The smell of boiling pig-fat animal fat preceded the attack by four heartbeats.
It was three hours before noon. In the cooling tunnels of Foundry Nine, the self-running magic charm hoppers were ticking steadily, printing the morning’s agricultural share-out tallies.
Then the main air vents slammed shut with an ear-splitting, high-pressure clang.
From the northern drainage gallery came the heavy, coordinated thunder of fifty armored boots. Fifty elite Thunder Executioners—the personal death squad of the Ninth Court—marched through the iron archway in double file. Each was wrapped in black star-fallen iron plate, wielding an eight-foot Heaven-Cleaving Halberd that hissed with purple execution lightning.
At their head stood Inquisitor Xie Dong.
His right arm was wrapped in thick, blood-soaked bandages where his nerves had been fried in the cellar. But his left hand held a six-foot glaive carved from pure, ringing lightning-bone. His sunken eyes were rimmed in red. It burned with the manic, murderous frenzy of a wounded animal backed into a corner.
“Seal every vent,” Xie Dong hissed, his voice echoing off the stone walls like clashing swords. “A captured runner from Basin Four gave up the map points under the needle. Every breathing soul in this ditch dies today. Hack the printing machines into scrap. Burn the paper.”
