The three clockwork hounds burst into the chamber of Entry hall 426 in a tight, three-sided hunting formation, their black star-fallen iron chassis low to the ground, their steel talons throwing up showers of sparks against the dark rock flags.
They were massive machines—each nearly six feet long and weighing over two hundred pounds—their brass ribcages heavy with cross-bracing struts of cold-rolled steel, their throats fitted with heavy rotating flechette launchers. In the center of their wedge-shaped heads, their crimson quartz crystals spun in a nonstop blur of sight tracking light, locked onto the scent of drying sheep fat and mortal sweat.
The lead hound saw the wide, open hall ahead and sped up, its internal air-powered cylinders hissing with savage power as its four legs pounded the floor.
Twenty paces into the room, its front talons struck the sheet of cold sheep fat.
The result was instant and total.
The machine’s steel claws found no purchase on the greased dark rock. The hound’s front legs slid wildly outward, its chassis slamming down onto the greasy flags with a loud, ringing crash. Its driving force, carrying over two hundred pounds of dead weight at twenty miles per hour, transformed the hound into an uncontrolled projectile of iron and brass.
