The fiery gale tearing through the underground volcano bowl of Progenitor Vault Two carried the metal sting of white-hot iron vapor and crushed dark rock. Standing in the shadow of the fractured black glass stone support prop sixty meters from the Earth-Shaker Behemoth’s front left leg, Arthur Vance adjusted the polarizers on his magnifying glass. The quad-lens sight assembly whirred softly against his cheekbone, filtering out the blinding glare of the underground arena’s molten rivers to isolate the living tracking data of the thrashing titan.
Every shudder of the giant statue sent blast waves rattling up through Arthur’s moving absorption boots. At two hundred and fourteen meters long, the Behemoth was less an animal in the conventional sense and more a self-contained earth-shaking continent. Its outer skin consisted of linked dense green rock armor scales, glass-fused iron deposits, and cooling dark rock plates that groaned under huge high-pressure tensions.
“Toby, stabilize the hum on the low-band relay,” Arthur spoke calmly into his lapel microphone, his voice cutting through the sound storm. “I need real-time seismograph correlation from the surface network. Give me the main hum of the land-wide shelf.”
A burst of static crackled in his ear before Toby Mallow’s harried voice broke through from the bridge of the command zeppelin twenty-two miles above. “Arthur, the Java trench is swaying at zero-point-eight Hertz! That’s the exact ringing hum of the land-wide crust-sink zone! If the Behemoth’s heart keeps pumping at four hundred beats per minute, the ringing shaking will liquify…
