Darkness didn’t fall over Arthur Vance gently. It collapsed upon his mind like a thousand-ton slab of falling granite.
In the deep, sense void of the synaptic blackout, the five distinct divine frequencies of the Pentagonal Array continued to echo through his damaged neural pathways like fading church bells. He heard the distant, low, deep rumble of Titus’s underground bedrock heartbeat. The high, whistling rush of Pip’s high-sky winds. The silent, velvet brush of Vesper’s shadow folds. The deep, hungry growl of Grimm’s blood-soaked jaws. And the calm, oceanic pulsing of Echo’s deep-sea cradle.
Gradually, the cold blackness was pierced by the sharp, burning sting of cold and exact reality.
The sharp, healing tang of packed wintergreen liniment, boiled away ammonia, and sterile ethyl alcohol cut through his numb smell nerves.
“Draw twenty milligrams of intravenous mannitol, stat!” Dr. Morrigan Calder’s voice barked with wild, razor-sharp power, cutting through the heavy ringing in Arthur’s ears. “His skull blood-vessel pressure is still hovering at one hundred and ninety! We have to drop the brain fluid swelling before the left time lobe herniates into the skull-base gap!”
“Mannitol going in through the right thigh line!” Toby Mallow’s voice choked with tears, trembling as metal ampoules clinked against razor-sharp trays. “Arthur... Come on, buddy. Don’t you dare die on me now. You promised we’d open that beast-doctor clinic in the upper district. You promised!”
