Across the two leagues of quicksilver water, the forty-eight mortar shells did not reach their intended targets upon the green jade dais.
As the iron canisters dropped through the end-post curve of their high-speed arc, they met the outer edge of the dampening field. The heavy hadal air, charged with the clear sound hum of the fused slate, thickened like cold animal fat. The screaming whistle of the shells flattened into a dull, muffled thrum, as if the projectiles were passing through a dense barrier of tightly packed wool. Half of the canisters blew up prematurely three hundred arm-lengths above the lake, bursting into greasy orange blossoms of sulfur flame and iron shrapnel that fell harmlessly into the heavy liquid silver. The leftover canisters struck the quicksilver surface with heavy, leaden slaps, sinking instantly beneath the dense liquid metal without throwing up a single drop of spray.
The physics of the quicksilver lake swallowed the bone-shaking energy with terrifying smooth speed. Being thirteen times denser than ordinary sea water, the liquid metal did not propagate blast waves as open water did. Instead, the thick, sticky fluid snapped the moving driving force into tiny heat fading away, extinguishing the burning sulfur embers in fractions of a second. The liquid silver acted as a vast, non-Newtonian high-pressure damper, protecting the giant stone foundations of the throne from any bone-shaking rupture.
