“I am not responsible for the machinations of this infernal contraption; I am merely sensing a purpose to the otherwise-”
“Sir!” Fink ran toward Brewer shouting, “Scouts report entrances have appeared in two spots around the object!”
As the words left Fink’s mouth, Jon saw a force of Wraiths break away from their main group and hurry toward the obelisk. He turned the other direction and saw the Vikings sending a similar party forward.
He shouted, “Damn it! We’re going to have to fight our way inside!”
“I think not, General,” Reverend Johnny stopped pacing and pointed.
All the turning and stopping, reversing and turning again, came to a halt. The puzzle had, indeed, solved itself. A huge black hole of a doorway opened directly in front of the human army camped on the plain of ice.
General Brewer commanded, “Entry team! Let’s go!” He turned to Casey. “Captain Fink, you stay outside with the troops. If you don’t hear from us in about an hour, or if you have reason to believe we’ve failed, follow us in. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Sir! Good luck, Sir.”
Three dozen well-armed soldiers mustered at the front of camp. General Brewer and Reverend Johnny led them toward the opening in the obelisk. That opening stood tall enough to accommodate a Goat-Walker and wide enough to fit eight lanes of traffic.
As they approached, the massive gate made Jon feel puny; insignificant, like Jack finding the castle after climbing the beanstalk.
They formed two columns and jogged inside. The soft glow of the midnight sun faded as they followed the huge corridor. However, hundreds of pinpricks of light flickered to life on the dark walls, like stars on a night sky, providing just enough glow to illuminate the passage.
Boots thumped on a solid floor but despite the height of the ceiling and a hallway that stretched forward seemingly forever, no echo sounded.
“Cold in here,” Johnny remarked as his breath exhaled in white puffs.
“Listen,” Brewer held a hand aloft and the column halted. “Do you hear that?”
A rumble…deep and low as if machinery worked somewhere in the distance ahead. Jon thought he felt a vibration in the wall…
…Outside, Captain Casey Fink waved his arms and walked the same circular path over and over wearing a track in the snow both in an effort to generate body heat and as a result of nerves. He alternated his attention from the obelisk to the Wraiths off in the distance to his left, to the Vikings off in the distance to the right, and then back to the strange contraption ahead.
At that moment, the puzzle started again. A thick ring near the top rotated, then one at the bottom in the opposite direction, then a pair in the middle, one slower than the other.
The door through which Brewer, the Reverend, and their men had entered disappeared…
…The corridor trembled and the soldiers rocked back and forth. They moved-the entire passageway moved-with mild g-force pushing them toward a side wall.
A slab of black slid out and blocked the passage ahead. Another did the same behind, this one catching a soldier at rear of the column, shoving him into some unseen groove leaving behind his arms and rifle while the rest of him disappeared, either pulverized or carried off.
Groans, mumbles, and curses from the men. Jon suddenly felt more claustrophobic than he had during the entire trip on the submarine; he feared the roof-or perhaps the walls-would suddenly slam together and crush his entire team.
“Dear Lord, we are spinning! The levels are moving again!” Reverend Johnny shouted the obvious.
Brewer shouted back, “It’s a trap! All this way for a trap!”
Johnny said, “No, no that’s not right. It’s a puzzle, General! A giant puzzle box made of levels and rings. A combination spinning and turning to different solutions, one that showed us the path. Another to…to…”
Their movement stopped with a heavy thud as if something locked into place. Every man in the entry team including the Reverend and General Brewer slammed against the wall and fell to the ground, gear scattering and legs wobbling.
An eruption of noise burst into the hall.
Clang. Smash. Pop. Bang.
Over and over again, a sound of grinding, whirring, hissing, machinery.
Johnny staggered to stand, retrieved his heavy machine gun, and gawked at the flood of light now filling the tall corridor as he finished his thought, “Another to let us in.”
Brewer regained his feet but struggled to regain his senses.
The passage opened to chaos incarnate. The heart of the enigma.
His mind fought to decipher the sight. Huge, inextricable, alien. He took the vision in bits and pieces in an attempt to digest the whole.
Jon looked up and saw a ceiling so very high above, a ceiling cluttered with piping, gears, tubes, and pillars, some running along the roof, many more hanging down to various heights. Everything moving, pumping, sliding, and rotating.
He stood on a ring made of some kind of cream-colored metal that traveled the circumference of the massive round chamber, stretching off to either side. Ahead, that ring ended at a short drop off where another ring waited, then another, then another, terraced and descending into the bowels of the structure, each crowded with gears, cranks, wires, pipes, blocks of stone with pulsating veins, and spinning top-like gadgets, and glass balls with electronic explosions inside and huge corkscrews and stretching springs.
A city-sized machine.
Jon watched a massive gear as tall as a small skyscraper roll along the lip of one of the rings, matching its teeth to notches in the floor.
A gargantuan pendulum swung from the shadows, swooped through the mass of machinery, and then disappeared again on the far side of the incredibly huge chamber.
On the concave walls, long cylinders jetted forth and connected with arcane sockets, some several times larger than a man. Spinning drill-like extensions darted out for unknown reason. Giant rock balls rolled in oversized gutters.
Like his men, Jon gaped at the sight, paralyzed by the size, complexity, and energy of the place.
“It’s like…like we’re fleas in a giant Swiss Clock.”
Reverend Johnny replied, “The Lord has made everything for his own ends, even the wicked for the evil day.”
A twisting, swooping tunnel encased in some sort of grayish metal or rock worked its way above, through, and around the madness. Jon spied several openings that might be entrances of some type; perhaps this was a thing meant for transportation. A conveyor belt of sorts moved through that tunnel in a stop, start, stop, start again fashion.
That tunnel rose and turned then descended then turned again like an insane version of the monorail at Disney World. Jon could not see if it traveled all the way to the bottom but it made no difference because the nearest entry port was a distance away.
From far down beyond the descending platforms came a light seemingly a mile away, its shine somehow seeping through the pandemonium to reach Jon’s eyes.
The runes.
“General, do you think we should-” a hailstorm of rail gun rounds cut off Reverend Johnny’s question as the shots ricocheted around the entry team.
A group of Vikings stood on a jetty higher than Jon’s group and a hundred yards away to their right. Their camouflage ponchos struggled to find the right pattern. Some turned cream like the floor of the rings, others splashed blue resembling the arcs of electricity shooting across parts of the machine, others shaded black, gray, silver, and red in reaction to the various colors found in the chaos.
“Take cover!” Jon yelled but that cover presented as much danger as bullets.
“Dear God, we are not alone,” but Johnny did not mean the Vikings. He directed Brewer’s attention in the opposite direction where, in the shadow of a pyramid-shaped metallic structure spitting sparks, gathered a cadre of Wraiths.
