The order to loose the fire-bolts hung suspended in the heavy, charged air of the Grand Central Round hall.
Across the half-round tiers, thirty repeating siege-giant crossbows groaned against their iron mounts as three hundred artillerymen leaned on the crossing levers, training their sights upon the lone figure in grey linen standing at the center of the High Dais. Each machine was primed with a bundle of five-foot iron quarrels tipped with potion-made brimstone and fire-oil. Weapons designed to splinter timber warships and melt through stone castle walls.
Yet as the gunners reached for the release trip-wires, an invisible shudder ran through the iron framework of the weapons.
The intense air pressure generated by the floating map was distorting the flight path cables. The braided gut-strings, swollen by the rising humidity and shaking at the sound hum of the stone ink, buzzed like angry hornets. The iron sighting pins refused to align, blurred by the shimmering sight distortion of the azure mist that continued to expand from the parchment.
The air had taken on the dense, stone thickness of deep water. Each breath drawn by the legionnaires felt heavy in their chests, tasting of bitter sea-salt and stone-hard limestone. The flames of the pitch-torches mounted along the stone railings flickered erratically. Their yellow tongues turned a pale, ghostly blue as the oxygen was displaced by the expanding mantle of salt water-vapor. Even the roaring draft of the blast fire had begun to choke, coughing clouds of dark, unburned soot into…
