Following their decisive conclave victory in Iron Crucible City, celebration had been suddenly cut short by an emergency supply order writ. Country authorities had right away requisitioned Lin Ke’s building team to stabilize the failing earth-heat smelters at Black Rock Citadel on the rugged northern frontier. What had been billed on the transport docket as routine heat-powered upkeep, however, smelled less like clogged boiler lines and far more like fresh slaughter.
The smell of boiling bile hit first.
It wasn’t the honest, choking stench of sulfur coal or fire soot. It was the rancid, sweet reek of clotted animal fat left in a sealed copper pot under three weeks of midday sun.
Lin Ke crouched on the wet iron grating of Flume Sub-Basement Four, his knee joints grinding with a dull, metal friction. The Ashen Iron lattice laced through his bone marrow groaned under the damp sky chill, streaming cold straight into his femurs.
Behind him, thirty feet above through the upright exhaust shafts, the heavy rotary pistons of the Black Rock Smelting Citadel thudded with an irregular, sickening hitch.
Thump. Thump... Thud-clank.
The rhythm was fully out of balance.
Lin Ke tapped the brass casing of Master Gauge Seven with the blunt knuckle of his index finger. The needle shuddered, refusing to rise past one hundred and twenty pounds per square foot.
