The descent into the foundation crypts was not a swim. It was a slow, controlled sinking through the shattered spine of a drowned empire.
Above them, six thousand deep-water lengths of the Southern Pelagic Sea pressed down upon the ruins of the First High court with the weight of eleven crushing deep-sea pressure. One hundred and ten tons of pressure of unbending, indifferent mass. At this depth, water ceased to feel like a liquid and behaved like cold, dense high-pressure oil. It entered every crevice, smoothed every sharp edge of broken dark rock. Then it held the giant stone blocks of the sunken city in an eternal, vise-like grip.
Ren Vale followed the trailing wake of Deep-Diver Ren’s flippered diving boots.
Every ten paces, the smuggler reached back with a lead-weighted glove to steady the copper umbilical connecting Ren’s brass collar to the backup salt water pack. Ren’s lungs moved in a steady, unnatural rhythm. It drew in the hyper-dense, cold stone salt water that Deep-Diver’s craft had tuned to his altered biology. It tasted of ancient shale, dissolved iron, and deep-earth sulfur. But it kept his chest from imploding. The Hadal Pressure Invariance held the crushing ceiling of the ocean at bay, weaving an invisible, spirit mantle across his ribs and skull.
