The surrounding heat within the Crystal Genesis Throne hovered at an unforgiving forty-two degrees, kept humid and thick by the churning liquid aether of the core.
Arthur Vance sat cross-legged on the glass-fused quartz shelf, a field technician’s portable cleaning mat spread across his knees. Laid out before him were the components of the Vance Cryo-Pneumatic Transfixer Mk. IV, stripped down to its main receiver, gas storage tank, and silver-steel-sleeved injector barrel. With practiced, rhythmic smooth speed, his fingers inspected each O-ring and valve seal ring. It tested their stretch against the sub-zero ice-cold fluid they would soon channel.
Beside his right knee, Grimm rested his heavy jaw flat against the cold quartz. The hound’s eyes, burning with faint embers of deep-sea violet, tracked Arthur’s hands with steady focus. Grimm knew this ritual. Whenever the brass tubes and glass canisters came out, blood followed. His broad black tail thumped once against the stone floor. That hollow thud betrayed neither excitement nor fear, but the grim patience of a war dog waiting for the kennel gate to unlatch.
On the other side of the mat, Titus was step by step pulverizing a tightly packed ration block made from stone-hard deep-sea kelp and powdered fiery sulfur. The terrapin’s thick, armored tongue flicked out. It gathered the stray stone dust from his chin, before he lowered his head. Then he closed his eyes in a five-minute power nap. To Titus, preparation meant energy conservation. When the call came, he would become a mountain…
