The heat hit them thirty yards before the heavy-duty tunnel opened into the foundry complex. It wasn’t the clean, radiant warmth generated by Titus’s dark rock core. But a choking heat blast heavy with boiled away machine lubricating oil, rotten-egg coal soot. The sickening coppery stench of scorched animal bone.
Arthur Vance stopped at the final elbow of the channel, crouching low against the saltpeter-crusted dark rock wall. He reached down to adjust the tension straps on his combat harness, ensuring the tube-shaped quartz flask housing Echo was locked securely against his chest bone. Inside the high-pressure chamber, the small pink axolotl floated calmly in oxygenated saline, his delicate frilled gills swaying like tiny crimson sea anemones as he pressed his blunt nose against the glass, blowing a tiny cluster of rainbow-bright bubbles that rose and popped against the intake valve.
Arthur adjusted his Monocle Taxonomy Loupe, switching its focal sky-slit from macro-razor-sharp light to high-contrast heat scanning. Through the greenish glowing display, the cave ahead resolved into a hellish lattice of crimson and blinding orange heat blooms. Every seam of the heavy iron piping running along the ceiling leaked plumes of white-hot steam that hissed against the damp stone. That created an iron-hard blanket of humid fog that clung to the floor.
