The warning didn’t come from an alarm horn or a shouted scout.
It came as a sound tremor. A high-hum shriek of tearing metal that traveled through the four-foot dark rock walls of the third crucible crypt. Across the ceiling arches, hundreds of years of hardened soot broke free, showering the three hundred fugitive workers in black powder as the floor beneath their boots jumped two inches into the air.
At the entrance to the crypt, the six-inch solid iron blast gate groaned, its center bowing inward in a saucer-shaped bulge three feet across.
Master Smith Kaelen lunged to his feet, tossing his crowbar into his single hand. “The blast gate! Barricade the arch with the anvil-blocks!”
Before two smiths could reach the timber braces, the blast gate burst.
An air-powered pile-bunker—a four-inch solid heavy dark metal rod driven by an ether explosion—punched straight through the center of the six-inch iron door with an ear-splitting, bone-shaking CRACK. The iron shattered like brittle window glass, jagged shards whistling through the entrance and embedding themselves in the dark rock pillars.
Through the howling dust cloud stepped the Overclocked Apostles.
There were only four of them. But their presence made the heavy Clockwork Guards look like children’s tin toys.
