The Lower Plaza of Sector 7 had become a slaughterhouse. White lime dust from the collapsed wall mingled with the yellow, rotten-egg haze of turning to stone fine mist, coating the cobblestones in a slippery, chalky paste that smelled of burning hair, skin-burning acid, and coppery blood.
Through the seventy-yard gap where the outer castle wall had stood, the main vanguard of the Beast Tide was surging like black floodwater through a shattered levee.
Arthur Vance didn’t waste a single breath on speeches or grand proclamations. His combat boots cleared the iron rim of the storm drain. Then, his mind shifted entirely into the cold, compartmentalized state of a frontline combat trauma surgeon and tactical commander.
“Keller!” Arthur shouted, his voice cutting through the ear-splitting din of shrieking mantises and rattling scrap-giant crossbows like a whip. “Pull your wounded back to the guildhall terrace! Calder is establishing an emergency chelate mist outer edge on the upper steps! Anyone with graying skin or shallow breathing gets ten drops of the buffer into their airway right away!”
Sergeant Keller scrambled to his feet, wiping gore from his forehead and barking orders to the surviving militia. Four burly blacksmiths hauled their choking comrades backward across the square on improvised stretcher-boards, while Dr. Morrigan Calder, her face smudged with soot and her leather apron soaked in neutralizing reagents, deployed her heavy brass pressure-atomizers. A shimmering, amber curtain of Marrow-Chelate vapor hissed into the cold morning air. That created an iron-hard chemical barrier that stopped…
