Stepping through the arched portal of Entry hall 734, Qiao Ming and Yan Zhiqiu entered the main artillery gallery of the Submerged Bastion. This was a massive stone hall forty arm-lengths wide and one hundred arm-lengths long, whose floor was dominated by a circular crossing turntable of solid cast bronze, twenty arm-lengths in width, embedded flush with the dolerite paving flags.
Resting upon the center of the turntable was the master weapon of the ancient castle: The Cyclopean Repeating Pneumatic Ballista. The engine was an awe-inspiring marvel of First Epoch military building. He measured ten arm-lengths from its bronze crossing snout to the rear balance weight cradle. Unlike mortal siege weapons that relied on wood and sinew, this giant crossbow was forged entirely from hardened spring steel, glowing bronze, and dark star-fallen iron.
Its twin bow arms were composed of twelve layered leaves of star-steel, each three fingers thick and six arm-lengths long, clamped together by massive bronze cuffs engraved with metrological fine-tuning scales. At the center of the chassis sat the air-powered firing metal tube: a massive bronze tube four spans in width, fitted with dual spreading valves and a back-and-forth air-powered cocking piston.
Qiao Ming approached the weapon with respectful, measured steps, his bare calloused feet feeling the cold, smooth metal of the bronze turntable. He ran his hand along the guide track of the firing bed, feeling the polished glowing bronze that had been preserved from rusting by a thick coating of amber whale animal fat and…
