The twin flame-lances hummed with the high-pitched whistle of high-pressure fire-oil forcing its way through brass atomizer nozzles.
Hovering fifteen feet above the dark rock floor, suspended by high-tension steel cables from the air-flow shafts, the four High-Pressure Steam Skirmishers adjusted their firing arcs. Their brass back shell armor gleamed dull orange in the pilot lights. Their convex glass visors reflected the ruined room below—the fallen court guards, the bleeding monk, and the boy kneeling in the soot with an ivory metal pen in his hand.
“Main incendiary purge,” the lead skirmisher commanded through his clockwork chest muscle. “Saturate the quadrants. Burn the wood. Burn the meat. The Spire accepts only refined marrow.”
Unit Ren raised his three-foot piston-wrench. But his left high-pressure arm was trembling, its storage tank pressure reading zero after the leap across the Great Culvert. Lord Ren took a step forward, his iron signet ring flaring with desperate ash light. But the Emperor’s knees buckled. The body cost of holding six machines in frozen stillness had burst tiny blood vessels behind his eyes, blinding his left vision in red haze.
Ren Vale lunged forward, throwing his body over Brother Ren and Mira, his mammoth bone awl raised to trace a defensive ward in the air.
