The Crucible of the Dragon God

by Mike Wild

As Kali worked her way to the outer tip of one of the highest branches, coming closer to the upper side of the sphere, she saw that it was definitely of Old Race construction. The smooth, runic covered and organic quality of its material a dead giveaway. The only problem was that said material, though close to the end of the branch, was just beyond a distance that she could leap, even though her leaps could be considerable. But the tree came to the rescue once again as Kali realised she could use two of the branches to slingshot herself across the gap.

  Tricky, but possible.

  Kali positioned herself back near the trunk, pulling the branches with her until they were tense, then, releasing one, used it to fling herself into the second, releasing the tension in that as she did so. The double spring effect catapulted her from the foliage of the tree and into open air, and then she slammed onto the curve of the sphere itself.

  From here it became trickier. Although the sphere's incline was not acute, it was slippery, and Kali found herself scrabbling for purchase as soon as she landed, then having to flatten herself on its surface to prevent herself sliding off. Thus positioned, she began to inch her way forward and upward. But though vegetation had so far aided her ascent, now it stymied it.

  Unmaintained and exposed to the elements for countless years, the upper curve of the sphere was covered in a slippery lichen and each time Kali tried to pull herself across it, she slipped back. There was no way around it and the only other access to the top of the sphere was via some kind of walkway that curved above it, but that was at least a hundred yards higher than her current position.

  There was nothing else for it. She had to negotiate the lichen.

  Pulling herself upward, even more slowly than before, Kali began to inch her way over the grassy coating, digging her fingertips and toes into the material for purchase. But the purchase was slight and, again and again, Kali found herself taking one step forward and two steps back. Increasingly frustrated, she found herself flinging any attempt at a negotiated passage to the wind, and instead simply clawed her way forward whichever way she could.

  She had gained perhaps fifteen feet when a whole swathe of lichen became detached from the sphere, its tiny roots ripped away beneath the weight of her body. Kali tried to throw herself over it but felt one foot skid under her, and the other, and then thought, oh-oh.

  Suddenly, she was accelerating back down the sphere, the carpet of lichen on which she lay now acting as a sled.

  "Whoooooaaaaaahhhhh!"

  She was too distracted by the likelihood of imminent death to hear the ziiiip of something thin and fast shooting past her. She was too distracted to notice had it been an inch to the left the shaft of wood that had made the sound might have gone right through her. But she was not too distracted to feel herself jar to a sudden stop, in the arms of something that smelled strangely familiar.

  "Slowhand?"

  "Hi, Hooper, falling for me?" the archer said, with a broad grin.

  Even as she watched his long mane of blonde hair being buffeted by the wind, and as she felt the two of them begin to rise, she couldn't believe he'd said it.

  Kali looked down. There was nothing beneath them, nothing at all. She looked up, and saw a thin wire stretching up to where it was fastened by an arrow in the underside of the walkway. And she looked at Slowhand's free hand, clutching a small and complex looking device, which seemed to be, thanks to some mechanical workings, carrying them up the wire.

  "Little something I worked on during my time with the yassan."

  "Really?"

  "Yup. Call it a whizzline."

  "A whizzline?"

  "Yup."

  Slowhand's smile of satisfaction was rapidly erased as Kali suddenly shouted in his face.

  "Are you telling me that I just went through all that for nothing!"

  "Hooper, now hang on -"

  "Hang on, he says! Do I have a lot of farking choice!"

  "Well, no, but -"

  "Slowhand, you are a -"

  "Hey, I saved you from a horrible death, didn't I?"

  "You wanna know about horrible deaths? I'll show you..."

  The exchange might have continued were it not for the fact that, at that moment, Slowhand's whizzline device reached its apex and the two of them found themselves dangling beneath the walkway, having come to a dead stop. They stared at each other as, beneath their combined weight, the line creaked above them, and then in unison yelped as the arrow holding it loosened slightly from where it was embedded.

  "I think we'd better - yaaaarrgh!" Slowhand said.

  They fell.

  Kali didn't hesitate, swinging her legs up so that they wrapped Slowhand about the middle, and then flipping backwards in mid air so that her feet hooked over a small rail on the underside of the walkway. Then, with a grunt, she jacknifed herself upwards and grabbed onto the same rail, lowering her legs until Slowhand dangled between them, beneath her. The archer stared up from between her thighs.

  "This," he said, "is like a dream."

  "You want me to open them?"

  "Er, not right now, no."

  There was a moment's pause.

  "Right."

  A few seconds later, Kali had manoeuvred the pair of them onto the walkway and they stared at what lay in front and beneath them.

  "Slowhand," Kali said, bending to place her palms on her thighs and taking a deep breath. "I think we're here."

  "Hoooo, boy."

  As the highest point amongst the whole, strange series of structures, the walkway afforded the two of them their first proper view of the complex. Kali realised then that she hadn't been far wrong with her first impression that the valley was full of worlds.

  A number of spheres of various sizes - though all massive - dotted the hidden place, some projecting ornate walkways to their neighbour, others on, or attached to, huge metal tracks or arms - one of which bore cradles and the rotted remains of more airships like those at the waystation - all sitting there amidst the overgrown trees. Literally complex and wondrous, Kali could see no reason why such should be its purpose but she couldn't help be reminded of something she had once seen used by the Sisters of Long Night. A mechanical contraption they told her was meant to emulate the movement of the celestial bodies on and around which they lived - something they called an orrery. That was what the Crucible reminded her of - a giant orrery, constructed for reasons she couldn't yet begin to imagine.

  There, roughly speaking, was Kerberos, the largest sphere and the one beneath them, there, in its shadow, Twilight, and there, further out, its size perhaps representative of its actual distance, Twilight's sun. The only sphere Kali could not reconcile with what she knew of the heavens was one that was positioned somehow jarringly amongst the others - a sphere constructed of a darker material than its companions that looked as if had once drawn ever closer to them on a perfectly straight track through the trees. Kali frowned - in all her explorations she had never come across anything like this, and the only way she was going to discover the purpose of the spheres was to get inside them. Fortunately, there appeared to be a gap in Kerberos - as if once upon a time the upper half of the sphere had, for some reason, opened to the skies. Its edges now browned with great patches of rust, it seemed jammed in that position, but it was wide enough for their purposes. The only problem would be in reaching it without a repeat of her recent, almost fatal mishap.

  "Remember Scholten?" Slowhand asked, winking.

  He unslung Suresight and strung an arrow with a wire attached. Kali nodded. She wouldn't easily forget that stormy night and the suicide slide from the heights of the Cathedral. A slide that had come to a rude end when Katherine Makennon's guards had cut the line.

  "You joining me this time?" she queried.

  "Wouldn't miss it for the, er, world," Slowhand told her, nodding at the sphere.

  He raised Suresight, aiming the arrow on a shallow trajectory, and then fired it through the gap. A second later he tested its tension and then attached the zipline. "Grab hol
d."

  Kali did as instructed, wrapping her arms around Slowhand's torso and her legs around his, ignoring some ribald comment as the archer shuffled himself against her. Then he lurched and the two of them began to speed down the wire towards the shadowy gap.

  As they slid through it into a dark and still interior, the metallic zuzz of the zipline sounded suddenly sharp, though not as sharp as would have been their cries of pain had they struck any of the odd, unidentifiable shapes that whizzed by them in the gloom. Thankfully, the interior of the sphere was vast, and none were in their way. Exactly what they were sliding into remained a mystery but, as was her habit on entering any Old Race site, Kali sniffed as she descended, trying to take in the odour of the place. There was metal and oil and the rough, sour tang of machinery. An odour she had smelled before in a site called Kachanka, one of her finds that had been some kind of dwarven factory. She never had discovered what it made. For all she knew it could have been dwarven razorblades, in which case, no wonder it had gone out of -

  "End of the line!" Slowhand warned suddenly, and the two of them released their grips, dropping with a clang onto metal where they rolled to soften their impact.

  Unexpectedly, they continued to roll, and - after mutual yelps of surprise - they realised they had landed on a sloping surface and were apparently sliding now towards the base of some huge bowl. When at last they came to a stop, they were up and ready to defend themselves, Slowhand panning a primed Suresight around him, Kali the same with her crackstaff. They saw nothing coming at them out of the dark, however, and reslung the weapons. Now, they listened, but the only sounds they heard were those of their own, heavy breathing and of the sphere itself - loud, eerie creaks and groans of metal shifting and settling. One such shift was so pronounced that the sphere actually shook, and the pair rocked on the soles of their feet.

  "Whatever this place is," Slowhand commented, "it feels as if it's coming apart at the seams."

  "It's ancient, Slowhand. What do you expect?"

  "I've a feeling it's more than just age that's caused this."

  Their eyes began slowly adjusting to the gloom and, as they did, they gasped.

  Because they seemed to have landed on a walkway that curved along the base of the sphere, and off to their left and their right. The trouble was, as their slide had testified, it didn't stop to their left and their right. Instead it curved up the sides of the sphere and then, disorientatingly, not least because of the dizzying height involved, curved across its top, crossing the gap through which they had entered, and down again in a complete loop, coming full circle back to the spot where they stood. Nor was it the only walkway to do so. The interior of the sphere was criss-crossed with them, weaving a web-like pattern over its cathedral sized interior, as if the terms up, down, above and below had no meaning here. To be certain what she was seeing was true, Kali attempted to renegotiate the curve of the walkway but made it only so far before its incline slid her back. Craning her neck and turning on the spot, she gazed open mouthed, tracing all the walkways and wondering whether some sorcery that had enabled people to traverse these impossible ways had, once upon a time, been at play here. This remained a possibility until Slowhand noticed that the walkways were suspended a little way above the shell of the sphere, and that between the two a series of tracks, gears and gimbals hinted that they had been designed to move around its inside. A latticework sphere within a sphere, apparently rotatable through three hundred and sixty degrees in every direction so that any point of any walkway could rapidly shift into any position it needed to be in. It was a more prosaic explanation than sorcery, for sure, but was no less staggering for it. An incredible achievement of Old Race engineering unlike any they had ever seen. One question nagged at Kali, though. What exactly was it for?

  Maybe part of the answer lay in what slowly became visible between the walkways. The vague shapes that had had whizzed by them during their descent were revealing themselves now to be tools and machines of various shapes, unknown purposes and sizes, all of which were aligned towards or - on their own independent tracks - capable of being aligned towards the centre of the sphere. Strange instruments like giant thrusting lances and claws, huge lenses and multiple-jointed things that looked like nothing less than upturned metallic spiders. The central focus of these tools made Kali rethink her initial impression of the place, feeling now that this was no razorblade factory but designed to build something big and she suddenly desired to see the ancient machinery in action. The huge inner sphere whirling and swirling about its task - whatever it was - and all of those various machines and tools at play, perhaps flashing and sparking with unknown energies, would have been of such complexity that it would have made the mechanics of the Clockwork 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 i
t, 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.