The silence on the low roof wall of Bastion Four was total, save for the hum of four thousand runic volts coursing through the copper rails of Rail-Lance One.
Eighty yards down on the snowy glacis, Chieftain Ymir-Krag gathered the leftover ice-cold mana in his elemental core.
The twenty-four-foot titan rose on his one good leg, his massive chest heaving with bloody steam, his right hand gripping the twelve-foot wooden handle of his runic ice hammer.
The hammer head—a semi-clear, four-ton block of single-crystal ice-slow ice—blazed with unbearable azure bright glare. It cast long, sharp blue shadows across the castle walls.
Master Borin Bronze-Lung knelt beside the heavy bronze trunnions of Rail-Lance One. That made a final check of the release gearwork.
“The layered leaf springs are holding thirty tons of stored clockwork potential,” Borin reported in a low, tense growl. “Every copper contact finger on the mana rails is seated flush against the sabot base. When you pull that lanyard, Lord Giles, there will be zero starting latency.”
Giles adjusted his glasses, his voice leftover level and analytical.
“The end-post striking force of a sixty-pound heavy dark metal dart at Mach two point eight is about four hundred and twenty thousand foot-pounds,” Giles said, double-checking his slide rule. “When that energy is focused onto an impact area smaller than a silver florin, the nearby blast wave pressure exceeds two million pounds of pressure. No atom-deep lattice in nature can sustain that shear slope without instant total fracture.”
