The Obsidian Row of pillars stretched three hundred paces into the black heart of Sector Zero.
Flanked by fluted columns of fiery glass that reflected the red glare of sulfur torches, the ritual avenue had been built to intimidate visiting royal envoys and foreign merchant princes. Every flat stone slab beneath their boots was polished black dark rock, so smooth that the miners’ nailed boots scratched harsh. It screeched trails across the mirror finish.
At the far end of the avenue stood the Grand Portal of the High Tiered hall: thirty feet of solid beaten bronze, etched with the sharp-angled facet-lines of the Guild’s sovereign seal.
Between the miners and that bronze portal stood the masterwork of the Arch-Lapidary’s private arsenal.
Six towering constructs stood motionless in two ranks of three. Nine feet in height, broad as draft horses, the automatons were not fashioned from crude iron or cast bronze. Their said clearlychassis were clad in linked scales of man-made diamond, sintered novaculite, and dense, purple-banded glow-stone.
Each plate had been faceted, ground, and polished to sight perfection by master craftsmen who had spent years calculating the glow of striking force. From their brass-sleeved shoulders hung huge cleaving blades. Four-foot slabs of hardened steel tipped with diamond-grit saw-edges that hummed faintly on internal steam-driven spindles.
