Following an ancient underground outflow channel three hundred meters up from the Tartarus floor, Arthur Vance led his exhausted squad into a side chimney pipe that seemed to defy every rule of deep-mantle geology.
The chimney pipe wound through a narrow cleft of glass-fused dense green rock before opening into a breathtaking, underground pocket roughly two hundred meters wide and eighty meters tall. It wasn’t a blasted fiery cave, nor was it a dark pit of choking sulfur. It was a huge, self-contained geode chamber of semi-clear amethyst, violet glow-stone, and pale green jade.
Crystals the size of cathedral spires rose from the floor and hung from the vaulted ceiling. It glowed with a soft, natural bioluminescence that bathed the entire safe hall in soothing lavender and mint-green light.
The sight acoustics of the geode were miraculous. Every sound inside the chamber was softened. It echoed gently off the multi-faceted crystal faces like the distant murmur of an underground safe hall. The stone composition of the amethyst walls absorbed all magnetic noise and high-pressure earth-shaking shakes from the outer mantle. That left the air fully calm. Tiny clusters of glowing crystal moss clung to the crevices of the jade boulders, releasing tiny spores of sweet, ozone-scented oxygen that filled the lungs with rejuvenating life-force.
