Entry hall 434 was filled with the ear-splitting, physical fury of sixty thousand pounds of rotating granite grinding against soul-forged bronze.
Down in the narrow intake trench of the second grinding basin, the Alpha Hound was trapped on its side, wedged between the curved hard black rock retaining wall and the massive, grooved face of the twelve-arm-length millstone. But the beast was far from dead.
Its soul-forged bronze armor, hardened with ancient potion-made magic charms and cooled in star-fallen oils, resisted the crushing weight of the granite wheel with terrifying resilience. Sparks of emerald and violet fire exploded from its flank plates as the stone teeth scraped across its metal hide, throwing off clouds of white salt-smoke that billowed upward into the vaulted ceiling.
Its twin spirit-furnaces, starved of oxygen in the foaming salt water slurry, roared with a choked, deep-throated fury.
Inside its armored throat blister, the rotary giant crossbow spun with a terrifying, high-pitched clockwork shriek: whir-whir-CLACK.
“Down!” Qiao Ming roared, throwing his arm across Yan Zhiqiu’s chest and driving her flat against the punched holes in iron plate of the watching pulpit.
A split-second later, a three-foot steel harpoon erupted from the pit.
The missile lanced through the salt spray with the speed of a lightning bolt, driven by eighty sea-weights of tightly packed air. It missed the pulpit railing by two inches, striking the iron overhead frame mid-air strut directly above their heads with an explosive, bell-like clang that shook the entire narrow high walkway structure.
