The Crucible of the Dragon God

King seem like those of a child's toy.

It would have been wondrous but, sadly, Kali doubted that it would ever work again. The interior of the sphere was almost as decayed at its exterior and, in parts, as overgrown as the jungle beyond. Swathes of lichen draped the walkways and machines, choking them, while great curtains of the stuff hung from the sides of the opening itself. Here and there plants had actually taken root amidst the machines. The sphere had gone almost to ruin, the vast mechanism that seemed the reason for its existence appearing, for all intents and purposes, dead.

Almost.

It was Slowhand who noticed it first, squinting at the heart of the sphere.

What had previously appeared to be empty space shimmered and rippled slightly, as if he were looking at some great globe of transparent liquid suspended in the air, extending out as far as the machinery around it and big enough that, if he so wished, he could almost reach out to touch it. The liquid reflected its surroundings in such a way — refracted them, in fact — that it seemed almost not to be there at all. It hung undisturbed, as if it were somehow part of an entirely different reality.

'Erm, Hooper?' the archer said. 'What the hells is this?'

Kali turned her attention to where Slowhand pointed. Her heart missed a beat. What she was looking at was something she knew existed from her researches but which, before now, she hadn't encountered. It was one of the older sorceries of the elves, a thing that toyed with existence and was designed to mislead, to obfuscate — to hide those things, that they wished kept secret from the world. The elves had a name for it. They called it a glamour field.

'You know what it is?'

'A-ha. But the question is, what's inside?'

'Some magical portal? To the realm of the k'nid?'

Kali frowned, bit her lip. Here in this place of technology that didn't feel right. 'Somehow… I don't think so.'

'So what do we do, shut it down?'

Kali shook her head. 'Even if we knew how, that wouldn't be wise until we know what we're dealing with. We need to take a good look around.'

Slowhand raised his eyebrows. 'That's a tad cautious for you, Hooper. What happened to 'ooh, ooh, ooh, what does this big red button do?''

'Funny. But usually the sites I explore don't have the bloody k'nid pouring out of them.'

'Point taken. Well, there's no sign of the little bastards here so… the other spheres?'

'The other spheres.' Kali agreed.

The pair began to look for a way through to the next sphere but, while they found it, accessing it was easier said than done. The non-manoeuvrability of the internal walkways meant that the entrance to one of the connecting bridges — a passage near to the construction's equator — could only be reached either by Slowhand's zipline or a long and complicated climb. Rather than risk an arrow coming loose at the wrong time if the sphere shook again, they decided on the latter. The archer took the lead, deftly negotiating the various projections, and Kali followed noting, as she did, that despite their condition some of the machines still seemed to thrum slightly beneath her feet, a sign that their surroundings were not quite as dead as they had first appeared.

Something else, however, was.

Slowhand had just reached the lip of the passage and grabbed onto it, ready to heave himself up, when his hand skidded away from the surface and he fell back with a cry, only escaping a rather swift and bumpy return to his starting point when Kali grabbed him by the wrist. She held on tightly as he dangled beneath her, giving him a chance to regain his footing, helping him roll himself over the lip. Unexpectedly, he cried out again, but only because he had discovered what it was that had made his hand slip in the first place.

'Ohhhh, hells!'

'What is it?'

'Trust me, Hooper, you don't want to know.'

'I do. It might be important.'

'Oh, I've no doubt that it is. But — '

Kali quickly leapt up next to him then, with a squeal, leapt just as quickly aside.

'Warned you.'

Kali grimaced. She had been standing on — more accurately, in — the rotting corpse of one of the Final Faith. The slimy and bubbling remains were clearly victim of a k'nid attack, brought down on this spot as it — its gender was hard to determine — had apparently tried to run. What made it so repulsive and different to other victims they had seen was that it clearly hadn't been fully absorbed. As if, for some reason, the k'nid involved had abandoned the process part way through. But, as Slowhand rather irreverently pointed out, it wasn't like them not to finish a snack.

'So what happened?' he asked.

'I don't know. Maybe it was interrupted by something.'

'Interrupted?' Slowhand repeated, panning Suresight about him once more. 'By what? The place is abandoned. Isn't it?'

'That's the theory.'

'Right.'

'I know one thing, though,' Kali added, nodding ahead, 'and that's that we're on the right track.'

Slowhand looked. 'Ohhhh, hells.'

'Exactly.'

Kali and Slowhand moved into the passage they had found and, at its end, onto a bridge between spheres — half overgrown with trees — picking their way carefully past more of the Final Faith; ten or so, all similarly and horribly dead. As they crossed, the Kerberos sphere shook once more behind them, more violently than ever.

'I guess these are the ones that didn't make the airship,' Slowhand commented.

Kali swallowed. 'Do you think your sister abandoned them?'

Slowhand took a second to answer, the face he pictured in his mind not Jenna, then said through gritted teeth, 'I'd like to think she didn't have a choice.'

The pair reached the far end of the bridge and entered the sphere Kali had designated Twilight.

The first thing they noticed was that the difference between it and 'Kerberos' couldn't have been more marked. For one thing, this sphere was not hollow like the other, possessing a floor at the level they entered which was divided into corridors and chambers. For another, its style of interior construction was distinctly opposed to the sphere they had left. Where Kerberos and all its heavy machinery had struck her as being predominantly dwarven, the almost organic and membranous make-up of Twilight was unmistakably elven. The fact that both spheres co-existed in the same complex — together with the presence of the elven glamour field in the dwarven Kerberos — led Kali to only one possible conclusion: this was a joint venture of both of the Old Races. That in itself wasn't unknown in the latter years of their civilisations' existence — where their magics and technologies had combined for the good of both — but in a place such as this, in such a way and on such a scale? What had brought them together to do this?

Kali and Slowhand began, slowly and cautiously, to explore the corridors and chambers about them. Some of these, however, were not immediately accessible as their doors were either sealed with thick membranes or they appeared to have been barricaded by the Final Faith in some desperate attempt to stave off the k'nid. The latter tactic had not been overly successful, judging by the number of bodies they found littering the place. Kali found it astounding that the Faith had sent so many of their people here — top-ranking academics judging by their robes — and realised that they had obviously attached great importance to the complex's capabilities, whatever they were.

Some clues started to present themselves as they explored further, not only in situ but also in a number of containers the Faith academics had packed with carefully preserved anatomical and biological diagrams of ancient origin as well as information crystals of a type Kali recognised from previous sites. That these containers were found in laboratories filled with vials, test tubes, examination slabs and other kinds of