At minus twelve thousand one hundred meters, Drainage Conduit Beta ended in a huge underground junction chamber that had once served as a main pressure relief valve for the entire fiery sector.
The chamber spanned nearly two hundred meters across, its circular floor paved with cracked dark rock flat stone slabs that were covered in a thick blanket of frozen, turquoise slush. Overhead, the jagged rock ceiling was hung with hundreds of massive, ice-shrouded stalactites that dripped ancient stone water into the darkness below.
Arthur stepped out onto the dark rock floor, his carbine resting in the crook of his arm as his boots crunched through the rime.
Grimm walked beside him, his jet-black coat drinking the faint surrounding light, his violet pupils dilating as his ears pinned flat against his skull. The hound’s jaw muscles rippled beneath his velvety black lips. His nostrils flared with deep, calculating snorts as he tracked a massive living congregation perched in the shadows above.
“Wyverns,” Arthur whispered over the squad link. His eyes tracked the heat clusters clinging to the stalactites forty meters above. “Sub-ice-slow ice wyverns. Spliced scavengers with armored back shells and ice-cold breath glands.”
As if responding to his voice, twenty-eight pairs of burning blue eyes ignited in the darkness of the ceiling.
