The yellow acid puddle on the steel beam of Quarry Four hissed like an open blast fire.
Giles Croft knelt beside the smoking metal, wearing his heavy hardened rubber apron and protective face shield.
He pulled a heat-proof glass pipette and an empty test tube from his leather field kit, carefully drawing up three drops of the bubbling, glowing yellow liquid.
The glass tube grew warm in his gloved fingers.
Around the edge of the crater on the surface level, a dozen fanatical cultists from the southern border clans had gathered behind Kenneth Drake’s guard ropes.
They were dressed in tattered black vestments painted with writhing serpent glyphs, clutching bone rattles and chanting toward the smoking fissure.
Their leader, a wild-eyed zealot named Kael the Cleansed, raised his arms toward the sky. They shouted to the gathered refugees.
“See the sacred blood of the World-Eater,” Kael screamed, his voice raw with religious ecstasy.
