The descent smelled of wet limestone, dead bats, and boiling grease.
Three hundred feet beneath the Seventh Ward’s lowest drainage adit, the natural fissures of the Iron Sword Province opened into a sprawling underground cave system carved by ancient ice-slow rivers. The air was thick, humid, and ten degrees colder than the surface. He carried the clear, metal tang of raw iron ore leaking from wet stone ceilings.
Lin Ke adjusted the coarse hood pulled low over his forehead.
The fabric was repulsive: heavy, scratchy, and reeking of sulfur. It was woven from fire melted rock waste wool. Porous dark rock glass fibers spun from the liquid waste of Furnace Four, interleaved with layers of raw sheep fat and charcoal felt. It felt like wearing a damp carpet of hot sandpaper against bare skin.
Beside him, Meng Shan looked like a walking boulder wrapped in burlap. The giant had to stoop to avoid scraping his massive shoulders against stalactites, his breath whistling softly through a grease-soaked filter cloth tied across his mouth. Shen Yue crept between them, dwarfed by her giant melted rock waste-wool poncho. They grabbed a lead-lined canister under her arm.
“Stop,” Lin Ke whispered, resting his hand against a damp limestone pillar.
