The twenty brass cannons mounted along the cavern dome hummed with terrifying vibrational energy.
Each four-foot barrel glowed a dull, angry crimson as subterranean magma was pumped directly into the firing chambers.
Heavy iron bearings ground together, swiveling the massive muzzles in synchronized alignment.
All twenty cannon bores locked onto the narrow catwalk where Kaelen Vance and his strike team stood.
In the dead center of the primary chamber rose the central sensor nexus pillar.
The pillar was a sixty-foot hexagonal column of solid black basalt, reinforced with iron bands and spiraling copper conduits.
Along the pillar’s six polished facets, hundreds of crystal needles floated inside mercury tubes, trembling with hypersensitive precision.
Elder Sterling leaned forward from behind the obsidian archway, his magnifying glass trembling against his spectacles.
