The descent of the Synaptic Mycelium Archon was with the sound of tearing meat and high-voltage spark static.
It didn’t walk, crawl, or fly. It slid down the stone-hard spinal channel like a five-hundred-meter tapeworm woven from glistening, electric-blue neural cables. Thousands of fine axon tendrils trailed from its underbelly like the roots of a monstrous weeping willow, each tip discharging blue lightning into the bone narrow high walkways as it grounded its huge bio-electric charge. Where those discharge bolts struck, the ancient hardened bone didn’t merely scorch. It melted into glass, pooling in bubbling, smoking craters that smelled of burned phosphorus and dry spinal fluid.
Embedded along its bloated dorsal ridge were hundreds of stolen skulls—the stone-hard craniums of extinct alien hunting beasts, titan reptilians, and humanoid stargazers. Inside their hollow eye sockets burned cold, rainbow-bright violet fires that flickered in timed together, hypnotic waves. Every skull opened and shut its hardened jaw in rhythmic, clockwork spasms, clicking out a maddening sound rhythm that shook directly against the human inner ear.
Arthur Vance planted his boots firmly on the narrow high walkway, the Transfixer carbine raised to his shoulder. His feet were set wide, absorbing the rhythmic tremors running through the twelve-half-mile vault. Through his Monocle Taxonomy Loupe, the creature’s internal anatomy resolved into a blinding web of salt-current tracking data.
