The Aethelgard drifted into the calm anchorage of the Helios Threshold. He settled into a stable parking orbit along the sun’s first Lagrange balance hall.
Here, at 0.387 Astronomical Units from the solar surface, the violent magnetic storms of the lower corona were left far behind. The star didn’t roar with the terrifying thunder of chromospheric flares. Instead, it poured down a boundless, steady torrent of warm, golden sunlight that lit up the ship’s broad watching narrow high walkways. The vast silver-steel shutters of the dorsal viewing dome had been retracted. It allowed the pure, uncorrupted True Yang heat wave to flood the high-pressure garden terrace.
The surrounding heat on the watching deck was kept at a balmy twenty-eight degrees, cooled by gentle recirculation fans that carried the fragrant scents of mountain cedar and wild mint.
In the center of the terrace, Titus had made himself comfortable.
The ancient Northern Xuanwu had extended his massive limbs. He settled his twenty-two-metric-ton bulk onto the heavy baked-clay floor plates with a satisfied, ground-shaking sigh. HUUUUMMMM. Titus’s dark rock shell, which measured over eight meters in width, had absorbed the radiant warmth of the sun until the glass-fused dark stone glowed like a giant hearth-boulder. Patches of ancient deep-earth moss, dormant since the cold depths of the void rifts, began to sprout fresh, emerald-green shoots along the seams of his armor scales, releasing a rich, loamy scent of sun-warmed forest soil.
