The main high-voltage bus was grounded. Then, the sudden collapse of the huge magnetic field had released a magnetic-pull backlash that had ripped through the Board’s control circuits like an angry dragon thrashing in a stone well.
The apex console—the grand bronze stone stand that had served as the throne of heaven’s office power for thirty thousand years—was now a shattered, smoking ruin.
Its intricately carved gear trains were stripped of their teeth, bronze cogs littering the floor like broken coins. The semi-clear quartz viewing windows were shattered from within, their inner surfaces coated in a thick, silvery film of boiled away copper contacts. Heavy transformer oil was dripping from the bottom of the casing, sizzling quietly as it pooled on the white-hot flat stone slabs. The scent of ozone, cooked sulfur, and burnt bakelite hung heavy in the air.
High Archon Tian Gang lay slumped against the corner grating four paces from the ruined console.
The First Archon’s appearance was a horrifying proof to the consequences of sudden, violent de-powering. Without the nonstop infusion of refined spiritual essence that had artificially preserved his flesh since the First Dynasty, the living clock of three hundred mortal hundreds of years had crashed down upon his physical form in a single, devastating impact.
