She spun around, flattening her back against the crystal, a thought striking her. And peering along the vast curve of the Spiral's edge she saw what she suspected she might. More doors like this one, that she supposed led to more rooms like the one she had already seen. Yes, it made sense. The plants that protected the Spiral were no natural species, that was certain, so they had to have been cultivated, engineered, maintained. And it was here that that had been done. These rooms were what made the Spiral tick.
It was incredible. She hadn't come across anything like this before. This vast place, these rooms, all of this effort to protect that key — why?
It was possible the room contained a clue. Kali turned back to examine the door, but there seemed no visible way of opening it. It was thicker than the crystal of the dome, too — too thick to smash. Then she noticed that the frame of the door was traced with a faint runic pattern — not a circle like beneath the dome but a squiggle that surrounded it like a vine — and she brushed her fingertips across it experimentally. There was a sound like a long intake of breath, and on the lower left the curls and strokes lit with a brilliant blue light that began to work its way around the frame as if it were somehow loading it with energy.
Kali staggered back, falling onto her rear, staring at the pattern, so stunned that for a second she didn't realise the light of it was illuminating her as if she were experiencing a visitation from the gods. She would have sat there still were it not for the sound of footsteps approaching. She scrambled up and away from the door but it was too late — drawn by the strange spotlight, Munch and his cronies had found her.
Munch stared at the glowing pattern and sighed.
"Miss Hooper, my job is hazardous enough, and I really cannot afford loose cannons," he said matter-of-factly. "Regrettably, then, I must find my own way to the key." He turned to the shadowmage. "Burn her!"
Kallow raised a hand that still flickered from the volley he'd launched earlier, flexing his fingers to combust it anew. Kali stared at the ball of flame that appeared hovering in his palm and backed away, swallowing. This time, there was nowhere to hide.
"No, wait," she said. "You're making a mistake."
"No," Munch said, already walking back towards the Spiral, "meeting me was your mistake."
Two things happened at once. Kallow punched his palm in Kali's direction, letting fly, and at the very same time the runic pattern completed, the door it surrounded sliding open with a hiss. Kali coughed and gagged as a noxious cloud — the product of the plants and gods knew what other strange materials that had rotted inside the room for years — erupted into the air outside.
Gas. And a lot of it.
The fireball never reached her. It ignited the cloud as soon as it left Kallow's hand and the space between them was engulfed in a sheet of flame that blew her pursuers off their feet, turning them into fireballs themselves. Only Munch escaped the worst of the blast, but even he was slammed across the chamber floor some fifty feet, bouncing and rolling, smoking and charred, even further beyond that.
"I told you you were making a mistake," Kali said.
She ran — because there was nothing else she could do. Behind her, the open room boomed as the gas remaining within ignited, and Kali felt the floor quake not once but thrice, the explosion starting a chain reaction that was beginning to work its way around each room on the rim of the chamber. As she ducked and weaved, the arched crystal doors blew out of their frames one after the other, shattering around her. Great plumes of flame erupted from where they'd been, carrying inside them vials and bottles that then also shattered, spreading who knew what upon the floor, but something flammable that added to and combined with the plumes to create a ring of fire in the heart of the Spiral — a ring of fire that was rapidly turning into an inferno. Kali looked for the exit, and with relief spotted it, but she did not run towards it yet, instead veering towards Munch, and aiming beyond him. The recovering psychopath loomed before her, and, without even thinking, Kali leapt upwards and somersaulted over his surprised form, twisting in mid-air and plucking his gutting knife from its sheath as she went. It was a move that rather surprised her, too. Whoahh, she thought, you're getting good!
But she was going to need to be. Because she wasn't leaving without the key.
Okay, it wasn't exactly the plan she'd had in mind, but the imminent destruction of the Spiral had forced a rethink. The sea of flame wasn't killing the plants at the base of the Spiral — not yet — but it wasn't sparing them, either. Already burning furiously beneath the lower steps — and refusing to go away — it had sent them into a sweating, writhing paroxysm that Kali hoped would keep them distracted while she did what she needed to do. Suicide, she knew, but since when had that ever stopped her? And unless she wanted the key to disappear forever in this conflagration, what choice did she have?
She sprinted straight for the Spiral and up, her footfalls clanging rapidly on its steps, gaining as much height as quickly as she could. All around her the lethal vegetation lashed and snapped as though it had a hundred victims in its malignant grip, tendrils twisting and twining with each other all about her, their needles locking and causing sudden, frantic struggles between them. Kali didn't wait around to see which won, the fire hot on her heels, spreading now not only with its own momentum but flicked ever higher by the panicked whiplashing of those plants it had already consumed. It was actually starting to damage them, the tendrils' outer flesh splitting in the intensifying heat, spurting their sap until they became slick with their own green juices. The resultant friction between them made them sound as if they were screaming — and perhaps they were.
Disgusting as it was, the sap was exactly what Kali needed. The acrid smoke that poured now from the plants she could just about cope with, but the heat was another thing, and the sap was as welcome as a mountain waterfall, enabling her to keep going. And keep going she did, using Munch's gutting knife to slice at any tendril that flopped in her path, not so much harming them as batting them out of the way to die. And the Spiral was dying, from the bottom up.
Still, it seemed neverending and Kali was starting to think that it would make one hells of a morning workout when, at last, she reached the top.
The key sat on its plinth before her, bigger than it had seemed from above, a peculiar thing — an oddly disturbing thing — carved in the style of gristle and bone. But far too unwieldy to carry, especially in current circumstances. Thinking quickly, Kali loosened her toolbelt, slung it over one shoulder, then hefted the key and stuffed it behind the strap.
Hells, it was heavy. But whatever it was, it was hers. She had done it. All she had to do now was get back down.
Kali took in two deep lungfuls of air and was about to begin her descent when the Spiral shifted beneath her. She stumbled and picked herself up. Then the thing shifted again, and she realised what she had been afraid would happen was happening. The heat of the fire was weakening — perhaps even melting — some of the Spiral's lower superstructure, and the whole thing was starting to collapse beneath her.
She looked down. The lower levels were folding in on themselves to create one mass of red-hot metal and superheated mulch. It was a giant furnace in the making.
There was no way down. Unless she got out of there now, the Spiral of Kos would become her funeral pyre.
Kali spun, searching for an alternative route. She could barely see anything, the explosions beneath her growing in their intensity and height. But then above the roar of the flames and the intensity of the heat haze she heard a peculiar clanking, looked down and saw the lift she had abandoned a seeming eternity ago bucking against its brake. But why? Another explosion drew her attention and, looking up, she saw it had reached almost as high as the observation platform — but obviously hadn't been the first explosion to do so — because the lift's counterweight was bucking against its own brake, the rail in which it sat mangled beneath it. And as she watched, the counterweight broke free.