Soul didn't verbally respond, but he bowed to Rain and immediately clambered up the gears and pulleys to the nearest broken catwalk. The walkways themselves were broken and twisted, but the lights attached to their railings appeared to be mostly intact. He rapidly turned a crank with a buzzing whirr, and yellow lights flickered to life. They wouldn't provide a terribly great illumination, but once he was finished winding up each section there would be enough light to work by.

In the dim cloudy dusk, the catwalk-lights cast an eerie yellow glow on the broken copper machinery.

By the time he was finished, Rain and Vin had successfully crafted a makeshift ramp that stretched up to the place where Nor was stranded. Nor picked her way down, slowly but surely -- she was pale and thin, dirty and dusty, as if she'd just been dragged underground and had never eaten in her life.

Her bare feet touched the catwalk where Rain and Vin were standing, and she lifted her head to thank them -- but she stopped, transfixed, when she caught sight of Vin's dark eye. Nor reached up to touch the symbols around his eye.

Vin knew, instinctively, that this girl could harm him -- could take his power away.

Nor stopped just before she might have touched him, and her eyes widened in hopelessness and fear. "You have an Old God inside you," she said, mostly for Rain's benefit. She took a step back away from him. "It is not benevolent."

From above came the echo of a panther's yowl and a flash of firelight; the enormous, fiery bearcat -- which Rain had only a short time ago narrowly escaped -- snarled down at them from the edge of the pit. It surveyed its potential victims, then took a running leap off the edge: A huge sprocket groaned and shifted under the bearcat's landing, but the fire god leaped again to swing up onto a lit catwalk, getting a little closer each time.

Soul raced across the beams and ropes, back to the elevator that Rain had been trying to repair, and set to work getting it running again as fast as he possibly could.

Nor stepped back again, equally frightened of Vin and of the flaming bearcat that descended toward them with long teeth and sharp claws.