The moment of shift was total, weightless, and breathtaking.
Arthur Vance stepped off the edge of the Continental Core Gate and plunged directly into the rainbow-bright beam of came together world-size light.
There was no violent drop, no stomach-churning dizziness, and no crushing gravity shock. The four-colored beam wrapped around Arthur and his five companions in a zero-drag, zero-drag slipstream of pure elemental mana. The crushing three-thousand-air pressure of the Kermadec Trench vanished instantly, replaced by a temperate, perfectly oxygenated air that smelled of clean rain, fresh pine, and mountain snow.
Beside Arthur, the squad drifted together in a tight, protective transit formation.
Titus took the downward prow. His huge twenty-ton was dark rock body gliding through the light like an ancient sky asteroid. His dark rock armor scales glowed with warm, golden-amber earth deep ring, stabilizing their flight path through the underground channel with easy grace.
Echo coiled his 150-meter body around the outer edge of the formation, his star-finned Kunpeng wings unfurled to their full seventy-meter wingspan. The great dragon-whale moved through the light beam like a creature swimming through a river of liquid starlight. His branching coral antlers cast soft, dancing patterns of turquoise soft glow across the tunnel walls.
