Between the six-hundredth and six-hundred-and-fiftieth steps, the Grand Stairs opened onto the broad galleries of the Auxiliary Encampments. Here, in the arched recesses that had once housed the sacred library vaults of the pre-flood masters, four thousand captive fighters and laborers were penned behind fences of barbed iron wire.
They had been gathered from across the three drowned continents. Apprentices of the Cloud-Shearer Sect, herb-gatherers of the Green Reed Valley, magic charm-scribes whose inkstones had been smashed, and earth-movers whose spiritual spirit veins had been bound with lead magic charms to prevent them from tunneling through the foundations.
The air in the gallery was heavy with the smell of unwashed bodies, stale rice broth, boiled animal fat, and the ever-present, stinging haze of sulfur smoke. Above them, iron channels bolted to the carved stone arches vented the greasy exhaust of the forge furnaces, coating every surface in a fine, greasy layer of black soot.
Along the outer edge of the cages, dozens of armed overseers patrolled with electrified iron batons, their boots crunching on coal dust. Whenever a captive slumped from tiredness or coughed too loudly, a spark of blue lightning would arc across the wire, bringing a shuddering cry of pain that echoed through the vaults.
