The shadows along the foundry walls didn’t move with the flickering orange light of the melted rock waste trench.
They detached themselves from the stone. They condensed into thirty armored figures clad in overlapping layered-scale plates of Stygian cold-iron. At their head strode a gaunt, nine-foot-tall spectral commander whose face was entirely hidden beneath a mask of hammered black steel.
In his gauntleted fists rested an eight-foot twin-bladed scythe that hummed with pure, packed space-cleaving intent.
Inquisitor Black-Scythe.
Personal headsman of Yama King Qin Guang.
“Living vermin,” Black-Scythe’s voice rang from behind his steel visor, carrying the dry, rasping weight of a headsman’s axe striking an oak block. “You have compromised the compute racks. You have poisoned the Sovereign’s foundries. You’ll not reach the core.”
He didn’t charge.
He drove the butt of his scythe into the iron floor.
