The explosion of the Giant statue of Khorat was not an ordinary blast of coarse black powder. It was the total, heat-powered rupture of forty tons of high-pressure potion-made steam tearing through an elemental holding matrix.
The bone-shaking blast wave blew out the hearing in Ren’s ears with an instant, ringing silence that swallowed the roar of the wind and the screams of dying men. The air pressure within the Ashen Ravine dropped with violent suddenness. It pulled the air straight from his lungs before slapping back down like a physical slab of wet timber.
Above them, sheltered behind the twenty-foot dark rock boulder at the mouth of the sheep track, Lord Ren’s massive frame absorbed the blunt moving fury of the blast. The Emperor’s iron buckler screamed as fragments of four-inch bronze boiler plating, red-hot iron rivets. Then it cut drive-chains hammered against the metal like a hurricane of iron hail. The Emperor’s iron-shod boots sank three inches into the frozen mud. His jaw clenched was tight, his slate-grey eyes narrowed against the scouring heat. Scalding white steam roared over the top of the boulder in a fifty-foot blinding wall of scalding steam.
Ren lay curled beneath his older self’s blackened cuirass. His hands clamped was tight over his ears. His lambskin apron was pressed against his nose and mouth to keep the boiling vapor from searing his throat pipe. The dark rock beneath his ribs hummed with violent, terrifying deep ring, absorbing the blast waves through the deep…
