The jaundiced yellow clouds rolled south from the jagged peaks of the Wyrmtooth Fissure like a wall of bruised sulfur.
By midday, the daylight over Haven-Hold had faded into a sickly greenish gloom.
The air smelled suffocatingly of burning brimstone and rotten eggs. That skin-burning vapor stung the eyes and coated the back of the throat with a dry, bitter film.
Giles Croft stood on the terrace of the central town hall, wearing a heavy hardened rubber slicker and gauntlets.
He held a brass hydrometer in one hand and a strip of litmus parchment in the other.
A steady, oily drizzle was falling from the yellow sky.
When a single droplet landed on the blue litmus paper, the paper didn’t merely turn pink.
It flared instantly into an angry, scorched crimson.
