HIS GOD CARRIED him up, sprinting up the staircase it had taken Ramus so long to descend. The ground below them was in turmoil, and in the tunnel the God had walked through streams of lava, nudged aside cave-ins and ground on through an avalanche of dust, diamonds and bones from some hidden opening. It held Ramus and Nomi close to its chest and used its body to protect them from danger. Ramus pressed his face to its slick, dark skin. It was surprisingly soft. He thought he heard its heartbeat, but it may have been earthquakes thumping through its feet.

It emerged into daylight at the top of the tall pyramid, shouldering its way through the opening and knocking aside the stone canopy. It stood there for a while, relaxing its arms so that Nomi and Ramus swung by its sides. Ramus stretched down with his feet but could not quite reach the floor. And then it sighed. It was long and loud, like steam escaping a pierced chamber. It slumped slightly, relaxing, reveling in daylight for the first time in eons. Then it turned its huge head to the north.

Ramus looked past the God's stomach at Nomi. She hung limp in its grasp, hair falling across her face. He could not tell whether she was awake, or even if she was alive. Perhaps a rock had struck her. . . .

But no, the God was protecting them. Saving them, because they had saved it. Ramus wondered what came next.

A great explosion thundered in the south, rumbling through the air and following through the ground. The God staggered atop the pyramid and turned, allowing Ramus to see what had caused the noise. In the distance, over the heads of trees being consumed by fires from below, he saw the range of hills pluming flames and venting clouds of boiling smoke. Fireballs rose and rained down across the landscape, beautiful from this far away yet more destructive than anything Ramus had ever seen before.

The God made another noise, a long way from a sigh.

It turned north again, descended the building in several huge leaps and ran into the trees. Birds scattered before it or fell dead from the sky in shock. Other animals fled through the undergrowth or turned on one another. It paid scant attention to its surroundings, but when it stormed through the ruined village and emerged on the other side, a lone Sentinel stood ahead, stricken dumb and motionless with shock.

The God snapped it up in another limb and carried on running.

The Sentinel started clicking and calling, and Ramus saw fleeting gray shapes slicking across the God's pincers, but only briefly. It grumbled what could have been a laugh, snapped a tree with one kick and crushed the Sentinel down onto the jagged stump. It was the last Sentinel Ramus saw.