Seawater hissed into blinding clouds of sulfur steam as the northern reef sank three feet beneath the waves.
The colossal red tractor beams from the eighty Blood-Star warships overhead bore down like solid pillars of iron. Every beam vibrated with the screech of straining gravity arrays, dragging Crater Island’s tectonic roots down into the boiling abyssal trenches.
Cracks thirty feet wide ripped across the basalt stadium floor.
Elder Sterling leaped across a widening fissure, his heavy boots skidding to a halt beside Kaelen’s wooden cot. The old warrior’s face was tight with urgent concern.
“Young master, the buoyancy reefs have snapped!” Sterling shouted over the roar of rushing water. “The island is dropping into the magma sea! We must board the armored cutter and flee immediately!”
Beside him, Claire Vance pointed her slender hand toward the northern cliffs, where whole sections of granite were sliding into the ocean.
“Sterling is right, Kaelen,” Claire said softly, her dark hair whipping in the scalding wind. “Eighty dreadnoughts are focusing their tractor engines on our foundation. In four minutes, this entire caldera will be submerged.”
On the evacuation skiff near the western pier, the fifty rescued mainland alchemists were huddling together in terror.
