At minus fifteen thousand two hundred meters, the concept of solid ground became an occasional luxury. The Basalt Trenches ended in a huge underground canyon that stretched beyond the reach of Arthur’s optics, carved by an underground river unlike anything found on the surface of the Earth.
It was the River of Liquid Hematite. A torrent of molten iron and heavy stone melted rock waste three hundred meters wide, rushing down a thirty-degree slope with the freight-train roar of an unchained world-size engine. Glowing streams of white-hot melted rock waste cascaded down tiered terraces of magnetic ironstone, throwing off blinding sheets of amber spray that sizzled against the cave ceiling. The air pressure here approached two gigapascals. It packed the surrounding gases into a shimmering, overload soup that made every breath heavy and dense.
The heat here was huge. Even with his somatically reverted human constitution, Arthur could feel the dry sting of the air scorching his throat through the baked-clay filter of his breathing mask. His lungs processed the enriched mana, but the physical heat wave demanded nonstop living compensation. He reached up, adjusting the tuned dial on his armored collar that controlled the Magmatic Thermos-Neural Shunt linked directly to Pip.
