Kali heaved herself up on top of the living mountain, avoiding its hands. She leaned forward, holding her gutting knife in both hands, and plunged it viciously into the creature's eye. Vitreous humour spurted forth and the creature reacted once more as she had hoped.
Roaring and slapping at the eye, the juggennath staggered forward in the direction from which the pain had come, seeking out the cause and attempting to crush it. There was, of course, nothing there, and Kali had already flipped herself away. She dangled, now, on a length of hair by the left side of the beast's head, and after a few seconds kicked herself around and delivered another blow with her knife, this time to the juggennath's cheek. Again, it roared, turning to identify its new attacker, but once more there was nothing there. As the beast lurched forward, she did a quick calculation, working out that only one more application of the knife would be needed to get the creature to go where she wished it to go, and then she could effectively sit back and enjoy the ride.
Kali returned to its head and this time used the fringe of the beast to drop herself down until she dangled directly in front of its eye. The blinded eye had reverted to a natural state, a sign that Redigor had departed his host, most likely in response to the pain. That suited her needs perfectly. Glancing behind her to double check that she, and more importantly the creature itself, were on the course she wanted, Kali rammed her gutting knife into the eyeball once more.
The creature roared louder than ever, scaring away those of its predators that still remained in the nearby undergrowth, and charged through the forest, swatting its great hands before it as it did, trying to locate and remove its tormentor. Kali, however, was once again, gone, perched now just above the beast's forehead like a driver. From that position she occasionally jabbed her knife into the wrinkled flesh of its brow, reminding it, when needed, of where she wanted it to go. Then the first of the traps she had laid became visible just before its stomping feet, and just before the rampaging beast triggered it, Kali wished herself luck and hung on tight.
The trap caused the beast no pain, of course, but it roared anyway, this time in confusion, as Kali's meticulously arranged vines wrapped themselves around its feet, throwing it off balance. The trap was not enough to bring it down, of course, but it was enough to send the giant stumbling blindly and out of control further through the forest and towards the second trap she had laid. This one was strung at a different height to the first, and this time the tension in the vines turned it as well, sending it careening to her goal. Kali tightened her grip on the giant's matted hair as it slammed through the trees surrounding it. She could make out the remaining traps ahead of them and, beyond those, the gorge that led towards the necropolis.
She couldn't help but yell out loud — "go, boy, go!" — as the juggennath impacted with her next trap, this one designed to catch the giant at the waist, throwing off its centre of gravity.
Kali suddenly found herself atop a rampaging mountain that could not stop itself from flailing forward, a victim of its own momentum. The last two traps she had lain came into their own now. As the giant stumbled into the complex arrangement of crossed vines, breaking each with a sound like a musket shot, the branches and, in one case, log that Kali had secured in place sprang from their lairs and struck the juggennath full on, slapping it forward. The giant roared in protest and confusion, brain unable to register what was happening in such swift succession, flailing all the more.
Perfect, Kali thought from her position at the creature's summit. All she needed to wait for now was the final trap and she could be off, leaving nature — and gravity specifically — to take its course.
The Juggennath broke through the thorn barrier surrounding Bel'A'Gon'Shri, and was in the gorge leading to the necropolis's front door. From her height Kali could actually see the stone slab ahead of them. She encouraged the Juggennath once more, ramming her knife into what remained of its eyeball. As the giant beast roared in pain she saw two tiny figures on top of the necropolis — Freel and Slowhand — turn at the sound.
The Juggennath staggered forward and Kali counted down the seconds until it triggered the trap.
If she did say so herself, there was no doubt that she had saved the best for last.
As the two tensioned vines stretched across the gorge floor were snapped by the Juggennath's staggering feet, a complex series of weights and counterweights were set rapidly in motion, and the two overhanging trees that Kali had tied back using ropes and pulleys sprang out from the gorge wall and slapped it hard in the back, somewhere in the region of each shoulderblade. Flung forward, the Juggennath roared and swung its mighty arms, trying to regain its balance, but its enforced momentum had already tipped its centre of gravity, and its mass was far too great to recover from such a complication in time to save it from its inevitable fall. It careened forward head-first, the heavy and uncontrolled pounding of its feet travelling up its body and shaking Kali to the bone, and she knew it was time to leave. She turned away from the eye and began to scramble down the back of the beast's neck, then unexpectedly flipped forward with a yelp, suddenly halted in her flight.
What the hells? She thought, and twisted her body, struggling to look above and behind her.
She saw that her foot had become entangled in a knot of the Juggennath's hair and she was now dangling from it like some kind of decoration.
Oh, that was great. Just great. Just farking great. How many seconds did she have before her plan came to fruition? Three? Two? One?
Roaring herself now, Kali flipped herself upward, tugged at the constraining mass of hair and then, realising she could not get free, instead heaved herself around the side of the Juggennath's neck as far as she could go.
One, in fact.
The last thing she saw with any clarity were the figures of Slowhand and Freel on the upper lip of the sealed entrance to Bel'A'Gon'Shri, their mouths agape. Then she saw the two of them throw themselves out the way.
By an odd coincidence, her cry echoed their own.
"Ohhhhhh, shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit…"
The Juggennath struck the sealed entrance to the necropolis like a battering ram, cracking the thick stone. For a moment it seemed that that might be it, that the slab would give no further, but the Juggennath's vicious spikes had embedded themselves in it. Clinging still to its neck, having at last managed to kick loose from its hair, Kali felt the Juggennath strain and lurch as the spider-web cracks widened and the slab crumbled before it. The Juggennath let out a last great roar of pain and protest and fell through the gap, hitting the floor with a force that rocked the very foundations of the necropolis. The Juggennath tried to pick itself up, but the remnants of the broken slab broke free and crashed onto its helpless form. It seemed unlikely that it would rise again.
A dusty, coughing figure picked itself up from next to the crushed, bloodied mass and stared into the darkness ahead. It wasn't exactly how she'd planned to make her entrance admittedly but, what the hells, the end result was the same. She'd promised Redigor she was coming and here she was.
"Knock, knock," Kali growled.
Chapter Sixteen
The first thing Kali noticed as she moved into Bel'A'Gon'Shri was how old the necropolis felt. It wasn't the usual sense of age she experienced when finding Old Race sites, but a feeling that she had somehow stepped backwards in time — not into the past exactly, but certainly out of the present. It was as if, when the place had been built, it had somehow clung onto its time and never been willing to let go.