The marble terrace was swallowed in less than ninety seconds.
Ren hauled Mira up the narrow spiral stairs that hugged the outer edge of the dark rock column. The stone steps were slick with green slime and hundreds of years of crusted salt water. It spiraled forty feet upward toward an upkeep narrow high walkway suspended beneath the vaulted ceiling. Behind them, Vane scrambled with uncharacteristic, wild agility, his kidskin boots abandoning all pretense of elegance as black water crested the seventh step.
“The high-pressure volume is exponential!” Vane screamed over the rising roar. His counting frame was tucked securely between his teeth so he could use both hands to drag himself up the iron handrail. “They haven’t just diverted the street drains! They blew the master intake of the Blackwater River!”
Ren reached the upper narrow high walkway. A narrow lattice of rusted iron grates bolted to the stone ribs of the ceiling.
He leaned over the railing, looking down into the cavernous darkness. The sight made his stomach turn to ice.
The Sunken Temple was no longer a quiet flooded ruin. It had become a churning underground cooking pot. Torrents of frothing brown river water, choked with smashed timber, heavy-duty grease, and dead canal weeds, poured through four massive arched intake channels in the northern wall. The water level in the central nave was rising at two feet per minute, obliterating the stone writing hall desks and submerging the carved statues to their headless shoulders.
