The sound that heralded the doom of the Gilded Castle was not an explosion, nor was it the roar of a beast. It was a deep, sickening groan of displaced earth-shaking mass—the sound of a million-ton granite plug shearing along its deep-rock fault lines.
In the Grand Citadel Courtyard, six hundred heavy household dragoons of House Vance stood in spotless, quadruple-ranked parade formation. Their polished silver plate armor shone in the morning light. Their heavy war-chargers, clad in decorative velvet bards and steel chanfrons, champed on silver bits. High on the central marble dais, overlooking the spotless formal gardens and sculpted hedges, Captain Gregory Vance stood flanked by sixteen senior retainers, his hand resting on the handle of his ritual old family saber.
Then, the world tilted five degrees to the west.
A violent, upward upright heave threw forty war-chargers onto their haunches, sending armored riders clattering to the flat stone slabs like overturned lead toys. The white marble stone floor, imported from the southern quarries at a cost of thousands of gold credits, buckled upward in a jagged, thirty-foot ridge that ripped through the center of the formation.
“Hold ranks!” Gregory screamed, stumbling against the marble stone railing as his gold-trimmed sword sheath clattered against the stone. “Form defensive squares! It’s only an underground tremor! Hold the line!”
