The moment they stepped past the twelve pillars into the central atrium, Vesper collapsed.
There was no warning, no incoming projectile, and no enemy attack. The white lynx simply took two unsteady steps, her left hind leg buckled beneath her. She struck the white flat stone slabs with a sickening, metal clatter. The sound of solid cast iron hitting marble.
“Vesper!” Arthur shouted, dropping to his knees beside her.
Her entire body was locked in a violent, tetanic convulsion. Her limbs were rigid as steel rods, her spine arched backward until her neck muscles groaned under extreme tension. From her nostrils and the corners of her lips seeped a thick, silvery fluid that crystal-hardened into razor-sharp metal needles the moment it touched the air.
Her amber eyes were rolled back, showing only white of the eye veined with rainbow-bright silver threads.
Grimm lunged forward, letting out an anxious, distressed whine that shook deep in his chest. He lowered his massive black head, gently nuzzling Vesper’s flank with his wet nose, his ears pinned flat with worry. Pip fluttered down from Arthur’s cowl, landing on the stone beside Vesper’s ear, chirping wild, high-pitched notes of avian alarm.
“Back! Give her space!” Arthur commanded, his voice dropping into the cold, razor-sharp power of a trauma surgeon in a collapsing emergency room. “Grimm, hold the outer edge! Titus, lock your gravity well at zero-point-five G to reduce surrounding weight!”
