The heat inside the hearth vault didn’t merely rise. It spiked with the sudden, violent spreading of a heat pressure wave.
Inside the cedar box, the ruby soft glow streaming from Pip’s breastbone flared into a blinding point of golden-orange blazing bright star-fire. The air within three feet of the box began to shimmer and distort, wavering like the air above a desert highway at noon. A dry, crackling sound—like dried pine needles thrown into an open blast fire—rippled through the stonework arches.
“Six hundred degrees at the core!” Morrigan shouted, her canvas apron snapping against her shins as the heat updraft rushed toward the ceiling. She threw up an arm to shield her face from the blasting heat. Her violet eyes were wide behind the crook of her elbow. “The cellular mitochondria aren’t just oxidizing the sulfur. They’re undergoing spontaneous nuclear transmutation! His aetheric thickness is off the scale!”
Grimm acted without waiting for a command.
The Obsidian Bone-Fang Hound lunged forward, planting his heavy forelegs between the cedar box and Arthur’s stool. Grimm lowered his massive head, his throat shaking with a deep, ringing rumble of grounding weight. The black glass plates embedded along his spine and neck bones turned a dull, matte black, actively drinking the radiant heat wave like dry sand absorbing spilled water. The blistering heat that would have scorched Arthur’s clothing washed harmlessly against Grimm’s light-absorbing fur. It drained away into the hound’s gravity marrow.
