The Crucible of the Dragon God (14 page)

"Here," Pim said, interrupting her train of thought. "These look pretty staff-like to me."

Kali moved to where Pim stood examining four racks of what appeared, at first glance, to be simple lengths of metal. But closer inspection revealed them to be inscribed with complex runics and tiny studs that had to be part of a magetech device. The metal tubes seemed to be of different ages and all had been preserved in varying states of wear and tear. This suggested to Kali that they had been collected from various locations, rather than a single source. Perhaps some of them - the more dented and bashed ones - even from some long ago won or lost battlefield. But if they had been used in battle, she wondered who the combatants might have been, because from the look of them they came from the third age of dwarven and elven development, when the two races should have been at peace. She sighed at the fact that it was just one more puzzle to ponder over.

What mattered now was that they worked and, to that end, Kali hefted one of the tubes from a rack and was surprised to find herself thrown of balance because the object was so light. It was strange because the staff
felt
heavy - cold, hard, unyielding - and yet it was perfectly balanced and weighed so little that she could spin it in the palm of her hand. One possible reason for that, she discovered, was that it was hollow. Thinking that Sonpear had sold them a dud, she first shook it and then peered down its length, moving it around until she had Pim framed in a small circle. It took the thieves guild leader a second to spot what she was doing but, when he did, he waved and frowned.

"Do you mind?" he said, stepping out of the way. "That thing could go off."

"Don't see how. Unless there's a rack of blowdarts around here somewhere."

"Even so..."

"But," Kali mused to herself, "I suppose it has to be called a crackstaff for a reason."

It was, as Kali discovered that very second.

What
exactly
she had touched on the length of metal she had no idea but, whatever it was, it appeared to have been the 'on' switch. Kali suddenly found herself blown backwards as a bolt of blue energy fired from the crackstaff with a recoil like a kick from a giant mool. Winded and dazed, Kali slid to the floor and watched the powerful bolt of energy that had been discharged still fizzling away around the edges of a jagged hole in the far wall. Instead of a pained expression crossing her face Kali began, slowly, to grin.

"Wuhh-ow."

"Hells," Jengo Pim said softly, echoing the sentiment. "How the hells did it -?"

Kali flipped herself up onto her feet.

"No idea," she said, moving over to the racks and sweeping up as many of the crackstaffs as she could carry, before thrusting them at Pim. "Maybe these tubes channel magical threads or maybe they somehow
concentrate
them but one thing's for sure - they work. Pim, we've got something with which we can even up the fight a little bit."

"I'm not so sure we have -
yet
." Pim said slowly.

"What are you talking about? Pim, we don't have much time so grab some more if you can!"

"Miss Hooper, I think we have company."

"What?" Kali said.

For the first time she noticed the thieves guild leader was staring past her, back towards the stairway they had used to get here, and followed his gaze. Several things were climbing - no,
sweeping
- up the stairs towards them. Spectral, ghostly shapes that Kali couldn't quite pin down enough to identify but knew immediately she didn't like.

"Oh, fark. I guess there is no such thing as a free lunch."

"I warned you this might prove hazardous," Poul Sonpear's voice commented. "I am afraid your careless use of the crackstaff has disturbed them."

"Them? Them, who? All right, Sonpear, so these are your hazards but what in all the hells
are
those things?"

"We call them residuals. They have become attracted to your vital energy."

"I'm flattered." The figures had reached the top of the stairs now and she could see them in a little more detail. "Wait a minute. Are they what I think they are?"

"They
were
what you think they are."

"How can that be?"

"It is believed that when Domdruggle created his expanse there were sacrifices that had to be made. An area effect at the point of conjuration that ended the lives of Domdruggle and they who assisted with the ritual, condemning them to a half-life here in the Expanse. They volunteered for it, Miss Hooper, elves
and
dwarves, but now I doubt that they even remember who or what they were. They know only what it
felt
like to be and hunger for that feeling, still."

"Hunger. Okay, I'm not sure I like the sound of that. So, they're attracted to us
why
exactly?"

"To extract the life force from your bodies. Make your souls part of the Expanse."

"Gotcha. Sonpear, why didn't you tell me about these things before?"

"There was a chance you would not encounter them, and so I did not wish to worry you."

"Next time, Sonpear. Give me
all
the facts." Kali grabbed another crackstaff from the rack, then shoved the thieves guild leader. "Out of the way, Pim."

Bracing herself this time, she aimed and pressed the same stud she thought she had previously used, gratified to find she'd made the right choice.

A crackling lance of blue energy shot impacted in the centre of the approaching residuals. But instead of blowing them apart, as she had hoped, the lance passed through them harmlessly, doing no more damage than a hand might wafting at some fog. It did something, though, because the spectral figures suddenly quickened their approach, coming right at her with a renewed determination.

"Shit."

Suddenly they were close enough for Kali to see them in full detail. She could make out wasted bodies and haunted faces with gaping mouths and what she thought might be weapons. With flowing beards or streak-like, angular heads, they looked as if someone had drawn them on the landscape and then had a hasty rethink, half rubbing them out with repeated swipes of an eraser.

Kali staggered backwards as one of them screeched like a banshee and slammed into her. Then, with a cry of alarm, she scissored back to avoid the wisps of a blade whooshing by where her stomach had been. The passing blade left behind tracers, like tiny furls of mist.

Somewhat aggrieved by the development, Kali threw a punch in retaliation but, as had the energy lance, her fist went straight through. Next to her, Pim suffered the same experience.

Now
that
was a little unfair. They could touch them but not the other way round? In the circumstances there was only one thing they could do. Dodging another rush, Kali pulled off her belt and made a makeshift strap for her back before grabbing an armful of crackstaffs and snapping her gaze at Pim, instructing him to do the same.

"Run," she then said to the thieves guild leader.

"Where? There are more of them on the stairs!"

Kali thought fast. "The hole I made. Out through there."

"This is the third level!"

"You got a problem with that?"

"Yes!"

"Pim, trust me - just do as I do."

Pim swallowed. "Go."

The residuals hot on their trail, the pair of them raced for the breach in the Three Towers wall and hurled themselves through. It was the first time that Kali had been grateful for what she considered the somewhat disturbing design of the Three Towers. Because, as she expected, the two plummeted out not into empty air but onto the tapering, semi-organic slope that, at their base, was a more gentle incline than further above.
More
gentle but they weren't out of the frying pan yet. The pair landed on the taper on their behinds, bouncing slightly and scrabbling for purchase to slow their descent before riding it down towards ground level, then tumbling into a heap at its base. Behind and above them, the residuals - probably about fifteen of them now - poured through the breach. Untroubled by such considerations as gravity, they began to sweep down towards them.

Kali quickly picked herself up. "Move!"

"I hate to repeat myself, but where exactly?"

"Away from here!" Kali shouted, already on the move. She tilted her head to the sky. "Sonpear!"

"You are doing the right thing, Miss Hooper. Avoid physical contact of any kind."

"I
know
that, dammit! Can you just get us the hells out of here?"

"I am endeavouring to prepare a return portal. Continue in your current direction and please be patient."

"Patient!" Kali repeated breathlessly as she glanced behind her.

The residuals had formed themselves into one amorphous mass that was pursuing them with even greater speed. What was worse, they seemed no longer content simply to chase. From within the mass they were hurling or firing the weapons they wielded and, disturbingly, they shot ahead of the mass in whip-like tendrils before snapping back to their owners to be launched at them again and again, narrowly missing each time.

"What the hells are those things?" Pim shouted. "Remember I'm only getting half this conversation."

"Er, can we go into that some other time?" Kali requested in a slightly higher pitch than normal.

She ducked as a hail of elven arrows pierced the air where her head had been a moment before, petering out into wisps ahead of her before, again, snapping back. Pim's question had raised one of her own. Namely why it was that Domdruggle's assistants -
if
she was right about the time he had conjured the Expanse - possessed such archaic weaponry. She could only put it down to some kind of race memory manifestation of their forms. It didn't really matter, though, did it? What
did
matter was that they were deadly and were not going to miss for much longer.

Kali muttered something as she continued to run, still seeing no escape route ahead of her.

"What?" Pim asked, breathlessly.

"Oh, just reflecting on something Sonpear said."

"What?"

"Just that this is a farking big pin."

"The portal is forming now, Miss Hooper," Sonpear advised. "Please try to stay alive a few moments longer."

"Oh, right," Kali responded. She could
now see something materialising a couple of hundred yards ahead of her - like a small storm cloud. "Actually, I was going to stop, turn and blow them a kiss."

"There is no need for sarcasm."

"Well, for pits sake!" Despite her words, Kali
did
turn, if only to glance over her shoulder to gauge the gain the residuals had made, and promptly wished that she hadn't. Because something
else
was materialising behind them, looming over them - something spectral and massive that, in the brief moment she saw it, she could have sworn was a giant face.

"Pim, I don't want to worry you but -"

"Now what?" the thieves guild leader said.

He, too, snatched a glance over his shoulder and promptly turned white. For what Kali had seen was indeed a giant face; gaunt, sunken and haunted. It regarded them hungrily with huge shadowed eye sockets and an oval of a mouth that was slowly widening into an all-encompassing maw.

It swooped down towards them, clearly intent on sweeping them into that maw. And it roared deafeningly as it came.

"What the hells!" Pim shouted.

"Domdruggle, I think."

"Ah. Run faster?"

"Run faster."

The pair of them put on a final, desperate burst of speed and closed the gap between themselves and the now partly formed portal. Kali thought that she could see the interior of the
Underlook
through it and, despite its current circumstances, nothing had ever seemed so welcoming. The only question now was, would they make it? Because behind them Domdruggle had accelerated beyond the amorphous mass of his assistants and the maw that had been his mouth seemed, like some dislocated jaw, to be stretching unnaturally forward, ready to scoop the pair of them inside. Kali could no longer hear Pim's shouts of alarm as the Expanse seemed now to consist only of a looming darkness and a deafening roar. For a second her own scream of protest at her faltering body was completely lost as the maw drew alongside, and then around, her running form.

Her last thoughts as the Expanse faded were:
Jump now, Pim, now!
Sonpear, this had better farking work
.

Suddenly, she could hear herself screaming, and then she was crashing into something hard. The realisation that she was back in the
Underlook
was interrupted as she felt something collide with her equally hard. She and Pim found themselves in a tangle on the floor, being stared at by a number of the Grey Brigade and Gargassians whose mouths were agape. She was vaguely aware that, across the room, Sonpear was gesticulating madly, managing to just close the portal as a grey and fog-like snout burst through with the haunting echo of the roar that had been deafening her only moments before. Then, it was gone.

Kali coughed. "Okay, that was interesting."

"You have a knack for understatement," Pim said, dusting himself down. The thieves guild leader wasted no time in getting back to the business of their own reality, frowning as he listened to the k'nid battering still at the outside of the hotel.

"How's the situation?" he asked one of his lieutenants.

"The walls won't last very much longer. Reckon maybe ten minutes or so before they're breached."

Pim sighed. "Then it's time we took the fight to them." He dumped the bundle of crackstaffs on a table. "These are weapons. Anyone who feels they're up to it, take one. We'll show you how they work in a moment." Pim's men hesitated. "Well? What are you waiting for?"

"There's another problem," Sonpear announced, stepping forward. "The fireballs, the k'nid, they did something to your friend. He went crazy when the turret room exploded,
changed
. And he went outside, as if looking for revenge. The old man's out there in the middle of the bastards. He's missing."

Chapter Eight

Kali had no idea how long she and Pim had been in the Expanse, but it had been long enough for Andon to turn into a full-fledged warzone.