And there it was. Or, rather, they were.
The intakes for the water pipes loomed before her in the murky depths, the churning water around them exacerbated by the pumps somewhere inside Martak that drew it in. Kali had to fight against the pull so that she was not sucked against the grilles she saw protecting the pipe's mouths, and, thrashing and kicking again, manoeuvred herself so that she was able to grab both sides of one of the pipes, and there, amidst a cloud of bubbles as blinding as fog, tugged and wrenched at the grille until it came away. She let it fall to the seabed and then — her breath short — dug in her belt for her breathing conch before she thrust herself upwards and in.
It was almost peaceful inside the tube, the distant thudding of the pumps like a heartbeat, the rotation of the fans — slower now that their job in releasing the king and his army was done — a relaxing thrum. This was the first chance she'd had to appreciate the complex network of pipes that seemed to power the mechanics of the place, and, while she found it an achievement, she also found it rather odd because it was so distinctly un-dwarven. But then, she supposed, they hadn't had much lava to drive their engines here at the edge of the sea.
There was nothing peaceful about what was occurring beneath her, however, and as Kali wiped away the grime on the inner surface of the tube, and looked out, she saw the vaguely distorted forms of the advancing army of clockwork warriors marching in rank after rank along Martak's exit corridor. But she had no interest in them. They were the responsibility of Slowhand and the others now, and her concern was in reaching the man who controlled them and what he, in turn, controlled.
Kali swam along the tube, timing her strokes through the slowly rotating fanblades, heading horizontally and then downwards, rubbing the glass occasionally to determine how far into the complex she was. Eventually the light outside became shadowed and she realised she was passing through the section of tubing that ran through the surroundings of the first door, which meant there was only one short section of corridor remaining. There was, however, a problem. Her breathing was becoming laboured, and she realised the conch symbiotes had almost exhausted their current supply of oxygen. She would need to pick up her pace, get out of the tube quickly, or she'd become part of the flotsam floating around this hellhole for the rest of time.
She swam faster, ignoring her surroundings until a second batch of shadow told her she had at last returned to the throne room of the Clockwork King. But her breathing was becoming desperate now, and she could taste the toxic taint of her own used breath. She'd poison herself if she didn't get out of there right away.
Bubbles exploding from the sides of her mouth, Kali felt desperately around on the base of the tube, searching for some weakness in its length. She found a seal that linked sections and then pulled Munch's gutting knife from her belt, working at the strange, almost organic seal. It was more difficult than she expected, and her movements became increasingly jerky, imprecise, but at last a downwards spiral of bubbles indicated the seal was coming apart, water leaking into the throne room below.
She wondered if Munch would notice — notice that she was coming for him.
She stabbed his knife into the weakened seal, and a sudden lurch in the base of the tube warned her that it was about to give. Just in time she jammed herself inside the tube as the whole section dropped away from the rest of the network and hung down at an angle, water slamming into and over her back as it poured down into the throne room.
Kali released herself and went with the flow which, quite conveniently, washed her right in front of Munch, sitting there, on his throne.
"Miss Hooper," the dwarf resurgent said. "Even I have to confess this is something of a surprise."
"Hi, Stan," Kali said. "Have to say, you look a little rough."
He did, too. Munch was almost slumped in the throne he had so arrogantly adopted, looking drained and fevered. His eyes seemed unable to focus on her — or were, perhaps, focusing on a thousand things — and he involuntarily spasmed every few seconds. The blood that had leaked from where the spikes had stabbed into his skull had not dried, because the sweat that ran from his every pore wouldn't let it.
"Controlling the Thousand is proving to be something of a challenge," he said, wearily. "But one that I will master."
"Can't let you do that."
Munch paused. "Ah. You have returned to kill me."
"Not here to see if you've grown any higher."
"I am afraid," Munch said haltingly, almost as a gasp, "you are an inconvenience I cannot afford."
"Now, where have I heard that before? I suppose this is the part where you set your dogs on me?"
"Indeed." He blinked, and his four bodyguards snapped to face her, their feet thudding down as they adopted an attack stance.
Kali was ready for them. She'd been ready the moment she'd dropped from the tube to the floor. She only hoped that, in trying to do what she wanted to do, she was as capable as the events of recent days had suggested she could be.
Because if she wasn't, she was dead.
Again.
Four hammers slammed down from her left and from her right, impacting hard with the stone floor of the throne room and cracking it wide. They were clearly only warning blows but nevertheless Kali was already gone, backflipping away and feeling the heavy whoosh of the hammers' mass as she went. She straightened, turned and ran, inviting them to follow, which they duly did, their feet pounding on the damaged floor behind her.
Kali ran almost to the end of the throne room, seemingly intent on fleeing from their pursuit but planning nothing of the kind. For one thing, there was nowhere to go — the gallery steps and corridor were still filled with the mechanical warriors' slowly deploying ranks — but for another she knew exactly where in the throne room she wanted herself, and her would-be butchers, to be.
What she wanted to do, in fact, was let them drive her into a corner.
The mechanical warriors came on, hammers raised and axe blades swinging, while a somewhat weak cackling from Munch echoed in the distance. Kali stood her ground, waiting for her moment. As the four approached, she bounced on the balls of her feet, watching their axes, but, particularly, their hammers, not only for which of the warriors would swing the first blow but how they would swing it. She had, after all, learned a new trick in the Spiral of Kos.
The first two disappointed, and she dodged their downward swings by deftly rolling between them, but the third, swinging its hammer horizontally, was exactly what she'd been hoping for. As the hammer swung towards her, momentum guaranteed to carry it onwards and upwards, she ducked beneath and then instantly sprang onto its upper face from behind, letting it carry her into and then propel her through the air. She landed exactly where she wanted to be, on top of the very water tube she and Slowhand had first used to enter the throne room, but she did not use it to leave, instead simply standing there until her attackers swung at her again. This they did, and Kali glanced over at Munch as the hammers smashed towards her, watching to see if he'd realised his mistake. For at her current height, the deadly bludgeons of the bodyguards could not quite reach her, and instead they smashed into the tube itself. Glass shattered and water exploded, sending the bodyguards staggering back beneath its deluge.
Kali had leapt away at the moment of impact, and now ran further up the tube, in the direction of Munch, where she heard him roar in anger. Yes, he'd realised his mistake but, as was the way of these things, it did not stop him repeating it. The bodyguards pounded after her, hammers and axes swinging all the way, and as they swung they shattered more and more of the tube, so that entire sections of it fell away to the throne room floor. They didn't crash down, however, but splashed and sank, the increasing deluge of water from the ruptured system beginning to flood the throne room, the still rotating fans pulling more and more of it in from the sea. Kali continued her flight along the tubes and the warriors followed, almost berserk now, though their rage — Munch's rage — could do little to help them in what had become a forced wade through the rising waters. Again they swung, though more sluggishly now, their giant hammers slowed as they ploughed through the flood and, again, more sections of the tubes disintegrated before them. The water was deep enough for Kali's purpose now, and she stopped her flight, instead diving into the water herself, and there she clenched her gutting knife as she swam beneath the surface in the direction of her mechanical pursuers. There was always a way, she thought, not only to get into places but to defeat things, and swimming into the midst of the pack of bodyguards she slashed the wiry tendons on the ankles of all four, the water preventing them being able to manoeuvre fast enough to stop her. With a series of mechanical groans they collapsed beneath the ever-rising flood to the throne room floor.