Chapter Five - Collapse

Though Chimaera Estate was Helmsman's official residence, it was Chimaera Laboratory that he thought of as home. The building's name had originally been a joke describing the country of Sardipa itself--ugly, mean, and made of leftover pieces, but something that no one wants to be on the bad side of. The building had taken on its namesake; originally little more than a large warehouse, a dozen odd spires and balconies had been constructed, with two sub-basements reclaimed* since Helmsman had moved in.

Helmsman sighed as he walked across the threshold and made for the stairs to his office, a large glass-and-iron construction hanging from the ceiling. He made it halfway there and found the stairs blocked off, with a handpainted sign reading "use elevator" in front of them.

"What the hell?" growled Helmsman. He looked at Rainsford, who shrugged.

"Sorry, Viggo, I forgot to mention that. Kilburn and Bowerston finished the elevator design and implimented a prototype while we were in Bellaraphon. It's just past the staircase, I'll show you how it works."

Rainsford led Helmsman to a steel platform beyond the stairs and threw a switch on a panel built into it. A compressor hummed, pressure valves fire, and the platform began to rise.

"Ingenius, eh?" said Rainsford.

"Not bad, not bad." replied the Savant. "But why aren't the stairs available?"

"We've been meaning to reroute them for a few years now, to make room for another forge along the West wall. This elevator also solves the problem of getting prototypes to and from Heavy Vehicle Testing on the third story. We don't have to use the taskmages anymore."

"Ah." Helmsman thought for a moment. "Bill, why is Heavy Vehicle Testing on the third floor? Wouldn't it make more sense on the ground floor?"

"I don't remember specifically...I think we put it up there because we needed the floor space for the old master lathe."

"Which we scrapped six years ago. We should probably relocate Heavy Vehicle Testing to the ground floor sometime soon, before there's an accident." This was probably a good idea; everything except the ground floor and basement levels had been added to the building's original shell by mechanical engineers, machinists, and day laborers, with varying results.

Sardipa itself was hardly a bastion of magic; this was traditionally the domain of Palosia, and so anything enchanted was viewed with suspicion by the average Sardipan. Ulgotha, however, was a city so large and so crowded that its accumulation of a magical field was inevitable. Magical fields will allow for some unusual events, such as rains of fish, electrical storms amid snow, not to mention the city's disproportionate population of undead.

That said, sometimes strange coincidences have nothing to do with magic.

Just as the elevator clicked into position at the top of its track, there was the sound that everyone in Chimaera Laboratory feared most, coming from the ceiling--metal creaking, bending, and breaking. As Helmsman and Rainsford watched, the bottom of Heavy Vehicle Testing ruptured, dropping a wheeled vehicle through the breach and onto the laboratory floor below.

Because of Chimaera's piecemeal construction, there was no second floor besides a steel framework beneath Heavy Vehicle Testing, but the Executive Lounge lay directly beneath it on the first floor. Sputtering steam and spilling burning coals as it fell, the derelect machine crashed into the Executive Lounge and kept going, crashing straight through the concrete floor and into the basement below. At this point, Helmsman and Rainsford lost sight of it, but heard it smash through another floor, and then another.

Helmsman's shock passed faster than Rainsford's. "Bill, get this thing back on the ground. Now!"

The elevator descended slowly, picking up passengers during its descent through Chimaera's five levels. Below, workers were swarming around the holes the falling vehicle had created and rushing down in the lowest level, making their way to where the heap had come to rest.

"How many do you think were killed?" asked Helmsman.

"At this time of day the sub-basements are mostly empty, and you're the only one with a key to the Executive Lounge, Savant--" said one of the workers behind Helmsman. Helmsman realized he had no idea that he'd had the key to the Executive Lounge. "--so if the pilot's all right, the damage might just be structural."

"How likely is that?" asked a voice Helmsman recognised.

"When was the last time you saw someone fifty feet through four floors and walk it off, Jones?" he replied.

Just then, there was a bloodcurdling shriek from the hole, followed by screams. The upper levels went silent. The first shriek hadn't sounded human.

"Well, they've hit the Abyss, then." muttered Helmsman. "Wonderful. Simply wonderful."

Once on the floor, Helmsman jostled his way to the ground floor opening. Once his voice was recognised, the workers moved aside. Helmsman peered over the edge at the scene below; unpleasant didn't begin to cover it.

The creature standing triumphantly atop the ruined prototype was certainly undead and certainly female; anything else was pure speculation. She might have been a Wight, or perhaps just a badly decomposed Revenant. She was howling like a banshee and trying to pry the cockpit open.

Helmsman was about to bark an order when he heard another voice already doing so. He recognised it as belonging to Jacob Kilburn.

Kilburn pulled his goggles over his eyes and fastened the buckles the machine he was shouldering. Two glass tanks were mounted on his back, each one containing semivolatile chemicals. He lit a match and held it to the wick at the end of the pipe in his hand, a tube connecting it to the tanks on his back.

"All of you, take the rope and lower me--now!" he yelled. He slipped over the side, dangling from the rope around his waste. The team holding the rope lowered him to the ancient floor. Very little light filtered through from the floors above, but Kilburn planned to brighten the area very shortly. To his left Angus MacGregor was lowered by the same means, equipped with an identical device.

"All right, you!" he yelled at the screeching creature. "Get the hell out of here, or Turash help me, there will be nothing left of you to bury!"

The creature looked up, and deemed Kilburn to be a better target than what was left of the prototype's driver. She leapt toward Kilburn, her claw-like hands spread wide.

Kilburn raised the pipe and squeezed the trigger. The chemicals mixed in the tube, creating a flammable gas as they combined. The pressure of the reaction shot the gas out at high speed, across the burning wick. The result was a twenty-foot column of flame. Kilburn raked it over the lunging undead.

The burners had been developed a decade ago for use in mine shafts to ignite gas pockets that proved lethal to miners. They had taken up use in Ulgotha as a means to control those undead who were less civilized than the members of the Alliance of Extended Humanity. They'd seen brief military use, but had too strong of a backdraft to be effective outdoors.

The banshee cried one last time as the sheer force of the torrent of fire threw her across the ancient room. MacGregor turned and engulfed a creature skulking in the corner, behind Kilburn. This place hadn't seen the sun in a century; Chimaera's burner's made it a new one, if only for a brief moment. What undead remained ran from the flames, retreating into the darkness of the Abyss.

"Jacob!" called the Savant's voice from above.

Kilburn looked up, pulling back his goggles. "Boss, is that you?"

"None other! Well done, Jacob!"

"You bet! We fried those rotwalkers good!"

The Savant hesitated for a second. "Get yourself cleaned up, I need to speak to you personally! The rest of you, get to work getting this place back in order!" he turned to Rainsford. "Send a messenger to the Mason's guild, tell them it's urgent and we can pay up front. I'll be in my office. See to it that Kilburn gets up there as soon as possible."

Although, thought Helmsman, I have to wonder if this is the best time to break the news.


*Ulgotha had been around in one form or another for more than two thousand years. The city had originally been built on the muddy banks of the River Leshrac, but had burned down and been rebuilt so many times that it was largely built on its own ruins. In some areas of the city, primarily the older districts such as the Upper Barrens and Ralston's Ferry, hard work and decent structural reinforcement could lead to the reclamation of as many as seven sub-basements by refurbishing the ancient architecture beneath the streets, though this was generally discouraged. It was said that one could move from the Marble Gate at the Northernmost edge of the city to the Bridge of Sighs that crossed the southern end of the River Leshrac without coming within twenty feet of the surface. The ruins of the undercity were referred to as "The Abyss" and rumor had it that the Abyss was filled with malevolent undead and other creatures who found a complete lack of sunlight hospitable.