Malakor drove the override levers to their stops. Then, the sound that answered was not an explosion. It was the collective groan of the physical universe being stretched beyond its elastic limit.
The four fluted copper support posts supporting the Great Loom bowed inward, their rivets popping with the sharp, ear-splitting crack of rifle shot. From the central carousel, the twelve gold-silver metal shuttles sped up into a blur of blinding silver-violet soft glow. They moved so fast their physical forms dissolved into a spinning metal tube of pure, un-burned friction. It screamed at a hum that tore the wax from Ren’s ears. Then it turned his vision to static.
“Total overload,” Vane shouted, his voice nearly drowned by the shrieking gears. The Merchant of Guilt was clutching the gangway handrail with both arms, his bent glasses hanging by one ear. “He has decoupled the dampening governors. The feed rate is forty thousand paradox units per second—the volcano bowl bedrock can’t ground that much chronological discharge.”
Beneath their boots, the dark rock floor of the volcano bowl began to liquefy.
It didn’t melt from heat. The stone remained cold to the touch. Instead, the atom-deep map points of the rock lost their time balance. Solid fiery dark rock turned into a semi-clear, grey slurry that sloshed against the iron foundation pillars. Through the swirling muck, ghostly stone-built anomalies flickered into existence. Carved marble stone railings from an empire that drowned ten thousand years ago, corrugated iron roofs from a future…
