The Magma-Behemoth rose from the black clouded eye like a drowned continent shaking off the sea.
Its crested skull of stone-hard dark rock rose sixty paces into the poisoned air, dripping ribbons of thick, black corpse-melted rock waste that hissed against the black glass shore.
Along its spine, hundreds of jagged fiery fins ground against one another with the screech of earth-shaking plates.
Embedded within the crags of its stone hide were the hardened faces of a thousand ancient miners and long-dead underground demons. Their jaws stretched was wide in silent, stone-hard agony.
Every crevice of the beast’s body cried the black liquid fire of the Stygian Waterfall.
The creature exhaled.
A blast of cold, rotting sulfur vapor roared across the deep gap. It carried a stench that caused the two draft mules behind Lu Chen to rear against their iron traces.
An Ni planted her boots into the fractured stone and threw her weight against the wagon brake, her teeth bared.
