The Crucible of the Dragon God

now — now…'

Moon's surprise at the unexpected outburst turned into a look of concern. 'Kali what is it?

'Steaming pits of Kerberos, old man, I'm twenty-three years old. Twenty farking three! I don't want the weight of the whole world on my shoulders!'

'Young lady …'

'It just isn't fair!'

'Kali …'

'It isn't farking fair!'

'Hey, hey, hey, what's going on?' Killiam Slowhand said, suddenly behind Kali and taking her by the shoulders. He turned her towards him, surprised to see the tears in her eyes. 'Hooper?'

Kali thumped him on the chest, repeatedly, as he drew her close. 'Godsdammit, Slowhand, this never ends!'

'Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's the matter, what do you mean. We won didn't we? Didn't we?'

The old man nodded, but his face remained troubled. 'This is about something else.'

'What?' Slowhand asked Kali, softly. 'What is it?'

Kali tensed in his arms but said nothing. And then, after a second, she broke away, grabbed some bottles from the bar and, without a word to he or Moon, headed outside, slamming the door behind her. Slowhand started to follow but Moon stopped him, spinning him around with a hand on his shoulder which, being half ogur, Slowhand could hardly resist.

'Leave her be,' he said and then, after a few more moments, led him over to the bar, signalling drinks from Red. 'So, young man. Why don't you tell me exactly what your intentions towards my protege are…'

Outside, Kali leaned for a few seconds with her back against the door, catching her breath. The fact was, her reaction had surprised her as much it had the old man and Slowhand, but she guessed that a bellyful of thwack and the fact that what was on her mind had to out somehow was pretty much responsible for her uncharacteristic display. But what could she tell her friends? She knew full well that she couldn't have done what she'd done over the last few days without their help. So how could she tell them that it might all have been for nothing?

That's right, she thought, nothing.

Gods, she had to talk to someone about this, didn't she? Or she would likely go insane.

Kali drew a deep breath and made her way to the top of the hill beyond the tavern, ignoring the syrupy rain. There, she pushed her way through a gap in the bushes into a small glade, wherein a solitary grave was illuminated by a flash of green lightning. The grave's headstone was carved with one simple word — Horse — and Kali touched it and smiled. It had become her habit to escape up here on the occasional night to tell Horse of the adventures she'd had since he'd been taken. And these chats were usually relaxed, meandering affairs, but the events of these last few days had left her hardly knowing where to start.

Kali slumped with her back to the headstone, cracked a bottle of flummox and began. She told him how the world — her world — had changed so much this past week that he would barely recognise it, and then she told him that what troubled her the most was that she had seen what the Old Races had ultimately been capable of, but that for all their greatness and the levels of technology, they had still been unable to stop whatever it had been that had wiped them out. And if they had been unable to prevent their extinction, then what hope did she and the others have of preventing theirs? Because the threat was as real to them as it had been to the Old Races, she knew that now. She knew that because she had finally realised why the dragon had taken them to the edge of the heavens — it had wanted to show them something. And that something had been a smudge on the side of the sun. With that realisation she had also worked out the purpose of the strange black sphere at the Crucible, the one that had once moved slowly forward on its straight tracks. It had done so because it wasn't a sphere, it was a countdown. A countdown the dwelf had obliquely referred to in the fading moments of his life.

She never had found out why she had been awaited. And she never had found out why she was like she was. And, now, she knew, there was a possibility that she never would.

Kali took a slug of her thwack as she remembered the dwelf's last words once more.

'This world is called Twilight for a reason,' he had told her. 'Once in an age, to every civilisation, a great darkness comes.'