Exactly how much became clear as soon as she and Horse topped the next ridge.
When she had ridden up into the hills with Slack the previous evening, she had left below her a town lying peacefully in the savannah and forest lands east of Andon. Solnos was positioned beyond a sun-bleached but solid wooden bridge, the river meandering gently around its northern outskirts, and at the other end of town a grassy escarpment rose to the south before sloping away in the direction of Fayence. The town itself was a little smaller than Kalten, without defensive walls because none had ever been needed, and its buildings were one or two-storey affairs, constructed of blindingly white plastered bricks over a wooden framework. The buildings were centred around two squares, each strung with bunting and paper lanterns, one lined with shops selling everything from food to farming implements to bolts of silk, the other home to the town's well and church, a twin-turreted and bell-towered affair that was rurally typical of the Final Faith. The Faith's 'missionary' presence in such an otherwise idyllic spot had been the only thing that had stopped Kali musing on the possibility of opening a second Here There Be Flagons in the town, but it had been something she'd remained willing to consider should the Faith ever be kicked out on their arses, as they thoroughly deserved.
Now, it was likely she never could. Solnos was turning rapidly to ruin.
Where only the previous afternoon children had been laughing and playing in the streets, their parents sampling the exotic fare of the town's communal dining plaza, all had degenerated into chaos.
The white buildings were now criss-crossed with a growing number of cracks, each widening by the second as the buildings were shaken to their foundations. Many of the inhabitants of the town were racing in and out of the buildings, desperately gathering valuables or loved ones, or rushing in panic about the streets, trying to understand what was happening to them. The destruction wasn't limited to the buildings, either — even those who had safely evacuated their homes could not escape the effects of the quake, as they found themselves fleeing dark, jagged rents in the streets themselves, bunting and lanterns falling and fluttering about them like dying birds.
It was utter calamity and confusion. The people of Solnos hadn't the slightest clue what was hitting them. But Kali did. From her vantage point on the hillside, she could see it, even if she couldn't quite yet take it in.
"Okay," she said with a levity she didn't feel, "that's a new one."
To the west of the town, in the midst of its farmlands, massive machines were drilling out of the valley floor. There were three of them in all, emerging one after the other, the first already risen to the height of the ridge on which Kali stood, filling the sky and dwarfing her with its mass. The machines resembled, of all things, giant fir cones. The comparison was hardly apt, however, because these were not the products of some unbelievably huge, nightmare tree, but things of metal which spouted steam as they rose. Things which crackled with electrical energy. Things which Kali had no doubt had been manufactured, which only served to make them all the more staggering.
She could only stand stunned beside Horse as the second and third machines rose to join the first, churning slowly out of the ground with a deafening crunching of substrata and roots, carrying with them great scoops of soil, shrub, and even whole trees, sloughing from their sides in lethal downpours. Rising ever higher, they inevitably became visible to the town beyond the ridge, and Kali's gaze flicked to the people of Solnos, who as one had momentarily forgotten their immediate concerns to stop and point, or scream.
As one, the massive machines had begun to turn slowly on their vertical as well as horizontal axis so their pointed peaks would eventually face towards the ground. As they did this they emitted a siren sound that reminded Kali of the last, desperate calls of some dying leviathan, or of some impossibly loud and haunting foghorn, blaring endlessly into the night. The sound drowned out everything, even the clatter of the crumbling hills.
What in the pits of Kerberos were these things? The style of their construction and the runes Kali could make out carved into their eaves were dwarven, and the devastation they'd caused upon emerging suggested they had lain underground for millennia. Their history and reasons for construction were only two of the questions that intrigued her, though. What had brought them to the surface? Who or what controlled them? And why?
No, Kali mentally kicked herself. Honestly, sometimes… The question she should be asking was, what could she do to help the people below?
Kali turned her attention back to the west of town, to the farmlands. There, a number of Solnossians, little more than dots from her vantage point, were scurrying across the fields, their tools abandoned. Kali had no doubt that when these most unexpected of crops had emerged from the ground, the farmers had been as staggered and transfixed as their neighbours in town and now that they had collected themselves to flee, reaching safety appeared to be almost impossible.
The fields were nothing less than a disaster zone, subsiding not only into the three gaping pits that the machines had created but into rents in the ground like those that had split the streets of Solnos. Even as she watched, Kali saw two of the fleeing figures sucked into oblivion, clawing desperately for purchase as they went, and she knew that things were only going to get worse. Beneath all of them was the subterranean expanse that she had only just escaped, and if Quinking's Depths collapsed further, Solnos might as well say goodbye to anything or anyone this side of the ridge.
Kali mounted Horse and spurred him down the hillside towards the fleeing figures. She frowned, the fleeing men and women were some distance apart, and to aid them all she and Horse would have to perform some pretty fancy manoeuvring.
With a "hyahh!" she drove the bamfcat toward the nearest group, shouting at them to raise their arms as she leaned sideways to scoop the first of them up. The man arced up onto Horse's back, landing with a thud in the saddle, and Kali repeated the rescue with a second farmer and a third. She could carry no more behind her for the time being and reined Horse away from the landslips and to the safety of a patch of stable ground.
Kali had no choice but to ignore their pleas about rescuing husbands, wives or brothers and wasted no time, turning Horse again and scanning the fields for those in the most immediate danger.
One group of five or six — in the chaos it was difficult to tell — were struggling, their escape route cut off by a fresh fissure. Attempting to backtrack, they were once more caught in the middle of the subsidence.
Another "hyaah!" sent Horse hammering towards them and, almost as if he had read her mind, the bamfcat deployed more of his natural armaments. The extra horns which had just sprang from Horse's body were, for once, meant neither as defensive or offensive appendages but provided hand and footholds for the group of farmers it would otherwise have been impossible to carry. Quite what the farmers made of the great armoured beast as it pounded towards them she'd never know, but as they staggered back before his fearsome sight, Kali had to indicate as best she could what they should do. Thankfully, in their desperation, the men and women seemed quick learners, and as Horse galloped into their midst, they leapt for and clung to the armoured protrusions.
"Hang on!" Kali shouted and, wondering vaguely if there was some kind of obscure world record for the number of farmers dangling from a bamfcat, she quickly reined Horse around once more, riding him into a jump across the fissure that had earlier stymied the farmers' flight.
The bamfcat roared triumphantly as they arced over the collapse, and, as they thudded down on the other side Kali, too, let out a whoop. But it wasn't over yet.