Engines of the Apocalypse

related to the black threads that Aldrededor had seen while piloting the Tharnak. A magic that had no place in the Faith's or anyone's doctrine, and that was unknown to them all. The realisation only served to reinforce what she'd thought about the Pale Lord, that there was something much more to him, much more to this whole affair, than met the eye. It was also clear that Bastian Redigor would not have seeded the tome with such a trap if he didn't have something really interesting to hide. The only problem lay in living long enough to find out what that was.

Kali dropped from her perch and raced towards Gabriella and Slowhand, the roiling mass of blackness pursuing her, batting aside bookshelves as it came. They skidded into another passage as one, the tapers lashing at their heels.

'I'm beginning to think they've got something against us!' Slowhand shouted, ducking as more woodwork exploded all around.

'What the hells makes you think that?' Kali shouted back.

'So what do we do now?'

'I don't know!'

'There's something that might stop them,' Gabriella gasped. She was staring up into the highest reaches of the library as she ran, above the precarious stairways, where a caged platform was visible. 'The Dellendorf Scrolls.'

'The Dellendorf Scrolls?'

'An archive of Old Race, perhaps older, scrolls — assorted incantations, enchantments, destruction spells and so on. They were found by an excavation team twenty years ago.'

'What's the point?' Kali said. 'Only Redigor's magic is working!'

Gabriella shook her head. 'My guess is that the Engines interfere with the stability of current spells or the casting of new ones, but the magic of the scrolls is sealed into their parchment, already cast. All one of us needs to do is release it!'

And I wonder which one of us that's going to be? Kali considered.

She stopped and stared up at the scrolls' store. It certainly wasn't going to be easy; and between her and them, a veritable forest of tapers now thrashed, expanding into other passages, attempting to catch them in a pincer movement.

'We're trapped!' Slowhand shouted. The archer loosed a number of arrows at the nearest tapers but they were batted away. Gabriella slashed at the encroaching mass with her blades, but this time the tapers snatched her weapons from her hands, flinging them away over the shelves.

'Yeah?' Kali said, as her companions backed up. She leapt onto one of the walls of books enclosing them and slashed the Deathclaws from top to bottom, landing back on the floor with a grunt. Slowhand stared at her, puzzled, until Kali booted the wall and the entire section tipped away before her, crashing into another shelf beyond it, starting a domino effect across the library towards the stairway.

'Neat,' Slowhand observed.

'Take these and try to slice yourselves a way out!' Kali shouted. She stripped off the claws and flung them towards Gabriella. The Enlightened One plucked them neatly from their flight. She nodded to Kali and donned them.

'Hooper — ?' Slowhand began, but Kali was already gone, leaping along the downed bookshelves, the tapers snapping at her from beneath and around their sides. Her alternative route seemed to have confused the dark magic strands, and Kali made it over several of the fallen shelves, but she saw that the tapers had extended ahead of her and were now punching in through a gap. She rolled, dodged and weaved, the stairs drawing ever nearer, until a taper managed to whip itself around one of her ankles and she found herself flipped high into the air.

After a moment of dizzying disorientation, Kali thudded to the floor beyond the final row of shelves and lay on her stomach, winded. To her right lay the base of the stairway she needed to reach, but to her left, hurtling towards her at a speed that in her state she couldn't hope to outrun, was a solid, seething mass of the black strands.

Kali struggled to her feet, looked for a way out, found none. She spun in a circle and punched shelves of books in frustration, furious with herself. A peculiar rumbling sound came from the direction of the stairs and she turned to face it, wondering what new threat she faced.

Her eyebrows rose. Gabriella DeZantez was racing towards her in mid-air, straddling two of the sliding ladders the curators used to access books on higher shelves. Between her legs, pushing the ladders as hard as he could, was a red-faced Slowhand.

'What, you think we'd let you do this alone?' He shouted as Kali ducked to let the ladders pass.

Kali watched their progress. Gabriella's hands blurred, the Deathclaws slicing constantly, the Enlightened One spinning and leaping between the two ladders in a dance that ensured not a single one of the tapers got near her or Slowhand. She and the archer cut a swathe through the mass, the black strands falling in their hundreds. The whole thing lasted no more than thirty seconds and, the tapers briefly repulsed, Gabriella leapt from the ladders and Slowhand released them.

'What are you waiting for?' She shouted to Kali. 'Move!'

Kali didn't need telling twice. She ran for the stairway but, even as she did, more tapers lashed in from beyond the shelves, wrapping themselves around the lower risers, preventing her mounting them. This time Slowhand came to the fore.

'Hooper!' He shouted, and two of his arrows whizzed over Kali's head to embed themselves solidly in the wall. She leapt onto the first Slowhand had fired as another arrow struck the wall above her, feeling it snap under her but giving her enough upward momentum to carry her to the second, and then the third. Kali climbed Slowhand's makeshift staircase above the level of the tapers as he continued shooting, and threw herself onto the stairway beyond their reach. Her feet clattered on metal as she ascended, and the tapers raced after her, but Kali tumbled and leaped, leaving them behind as she negotiated the complicated structure. At last she reached the cage containing the scrolls, booted off the padlock and threw herself inside, slamming the cage closed behind her. The tapers swarmed about and rattled the metal enclosure but the mesh was too fine for them to penetrate. Kali let out a relieved breath.

Her relief was short-lived.

It was all right for DeZantez to say she could use one of the Dellendorf scrolls to blitz the tapers but, dammit, which one? There were hundreds stacked before her and, as far as she knew, the one she chose might make things worse, not better. It seemed, though, that whichever curators had been assigned to investigate these mysterious scrolls were possessed of frustrated egos and somewhat fanciful imaginations, and Kali found a clue to what she wanted in their attached notations. Quite clearly named after the curators themselves, the scrolls glorified in such names as Hamish's Wandering Eye, Charles's Dream of Domination and Gleeson's Worrisome Whiff, and one which sounded as if it might be up to the job — Strombolt's Devastator. Yes, that sounded pretty unequivocal. Now, how was it Gabriella had demonstrated it should be used?

Kali took a breath and stood in the centre of the cage, sweeping her palm across the scroll she held. As she did, the script upon it — a strange collection of symbols unknown even to her — parted company with the parchment and flew out through the mesh of the cage. Nothing happened for a second, and then the floating symbols raced together and collided, forming a dense, pulsating cloud above the centre of the vast library. The air grew immensely heavy, the light dulled, and a charge in the atmosphere made Kali's hair stand on end. The last thing she thought as she wrapped her arms about her head was how the curator had pleaded with her not to damage his books.

The Hall of Proscribed Knowledge, all of it, detonated with an explosion so powerful that its walls buckled momentarily outwards, prompting screams and cries of alarm from outside. The stained glass windows lining its upper storey disintegrated, shards falling as a rainbow rain. The chandeliers were propelled upwards, bouncing off the ceiling and dropping broken metal and molten wax before crashing to the floor below. The explosion finished the job the tapers and Kali had started, smashing each and every piece of furniture — tables, chairs and bookshelves — against the walls, leaving them as a shattered tide washed against the hall's perimeter. For quite some time afterwards countless cream and white leaves — all that remained of the books that had crammed the shelves — fluttered to the floor. If there was any saving grace to what Kali had just unleashed, it was that the tapers had flopped to the floor, dormant or dead.

'Oops,' Kali said as she picked herself up from the floor of the cage. She coughed and picked splinters from her hair. From far below she heard other coughs and looked down to see Slowhand and Gabriella emerging,