Mike Wild - Engines of the Apocalypse

"My being one of the Four."

"Hey, I don't think so," Kali said. "You did more than your bit to save the world today."

Gabriella shook her head again, but this time didn't laugh. "No. This wasn't the time, I sense that. Not the threat that is meant to bring the Four together…"

Kali turned away, biting her lip. When she looked at Gabriella again, the Enlightened One was staring directly at her.

"There's more you haven't told me, isn't there?" Gabriella asked. "You know something, don't you?"

Kali took a second before she spoke. "Not much. Something's coming. Darkness."

Gabriella absorbed the information, swallowed, and her body spasmed once more. But she retained enough control to study Kali intently. She clutched at Kali's hand, squeezed it. " Tell someone . Tell Slowhand. Don't go through this alone."

Kali nodded, while beneath her, Gabriella groaned.

"Do something else for me," she said. Slowly, her skeletal hand slipped into her charred surplice and withdrew the shard of Freedom Mountain, which she pressed into Kali's hand. She swallowed again, dryly, and her next words emerged almost as a wheeze. "Please. Watch me go."

Kali looked at the shard and at Gabriella and nodded. The Enlightened One squeezed her hand in thanks and held her gaze. Only after a few moments had passed did Kali realise that she was never going to look away again.

Kali took a shuddering breath and slowly raised the shard. She gasped, eyes widening, and smiled.

Gabriella's soul rose from her body in much the same way as Brother Marcus's had done, but there was something that distinguished it, not only from the Faith soldier's soul but from every other soul she had now seen.

Gabriella's essence shone brightly, blindingly. As it slowly wove its way upwards, towards Kerberos, it flared with all the colours of the threads, a rainbow burst filled far more with life than it ever could be with death.

Kali thought about everything she'd learned about Kerberos in the past few days. About how it might, despite her previous disbelief, be a part of everything.

And maybe, she thought, Gabriella had been wrong about not being one of the Four. Maybe, just maybe, she might yet still be.

A hand fell heavily on her shoulder.

"Hooper, I'm sorry," Slowhand said. "The Engines — there's something wrong."

There was something wrong, all right. Great shadows loomed over Kali even as she stood to take in what Slowhand had said. As she looked through the collapsed roof of the Chapel of Screams she saw that the Engines were lower in the sky than on their arrival. Their sirens were blaring in a deafening, urgent tone.

"Oh gods," she said. "They're coming down."

"Down?" Slowhand repeated. "Hooper, I thought you had control of these things?"

"I do… I did! They just weren't meant to come down so soon ."

"So soon ?"

"What, you thought I'd leave them up there? Slowhand, there's a reason they're called the Engines of the Apocalypse!"

"Right, right, fine," Slowhand said.

He looked around at the former members of Redigor's High Council, all of whom were shuffling slowly about the Chapel, disorientated "But I suggest we get these people out of here now."

Above them, one Engine tipped suddenly to the left, its siren blaring louder still, and grazed one of its companions. The sound of the immense machines grinding together drowned out even the increasingly distressed wail of the siren, and the explosion that followed drowned out even that. The first Engine shuddered on its axis and sheered off. The second came to a stop, hanging above them like a steel storm cloud.

And then, though strangely slowly for something of its size, it began to drop.

"Move, move, move!" The archer commanded, slapping Kali on the shoulder with his good arm and herding Makennon, Freel and the rest towards the Chapel's exit.

The Anointed Lord glared at him furiously for a moment, snarling over Redigor's remains, but she capitulated, turning to help Freel and Slowhand with steering their groggier counterparts from the Chapel.

As they ushered the nobles, lords and ladies onto the tomb bridge, the first Engine fell, burrowing into the hole left by the exploded chapel roof. As it came, slowly and inexorably, the edges of the hole began to crumble and collapse, bringing a rain of falling masonry. From near the exit, having just manhandled the last of Redigor's victims through, Kali stared back into the Chapel, picking out Gabriella's corpse through the resultant cloud of dust and debris. She started towards it, intending to carry it out with her, but two slabs of the roof collapsed in her path. Coughing and spluttering, Kali staggered back, looking for another way around. The Engine had begun to burrow itself into the base of the Chapel, and great jagged rents were splitting the floor, spidering out in all directions. Kali finally had to concede that there was no way through. Reluctantly, she turned and stepped onto the bridge.

As Kali began to race after the others, making their way slowly across the bridge, the second of the Engines slammed into the chapel roof and through it and the Chapel of Screams was no more. Kali looked back and swallowed as cracks began to pursue them across the bridge. Many of the former soul-stripped still milled by the tombs lining the chamber, free of their possession but lost on the crumbling walkways.

"Get a farking move on!" Kali shouted to those on the bridge, and to those above and below, "Hey, do you really want to die?"

Miraculously they all made it, bursting from the entrance of Bel'A'Gon'Shri and racing to safety along the gorge just as the entire necropolis collapsed. Kali and Slowhand ushered them on along the gorge, at last reaching a safe distance where the dust and debris from Bel'A'Gon'Shri choked and coated them but otherwise passed them harmlessly by.

The rest of the party out of harm's way, Kali told them to carry on while she and Slowhand paused for a while. She wanted to make sure that the third and last of the Engines followed its companions, not only to confirm that the peninsula was rid of the things but also because, in a sense, it would be like watching the final nail being hammered into Bastian Redigor's coffin.

Unfortunately, things didn't go quite according to plan. Explosions rocked the third Engine, and it began to spin faster and faster, before it fell.

Kali and Slowhand looked at the crooked remains of its companions beneath it, and did some quick mental calculations.

"Please tell me it's not going to do what I think it's going to do," Slowhand said.

Kali stared. "It's going to do what you think it's going to do."

"Oh. Hells."

"Shall we run?"

"I think we'd better."

Despite their words, they remained where they were for another couple of seconds, staring up.

The third engine was coming down on the other two and still spinning at full tilt. Exactly how the engine would react to that Kali and Slowhand couldn't be sure, but it wasn't likely to be gentle or quiet.

The third engine, its sirens blaring, listed badly to the side as it continued its fall, presenting itself side on to the remains of the engines below. The strangely shaped mass slewed into its companions with a grinding and clashing of metals louder even than the noise of the sirens, jamming itself between them and, with an almighty explosion, hurled itself out from between its grounded companions, tumbling end over end towards the necropolis's entrance. The Engine shattered and scattered statues as it came and, when its nose hit the ground, flipped itself end over end once more, bounced along the gorge for perhaps three or four rotations, and slapped down onto its belly with ground-quaking force, skewing along the gorge towards them.