The five Void Solar-Siphon Skirmishers plunged through the golden empty pocket of the lower corona like birds of prey stooping upon an exposed kill. Their flattened, three-sided bodies spanned over forty meters from wingtip to wingtip, armored in overlapping plates of deep-sea cold-matter hard shell that absorbed the blinding solar radiance. They cast long, unnatural streaks of shadow across the blazing bright star-fire arches behind them. Beneath their wide, leathery wings, clusters of whip-like drain tube tendrils trailed in the solar wind, their barbed tips dripping with a thick, sticky, heat-drawing venom that froze the surrounding spark-charged gas into tiny, glittering ice crystals.
Arthur didn’t panic. On the narrow, shaking silver-steel narrow high walkway suspended above the solar fire, panicked motion meant slipping from the magnetic mesh and tumbling into the multi-million-degree heat-rising deep pit below. Instead, he dropped into a low, balanced crouch behind the massive, unmoving pillar of Titus’s front left leg. The giant terrapin shifted his bulk by three inches, angling his heavily armored shoulder armor scales to create a physical low roof wall that fully shielded Arthur from the direct vector of the incoming dive.
“Grimm, Vesper—way out and intercept!” Arthur commanded through the soul-sync link, his thoughts flashing across the neural channel with zero latency.
