The breath of the Archaic World-Serpent didn’t arrive as a violent storm. It rolled through the crystal-clear tiered arena like an oceanic tide of liquid light, warm as freshly drawn blood and glowing as distilled starlight.
Arthur Vance stood with his boots braced against the emerald ridge of World-serpent’s snout. He watched the pearl-white mist wash over the cave floor. Through the amber aiming cross of his type-list monocle, the mist didn’t register as simple gaseous aether. It was a dense fine mist of living cellular catalysts—Earth-Mother Genesis Marrow.
In the ancient pre-cataclysm type-list of the precursor vaults, Genesis Marrow was the ancient stem-fluid of the biosphere. It was the uncorrupted genetic template from which all terrestrial life had diversified before cosmic parasites poisoned the world-size mantle. For a hundred million years, the guard had held this pool within its chest water tanks, preserving it against the void.
Now, freed from the leech-like spore that had choked its throat, World-serpent gave the marrow back to the world.
The rainbow-bright mist didn’t fade into the upper air. Guided by the ancient magnetic vectors of the world-size core, the vast cloud separated into five spiraling torrents of packed elemental force, each drawn toward a distinct living signed name among Arthur’s squad.
