The Alpha Void-Crawler fell like a collapsing watchtower.
Its thirty-pace bulk was armored in layered black diamond plates three feet thick, sharpened by thousand years of deep-mantle pressure until it drank all surrounding light.
Twelve jointed legs, each as thick as a temple pillar, struck the inverted roadway with bone-shaking violence.
KABOOM!
The dark rock beneath its weight fractured into a spiderweb of three-inch fissures.
Its massive cephalothorax reared back, revealing a circular maw ringed with four nested rows of jagged, rotating silver-steel teeth.
A blast of sub-zero deep-sea wind billowed from its gullet, freezing the moisture in the air into needles of black rime.
The beast lunged forward.
