ledge, rubbed her stomach and cursed. "There are rules to this game," she added, "and rule one is watch every step."
A flash of resentment crossed Slack's face as he dusted himself down, but then he turned to stare into the dark, shaken by the end he had almost met with but staring with undisguised greed. Kali joined him at the edge of the abyss, wondering fleetingly whether it might be easier if she just shoved him off, but considering what it was they faced it was obvious Slack could do nothing without her.
As always, through her research, she had known roughly what to expect when coming here, but as always the expectation never quite did the reality justice. The two of them were staring into a vast natural cavern that must have extended beneath three or four of the hills surrounding Solnos, a huge expanse barred with immense stalactites and stalagmites with a pillar of azure twilight streaming down from somewhere above at its distant centre. The pillar of light was the only illumination in the darkness, and picked out an isolated column of rock, maybe six feet in diameter, the base of which disappeared into the abyss below. It was clearly unreachable by conventional means but it was nonetheless Kali's destination. She bit her lip and studied her distant goal. At this distance, she could not make out the details of what she knew lay there but her above average eyesight could at least discern the motes that slowly danced in the pillar of light in an almost dreamlike way, as if something beneath them was affecting the reality where they hung. Something that itself played with reality. Something magical.
Kali had no doubt that she'd found what she'd come for. All she had to do was reach it.
"There?" Slack observed incredulously. "But there is no way across!"
"Rule two," Kali answered, pulling a small object from one of the pockets in her dark silk bodysuit. "Plan ahead."
Slack stared at a small, carved piece of stone Kali held in her hand, then watched her move to the rock wall, brush away some lichen from a small area and then insert the stone into a niche revealed behind. She tightened her grip on the stone and then, with a grunt, turned it solidly to the right, to the left, and then twice to the right. Something grated behind the niche and then below, in the darkness, something rumbled. Slack watched in amazement as, continuing to rumble, a rock column rose slowly from the abyss, shearing thick cobwebs, dust and the detritus of ages from itself as it came. The top of the column stopped level with the ledge on which they stood, some hundred feet out into the void.
Kali withdrew the stone key from the niche and smiled. Slack, meanwhile, stared at the column and then Kali, regarding her quizzically.
"I still do not understand," he said. "That is still too far away to reach."
Kali nodded. The fact was, it was just too far away for a running jump, even for her. But even had she been able, she wouldn't have tried. Revealing her unique capabilities to a man who would, for the price of a shot of boff, tell all and sundry about a freak who could make such a jump was not a wise move. In a backwoods region such as this, such tales could easily reach the ear of some overzealous Final Faith missionary, and she had no wish to be dragged to a gibbet and burned as a witch. Luckily, however, there was no need to jump at all.
"Rule three," Kali said. "Be patient."
She smiled again as, from under the lip of the ledge where they stood, a scintillating layer of bright blue energy moved out towards the risen column, manoeuvring itself around stalactites and stalagmites to form a zig-zagging translucent bridge. More motes danced lazily in the blue, before freezing where they hung, trapped in what had appeared.
Slack squinted, frowned, and Kali realised he hadn't a clue what he was looking at. It was easy to forget that while she lived with such wonders on a day-to-day basis now, the average peninsulan, especially those out here, had never once encountered the threads.
"It's called magic," she explained.
"Magic?"
"It's -" Kali paused and contemplated. How exactly did you explain magic to a man like Slack? "It's kind of like using the world around you... a way of doing things with invisible tools."
"So, with this... magic, I could dig a cesspit with