The high triforium gallery exploded into fire.
THWACK-BOOM!
Six heavy steel crossbows fired sulfur-charged explosive quarrels from the upper narrow high walkways. The bolts struck the ancient limestone stone railing where Vane Vale had been standing a heartbeat before, exploding in a shower of crushed granite and burning pitch that scorched the ninety-foot vaulted ceiling black.
Vane rolled across the stone stringer on his side, his velvet coat catching an ember that he beat out furiously with his kidskin glove.
“A fully un-skilled response to an audit!” Vane yelled over the roar of the flames, scrambling behind a stone rib. “They’re shooting the accountant! The ultimate mark of office bankruptcy!”
Across the void of the lantern dome, the Aeterna Monstrance was dropping.
Driven by the wild levers of Deacon Ignatius, the massive steam winches groaned. The five-story blackened boiler-plate engine dropped thirty feet through the air on its steel mid-air cables. It settled directly into the focal axis of the four curved crystal mirrors, eighty paces above the screaming congregation.
The central star-fire chamber flared with blinding, world-ending intensity.
VROOOOOOOOOM!
A column of raw solar star-fire, four feet wide, began to form within the central quartz focus. It hummed with that terrifying pure silver shaking that made the stained glass windows in the high window row rattle in their lead frames.
Ren Vale didn’t wait for the beam to focus.
He sprinted along the narrow stone stringer of the triforium, vaulted onto the iron mid-air cradle of the cathedral clockwork chime. Then he leaped into the open air.
For two terrifying seconds, there was only the eighty-foot drop to the marble floor below.
Then his boots slammed onto the shaking iron upkeep narrow high walkway of the dropping Monstrance.
Ren hit the narrow high walkway on his hands and knees, the impact jarring his bruised shoulder, his greased wool boots finding purchase on the diamond-tread steel. Heat washed over him—three hundred degrees of radiant back-surge venting from the liquid silver-vapor boiler.
Deacon Ignatius turned from his control console. His leather goggles reflected the blinding purple light of the core. With a snarl of panicked rage, the old engineer drew a heavy iron boiler wrench and swung it with both hands at Ren’s skull.
Ren didn’t draw a weapon.
He ducked beneath the whistling steel wrench, lunged forward with his left shoulder. Then he drove the heel of his palm directly into the old man’s solar nerve web. The deacon wheezed, stumbling backward into the boiler housing, his wrench clattering through the steel floorboards to plummet into the nave below.
Ren shoved the engineer into the backup tool locker, slammed the iron latch. Then he turned to the rear of the machine.
There sat the main running charter. An eight-inch bronze plate bolted to the central power-coil housing. It wrapped a sheet of cured thick parchment inscribed with the cathedral’s master radiant promise.
Ren drew his Reforged Martyr’s Awl.
The lead sleeve surrounding the mammoth ivory shaft was smoking faintly. It took in the intense surrounding holiness that radiated from the star-fire chamber. Ren pressed the silver metal ring against the bronze seal.
A shadow fell across the narrow high walkway.
CLANG!
A seven-foot brass liturgical staff struck the steel floorboards three inches from Ren’s knee, discharging a blinding arc of consecrated lightning that threw Ren onto his back against the railing.
Judge-Prelate Malachai stood on the upkeep overhead frame.
He had ridden the central altar lift upward, his golden vestments billowing in the heat draft, his tall silver miter discarded, his grey hair wild around his ascetic face. His blue eyes burned with the manic, unhinged fury of an emperor whose empire was crumbling in his hands.
“You’ll not touch that plate, scribe,” Malachai whispered, his voice cutting through the roar of the steam boiler.
The Judge leveled his brass staff like a spear, the quartz monstrance at the tip glowing white-hot.
“You have destroyed forty years of holy stonework,” Malachai snarled. He stepped across the trembling narrow high walkway. “You have poisoned the minds of the faithful with your miserable ledgers. But the light doesn’t need their faith to burn! The light only needs fuel!”
Malachai lunged forward, the brass staff driving straight for Ren’s throat.
Ren rolled across the steel floorboards as the staff struck the diamond tread. It blasted a three-inch hole through the two-inch boiler plate with a shower of molten iron sparks.
Ren scrambled to his feet, his back pressed against the central crucible. His reforged awl was gripped in both hands, held crosswise before his chest.
“Your light is dead, Malachai,” Ren said, his voice flat and steady despite the blistered heat searing his cheeks. “The children are free. You have no fuel.”
“I have you!” Malachai roared, lunging again, his staff swinging in a wide, lethal arc. “And when I burn your heretical meat in this crucible, your sister will come to the ashes!”
The brass staff struck Ren’s reforged awl.
BOOM!
The impact blew up with the bone-shaking force of an artillery shell.
The silver metal ring of the awl clashed against the quartz monstrance. The lead sleeve glowed dull cherry-red as it swallowed the consecrated lightning, channeling the discharge safely into the steel frame of the Monstrance.
Ren’s feet slid three feet across the diamond tread, but his grip held firm. The mammoth ivory didn’t shatter. The rotting thick parchment didn’t burn.
For a heartbeat, the two men stood locked together eighty feet above the cathedral floor. The High Judge in his gold vestments, pouring three hundred years of stolen divine grace into his staff, and the indentured keeper in his black cassock, holding the line with a tool forged from grief, lead, and dead bone.
“Brother!” Ren shouted over the roar of the boiler. “Now!”
From the high triforium gallery eighty paces away, a dark shape draped in black burlap stepped into the open air.
The drop onto the shaking iron narrow high walkway of the dropping Monstrance rattled every bone in Ren Vale’s body.
Steam hissed wildly from the high-pressure relief valves on either side of the diamond-tread overhead frame, blinding him in thick clouds of scalding white vapor. Beneath his feet, the five-story boiler-plate frame groaned under the tension of the four steel mid-air cables, swaying gently eighty paces above the stampeding congregation below.
Ren scrambled upright, his reforged awl gripped tight in his right hand.
The central star-fire core was screaming.
VROOOOOOOOOOM.
The pure silver sound drone had intensified into an ear-splitting, physical shaking that made the air inside Ren’s chest buzz like a trapped hornet. Inside the ball-shaped leaded quartz chamber, the liquid silver-vapor star-fire burned with a terrifying, lavender-white soft glow that cast razor-sharp shadows across the boiler housing.
Ren lunged toward the rear check hatch, where the eight-inch bronze running plate was bolted to the frame.
CLANG!
A seven-foot brass liturgical staff crashed down against the narrow high walkway, shearing through an iron handrail with a bone-shaking shower of sparks.
Malachai lunged through the steam, his golden vestments torn, his grey hair wild and tangled across his blistered forehead. The quartz monstrance at the tip of his staff flared with blinding, unstable radiant fire.
“You have destroyed the church!” Malachai howled, his face twisted in psychotic fury. “You have broken the promise of three hundred years! But you’ll not take the machine! I’ll detonate the boiler before I let a gutter-scribe touch the altar!”
Malachai swung the heavy brass staff with both hands, aiming directly at Ren’s skull.
Ren didn’t flinch. He planted his boots on the diamond tread. He raised the Reforged Martyr’s Awl in a two-handed cross-block. Then he met the sweeping blow.
BOOM!
The impact blew up like an artillery shell eighty feet in the air.
The silver metal ring of the awl bit into the quartz monstrance. The lead sleeve glowed dull cherry-red as it swallowed the consecrated lightning, channeling the discharge safely through the awl’s ivory core into the steel narrow high walkway beneath their boots. The rotting thick parchment wrap buffered the spirit feedback. That got rid of the chemical shock that would have melted Ren’s nervous system.
Ren’s boots skidded six inches across the steel, but his grip never faltered.
“The church was already dead, Malachai,” Ren whispered through clenched teeth. His silver-flecked grey eyes burned inches from the Judge’s manic blue gaze. “You were just using children’s ribs to keep the corpse warm.”
Ren twisted his wrists. He swept the heavy staff aside with a sharp, levering motion of the ivory metal pen.
With his left hand, Ren reached into his black cassock, drew out the Speculum of Forfeited Paths. Then he held it up to the blinding glare of the star-fire core.
“Brother!” Ren roared over the screech of the steam valves. “Catch the light!”
Across the void, a figure in coarse burlap soared through the air from the high triforium gallery.
Brother Ren hit the narrow high walkway with the heavy, bone-shaking impact of a falling meteor. His lead buckler was held high. He stepped directly between Malachai’s glowing staff and the central boiler housing.
Malachai swung his liturgical staff with desperate, berserk fury.
CLANG! CLANG!
The heavy brass head struck the diamond-tread narrow high walkway, gouging molten furrows through the steel. Sparks flew into the freezing draft, lighting up the two men locked in combat eighty paces above the screaming congregation.
Ren ducked beneath a sweeping blow, his boot heels finding purchase against a steam valve. He drove the silver metal ring of his reforged awl toward the bronze running plate on the Monstrance’s spine.
The needle struck the bronze housing.
CRACK!
The lead sleeve on the awl flared with brilliant violet light. The rotting thick parchment wrap buffered the violent electric-shock holy charge that surged from the machine, allowing Ren to channel his own body force directly into the thick parchment running charter beneath the glass.
Clause One: Immediate revocation of sacerdotal hum!
Sound shift: Vitric shear hum!
Malachai saw the purple glyph ignite upon the bronze plate.
His eyes went wide with pure, world-ending terror. “No! Not the shear hum! You’ll shatter the lenses! You’ll kill us all!”
The Judge lunged forward with both hands on his staff. It drove the glowing quartz monstrance directly at Ren’s throat with enough striking force to decapitate an ox.
Ren couldn’t block. His awl was locked into the bronze plate, channeling the hum shift.
A dark shadow dropped from the high triforium gallery.
BOOM!
Brother Ren landed on the narrow high walkway between them, his bare, linen-wrapped feet striking the steel floorboards with the force of an iron pile-driver.
The monk raised his circular lead buckler—forged from his melted purification basin—and met the full, packed fury of Malachai’s glowing staff.
The impact sounded like a thunderclap inside an iron bell.
The seven-foot brass staff bent nearly double against the lead buckler. The quartz monstrance at its tip shattered into flying shrapnel that cut deep into the monk’s face and shoulders. The consecrated solar lightning erupted across the narrow high walkway, blinding in its intensity.
Brother Ren didn’t scream. He didn’t yield an inch.
He planted his feet in the trembling steel. His scarred chest took in the bone-shaking moving load. His silver-flecked eyes were locked onto Malachai’s horrified face.
“The sermon is finished, Prelate,” Brother Ren whispered softly.
Beneath their boots, the Aeterna Monstrance began to sing with a new, terrifying, high-pitched sound scream:
THE CHIME OF VITRIC SHEAR.