The thunder of thirty tons of First Epoch iron slamming into the bedrock was not the end of the disaster. It was merely the opening percussion.
Beneath the huge teeth of the drop-gate, the Singing Behemoth thrash-kicked in its death throes. Its four multi-ton amethyst pillars beat against the terrace pavers with the wild, spasmodic violence of a crushed hornet, gouging two-foot trenches through the granite and sending showers of blinding violet sparks fifty feet into the rain. From its shattered chest cavity. There, the hairline crack had split into an open deep gap, the trapped time star hissed and pulsed, leaking clouds of white-hot radioactive star-fire that turned the falling drizzle into scalding steam.
Then, forty feet above the gate, the mountain’s ancient stone-built promise surrendered.
The backup stonework arch—two hundred and forty tons of hand-hewn granite arch stones, set without mortar during the reign of the first High judge—had been fractured by the Behemoth’s high-pitched death-chord. Now, robbed of the tension provided by the massive iron drop-gate frame, the keystones slipped.
A sound like tearing silk raced through the dark rock cliff face, followed instantly by the ear-splitting roar of complete load-bearing collapse.
“Back!” Lord Ren bellowed, his voice rising above the grinding thunder of the stone. “Clear the apron! Clear the threshold!”
