The greasy reek of burning sulfur seeped through the upper rock fissures twelve hours after Vanguard General Krag died.
It started as a foul yellow haze curling along the cavern ceiling. Within minutes, the haze thickened into oily, suffocating black smoke. The heavy fumes smelled of boiled tar, ground alkali salt, and rotten eggs.
High above on the canyon rim, General Dravus’s siege engineers had wheeled fifty iron-bound pitch-wagons into position.
They ignited the cauldrons, stoked the coals with bellows, and channeled the boiling sludge directly into the mountain’s natural ventilation chimneys. Giant bronze pumps groaned in rhythmic cadence. Every stroke forced hundreds of gallons of pressurized, toxic smoke down into the subterranean oasis.
Elder Sterling planted his boots on the rocky shoreline of the underground lake.
His Nascent Soul aura flared bright silver. He drew his heavy longsword and slashed the air twenty times in rapid succession. Gale-force wind blades howled across the cavern, building a spinning wall of compressed air to push the black clouds back toward the cracks.
Ten paces away, Sera Thorne thrust her ancestral spear into the limestone floor.
Silver lightning crackled along the shaft of the Storm-Pike. She spun the weapon with one arm, generating an electric gale that buffeted the descending soot away from the refugee tents.
