The sixteen captured warships slipped back beneath the churning surface, leaving the burning wreckage of Solis’s barges behind.
They glided through the narrow three-hundred-yard canyon throat like silent black leviathans.
Along the basalt cliffs, the thirty-six Saint-Iron array spikes hummed with dormant golden fire. Each spike sat flush against the rock, radiating a calm, protective resonance that calmed the turbulent currents.
Linnea walked the length of the flagship’s main deck, running her bare fingers along the timber rails.
The blue Anti-Marrow Hull-Ward paste had cured into a translucent, crystalline shell.
“The hulls absorbed the paste down to the keel,” Linnea reported to Elder Sterling. “The maritime radiation cannot penetrate the wood, and the thermal current will not blister the paint.”
Two miles down, the fleet entered the subterranean grotto.
The subterranean air was dry, warm, and scented with mineral salt and geothermal heat.
