The sole of Ren-the-Cinder’s boot felt like greasy pigskin, worn so thin that Ren’s kick drove the man’s heel directly into the dark rock floor.
“Get up!” Ren barked, grabbing the collar of the Coward’s dust-cloak and hauling him half out of the shadows behind the water pump. “You said sixty seconds! Look at the keystone!”
Above them, the central arch was bleeding powdered mortar in a steady, white curtain. The granite blocks had shifted three inches out of posture, their edges grinding against one another with a low, screaming friction that shook through the marrow of Ren’s teeth. The boiling potion-made sludge was already twelve inches deep on the main floor, licking at the base of the platform.
Ren-the-Cinder gasped, his hood slipping back to reveal greasy, sweat-plastered hair and hollow, twitching cheeks. His bloodshot eyes locked onto the curving vault overhead.
The contract ledger ratified: Structural Shear Computed. Target Mass: Central Siphon Keystone (Arch #3). High-pressure Back-Pressure: 4,200 Imperial Lbs / Sq Ft. Time to Total Catastrophic Failure: 00:00:11. Way out Vector Identified: Secondary Drainage Chimney pipe East.
“Eleven seconds!” the Coward shrieked, scrambling to his feet with the wild speed of an alley cat tossed into a horse trough. “Not sixty! The pressure spike migrated to the third arch! The whole roof is an inverted wedge! Run! Why aren’t we running? Where is the door?”
