The gold-silver metal rod in the iron-puppet’s hand rose toward the ceiling with the smooth, terrifying gaining speed of an air-powered piston.
Thirty feet above the rose-quartz floor hung the bronze gong, three feet across, its surface cast from bell-metal alloy that would ring through three miles of underground channels if struck. Once that chime sounded, forty armored wardens from the High Guard barracks would flood the Topaz Terrace, sealing every drainage chimney pipe and exhaust chimney in the sector.
“The knee joint!” Artificer Ren shouted, not wasting breath on a curse. “Octahedral facet on the knee cap! Mark the vertex!”
Ren Vale moved before the thought fully formed in his skull.
He didn’t sprint with full striking force—his fragile quartz kneecap forbade reckless gaining speed—but his felt-soled boots glided across the grout lines with the fluid, low-centered care of a cat. In his uninjured right hand, he held his mammoth bone awl, its silver tip dipped into the dark pool of dark oak-ink resting in his thumb-palette.
The seven-foot diamond iron-puppet brought the gold-silver metal rod back, its brass shoulder gears whining as steam pressure built in its chest pipe hub. Its blank silver mirror-mask reflected the golden light of the topaz geode, fully empty of eyes, mouth, or humanity.
