The ground-shaking pulse that rolled through the floor of the High Archive didn’t fade into the black water. It gathered strength, rebounding between the linked dark rock blocks like a living current until it funneled through the vaulted archway into the Central Round hall of the Scroll hall.
Ren moved quickly, his flippers cutting through the dense salt water as he caught Mira by her mortal left elbow.
Beside him, Deep-Diver Ren kicked with brutal smooth speed. His heavy lead-weighted harness carried him across the threshold. The smuggler’s scarred brass faceplate turned toward the round hall, his green slit pupils narrowing in alarm as he caught the sound shaking traveling through the rock.
“Out of the hall, now!” Deep-Diver’s voice rumbled through the copper drain tube line, metal and sharp. “The whole deep gap is acting like a trumpet. If that shaking catches in an enclosed throat, the standing wave will blow your ears through the center of your brain!”
They burst out of the narrow dark rock passage into the huge expanse of the Central Round hall.
The chamber was massive. A circular arena two hundred paces across, domed with giant stone slabs of black fiery stone that rose seventy yards above them into total darkness. Around the outer edge of the dome, ancient master builders had carved spiraling sound chimney pipes. Fluted channels lined with gold-silver metal deep ring strips designed to carry the spoken oaths of First Epoch chancellors to every corner of the sunken city.
