Rasalom was near, clinging to the arch, his outstretched talons only a few feet from Glaeken's face, yet he was receding, falling away. And then Glaeken saw why. He'd cut through the remnant of the fourth support and now Rasalom was dangling over the pit, clutching frantically with arms, legs, and tentacles to the swiftly tilting remnant.
The entire structure—the new Rasalom, the central disk, and the remnant of his sack-like chrysalis—was now supported entirely by the third arch. And Glaeken had already damaged that near its union with the disk.
After all these ages, Rasalom's end was at hand.
Or was it?
Rasalom was suspended head down over the pit, but he was scrabbling backwards along the remnant of the arch, up toward the disk.
"You cannot win, Glaeken! Not this time! It cannot happen! I won't allow it! I'm too close!"
His movements were shaking the entire structure, exerting enormous pressure on the lone arch. It began to bob like a fishing pole that had hooked an enormous Great White. As Glaeken hobbled back to the rim of the cavern and made his way toward the final arch, he heard it begin to crack where he had started a cut near its distal end.
Rasalom must have realized it too, because even in this dim light Glaeken could discern a frantic desperation in his movements. But it was too late. The end of the arch was splitting, angling down at its wounded tip. Breaking…
A cannonshot crack signaled the end. The disk lurched downward suddenly to a vertical angle, twisted crazily. Rasalom was there, clutching the disk's upper edge with his taloned fingers. Other appendages, spiny, rickety arms with clawed tips had broken free of the gel along his flank and were blindly questing for purchase while his tentacles stretched toward the end of the arch, reaching.
And then the final threads of the final arch gave way and the disk, the sack, and Rasalom plunged into the abyss.
No—not Rasalom.
Glaeken groaned as he realized that Rasalom was still there. The rest had fallen away but he was clinging to the final support by one of his tentacles—and pulling himself up!
Glaeken forced his wounded leg to move, to half run, half stagger to the base of the third arch, climb upon it, and hobble along its wavering length. He didn't have time to cut through this one. He had to meet Rasalom at its terminus and stop him there before he regained his footing.
"This is what it's always come down to, hasn't it, Rasalom. You and me. Just you and me."
Rasalom's reply was to snake his other tentacle upward and loop it around the shaft of the arch next to the first. He used them to hoist himself higher until his taloned hands could grip the arch. That done, new tentacles began to spring from the great gelatinous mass of his body to join the others in coils around the shaft.
He's going to make it!
Glaeken clenched his teeth against the pain in his leg and increased his speed. He didn't hesitate when he reached the first tentacles—he slashed at them with the weapon. Blinding flashes, greasy smoke, and thick, dark fluid spurting from the amputated ends. The world narrowed to Glaeken, Rasalom, the arch, and the weapon. Closing his eyes against the flashes, choking on the smoke, he slipped into a fugue of pain and motion, moving in a fog, operating on reflexes as he severed coil after coil and kicked their writhing remnants aside, then moved on the next group.
From below him came a thunderous roar as Rasalom kicked and thrashed in inarticulate pain and rage.
Spiny, spidery, pincer-tipped arms rose on both sides and snapped at him. Glaeken lashed out left and right, scything them down as he kept pushing forward.
Until finally he was at the end of the arch and Rasalom swung below him, suspended only by his yellow-taloned hands, one of them already missing a finger.
"Glaeken…no…please!"
And in the instant of that plea Rasalom yanked his body upward and lashed at Glaeken with the three fingers of his good hand. Glaeken ducked as the talons raked the air inches above his head. He swung the weapon upward, over his head. The impact with Rasalom's wrist and the simultaneous detonation of brilliance as the blade sliced through skin and muscle and tendon and bone nearly knocked Glaeken off the arch. He threw himself flat and hung on as Rasalom thrashed and howled and waved his partially severed, black-spurting wrist in the air.
Up ahead, near the shattered tip of the arch, Glaeken saw that Rasalom's only remaining hold on it was the two surviving fingers on his damaged hand. He crawled quickly forward and slashed at the nearest with the weapon, severing it with another flash of light. The talon of the last digit scraped along the surface of the arch, scratching a deep furrow as it slipped slowly toward eternity. Then it caught in a small pit near the edge.
"Glaeken!" came the muffled, agonized voice from below. "You can't! This can't be happening! Don't!"
Glaeken was about to raise the weapon and sever that last digit but thought better of it. Instead he rolled over and swiveled his body around; he flexed his good leg all the way to his abdomen.
His foot shot out and knocked the talon over the edge.
No final farewell to Rasalom, no verbal send off. Nothing more than a contemptuous kick.
Rasalom's scream was loud, almost painfully so. It echoed up from the glowing depths long after his tumbling, mutilated form had been swallowed by the mists.
But Glaeken did not wait and watch and listen as he dearly would have loved. Instead, as soon as the arch slowed its bobbing from the release of Rasalom's enormous weight, he began crawling back toward the cavern rim as fast as his limbs would allow
Rasalom was falling into eternity. When he passed the point where his presence no longer influenced this sphere, the old laws would begin to reassert themselves. Nature would awaken from the coma Rasalom had induced and begin its recovery, regain its control.
And this cavern had no place in nature.
As he reached the end of the arch, the walls began to shake. The rubble choking the side tunnel began to tumble free, revealing the opening. If he could reach that granite passage, he might survive.
He was almost there when the roof caved in.
The crowd quieted as a new sound overwhelmed their chants and songs. Carol's voice had given out a while ago, so she was already quiet.
They'd spilled across the street and into the illuminated sections of the Park, and were swelling further. But the sound had frozen them all in their tracks; and now they stood half crouched, looking up, looking around, looking at each other. Carol hushed those near her.
A basso drone, a thunderous buzz, a monstrous flapping in the air all around the widening cone of light, growing louder, vibrating the streets, the sidewalks, the buildings.
"It's the bugs!" someone cried. "They're coming back! Coming to get us!"
"No!" Carol cried, her voice a ragged blare above the growing fearful murmur of those about her. "Don't be afraid. They hate the light. As long as we stay in the light they won't come near us."
She, too, was afraid, but she hid it. What was happening? She glanced at Bill and he shrugged and held her close.
Then she saw them. Bugs. An immense horde of them, thickening the air and swarming along the ground around the cone of light. Some of them were forced to dip into the light by the crowding but their wings and bodies began to smoke where the light touched them and they darted back out.
No concerted attack, no suicidal kamikaze bug rush to wipe them out. Rather, a mad, blind, panicked dash toward the hole. The cone of light had reached the edge of the bottomless opening and she could see the countless horrors diving into the depths beyond the light, the winged ones spiraling down, the crawlers leaping from the edge.
"They're going back!" Carol said, as much to herself as to Bill. "They're going back into the hole!"