First, the person reclining on the stairs was indeed his brother Arznaak; rather than displaying the usual limp and splayed posture of someone who had just encountered the music of Jurtan Mont unprepared, though, he appeared to demonstrate instead the rigidity of a cataleptic fit, complete to the rictus of open eyelids and eyeballs tilted firmly back. Second, as the people above descended the last coil and drew into sight, the first was indeed revealed to be Svin and the second - bearing both lantern and flute - was Jurtan Mont. There was, however, following just behind Jurtan Mont, a third.
“Stop the music,” this man commanded, adding a peremptory wave of his hand. He pushed past Jurtan and Svin, sparing barely a glance at Arznaak and his convincing imitation (however premature) of rigor mortis, and gazed instead past Shaa down the tunnel, where Gashanatantra, legs splayed on the floor, was leaning against the wall with the more characteristically groggy and slack-jawed expression of the Jurtan Mont-inflicted. A fairly unpleasant grin spreading across his face, the man advanced toward Gashanatantra and stood over him, his arms folded across his chest.
“So,” said the man, “Gashanatantra. I understand I have you to thank for spending quite an excessive amount of time inside a ring.”
The bird dove at the Corpus, its talons outstretched toward the giant eyes. Max, still grasped firmly within the other set of matching claws, pulled up his legs and tried to brace himself for impact. The Corpus was watching them come in with a singularly vague and disinterested expression. Its aspect was not necessarily so surprising when you considered that its cloak of Knitting was in the process of shredding itself apart ever more rapidly, the gouts of silver sparks chasing up and down around its skin like seam lines ripping away on an overstuffed pillow. Widening gaps were opening up in some places where the silver lines were pulling away from each other; in other spots the silver burnout effect was licking back along the skin itself, consuming it in vast sheets of shimmering flame that left a sparkling residue swirling like dust in the air. Along the seams and beneath the swaths could now be glimpsed the surface layer of packed bodies, wrapped around each other in contorted poses, some clearly in broken postures incompatible with life, their Knitting finery now tatters and rags stained liberally with blood, others clawing feebly for the open air, and a few (not yet the full avalanche that would obviously soon be seen) falling free of the matrix and beginning their tumbling trajectories toward the earth far too far below. With the bird executing its currently suicidal and unnecessary mission, Max fully expected to be joining them within the next few seconds.
But then the looming right eye focussed on them. Some residual trace of its basic operational reflexes made the Corpus take a half-step back; then, as the bird shrieked at it for good measure, it lurched away again, its head rearing back even faster than the body as it tried to get its face away from the imminent danger, the vast arms again coming up behind them and the hands bending in –
- when all at once the head jerked back and disappeared.
It had not of course actually disappeared, Max realized; what had happened instead was that the uncoordinated Corpus had simultaneously lost its balance and gone over backward, pulling its head rapidly earthward on its whip-lashing neck, and its feet (though still embedded to a good depth in the ground) had slipped out ahead, where they were now plowing two huge furrows through the field and sending tons of loam into the already well-clogged air.
Perhaps some of the captive Imperial functionaries making up the main mass of the Corpus would have a greater chance of surviving when the thing hit the ground, compared to the likely outcome of descending a hundred feet or so in free-fall, but by the same token those on the Corpus’ back were about to become nothing but thin-smeared marmalade. As for the stadium itself...
The bird had begun to flatten out its dive as the Corpus executed its massive seconds-long topple toward the ground, but had given off its ferocious squawking, and so Max had a chance for a quick glance around without the distraction of having his ears blown out at close range yet again. So it was that he caught the sight of one of the Corpus’ sliding feet, not yet significantly retarded by the fifty-foot earthen berm it had already shoved away from it, moving inexorably in a straight path that would shortly take it directly through the base of the Emperor’s observation tower. “BIRD!” Max yelled, and somehow the creature seemed this time to hear and agree, for it stood up on a wing and came out of its tight wheel driving hard for the end of the field.
Then, with a titanic rumble that seemed synonymous with the crack of doom, the remains of the Corpus slammed into the earth.
The surface of the field seemed to leap straight up in the air as the shockwave dashed outward toward the stands. The rising mud and dust did not completely obscure from view the network of fissures radiating from the long canyon the impact of the Corpus’ body had spontaneously hollowed out. The Corpus was still splitting apart, too, revealing a dense concoction of gore and carnage that was already mixing its own cloud of spurting red with the flying mud. It could not have been much more than a second after the impact, for all the time-slowing effect of viewing at first hand a great calamity, before the shockwave reached the front of the bleachers.
More dust rose. With the glacially slow movement that signals the onset of a great avalanche, the northern stands began to crumple toward the parade ground, first the field-box tier, than the middle, and so on up toward the top, seats and benches and shrieking masses rolling and tumbling until they were lost beneath the billowing dust. Perhaps other sections of stands were going down as well; perhaps the entire stadium was in the process of collapsing inward; but Max’s attention was now fixed on the tower - or rather on the remains of the tower, for although the fall of the Corpus had arrested the slide of the foot at the limit of its outstretched leg just shy of the tower’s base, the mass of the hill it had pushed ahead of itself had been enough to crack the tower in at least one spot below the center-point, and as a result the observation deck (impelled in addition by the large-amplitude tremors wracking the field) was spinning on its axis as it crashed down the snapping length of its ruptured pylon.
Max activated his second-quantum level vision apparatus as the bird glided slowly overhead, banking sharply to avoid the eastern bleachers and come around again for another pass. Roughly in the center of the wreckage of the observation level spread out across the top of the Corpus’ substantial hill Max had seen the yellow-green glow of a fully-activated personal protection field; the Emperor’s, most likely. Various other colors sparkled around it; here a cross-hatched pulsing that was probably some sort of amulet, there the fading orange of another protection field taxed beyond its limits, but there - in just about the right place, too - was the gold radiance of a god.
The bird came in low and slow and released him. Max crashed down fifteen feet, his usual litheness deserting him in the ridiculous black armor, but he managed not to break his ankle or land on anyone’s head in the process, or at least not on anyone who was in a condition to protest. He straightened up and shoved aside a pile of bashed-in chairs.
The gold shell revealed under the rubble contracted and faded out. Phlinn Arol, in an approximately fetal position, looked up at Max over his shoulder. Even with his protection field obviously jacked up to its maximum level, Phlinn Arol still appeared exceptionally haggard, not to mention the blood running freely from his nose and ears. His mouth was a bright frothy red and the whites of his eyes had gone entirely crimson. Still, he was clearly alive, a fact underlined when he sat up in a slow series of jerks, extending his hand back down to whoever he had been further protecting beneath his body and within the extended cushion of his shield. Leen came into sight, holding her head with her free hand. Whether the blood on Leen was her own or Phlinn Arol’s was not immediately apparent.