Engines of the Apocalypse

symbology was, of course, usually to do with war but Kali didn't see a single battleaxe, anvil or roaring dwarven visage. Instead, the fine etchings were flowing, swirling patterns — millions of them, perhaps — that reminded her of mathematical or algebraic symbols, all interlocking and sweeping in every direction and along the curving walls, combining as a whole into a thing of beauty. But were they just decorative or did they serve another purpose? Kali placed her palm on one small area of the etchings and immediately snatched it away, her flesh jolted, tingling and numb. Well, that answered that. Whatever they were, they were more than just decorative.

The answers lay ahead, they had to, and Kali began to walk the tunnel's length. She moved with caution, her concerns about the lack of traps playing on her mind. Again, though, there was no sign at all of anything threatening. The one thing that made her slow in her tracks turned out not to be any kind of hazard at all.

Lying on the floor of the tunnel, apparently torn apart, was the remains of some kind of machine. Multi- limbed, with appendages that resembled tools, it reminded her of some kind of giant spider.

Kali took a wide berth around it, just in case, and proceeded along the tunnel.

With all of her concentration focused on detecting traps she felt sure should be there, she found herself suddenly caught off guard, her progress impeded not by any trap but an unexpected wave of dizziness and disorientation that threw her off balance and sent her staggering.

'Whoa,' Kali muttered.

Her head thumped, the passage seemed to spin about her, and she felt suddenly very hot with a wash of tingling saliva in her mouth, and a wave of nausea. Palms pressed against the passage wall, Kali swallowed and shook her head, feeling it buzz as she did and bringing a sudden stabbing pain behind the eyes. What the pits was going on? She suddenly felt as if she had the hangover from the hells. The previous evening had been a little heavy, even for her, but it felt all wrong. There was a throbbing heaviness of the head there, for sure, and an acid biliousness in her gut, but she knew what a hangover felt like and this wasn't it.

There was only one other conclusion. Something about — something in — this place was messing with her insides.

The sensation passed as she moved a few feet further on, and returned once more as she drew nearer to the end of the passage, before inexplicably disappearing again. Thrown, Kali continued, experiencing a few minutes of normality, before, abruptly, the debilitating sensation hit her once more. And if anything, it was worse than before. The resurgent feeling slapped her like a wave and, never mind her stomach, she felt as if her brain itself was sloshing about in her head. This time Kali buckled and actually did throw up and for a few seconds remained on her hands and knees, trailing spittle and groaning. She didn't want to get up but she knew she had to, that the sensations were connected to particular spots in the passageway and, perhaps by extension, in the whole place. Unless she wanted to suffer an ignominious death by a thousand heaves, she had to find a safe spot, and quickly.

Kali picked herself up, her vision wavering and blurring, and, her brain feeling like one of Slowhand's balloon animals, weaved like a drunk towards the end of the passageway. The current section seemed to have no safe spot whatsoever. She was dimly aware of passing another couple of the wrecked, spidery machines — in fact, almost tripping over one of them in her reduced state — and tried to think more about what function they might serve but found her concentration slipping away from her, unable to focus on anything but placing one foot in front of the other.

As bad as she felt, however, she could not help but react to what she saw as she reached the end of the passageway — even if for a second she thought it might be some vision induced by her delirium. Once more, Kali fell to her knees, not due to the disorientating effects of the place but because she was so staggered by the chamber she found herself in.

No, chamber was not a word that did this place justice. Spectacular as it had been, chamber was a word that described the lower level of Quinking's Depths, but this was…

Kali was kneeling on a platform overlooking a vast dwarven machine room, its metal-ribbed heights soaring as high above her as they plunged into the depths below. It was a vertiginous, spherical world of a place that made her feel as if she had stepped into the very core of Twilight itself. Great, irregularly-shaped metal objects rose and fell in the centre of the massive sphere, other smaller devices hovering around them like the satellites of metal moons. Other masses simply hung in the air, rotating slowly, while around the edge of the sphere, along its equator, a massive band of metal spun constantly, alternately clockwise and anti-clockwise, blurred by its speed — some kind of accelerator. And working on and around all of it — skittering on, about and around the devices — were spidery machines like the ones she had seen wrecked in the tunnel.

Kali couldn't take it all in, let alone make any sense of it, especially in the state she was in, and she crouch- walked along the platform until she found the blessed relief of a safe spot. Here, she felt able to crawl forward and peer down over the lip of the platform.

The machine room went far deeper than she had envisaged, burrowing down into the natural, rocky depths, so that the whole place was the shape of an upturned teardrop. Rising from that rocky depth was the reason 'the hub' had been built here, a narrow and tapering pinnacle of rock that disappeared into the confusion above, forming the centre around which they turned. The rock seemed, somehow, to be exerting an influence on the objects, keeping them afloat and in motion, and even from where she studied it Kali could feel the force it was emanating, as if she were leaning into a strong wind. She realised suddenly what it was she was dealing with here. The pinnacle of rock was an unimaginably massive lodestone — a giant, natural magnet — and its satellites had to be magnets, too, repelling and attracting each other in a geological dance choreographed by unbelievably complex forces. By the gods, they said the dwarves were masters of the very rocks themselves but this… this was incredible. It was magnetism on a massive scale, a peninsula-wide field controlling the Engines of Apocalypse.

Kali shook her head, another wave of dizziness hitting her, and, as she did, she caught a glimpse between the gaps in the revolving magnets of something else — something perched on top of the lodestone secured by bent struts. Some kind of platform, with what appeared to be a control panel on it. There was something else on the platform, too, and Kali felt a knot of dread in her chest as, through increasingly wavering vision, she made out four of Bastian Redigor's soul-stripped, at their feet another wrecked spider. They had clearly been despatched to activate the Engines, and as far as she could see it would be impossible to access the controls without them detecting her presence.

But wait. There was something not right about them. The soul-stripped were less than animate when not under the direct control of the Pale Lord but these four seemed to be not so much standing at the panel as slumped there. But that didn't make sense. Wouldn't Redigor would have kept them alive to ensure the continued operation of the Engines, or at the very least to stop anyone coming along to turn them off? What, then, was going on?

Kali swallowed as the brief glimpses of the soul-stripped the revolving magnets permitted her revealed more about their state. The soul-stripped were not moving because they could not move. Each of them was quite, quite dead, rivulets of blood congealed beneath their mouths, ears and nostrils. Where their eyes had been were simply empty sockets still slowly oozing gore. It was as if some external influence had taken hold of their heads and squeezed until they popped.

Kali raised her fingertips to her own nostrils, and they came away red and wet. The dwarves had established no defences here because no defences were needed. The spider machines had been built to maintain the hub once it was running because the dwarves knew the overwhelming magnetic forces at play would prove deadly to any living thing, including themselves. While Redigor's puppets were no longer strictly alive, their bodies were still flesh and blood, subject to the same physical vulnerabilities as anyone.

Kali wondered if Bastian Redigor had felt the agonising pain that must have accompanied the soul-stripped's deaths. And she wondered, more resilient than most or not, how long it would be before she started to feel her own.

She had to reach the control panel.

Get the job done and get out of there fast.

Kali stood and found herself staggering, forced to steady herself on a nearby strut. Oh, that was just great. Under normal circumstances getting the job done might have involved a couple of daring leaps across the magnets and then onto the control platform, but in her current condition there was no chance of that. She had to find an alternative route.

Kali studied the chamber and its central platform. Once upon a time it had to have had some kind of access walkway but that had clearly been removed once the structure was finished, meaning there was no direct way to it.