At thirty-one thousand two hundred meters depth, the crust-sink canyon ended in a huge upright drain tube known as the Kermadec Abyssal Chimney.
Here, the water took on an oily, pitch-black opacity. Heat imaging revealed that the deeper trench floor was blanketed in a dense, stale cloud of hydrogen sulfide, heavy metal sulfates, and necrotizing void spores. The mixture had a pH of two point one and carried enough dissolved neurotoxin to paralyze an entire deep-sea ecosystem in minutes.
Floating within this toxic murk were dozens of Abyssal Dread-Eels. Huge, eighty-meter anguilliform horrors whose skin was studded with pulsing clusters of purple void polyps. As the squad approached the rim of the chimney, the dread-eels coiled their muscular bodies. They opened gaping circular maws filled with nested rows of needle-like teeth.
HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
From their throats erupted a coordinated deluge of packed black bile and acidic sludge, surging upward like a geyser of liquid death.
“Acid-burning chemical barrage,” Arthur alerted, tracking the toxic wave on his Zeiss monocle. “pH 2.1, soaked with void neurotoxins. It will erode Titus’s dark rock shielding if sustained.”
Before Titus could brace his belly shell, a massive shadow surged forward from the rear of the formation.
