by Mike Wild
It was one of the peculiar features of the area. Surrounded by the temperate farmlands of mid Pontaine, the almost perfectly circular valley was a meteorological anomaly, prone to a stultifying heaviness of air and battered by constant electrical storms. Those who lived on the periphery of the area said that sometimes the catastrophic conditions on the plain affected other weather it had no business affecting, pulling at the northern lights and bending them toward the ground, or even snatching a maelstrom from the Storm Wall, far away on the coast, for a few hours. If this were true — and Kali had seen enough of the raw potential of Old Races creations to believe it could be — it was likely that the energies of the control centre for the machines, what she had nicknamed 'the hub,' were responsible.
In other words, she guessed she was in the right place.
Nearing the centre of the plain, Kali slowed Horse to a stop and stared into the rain-lashed, thundering vista before her. She dismounted, took her squallcoat from her saddlebag and slipped it on, fastening it securely. From there on in, she led Horse by the reins.
It was hard going, fighting the unnaturally heavy atmosphere and taking deep, grasping breaths as she went. Here and there, tornadoes whirled across the barren ground, threatening to pluck her up if she strayed too close. Not that it was much safer out of their path — where the whirlwinds didn't manifest themselves, Kali found herself having to dodge sudden bolts of lightning that struck the ground about her, leaving small, smoking craters where they hit. One or two almost got her, but she soon learned to anticipate their arrival, the dense air further thickening a few seconds before each strike, as if someone were pressing down hard on her head. No pitsing wonder the area was so desolate, she thought. Other than a few scattered hardy plants, tanglevine and redweed among them, it was like walking through a bad dream. No one had ever tried to fully explore, let alone colonise the region, but why in the hells would they?
Once again, she thought, to find the hub you'd have to know it was there.
And suddenly, unexpectedly, it was there. A dark cave mouth loomed before her out of a dust storm. Not just a cave mouth, though: the eroded rock still retained the faint remains of carvings chiselled into it millennia earlier, shapes Kali recognised as dwarven. The most obvious clue to its provenance, though, was that the cave mouth itself was the shape of one of the Engines.
Kali tethered Horse, moved to the mouth and paused. If this was indeed the entrance to the hub then surely it was once a prime target for the dwarves' elven enemies, and as such she'd have expected it to be protected by the usual array of dwarven defences and traps. There was no evidence of anything, however, and Kali wondered if perhaps the traps, like the mouth itself, had been obliterated by the ravages of the plain. She bit her lip, deciding all she could do was proceed with caution.
Kali entered the cave mouth, briefly disappointed. To be frank she had been expecting to find more than just a cave. But that was all she'd got. A plain tunnel sloped gently downwards, ending in a chamber devoid of features but for a large hole in the ground. Kali eased her way to its edge and peered down. While deep, it appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be simply that. A hole in the ground. Then Kali noticed that the floor of the cave leading towards it was scarred and grooved. Once upon a time heavy objects, and a good number of them, had been dragged towards that hole. She pictured teams of dwarves pulling their burdens on ropes and then -
And then what? She wondered.
Because unless she had been completely wrong about this being the hub and she had, in fact, stumbled across some dwarven landfill site, surely they hadn't simply been dumped down there? She looked around. There was no sign of any haulage mechanisms with which they might have been lowered. As far as she could tell there was also no sign of any mechanism which might raise an elevator from far below. Frowning, Kali conducted a thorough search of the surrounding rock, but nothing. It did indeed appear as if she had come all this way to be stymied by a hole.
Kali sat herself against the wall and made a flubbing sound. If she were going to make the rendezvous with DeZantez and the others, she did not have the advantage she normally might in such circumstances — to take as much time as she wished to ponder the problem. Frustrated, she plucked stones from the cave floor around her and began to lob them towards the hole. If she listened carefully, she might at least be able to determine how deep the farking thing was. It was then that she noticed two things — one, a thrumming from below that was barely audible over the lightning strikes outside and, two, the fact that the stones she had lobbed at the hole hadn't fallen in.
What the hells? Kali picked herself up and moved to its edge, leaning forward to grab one of the hovering stones from mid air. It seemed to contain metallic ore. As she leaned forward, she felt a resistance, placing her hand in a soft pillow, and stood back, her heart thumping. Did that mean what she thought it meant? That if she — ?
Kali stripped off her backpack and threw it out over the seemingly bottomless drop, raising her eyebrows as it, too, bounced about as if tossed by currents of air. But this was not air she was dealing with — she felt nothing on her flesh, on her face, in her hair — it seemed instead to be something that warped the air.
Perhaps, even, the same force that kept the Engines of the Apocalypse aloft?
Okay, what's the worst that can happen? Kali thought. If I step over the breach I end up hovering there and have to claw my way back.
But what if the only reason that the rocks and backpack were hovering was because they were lighter than she was? What if this resistance, whatever it was, allowed the gradual descent of something with more mass — the objects that had scored the floor of the cave, perhaps? What if the strange force warping the air acted as some kind of invisible elevator?
Kali stepped forward, her foot wobbling slightly on the air, and then drew herself over the hole. She stuck her arms out straight like a wire walker and giggled as she floated. Then, very slowly she began to descend. Instinctively, Kali took a deep breath, but then smiled to herself. This wasn't water she was dealing with, this was something else entirely, and it had so far proved to be harmless, so she saw no reason why she shouldn't enjoy the ride.
Down she went, slowly down. At long last, Kali felt solid rock beneath her feet once more.
She stared at a solid rock wall. Disappointment threatened to overwhelm her once again. But then she turned around.
Kali smiled. Hello, hub, she thought.
Stretching away ahead of her, cut to the same dimensions as the vertical shaft, was a tunnel running horizontally through the rock, disappearing into the distance. Kali took a step forward, shrugged away a moment of giddiness, and waited while her eyes adjusted to the dim light of the underground.
The smooth, curving walls here were not bare rock, but lined with a softly-glowing metal, as was the floor, both inscribed over every inch of their surface with thousands upon thousands of delicate etchings. There were far too many of these etchings for Kali to be able to make sense of them as a whole, but they were undoubtedly dwarven in style and, what was more, of a kind that she had never come across before. The archetypal dwarven 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 tur
ned 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 wa
s no direct way to it. The pattern in which the magnets orbited it, however, did present one or two moments when protrusions of the rotating stones almost touched the platform. If she could get onto one she should be able to make the jump across. There was no way onto them from this side of the chamber, but on the other side one of the objects that passed near the platform also passed near the edge of the chamber, and that distance, too, looked jumpable. It sounded easy enough — A to B to C — but the only problem was that getting to B would involve having to hitch a ride on the accelerator. The very, very, very fast accelerator.
Kali looked down. There was some kind of access hatch beneath her feet and she bent and flipped it open, staggering back as a wave of velocity seemed to slam through the gap. The accelerator lay directly under the hatch, as she'd hoped, but there was no way she could drop onto it while it was in motion. Kali swallowed, watching it ram first one way and then the other, each transition marked with an almighty clang. Gods, it was fast — the moment in which it paused to change directions fleeting — and her timing would have to be perfect. She waited while it stopped once, twice, and on the third time dropped without hesitation, flattening herself and grabbing hold as tightly as she could before it started again.
Thankfully, the accelerator was layered with tiny ridges and these afforded Kali a better grip than she would otherwise have had. Even so when, a heartbeat later, the accelerator punched back into life, she was almost ripped from its surface like a leaf. Kali skidded backwards, grabbing at the ridges to slow herself, and heard herself screaming, partly in exhilaration, partly in shock. She felt her teeth bared, her cheeks flapping and the flesh of her face rippling against her skull as she was carried around the perimeter of the chamber at unimaginable speed, the room blurring. The ride was over almost in an instant, however, and Kali screamed again as she found herself flipped heels over head, her grip snatched away, skidding helplessly forward on her back. She had only a second to react and she clamped her fingers onto the ridges and, with a grunt, flipped herself over, grabbing them once again.