The water in the flooded stone-hard forest didn’t ripple. It pulsed with rhythmic, underground tremors.
Three miles east of the main underground water bed basin, the underground road crossed through a drowned forest of hardened limestone trees whose massive, stone-hard roots dipped into stale, black pools. Toby had halted the forty-two haulers on a dry limestone shelf behind a natural barrier of fallen pillars. Meanwhile, Arthur led Tactical Cell Alpha forward on foot to secure the crossing.
Arthur moved through the knee-deep water, his heavy combat boots finding purchase on the slick, stone-hard roots beneath the surface. The air beneath the hardened canopy was warm, humid, and heavy with the scent of decomposing aether-moss. Water dripped from the pale stalactites above with regular, hollow thuds that echoed through the drowned grove like the ticking of a grandfather clock in an empty cathedral. The sapphire bioluminescence of the upper bryozoans was blocked by the dense limestone canopy. That left the pools in murky, charcoal twilight.
Grimm walked fifteen paces ahead, his black coat shimmering with wet gloss. The three-hundred-and-fifty-two-pound direhound’s heavy pads barely stirred the dark water. But his sense hairs were on full alert. The black glass bone spikes along his spine bones shook with a low, sub-heard hum, pinging the surrounding limestone like an organic sonar array. Every muscle in his massive shoulders was coiled, ready to spring.
