[quote]She grabbed a fistful of the freshly hot dirt and launched it into the Kitty's face praying that it had some effect before she made the mad dash into the Stone. She slipped due to the mud that now had turned to sand all over her body. She ended up sliding unintentionally down the hole. She cried out and in a wild panic she grabbed out at anything that she could catch herself on. Her savior was a rusted and unmoving gear some distance down.

She let go and fell a few more feet and landed onto the side of a large gear with a thud. This gear still moved and she rotated on it at a steady pace.

She realized that her left arm had become dislocated and there were cuts all over both arms. Exhausted and in pain, Rain started to cry silently. This day had simply become too much.[/quote]

All around was the hiss and slow tick of machinery and steam; only a few of the machines continued to beat like a struggling heart, while the rest were still and cold and silent. The gear on which Rain lay moved slowly by degrees without obstruction, like the face of a clock, with a promise to carry her forever as long as she wished it.

From her vantage point in the cool darkness, a chaos of gears and springs and cogs and sprockets filled the space all around her, illuminated only by the dim clouded light that filtered down from the broken Stone. Metal walkways crisscrossed above and below her, leading to mysterious doors on the shadowed walls. Many of the gears were stuck and struggling due to the chunks of the floor and ceiling that had caught in them; somewhere below her, water was dripping into a larger pool. There was no immediate indication of what this enormous machine was for, or why it existed at all.

Footsteps echoed softly on a catwalk above. Someone leaned over to peer down, then glanced upward to see if there would be any more falling bodies to jam the machinery. The person climbed up on the railing, then dropped down lightly to land on one knee on the same gear where Rain lay. They stepped forward, leaving droplets and wet footprints in their wake, with the intention of collecting this new corpse -- but stopped when it was clear that Rain was very much alive.

In a panic, the person gave a running leap and clambered up onto a nearby catwalk, where they crouched against the railing to stare at her from a safe distance. In the dim light, it was the shape of a full-grown man hunched against the catwalk railing. He was extremely pale -- almost translucent -- and wore very little clothing. A long braid of dark hair hung over the edge of the catwalk, dripping water.

[quote]She picked up the lantern and followed the new path, her footsteps echoing in the cave without the wind and rain that had been present outside. Once we have escaped, what price would you ask of me, Shaiollesh? She asked the God of Caverns. She was grateful for the power she was given, but she wasn't foolish enough to assume it was given freely.[/quote]

Shaiollesh was silent for a long while -- but there was an air of patience and thoughtfulness as the god considered its answer.

Somewhere above -- past the labyrinth of passages that Grace herself had arranged -- Lha'tak's emissary caused earthquakes and landslides, tearing away at the stone, intent on destroying the mountain itself while burrowing deeper after Grace. The emissary, however, had no way of knowing where Grace was. The mountain would collapse long before Grace could be discovered, and trapping her would be near impossible while the God of Caverns' power was in her hands.

Nor's arms tightened around Grace's neck, and she took in a slow breath. She mumbled something in her strange language -- Amune would understand her: [i]We are being watched[/i]. And then, she spoke again with a thick accent, in the language Grace knew: "I can walk." She shifted in Grace's powerful grip, to prove that she could move well enough to keep up on her own.

Shaiollesh chose that moment to answer, but not in words. Grace would instinctively know that the God of Caverns simply wished to exist; that she was not being [i]given[/i] power, but rather that Shaiollesh needed Grace to act as a conduit for its power. The gods each had an exceptional store of power, but were incapable of using it themselves in any meaningful way. The gods could not affect the world directly -- but they could siphon their power through a living person. Some gods wished to affect the world more profoundly, to exercise rule over it all, and so gathered as many conduits as possible and forced them to act according to the god's will with deals and threats -- but Shaiollesh was content with Grace, satisfied that she was here to manipulate the power that had until now been dormant. It didn't matter to the God of Caverns what she chose to do with it, as long as the passages remained open.

Grace knew, then, that until the collapse of the Stone, Nor had been the one that had been holding Shaiollesh captive -- eons of being caged behind constricting walls. All of the gods had been trapped by the one that Grace was now protecting -- and all of the gods thirsted for her blood. Shaiollesh, too, held no love for Nor -- but the God of Caverns was patient, and understood that Nor was now powerless, and destroying her was a pointless endeavor.

As soon as Nor was allowed to stand again -- shakily -- she craned her neck, touching a wall for balance, but couldn't see far at all down the passage. She reached back to take Amune's hand, and spoke to Grace in her lilting dialect: "Where are we going?"