The voice did not come from human lungs. It arrived as a monstrous shaking of steam, high-pressure liquid silver, and amplified brass that dropped through the upright air-flow chimney pipes like molten lead poured into an open ear.
From the keel of the sky dreadnought Celestial Sovereign, sixteen huge sound megaphone arrays—each thirty paces across, cast from ringing bell-metal and driven by high-pressure steam turbines—were lowered into the shattered mouth of the northern crags. When they spoke, the sound displaced thousands of cubic feet of air, shaking the granite cliffs so wildly that flocks of roosting gulls fell dead from the crags with burst air-sacs.
Through the upright periscope tubes, a sight scrying beam projected a flickering, sulfur-yellow phantasm onto the grand quartz sounding horn of Entry hall 050. The image revealed the ugly transformation of the supreme commander: Supreme Arch-Elder Zhu Heling, known throughout the histories of the high sects as the Scholar of the Golden Sovereign.
Hundreds of years ago, Zhu Heling had walked the world as a mortal philosopher, a master of sky astronomy and water-mapping lore who had studied the same ancient archives as the founders of the Scroll hall. But in his desperate terror of physical dissolving during the Great Drowning, he had abandoned his living frame. He had transformed himself into a huge body-leverage hybrid. His spine replaced with a flexible column of hardened star-fallen iron, his chest housing a high-pressure spirit-fire fueled by stolen Dao-veins, his vocal chords woven from gold wire and…
