The underground deep gap of the northern borderlands was an open crucible of howling spatial chaos.
Two thousand feet below the surface, suspended directly over a boiling lake of liquid black magma, Frank stood with both steel-toed boots planted firmly atop the flat crown of a one-hundred-foot, fifteen-ton solid forged-steel pile. The massive steel beam hung from the braided steel cables of a heavy timber crane derrick. The boom groaned under the suspended load, swaying gently in the scorching heat updrafts. In Frank’s hands was Shen Shitou’s twenty-pound forged hard dark metal sledgehammer, its polished hickory handle cool against his split-leather work gloves.
Directly beneath the chisel-pointed tip of the suspended pile. He rose from the blazing bright magma, was the mountainous skull of the Abyssal Void Sovereign.
Having regenerated an ugly arm of bubbling, acid-burning dark matter from the world-size mantle, the ancient cosmic terror looked up with sixteen burning crimson eyes. The gaze was soaked with pure, poisonous malice. Its jaw-plates unfurled, revealing a deep-sea vortex of negative gravity capable of swallowing a small city whole.
“MORTAL FILTH!” the Sovereign’s psychic roar shook the foundations of reality, causing rocks to tumble from the cliff faces five miles away. “THOU DAREST COME TO ME ON A WIRE?! I WILL SWALLOW THY SOUL AND TEAR THY FLESH ACROSS TEN THOUSAND AGES OF UNENDING NIGHTMARE!”
