Live and Let Drood

“Because I’m pretty sure this is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.”
    I gave her hand a final squeeze, let it go and turned away to look into the open doorway, where the huge and specially reinforced front doors should have been. The empty gap was like an open wound. I moved slowly, steadily, forward, Molly right there at my side. Gravel crunched loudly under our feet in the quiet. The remains of a lone gargoyle lay shattered on the ground before us. As though it had been shot down while flying against our enemies and plummeted to the ground. And maybe it had. I’d always been suspicious about the gargoyles. When I was just a kid, sleeping in one of the great communal dormitories along with the other young Droods, I was half-convinced gargoyles would creep down from the roof at night and listen outside our windows, so they could report all our sins and bad intentions to the adults. And maybe they did. Drood Hall is full of secrets. I stopped then and made myself rephrase that. Drood Hall was full of secrets. It was important to remember everything I’d lost.
    I stepped past the broken remains of the gargoyle, with its shattered face and broken wings, to stand before the open doorway. Something really powerful had blasted both doors right off their hinges and sent them flying a fair distance down the hallway. I could see them lying on the floor, the heavy wood cracked and splintered from some unimaginable impact. And there in the doorway was the half-melted golden figure, the last defender of the entrance hall. The armoured man lay curled into a ball, as though wrapped around his pain. I knelt down beside him, let my fingertips drift gently across the cracked and distorted face mask. The metal was cold to the touch. Cold as death. There was no way to remove the featureless mask, no way of telling who it was inside the armour. Whether…it was anyone I knew.
    I rose and strode past the dead man into the gloom of the hallway. There were no lights working anywhere, just dark shadows and fire- and smoke-blackened interiors. Loud and dangerous cracking and creaking sounds came from the bulging ceiling overhead, which supported all the weight of the fallen-in upper floors. It could all come down anytime. I knew that. I didn’t care. I needed to know what had happened here; needed that more than life itself. It is possible…I wasn’t entirely sane at that time.
    I moved slowly down the dark hallway, through ruin and devastation, and forced myself to be calm and collected, practical and professional. Just from looking around me at the nature of the destruction, I could see they must have used grenades and flamethrowers. No other way to do this much damage in a hurry. Probably some magical and superscience weapons, as well. Someone had been intent on doing a really thorough job here.
    I considered all the possibilities as I made my way down the hallway, broken floorboards groaning warnings under my weight. Molly was careful to keep distance between us, to spread the weight out as much as possible. Could there have been sabotage, or even an invasion of the family Armoury—our own weapons turned against us? It didn’t seem likely. An enemy who’d planned such a thorough assault wouldn’t have gambled on finding enough weapons here to do the job. They’d havebrought their own. Could the enemy have teleported inside the Hall if all our shields were down? That would explain how they were able to take all of us by surprise so easily. Maybe even suicide bombers? So many possibilities, so many questions, and no answers anywhere. Molly stepped deftly over the rubble on the floor, looking at everything, touching nothing.
    “There wasn’t any damage out in the grounds,” she said, after a while. “All the fighting took place indoors. Look at the bullet holes in these walls. And scorch marks from energy blasts, which implies energy weapons or offensive sorceries. Do you suppose…there could be any survivors, maybe trapped somewhere in the Hall?”
    “No,” I said. “We would have fought to the last man rather than let this happen to the Hall.” I stopped abruptly, glancing about me, hands clenched into fists at my sides. “But you were right earlier. We can’t afford to spend too long here. If all our defences are down, then the shields that hide our presence are down, too. The whole world can see exactly where Drood Hall is, for the first time, and that makes us vulnerable. The vultures will be