We're very near the end. Only 2 or 3 chapters to go! So here's an early update even though I haven't finished ahead of time yet. :D

Xxxxxx

My light danced in front of me as I ran with no clear idea of where I was going. I had a really annoying sense of déjà vu as I bounced off walls and often stumbled over fallen rocks and pieces of wall littering the passage. Dust was everywhere in the air, giving me the impression that I was running through a mist or burning building. It got in everywhere and gave me the constant taste of silt on my tongue as well as making my eyes water.

I hoped Clank was having an easier time than I was. I also hoped that he could actually get past the glass ceiling and somehow use the pillar to get to the roof. I didn't have a clear idea of what the place looked like beyond the glass, I just hoped it was doable without needing a ton of climbing gear or he was gonna have some serious problems. The other thing that gnawed at the back of my mind was the fact that Max was probably still in that room. I was really worried something might happen between the two of them when Clank returned to the place. Clank may have his time-bombs and a mean kick but he's not exactly what I'd describe as... durable. I was worried Max might've had a change of heart when this place started falling apart and decide to take out a bad mood on my pal.

I pushed the thought out of my mind. Clank might not be build out of raritanium exactly but he was smart, and I'd sent him on some pretty crazy solo missions before. I just had to have faith that he'd be able to handle whatever Max decided to dish out and get out of there.

What I had to focus on at the moment was getting out myself. I didn't recognise any of these hallways. All I could hope for was that at some point I'd find a window or a doorway leading outside so I could climb up like I did the last time. Either that or find a passage that for some reason led to the central pillar of the place so I could climb it instead. But to do either, I was gonna need to keep moving as fast as I could.

At one point I thought about contacting Aphelion to get ready for a pick-up, if not for myself then at least Clank. However, as I reached for the nav-unit on my harness a thought struck me. Even if this place was about to crash into the jungle below us, I still didn't want to take any risks of it somehow still being able to tap into my frequency and use Aphelion's comm to broadcast off-world. I wasn't sure if the place still could send any kind of signal, but I didn't think it was worth the risk and decided against it. I wasn't really sure how we'd let her know when we reached the roof though. If this place decided to come crashing down while we were on top of it we could probably make a very high jump and use Clank's heli-pack to glide down. Then we just had to wait until the temple was well and properly destroyed before we hailed the ship. I hoped that if I didn't get there in time, Clank would have the sense to glide down himself. Or use the robo-wings or something.

There was a moment where I was almost convinced the building was falling over. The entirety of the passage rolled an almost complete 90 degrees and I found myself putting more weight against the wall beside me than my feet on the floor. The building corrected itself though and with a clumsy lurch was the right-side up again. I tripped and fell, coughing for a moment on the new rain of silt and dust this violent movement had caused before I got back up and kept going.

The designs of the walls had changed, away from the decaying lombax inlays back to the more ancient looking temple cut from sturdier and more granite-like stone. 'So I'm heading back to the outer rim of the place.' I told myself as I ran. That meant a door or window was probably gonna be my best way out of here. Or maybe a hole in the wall. Whatever worked. A caved in ceiling, a caved in floor. I didn't care. As long as I could get out. Almost every corner I turned led me to some scene of destruction as the ancient rock couldn't handle the strain of movement anymore, already weakened by the steady rock the temple'd been doing up until now.

I had to get pretty creative with how I was gonna keep going. Sometimes using piles of rubble to climb upwards to crawl through a hole in the ceiling to the next floor or finding hand-holds on a wall to shimmy my way across a large gaping void where floor had given way and crashed to who knows where. And the further I went the worse it became.

Walls seemed to be made of shortbread rather than stone, floors cracking in almost predetermined patterns and every roof above me concaved downwards as if threatening to do themselves in like a man standing on a ledge. And all the while there was the choking dust and the by now deafening sound from crashes and roars of demolition. The lack of steadiness underfoot often caused me to stumble or throw my hands against something for support. I was expecting the whole place to crumble to dust under me at any second.

I came to a large hall, similar to the flooded room but obviously a different place since the floor was still intact. The ceiling was far above me, making me think of a cathedral, and maybe that's what it was. After-all, this place was originally a place of worship. Maybe this was where they had mass gatherings for some or other reason. Probably sacrifice with my luck. The ceiling had caved in hundreds of years ago by the looks of it. A seed at some point in its life must've fallen into the room through it and taken root, because now there stood a very tall, sturdy looking tree below it. Its roots had cracked the rocks, stone and boulders of the floor as it had forced its way through them while its peak had curved to find the gap in the ceiling where sunlight would flood into the room and had grown out of it, leaving only a very narrow gap between it and what was still intact of the roof. Its branches had also caused a good amount of damage to the surrounding walls, either breaking large sections of them or simply forcing themselves through cracks and weak-points. Its bark was black and had deep gouges in the wood. The leaves growing on its branches were sparse and small, with an almost indigo sheen to them. I immediately plotted a route and started climbing. The curve of the trunk helped, giving me more to cling to than a straight growing tree would've.

I'd gotten about halfway up it before things went very very wrong.

There was a loud, cracking sound, like the earth itself was splitting in two. Shining my light downwards I saw dark, black lines running wildly across the ground, sections of which were already starting to shift with long groaning complaints. More cracks were shooting back and forth between the large ones, inter-connecting them as I felt the tree shudder and slowly start to tip to the side.

"Aw crap."

The floor caved in, crashing down into the darkness below me. I was half aware of the sound of stone against stone before the thundering sound of the collapsed floor repeated itself. The falling rocks had taken out the floor below too. I clung to the tree so hard it felt like I was going to dislocate my fingers as it tipped over and followed the stones down into the dark. My eyes darted to the walls and ceiling, but the branches tore them apart as it fell, leaving me nowhere to jump to and no signs of any outcropping that was going to survive.

I somehow found a way to tighten my grip as I squeezed my eyes shut so tight it hurt, feeling the wind start to rush as I fell.

What followed was a long, confusing drop. Dust and pebbles rained over me from seemingly everywhere as the tree tried its best to hit each and every wall and rock as it fell. There was the sound of branches being ripped apart above me and the thundering of rock meeting wood below me, each impact causing my grip to slip a little further. A sickening moment happened as I lost my hold, crashing through broken branches and lost rocks before I somehow found my arms wrapped around a tree-root as if by themselves. The light on my harness had cracked as I'd hit something on the way down and was now blinking nonsense Morse-code in the dark. I'd barely managed to make sense of where I was when we hit another floor, the avalanche that'd formed around me making short work of it. I wrapped my legs around the root but the impact shook me loose again as a fist-sized rock picked its moment to hit me right in the small of my back.

Cold wind slammed into my face as boulders fell away below me into empty air, shrinking slowly before they were swallowed by a black mass that'd appeared under and all around me. The air smelled clear and had a crispness to it that almost hurt to breathe. I realised the cave-in had broken straight through the bottom of the monster and I was staring at the canopy of the jungle. Panic tried to take over but got literally knocked out of me as I hit something wooden and tumbled off it before feeling myself caught in a nest of roots and dirt.

My heart felt like it was trying to bruise the inside of my chest it was pounding so hard and I realised I was breathing too quickly for my lungs to handle. There was no more falling. Looking up I saw the broken, tattered remains of the branches had wedged themselves in some part of the damaged floor above me and got stuck. The rest of the floor had fallen away to create a shapeless hole through which pieces of temple were still cascading to the jungle below. The rest of the space immediately above me had cracks the length of entire city blocks running across it. I could see other parts of the bottom of the temple, seemingly miles away, that'd also collapsed, raining their own dirt and debris. My hole had happened near the edge of the structure and I could see one of the enormous spider-like legs to one side as it strode awkwardly forward.

I swallowed, getting my breathing to a stage where it was actually providing me with air again as I tried to piece together an idea on what the hell I was supposed to do now. The tree I was tangled in was, at the moment, the only thing keeping me from a sheer drop. Trying to climb it back up and into the temple seemed like just asking it to dislodge and fall. But there were no other places for me to jump or climb to. The hole itself was way too high above me and the leg of the walking building was even further than that. Not to mention it was moving erratically and I didn't think I'd have been able to grab it even if it was close enough. I was hanging suspended in mid-air like some kind of insane claw-machine at an arcade with nowhere to go and too afraid to move too much in case it spelled my doom.

I tried not to panic, trying to think of some kind of plan. Once again the idea of calling Aphelion came to mind. It seemed like a good idea, but I then thought of Clank sitting on top of this thing waiting for his own pickup. If he didn't contact Aphelion himself he was gonna need to be seen and I didn't want her spending her time underneath the temple instead. Either way, I wasn't comfortable with the idea of the ship needing time to travel between the roof and the base of this thing with it threatening to fall over at any moment.

'Threatening' was being generous in describing it. Watching the legs of the thing as it strode, I saw it stumble and trip over itself as if it'd just been on the biggest bender in its life and was now trying to walk home through a marble factory. That was the nice wholesome comparison. The other one was that it looked like one of the weird animals I'd had to shoot on my adventures. Stumbling in confusion and pain as the realisation that they'd received a hole in their gut set in before they just lost their grip on gravity completely and fell to the ground.

As if taking its cue from my thoughts, the temple stopped its broken walk forward and started to stumble in place, swaying dangerously to one side and then the other. Its legs crossed over themselves and I saw another hole break apart in its base several yards away, throwing more of its innards over the forest. I heard something like the sound of a gong being struck before I caught sight of the satellite dish from its back falling past me to the ground far below, followed by sheer waterfalls of rock, sand, dirt and brass.

I shifted among the tree-roots and got myself into something resembling a standing position, gripping the roots around me tightly. The building swayed again dangerously. If I was gonna do something it had to be now.

I could see the canopy below me of the insanely tall trees that'd grown in a haste to claim a spot in the sun and not be overshadowed by their neighbours. The building tipped again, staggering downwards more on my side than the other. I tensed my grip and hoped with all I was made of that when this thing fell it was gonna fall the other way.

The last sway came. It started the same as the others had, but when it reached that point of no return it kept going, leaning further and further to the side opposite me. The tree above me groaned and shifted as its grip slipped. I tensed the muscles in my legs and adjusted my clamp-like grip, getting ready for what I was convinced would be the last stupid thing I ever did.

The building was almost on a 90 degree angle when I started hearing the first sounds of trees getting annihilated under its bulk as it met the canopy. The tree that'd saved me lost its hold and started sliding downwards. I kicked my heels into action, causing the blue-hot propulsion to bust into life. I then took a breath that was too tight to feed me air, and leapt as far as I could, throwing out as hard a thrust as my hoverboots could give me.

I fell through nothingness for what felt like an age. I'd waited for as long as I could, until the top of the jungle no longer resembled a green carpet but I could make out individual trees and branches, but as I fell, it seemed like I was somehow still miles higher than I should've been. And then I hit the tree I'd been aiming for.

I tore through the first few green, tender branches of its highest point before I started tumbling downwards. Whenever I could I grabbed forward, ripping out handfuls of leaves, twigs and bits of bark as I tried to slow my fall. I burned my boots against the trunk and tried to dig claws I didn't have into the bark, and although I felt my plummet slow, I couldn't escape the sheer level of stupidity I'd just shown as I felt my side smash into a branch. It felt like I'd just thrown myself full-force with hoverboots at full blast against a concrete wall, but I didn't even have time to register the pain as another branch assaulted me, flooding my vision with bursting static and knocking the wind out of me. I clawed blindly at anything that would stop my fall. My brain was in too much shock to try to keep track of how many solid masses I collided with before I felt something slam into my shoulder and chest like a steamroller. I felt my fall stop abruptly and for a moment I wondered if it was over. But I felt my weight shift and after a second or so, I slid over the side, continuing my fall.

I couldn't register where I was falling from or how far I was going to go before another obstacle came out of the night to pummel me. My eyes wouldn't work. I couldn't figure out why. Maybe they were closed, maybe my head just couldn't register what I was seeing anymore. I couldn't tell, and I started to feel myself not caring anymore either.

The outside world died as my focus homed in on pain. Pain from everywhere. Throbbing and streaking through the universe so hard and so intensely I couldn't even tell if it was pain from a wound already inflicted or pain from new injuries being struck into me.

But it didn't matter because eventually, even the pain vanished, and I was left with nothing. I breathed a sigh of relief as the world stopped and slid out of existence.

Xxxxxx

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