The silence that fell over Haven-Hold was more terrifying than any earthquake.
In the center of the Grand Plaza, Terravorax sat fully motionless, its cathedral-sized head tilted upward at a forty-five-degree angle.
Its throat had swelled into a huge, pulsing sphere of dark rock and diamond scales, swollen to three times its normal width by eighteen million cubic yards of trapped carbon dioxide gas.
Giles Croft stood on the central terrace, his stopwatch ticking in his palm.
“Internal esophageal pressure is sixty-eight pounds of pressure above sky,” Giles stated. His voice ringing with was cold, calm focus.
“The wyrm’s upper sphincter is in backup muscular burst.
When that valve releases, the escaping gas will discharge at Mach one point two. That set off an aimed sound pressure wave capable of tearing the roofs off six hundred stone apartments.”
Captain Kenneth Drake stepped to Giles’s side, his leather command coat fastened tightly against the sulfur wind.
