"Oh gods," she said. "They're coming down."
"Down?" Slowhand repeated. "Hooper, I thought you had control of these things?"
"I do… I did! They just weren't meant to come down so soon."
"So soon?"
"What, you thought I'd leave them up there? Slowhand, there's a reason they're called the Engines of the Apocalypse!"
"Right, right, fine," Slowhand said.
He looked around at the former members of Redigor's High Council, all of whom were shuffling slowly about the Chapel, disorientated "But I suggest we get these people out of here now."
Above them, one Engine tipped suddenly to the left, its siren blaring louder still, and grazed one of its companions. The sound of the immense machines grinding together drowned out even the increasingly distressed wail of the siren, and the explosion that followed drowned out even that. The first Engine shuddered on its axis and sheered off. The second came to a stop, hanging above them like a steel storm cloud.
And then, though strangely slowly for something of its size, it began to drop.
"Move, move, move!" The archer commanded, slapping Kali on the shoulder with his good arm and herding Makennon, Freel and the rest towards the Chapel's exit.
The Anointed Lord glared at him furiously for a moment, snarling over Redigor's remains, but she capitulated, turning to help Freel and Slowhand with steering their groggier counterparts from the Chapel.
As they ushered the nobles, lords and ladies onto the tomb bridge, the first Engine fell, burrowing into the hole left by the exploded chapel roof. As it came, slowly and inexorably, the edges of the hole began to crumble and collapse, bringing a rain of falling masonry. From near the exit, having just manhandled the last of Redigor's victims through, Kali stared back into the Chapel, picking out Gabriella's corpse through the resultant cloud of dust and debris. She started towards it, intending to carry it out with her, but two slabs of the roof collapsed in her path. Coughing and spluttering, Kali staggered back, looking for another way around. The Engine had begun to burrow itself into the base of the Chapel, and great jagged rents were splitting the floor, spidering out in all directions. Kali finally had to concede that there was no way through. Reluctantly, she turned and stepped onto the bridge.
As Kali began to race after the others, making their way slowly across the bridge, the second of the Engines slammed into the chapel roof and through it and the Chapel of Screams was no more. Kali looked back and swallowed as cracks began to pursue them across the bridge. Many of the former soul-stripped still milled by the tombs lining the chamber, free of their possession but lost on the crumbling walkways.
"Get a farking move on!" Kali shouted to those on the bridge, and to those above and below, "Hey, do you really want to die?"
Miraculously they all made it, bursting from the entrance of Bel'A'Gon'Shri and racing to safety along the gorge just as the entire necropolis collapsed. Kali and Slowhand ushered them on along the gorge, at last reaching a safe distance where the dust and debris from Bel'A'Gon'Shri choked and coated them but otherwise passed them harmlessly by.
The rest of the party out of harm's way, Kali told them to carry on while she and Slowhand paused for a while. She wanted to make sure that the third and last of the Engines followed its companions, not only to confirm that the peninsula was rid of the things but also because, in a sense, it would be like watching the final nail being hammered into Bastian Redigor's coffin.
Unfortunately, things didn't go quite according to plan. Explosions rocked the third Engine, and it began to spin faster and faster, before it fell.
Kali and Slowhand looked at the crooked remains of its companions beneath it, and did some quick mental calculations.
"Please tell me it's not going to do what I think it's going to do," Slowhand said.
Kali stared. "It's going to do what you think it's going to do."
"Oh. Hells."
"Shall we run?"
"I think we'd better."
Despite their words, they remained where they were for another couple of seconds, staring up.
The third engine was coming down on the other two and still spinning at full tilt. Exactly how the engine would react to that Kali and Slowhand couldn't be sure, but it wasn't likely to be gentle or quiet.
The third engine, its sirens blaring, listed badly to the side as it continued its fall, presenting itself side on to the remains of the engines below. The strangely shaped mass slewed into its companions with a grinding and clashing of metals louder even than the noise of the sirens, jamming itself between them and, with an almighty explosion, hurled itself out from between its grounded companions, tumbling end over end towards the necropolis's entrance. The Engine shattered and scattered statues as it came and, when its nose hit the ground, flipped itself end over end once more, bounced along the gorge for perhaps three or four rotations, and slapped down onto its belly with ground-quaking force, skewing along the gorge towards them.
"Now?" Slowhand asked.
"Now." Kali said.
The two of them turned and began to run like the hells, the engine demolishing trees, boulders, everything behind them, and still coming. The pair snatched glances over their shoulders and wished they hadn't, as it was beginning to look as if they had turned to run just a little too late.
The engine, seemingly unstoppable, continued to tear up the ground as it advanced, creating a solid tsunami of soil, rock and shredded vegetation. It would not, both of them reflected, be a very nice way to go.
The first ripples of soil and debris nudged at their ankles.
They looked at each other, and gulped.
Then Katherine Makennon was standing before them and the Anointed Lord was not alone. A group of ten mages, who had presumably teleported in to be by her side when they had witnessed the arrival and demise of the Engines, stood to either side of her. Makennon gestured to them and, as one, they raised their arms, releasing visible pulses of energy over Kali and Slowhand's heads, designed to slow the rampaging Engine down.
The strain was written on their faces. Veins pulsed beneath their flesh. From the noses of one or two blood began to trickle, and then pour.
The Engine began to slow. Gradually, the sounds of destruction from behind Kali and Slowhand quietened. And then it was over, the two of them rather embarrassingly pushed right in front of Makennon on the crest of a final, slow wave of soil.
"Thanks," Kali said, after a moment.
The Anointed Lord regarded her. The cloak she wore to restore her dignity had, it seemed, been 'donated' by the mayor of Gargas, who stood shivering in his britches behind her.
"I think that makes us even," Katherine Makennon said. Her tone made it clear that there would be no discussion as to what had happened. Ever.
Kali nodded. As she did, Freel emerged from the undergrowth and stood by Makennon's side. He snapped his fingers at those mages who weren't holding handkerchiefs to their noses, and they began to weave the threads. After a few seconds, the air before Makennon and Freel parted into a rift through which Kali glimpsed a view of Makennon's inner sanctum back at Scholten Cathedral. The rift hovered a couple of feet off the ground but, in an ostentatious touch presumably designed to ease Makennon's passage, a small flight of steps formed so that she could reach it.
As if they were departing after a simple day in the countryside, Makennon's retinue filed through one by one, until only the Anointed Lord and Freel were left. Then it was Freel's turn. At first it seemed that Jenna's husband was going to leave without a goodbye but he paused, one foot on the steps, and turned to Slowhand.