Inside the quiet safe hall of the Iron Ark’s mobile command trailer, the air was still, cool, and fragrant with the clean scent of dried cedar shavings and sterile alcohol.
Arthur Vance sat cross-legged upon a woven straw quiet focus mat in the center of the room. His vanguard field coat was draped neatly over the back of the commander’s chair, his ARC-7 mag-carbine cleaned, oiled, and racked in its wall locker. His hands rested palms-up on his knees, his breathing slow, rhythmic, and barely noticeable at thirty-two cycles per minute.
Within his inner sea of mind, the ghostly stonework of his soul-space had reached its total, unchanging crystal-clear threshold.
Where there had once been fragile, semi-clear soul-filaments tethering single beasts to his spirit, five massive pillars of radiant old family light now rose from the bedrock of his mind. Each pillar burned with the pure, uncorrupted hum of an ancient lineage:
The first pillar burned with pitch-black gravity fire—the indomitable moving vanguard of Grimm, the Nether-Spine Direhound.
The second pillar blazed with molten solar gold—the sky close-air strike vector of Pip, the Solar Flare Raptor.
The third pillar stood as an unbending column of dark stone and green moss—the unmoving earth-shaking castle wall of Titus, the Obsidian Xuanwu.
