The heavy iron door of the boiler vault hung by a single snapped hinge, bent outward into the room like a torn sheet of tin.
Through the crushed brick doorway poured six Clockwork Guards, their brass-plated shin guards thudding against the soot-blanketed dark rock floorboards with the terrifying weight of iron anvils. Each guard was a Model Four Heavy. He was wrapped in an inch of black lacquered plate, their right arms armed with motorized air-powered clamp-shears that snapped open and shut with ear-splitting, rhythmic clatter. Behind them, two court guards dragged a high-pressure ether ram mounted on an iron two-wheel carriage. Its heavy hard was dark metal-steel piston hissing white steam into the ceiling chimney pipes as it prepared for a backup bone-shaking strike against the vault walls.
Inside the vault, everyone could feel the powdered lime scale, scorched oil, and the sharp, metal tang of fresh blood.
Brother Ren stood between the shattered entrance and the iron metal tube where Mira had been resting.
The Disgraced Saint had not pulled back. His coarse burlap habit was torn across the chest, soaked in dark crimson blood where two air-powered crossbow quarrels had struck him. He hadn’t dodged. He had stepped directly into the quarrel arcs. He used his Martyr’s Osmosis to draw the moving trauma and barbed iron heads into his own ribs so that not a single splinter of steel reached the girl behind him.
