The attack came not through the flooded nave, but through the dry air-flow chimney pipes of the high vaulted ceiling.
A sound like tearing zinc ripped through the quiet of the third watch. From the iron grates forty feet above the writing hall dais, four black iron grappling hooks dropped on singing steel cables, followed right away by the bone-shaking hiss of high-pressure steam.
Eight amphibious shock-iron-puppets dropped in silence.
They weren’t living men in lead suits. They were the Synod’s elite clockwork guards. Six-foot clockwork constructs forged from cold-rolled steel and lacquered bronze, their torsos housing high-pressure steam boilers that whined at sixteen hundred turns a minute. Their arms ended in air-powered shearing jaws capable of snapping an iron crowbar in two. Their optic clusters glowed with the cold, poisonous green of potion-made glowing.
Before the first build’s steel boots touched the marble dais, Lord Ren was already in motion.
“Shields up!” the Ash Emperor roared, his voice ringing through the vaulted cloisters like a bronze war-gong.
He didn’t advance alone. Behind him, four of the strongest bookbinders from the lower trench—men who had spent thirty years hauling fifty-pound bales of sheep thick parchment—slammed a barricade of heavy oak library tables into the center of the dais. Across the front of the wood, Lord Ren had nailed sheets of boiler-plate iron scavenged from the drainage pumps.
