Engines of the Apocalypse

safe enough to traverse, then put on a sudden burst to reach its other end. She did the same with the second, and then the third. The fourth presented a problem, almost as unpredictably erratic as the one on which Slack had met his doom. The effects of the quake on the cavern were worsening. What the dwarves had intended to be a protective sanctum for as long as the hill above existed was now starting to come down about her ears. While she ran on the spot waiting for safe passage a rain of dust and stones left her coated in a grey shroud, and she had to dive out of the path of several large chunks of debris.

Then, when the bridge finally seemed stable enough for passage and Kali began to race across, all of the pillars began to move up and down.

Kali felt her stomach lurch as the pillar ahead rose and the one behind sank, taking the bridge with them so that she suddenly faced an uphill flight.

Oh, you have got to be kidding.

Kali pumped her legs until she neared the rising pillar ahead, and, with a bellow, threw herself onto it, rolling into a ready position for the next, crouched to leap.

There were only two bridges left now, but she was painfully aware that the next was the one that had so abruptly ended Slack's time on Twilight. It was once more flickering every half second or so but, interestingly, the claws had still not fallen through, which suggested it was stable enough to take her. The problem lay in timing it right, because if she moved at the wrong moment the pillar ahead would have risen too far and she'd once again face a steep incline to reach the end.

Kali ducked as the cavern shook violently and further falls of rock poured from the roof all about her, and then scowled at the bridge ahead. It looked as right as it was ever going to be.

Kali moved, faster than even she thought possible, but once again the quake scuppered her plans. As she began to race for the final pillar a massive boulder detached itself from the cavern roof and plummeted straight down. The boulder seemed to hit the pillar in slow motion, splitting asunder before bouncing off into the abyss, and in its wake the pillar started to crack and break apart. What was worse, it severed the link with the last two bridges. Kali staggered and yelped in protest as the threads there began to sputter and die, and now it was her mind rather than her body that raced. She took in all of the possibilities presented by the changing circumstances and moved again, heading not for the pillar but for the Deathclaws. It had never been her intention to remove them from the cavern but now they were coming with her whether she liked it or not. In fact, they might even save her life.

Kali didn't even slow to pick the ancient weapons up, executing a rolling somersault as she ran, one hand slipping into each of the claws and shaking to lose Slack's disembodied grip. His appendages spun down into the abyss, arcing trails of blood, until something white snatched them out of the air to join the rest of him, but Kali was already gone.

Her sole interest now was in reaching the collapsing pillar before the bridge died or it broke apart completely. The pillar was more or less level as she reached it, though far from intact, and as Kali landed on its buckling and crumbling surface it finally relinquished its hold on the bridge ahead, which blinked out of existence before her eyes.

She didn't need to turn around to know that the bridge behind her was also gone, but neither did she let the fact that she was seemingly now trapped on a disintegrating finger of rock hinder her pace. Kali ran full pelt across its surface and then, even as she felt the pillar tipping and tumbling away beneath her feet, she let out a loud 'gaaaaaah!' and launched herself into the air.

Arms and legs flailing to stretch as much distance out of the leap as possible, she seemed to hurtle though the air for ever. But then she thudded into the stalactite ahead of her, the claws embedding themselves effortlessly into the spine of rock.

Kali simply hung there for a second.

'Oh, yes,' she breathed to herself.

From the stalactite to the ledge and the exit was now only a minor jump, and Kali made it with ease. She would have taken a moment to pay her respects to Slack but the cave was rapidly filling with rubble. But as Kali moved into it she did cast a backward glance into the cavern that had almost claimed her life. The last of the bridges were flickering out now, leaving the ages old resting place in darkness but even as the roof caved in, she sensed that it hadn't been the quake that had caused the bridges to go away. No, something else had killed the magic.

Maybe when she reached the surface she'd find out what the hells was going on.

Chapter Two

Hells was the right word. As in all of them breaking loose. Kali dragged herself spluttering and squinting up into the dawn light, disorientated and wrong-footed. Not only because the landscape she remembered from before her descent was now obscured by a dust cloud so thick she could bite it; she also immediately found herself dodging rivers of scree flowing rapidly down the hillside. As the treacherous stones threatened to sweep her off her feet, Kali hopped left and right.

There was no escaping it. The whole range rumbled as if the world itself were coming to an end. The boulders she dodged smashed into others below, cleaving apart with cracks like thunder, the guttural, groaning, thrashing sounds of uprooted trees and vegetation and the strange, hollow clattering of falling rock everywhere. There was another sound, too, not particularly loud in comparison, but one to which demanded Kali's attention. It was the agitated snorting and roaring of Horse, whom she had left tethered nearby — safely, she'd thought at the time.

Kali scanned the hillside, trying to locate the bamfcat in the chaos. As she did she caught sight of a dark, spherical object, the size of a fussball, darting here and there through the dust-filled air. As she saw it, it stopped dead, hovering right in front of her eyes. Kali recoiled instinctively, thinking what the hells? But by the time she'd recovered enough to try to work out what the sphere was it had already gone, darting away into the fog as quickly as it had come.

Weaving to dodge the tumbling descent of yet more stones, Kali began to work her way across the hillside once more, at last spotting Horse rearing against his tether, horns and armour plating deployed to deflect falling rubble. She moved to him quickly, slapped his side solidly and whispered calming words in his ears, and, though his nostrils still flared and he bucked slightly beneath her, the bamfcat no longer fought her. One thing was for sure, though — she had to get him out of there. Kali quickly untied his tether and led him away from the quake. At least that was her intent. The problem was, there didn't seem to be any away to get to. What Kali had thought to be a phenomenon specific to the hills was actually affecting an area much wider.

Exactly how much became clear as soon as she and Horse topped the next ridge.

When she had ridden up into the hills with Slack the previous evening, she had left below her a town lying peacefully in the savannah and forest lands east of Andon. Solnos was positioned beyond a sun-bleached but solid wooden bridge, the river meandering gently around its northern outskirts, and at the other end of town a grassy escarpment rose to the south before sloping away in the direction of Fayence. The town itself was a little smaller than Kalten, without defensive walls because none had ever been needed, and its buildings were one or two-storey affairs, constructed of blindingly white plastered bricks over a wooden framework. The buildings were centred around two squares, each strung with bunting and paper lanterns, one lined with shops selling everything from food to farming implements to bolts of silk, the other home to the town's well and church, a twin-turreted and bell- towered affair that was rurally typical of the Final Faith. The Faith's 'missionary' presence in such an otherwise idyllic spot had been the only thing that had stopped Kali musing on the possibility of opening a second Here There Be Flagons in the town, but it had been something she'd remained willing to consider should the Faith ever be kicked out on their arses, as they thoroughly deserved.

Now, it was likely she never could. Solnos was turning rapidly to ruin.

Where only the previous afternoon children had been laughing and playing in the streets, their parents sampling the exotic fare of the town's communal dining plaza, all had degenerated into chaos.

The white buildings were now criss-crossed with a growing number of cracks, each widening by the second as the buildings were shaken to their foundations. Many of the inhabitants of the town were racing in and out of the