Darkness was not an elemental force of terrifying occult power.
It was merely the temporary absence of tuned magnetic heat wave within the visible spectrum.
Lord Giles Croft stood upon the highest low roof wall of Bastion North-East. He held a dark cobalt welding visor and a padded brass carbon-electrode feeder wrench.
The midnight mountain air was freezing and heavy with dense, swirling black clouds that fully swallowed the stars.
Two feet beyond the stone railing, the world vanished into a terrifying, solid void of black mist.
Yet before Giles sat a rig of titanic sight power. A sixty-inch curved glass mirror ground from pure quartz crystal, silvered on its rear concave surface with chemical nitrate.
The mirror had been heat-softened for fourteen days inside the earth-heat glass kilns to eliminate internal heat stresses.
Its curved curve had been polished with jewelers’ rouge until its focal length measured exactly twenty-four inches, checked with sight collimators.
