Quoted By:
The heap of corpses here - partially your handiwork with the grenades, and partially that of the machine gun - resembles a charnel house or hellscape.
You wonder if there was some manner in which you could have averted this atrocity... prevented this steelworks furnace hall from being turned into a warzone.
Perhaps if you had tried to persuade the assault teams that whatever ritual Cade and the Ghoul King and his associates were concocting in the Slag Furnace was not to be interrupted or disturbed... warned them to stay away, that no-one was to enter the ritual chamber of the Slag Pit - Or maybe something even more mundane, that the Industrial Rearmament Act (IRA) in force upon this steelworks made it mission-critical infrastructure for national security, that no shooting, no gunfire or explosions would be permitted to damage the delicate steelmaking equipment (you gaze sceptically at the abandoned monolithic and gargantuan slabs of rusting machinery all around you) some excuse or contrivance of this ilk... would it have prevented this unnecessary suffering and bloodshed?
You cannot imagine that such unrelenting ferocity in fighting would ever occur over a foundry.
Surely no-one would ever attempt to pilot drones and explosives near a steel mill, no-one would ever permit themselves to be besieged and killed by gunfire within the grim industrial stronghold of a foundry or steelworks - all at the behest of some inexplicable ritual over a dream, a mere Sign; the Sign Of The Living Death.
As you stalk ever deeper towards the Slag Furnace, into lambent gouts of glowing fumes and sweltering heat, where even the fluttering shadows of machines appear flame-horned, spitting embers and cavorting before an infernal temple to this molten whirlwind conflagration, the savage crash and clank and grind of rails and chain reverberating all around, shaking the heat-heavy air into tremulous anguish - you wonder if war is the inevitable product of all this industry, this industrialisation, the competition over scarce industrial resources. Rivalry that makes enemies of others... The urge to live and grow forever. Feed and breed and bleed.
You remember what the narcotrafficker, Pedro, told you he believed to be the essence of all magic, all sorcery - Sex and Death, Creation and Destruction. But by what means does civilisation possess to rid itself of all those institutions or industries that outlived their purpose? How would you uproot that which had outgrown its own natural lifespan, that which still clung adamantly and obstinately to the semblance of life, beyond its natural course? Jerome The Wizard seemed to believe he could simply make his incorporated acolytes live forever, bring them to that sempiternal realm which knew no Death. You cannot tell if his belief was a delusion, or if the alternative could only be conflict, killing, destruction, war.
