The descent into the Underground Cold-Vaults felt like walking down the throat of a dead mammoth.
Lu Chen pulled on the iron cart’s tow-cable, the heavy wrought-iron wheels screeching over greased pine rails with a rhythmic groan.
Behind him, three mortal laborers pushed with their shoulders, their ragged breath steaming in the rapidly chilling air.
With every twenty paces they dropped, the surrounding heat plummeted.
The boiling hot fifty-degree sulfur heat of the Smelting Ward faded behind them, replaced by a damp, biting chill that hovered near zero.
Frost crystals coated the jagged limestone walls, glistening like crushed glass under the faint glow of blue glowing lanterns hung from the ceiling.
At the bottom of the ramp, two heavy iron doors stood propped open with granite chocks.
Inside was a vaulted chamber forty paces wide, paved with slate slabs and crisscrossed by narrow drainage gutters carved into the floor.
