Lifting the oak door took four men, their boots slipping in the mud as they heaved the solid heartwood slab from the gravel bank.
Jon Hale took the left forward corner, his bare torso glistening with cold mountain runoff and sweat, the tarred hemp rope biting into the calluses of his palms. Beside him, Iven braced the right forward corner, her shoulders hunched against the strain as she kept her smoking pitch torch held high in her left hand. Behind them, two Host defectors gripped the rear iron hinges, their broad backs bowing as they took the burden of Sir Cael Ardent.
The hero did not weigh more than a mortal man now. Without the buoyant kinetic field of the celestial engine, he was merely six feet of dense bone, muscle, and battered iron breastplate.
He groaned as the oak door rose from the ditch, his blackened right arm sliding across the wet grain of the wood. Jon quickly took a strip of clean oilcloth and pinned the dead limb against Cael’s waist, preventing the charred tendons from snagging on the rough edges of the frame.
“Easy on the rise,” Jon said, splashing through the flume toward the access shaft. “Watch your footing on the wet basalt.”
