With both the western and northern relief shafts venting orange spark steam into the cold sky, the final third of the stolen Court circuit tightly packed into the eastern side of the basin with terrifying thickness. The Mineral Spring Guardian’s leftover mass tightened from a twenty-foot column into a squat, eight-foot knot of white-hot limestone and screaming vapor directly over the eastern drainage lip, its Jade-equivalent intention hardening around the last intact valve like a closed iron fist.
Worse, the terrain around the eastern relief dome had been ruined during the first eruption. A two-ton slab of carved granite top stone ledge torn from the auction pavilion roof edges had crashed down at an angle across the eastern basin rim, burying half the hardened valve cap under solid rock and blocking the natural stone runoff trough that led out of the courtyard. If Ilyra tried to plunge her spear down from above into that narrow, obstructed crevice. Meanwhile, the tightly packed Jade vapor whirled around it, the sideways tearing force against the granite top stone ledge would snap her seasoned ash shaft in two before the iron tip could pierce the valve. And even if the cap broke, the blocked runoff trough would bounce the escaping fire pressure straight back into the guardian’s core.
