The descent below minus twelve thousand meters brought them into the jagged labyrinths of the Basalt Trenches. Here, the earth-shaking plates collided in an endless, grinding war of sub-crustal friction. Towering ribs of tightly packed metamorphic dark rock arched over chasms so deep that falling boulders vanished without an echo. The world-size crust groaned under nonstop stress, venting bursts of high-pressure steam and sulfur crystals from jagged fissures that lined the stone path.
Arthur walked at the front of the formation. His combat boots stepped carefully across narrow ridges of cooling foam-stone. The air was so dense with tightly packed mana and boiled away heavy metals that every breath felt like inhaling warm, oily grit through his breathing mask. He kept his right hand on the forearm grip of the Ancient Suture Lance, his senses tuned to the subtle shakes traveling upward through the soles of his boots.
Behind him, Titus moved with the slow, unstoppable driving force of a moving mountain. The tortoise’s wide claws were tipped with diamond-hard dark rock spurs that dug deep into the stone with every step. It anchored the entire squad’s nearby gravity field. Whenever a ground-shaking tremor rippled through the ledge, Titus simply flared his earth-shaking aura. It took in the shock wave into his shell and drained away it into the earth.
