The light arrived thirty seconds before the thunder.
Across the vast, three-hundred-pace threshold of Entry hall 021, the darkness of the high vaults suddenly flared into blinding blazing bright violet. High in the northern high window row gallery, three damaged dreadnought barges of the Azure Firmament Sect had coupled their backup spiritual reactors into a single firing array, directing a packed barrage of thirty-six long-range qi beams directly down the central processional hall.
The intent of the elders was see-through. Unable to breach the gates on foot or bypass the water locks, they were attempting to sunder the great dark rock hinge-stones of the Twenty-First Sluice-Gate. They dropped forty thousand tons of fractured rock to crush the migration vanguard and trap the leftover eight million mortals in the narrow bottleneck behind.
The air inside the hall turned white-hot. The stone dew condensing upon the pale limestone pilasters flashed into scalding steam. The stone flags underfoot popped and crackled as their surface moisture swelled wildly. The heat was choking, carrying the sharp, chemical stench of boiled away ozone and copper flux.
Below the archway, thirty thousand mortal weavers and their children looked up in paralyzing terror, the violet death-glare lighting up their pale faces as the high-energy beam dropped like a headsman’s blade from the vaulted roof.
