The smell of boiling granite rolled down the gorge like a blast from an open kiln.
Iron Sword Pass was a natural granite bottleneck. A jagged, narrow slit cut through three-thousand-foot dark rock cliffs that separated the smoking plains of the Scorched Sun province from the lush valleys of Azure Cloud.
Directly behind the pass lay four refugee camps housing fifty thousand mortal blacksmiths, farmers, and children displaced by the drain tube’s drought.
High above the cliffs hovered five hundred flying war-chariots.
Forged from blackened solar bronze and powered by tightly packed Yang-fire cores, each chariot carried three armored archers and a self-running siege giant crossbow that fired six-foot spears of packed star-fire.
CRACK-BOOM.
A volley of three hundred star-fire spears slammed into the outer granite castle walls of the pass.
A hundred feet of solid mountain rock melted in a blinding flash of orange fire. It sent cascades of molten gravel pouring down into the gorge. The ancient stone castle wall, carved during the Second Epoch, was groaning under the bombardment, hairline fractures spider-webbing across its foundation.
