The air-powered cable of the magnetic ascender hissed as it rewound. It hauled Arthur Vance up the sheer, upright cliff of the Earth-Shaker Behemoth’s left flank. Beneath his climbing boots, the titan’s dark rock hide buckled and throbbed with terrifying living force. Every pulse of the underground giant statue sent waves of heat streaming through the stone, hot enough to melt standard lead shielding in seconds.
Yet within the radiant golden bubble cast by Pip, the air remained remarkably cool, fresh. Then it soaked with pure solar aether. The Three-Legged Golden Crow flew parallel to Arthur. His three divine talons were tucked in tight, his nine tiny suns orbiting his wings in a timed together counter-spinning pattern that absorbed every errant wave of heat wave. Pip cocked his golden head, his bright, black glass-ringed eyes tracking Arthur’s ascent with fierce avian vigilance. Every few seconds, the bird snapped his sharp black beak—clack—monitoring the shifting pressure currents.
Arthur reached out with his gloved left hand, planting his grip on a protruding knob of magnetic dense green rock. The rock was slick with condensed stone moisture and tiny quartz dust ash. But the micro-spikes on his glove palms bit firmly into the crystal grain. Built into the palms of his Vanguard bio-suit was a sense touch matrix that registered the sound shakes of the living rock. Through the man-made polymers, Arthur could feel the wild, shuddering deep ring of the Behemoth’s blood tree, mapping the blood-vessel branching of the titan’s chest wall…
