The heat dropping from the heavens was not the honest warmth of summer. But the choking radiance of an overheated kiln.
High above the central pavilions of the Floating Mountain, the lead war chariot came to a halt. Suspended fifty feet above the cedar balcony, the gold-trimmed vessel hovered with a deep, droning shaking that made the baked-clay tiles along the roof edges shiver in their mortar. The four horned sky fire-drakes harnessed to its prow hissed all at once, their scales crackling like hot embers as rotten-egg smoke coiled from their flared nostrils.
At a subtle gesture from Celestial Envoy Bai Ming’s ivory court scepter, six sky standard-bearers stepped forward along the chariot’s golden narrow high walkways.
With timed together, dramatic snaps of their wrists, they unfurled six huge banners of woven sun-silk. Each banner stretched forty paces in length, dyed in blazing bright saffron and bordered with blazing crimson solar runes. As the heavy fabric caught the mountain wind, the runes flared to life. An artificial solar domain swelled outward, bathing the entire summit in a blinding, shadowless glare.
Down in the terraced gardens below the terrace, rows of delicate blue spirit-orchids drooped instantly. Their leaves curled, turning gray. The artificial solar aura drank the surrounding moisture from the air.
