the far end of the Chapel of Screams. She slammed into the wall beneath Slowhand with numbing force and, her dance done, slumped to the floor.

"Did you really think you would be able to make a difference?" Redigor asked.

Kali shook her head and wiped a slick of blood from her face. She realised it was dripping on her from the archer suspended helplessly above her. Oh gods, Slowhand, she thought as her head spun. What was it she had gotten her lover into? What had she gotten them all into?