“We have to get to the base of the structure, quickly! Molly! Can you clear us a path?”

“I’m tired, Eddie. So tired . . .”

“Can you do it?”

She glared at me. “Yes! Yes, I can do it! I’m Molly Metcalf, dammit. But you’d better be right about this, Eddie . . .”

She thrust one arm in the direction of the towering structure, and just like that every drone between us and it exploded into bloody gob-bets. I made a mental note never to get Molly really mad at me, grabbed her arm, and we ran for the tower down the narrow aisle she’d opened. Aisles had opened up between all the other armoured Droods and the tower, and they were running too. We raced across the cracked stone ground, while the drones recovered their senses and ran to fill the gaps. We smashed them out of the way, knocked them over, and ran them down, racing for the tower. We all got to the base of the huge structure, and I yelled for all the armoured Droods to grab onto anything that looked substantial or load-bearing. Molly and Janissary Jane, Mr. Stab and Roger Morningstar worked hard to keep the drones back, as we all took hold of the tower and ripped its underpinnings out.

For a long moment nothing happened. The tower was huge, and there were only eleven of us . . . but we were Droods, and we had the incredible strength of the armour on our side. We ripped the support right out from under the tower, and brought the bloody thing down.

It roared and screamed like a living thing, and explosions ran through its shape like a string of firecrackers. New lights shone from a thousand new openings, while cracks ran up and down the exterior. Shudders ran through the whole height and width of it, and pieces started falling away. It swayed upon its crippled base, and then, slowly, the whole great length of it nodded forward and fell, stretching out across the great stone plain. Slamming down like the hand of God.

The gateway closed. Gone, just like that, and with it all traces of the terrible thing on the other side. The tower almost leisurely measured its length along the plain, and shattered into a million pieces as it hit. Most of the drones were crushed underneath it, and the few who survived turned and ran in a hundred directions. I let them go. I was busy hanging onto Molly, who was protecting us all with a simple force field, using the last of her strength.