The infrared fire bowl died down to a dull cherry ember, choking under a thin crust of grey ash as Arthur Vance packed his razor-sharp kit into the padded field harness.
In the bone nook fifty meters above the glandular junction, the air smelled of burnt chicory, dried cold-root salve. The faint, sweet tang of ozone trailing off Vesper’s newly lined up fur. The White Tiger of Heavenly Slaughter sat perched on the lip of the nook, her amber eyes scanning the darkness below. She didn’t fidget. The five-inch claws she had tested against the silver-steel block were retracted cleanly within her velvet paws. But every few seconds the air around her whiskers refracted starlight into needle-thin rainbows. A quiet reminder that her physical form was now brushing against the fabric of space-folding space.
Behind them, Titus shifted his massive bulk, the stone-hard armor scales of his back shell scraping against the limestone ribbing of the wall. The giant terrapin blinked his heavy, ancient eyes, let out a deep-rumbling rumble that shook through the floorboards of the nook. Then he lowered his blunt snout toward Arthur’s hand. Arthur reached out, his bare palm resting against the cool, stone-hardened ridge above Titus’s nostrils.
