The sound of the Behemoth’s burst main heart artery was not a hiss. It was the terrifying roar of a high-pressure fiery blowout. Through the gaping tear left by the pulled out parasite, a geyser of white-hot liquid iron and molten dense green rock erupted at forty-two meters per second. The blazing bright fluid struck the inside walls of the chest cavity, splashing against the dark rock ribs and filling the narrow fissure with blinding white light and choking heat wave.
“Arthur! The titan’s systolic pressure is collapsing!” Toby screamed over the communicator, his voice barely heard over the blaring alarms of the command deck. “The Behemoth’s core blood-vessel circuit is dumping sixty thousand liters of molten rock per second! If the main heart artery isn’t sealed in seventy-five seconds, the heart will suffer permanent bubbling blast and the entire world-size anchor will die!”
The physical devastation threatened to eat everything. Droplets of molten dense green rock splattered against Arthur’s chestplate, charring the outer high-speed ceramics and threatening to overwhelm his internal cooling system. The surrounding heat inside the chest cleft leaped past fifteen hundred degrees. From the sealed pocket of Arthur’s tactical chest harness, a small, semi-clear snout emerged. Echo, the ancient mud-axolotl, fluttered his delicate, feathery outer gills against the stifling heat. The little amphibian didn’t emerge fully into the scorching air, but through his innate mastery of spatial moisture and nearby heat inversion, Echo expelled a shimmering, semi-clear bubble of cool aether water—bloop. The bubble burst softly…
