Chapter 3
The metal was screaming.
It was a low, chemical hiss that vibrated through the reinforced floorboards of the Cartel crawler-tank.
The Abyssal Tide was not composed of water.
It was a liquid rot.
It was a highly concentrated, acidic byproduct regurgitated from the deepest, unmapped fissures of the continent.
The heavy iron treads of the fifty-ton vehicle were actively dissolving in the black sludge.
Inside the cramped cabin, the air was a freezing, suffocating haze of diesel fumes and terrified sweat.
Jax threw his entire body weight against the heavy iron steering levers.
The Cartel scout’s forearms trembled violently.
The massive diesel engines shrieked in protest, fighting the thick, tar-like suction of the deep mud.
"We are losing the tracks!" Jax yelled, his swollen face pale in the dim amber light of the dashboard.
Caelan Cross did not look at the scout.
He stared at the internal temperature gauge mounted on the steel console.
The brass needle was plummeting.
The ambient temperature of the abyssal flood outside was unnaturally, aggressively cold. It leached the heat straight through the heavy Cartel armor plating.
Caelan reached out with his right arm.
His silver-etched iron fingers grabbed the heavy brass fuel-injection valve.
He cranked it fully open.
He dumped the absolute last reserves of their scavenged Cartel diesel directly into the primary burners.
It wasn't to increase their speed. It was simply to generate enough ambient engine heat to keep the blood in their veins from freezing.
The cabin warmed slightly, smelling heavily of burning oil.
It was a temporary mathematical patch.
They were running on fumes in an ocean of acid.
"Find us a ridge!" Zylia Vex begged from the floor.
The shadow-weaver huddled in her ragged black robes, shivering so violently her teeth chattered loudly against each other.
"There are no ridges!" Jax screamed back, staring blindly through the cracked, condensation-covered windshield. "It's all black! I can't see the ground!"
Caelan closed his eyes.
He engaged his [Anatomical Insight] .
He needed to project his visual processing through the hull. He needed to map the structural density of the mud ahead and find a solid shelf of bedrock.
The silver geometric runes flooded his retinas.
They immediately fractured.
The runes jagged. They violently warped.
The dense, concentrated abyssal corruption saturating the atmosphere actively attacked his magic.
The flawless silver math glitched into a blinding, painful red static.
Caelan gasped, his hands flying to his temples.
A sharp, stabbing migraine drove directly into the center of his skull.
The anomaly was too massive. It was too thick.
He could not read the earth. He could not calculate the physical vectors of the terrain.
The Warlord was flying completely blind.
He opened his silver eyes, the red static slowly fading back to normal vision.
The tactical advantage of the architect had been stripped away by the sheer volume of the environment.
His body punished him for the attempt.
A wave of intense, nauseating heat radiated up his left arm.
He looked down at the [Venomous Chitin Graft] .
The three-foot, glossy black arachnid scythe rested heavily against his thigh.
The crude, horrific alchemical fusion of his splintered radius and the apex predator's bone was failing.
The freezing temperature of the cabin restricted his blood flow.
But the highly caustic, smoking green venom coating the chitin demanded constant, heavy circulation to prevent it from chemically melting his own shoulder joint.
The venom actively burned through his veins.
His cardiovascular system was working at triple its normal capacity.
It required a massive caloric toll.
He was starving. His human meat was rapidly consuming its own reserves just to fuel the monstrous architecture he had bolted to it.
He looked at his heavy iron-wood rucksack sitting on the floor.
He knew exactly what was inside.
Empty glass vials.
He had no Cartel stasis-fluid left. He had used the absolute last drops to stitch the massive Thall torso together on the rear deck.
He had no alchemical numbing agents. He had no surgical salts to purge the necrosis.
There were no magic pockets in the deep crust.
He had spent his entire inventory to build a god. Now he was paying the biological price of his empty ledger.
He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing his breathing to slow.
He trapped the agony behind a heavy mental vault of cold logic.
He could not panic. Panic was an inefficient emotion.
The crawler-tank violently pitched forward.
The nose of the heavy vehicle dipped sharply, sliding into a submerged, unseen fissure hidden beneath the black water.
Jax screamed, pulling the steering levers backward with all his might.
It was too late.
A massive, rolling surge of thick, tar-like abyssal sludge crested the heavy steel mudguards.
The black water slammed directly into the primary diesel intake vents mounted on the hood.
The engines choked.
The sound was catastrophic.
It was a wet, grinding shriek of heavy steel pistons violently locking against an incompressible liquid.
The massive Cartel engines misfired once. Twice.
Then they died.
The entire fifty-ton vehicle shuddered with bone-jarring force.
It slammed to a complete, dead halt in the middle of the black ocean.
The amber dashboard lights flickered wildly.
They died.
The cabin was plunged into absolute, freezing darkness.
The heavy, rhythmic vibration of the engines vanished.
The silence that replaced it was terrifying.
It was the heavy, sloshing sound of the acidic tide rising against the steel hull.
"No," Jax whispered in the dark.
The scout slammed his fists against the dead steering console.
"No, no, no! Start!" Jax wept, frantically flipping the useless brass ignition switches.
The engine was flooded. The block was dead.
Zylia let out a choked sob from the floor.
The freezing temperature of the deep ocean immediately began to seep through the armored walls.
Their breath formed thick, white clouds in the pitch black.
The heavy steel hull groaned.
The immense, crushing hydraulic pressure of the rising tide was squeezing the cabin.
Caelan sat perfectly still in the driver’s seat.
He looked toward the rear of the vehicle, through the heavy steel bulkhead.
Out on the exposed, blood-soaked iron deck, Kragga Iron-Maw stood motionless.
The massive, four-ton siege engine was impervious to the cold. The stolen Inquisition Aether-Core inside its chest pulsed with a steady, warm golden light.
Beside it, Xyrielle stood like a dark-silver statue.
The Mutated Apex Shadow-Core in her chest burned hot enough to flash-boil the acidic rain before it touched her flawless marble skin.
His weapons were perfect.
But his retinue was trapped in a sinking iron coffin.
The constructs could not drive the tank. They could not fix a flooded diesel engine.
They were functionally useless as the mud swallowed the treads.
Jax buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking with silent, terrified sobs.
The scout had survived the Wastes. He had survived Silas Vane.
He was going to drown in the dark.
Caelan analyzed the data.
The ordinary survival math was incredibly simple.
If they remained sealed inside the armored cabin, the ambient temperature would drop below freezing in ten minutes. Hypothermia would claim the shadow-weaver and the scout shortly after.
If the cold did not kill them, the acidic sludge would eventually eat through the door seals, drowning them in a toxic rot.
It was a fatal equation.
Caelan refused the math.
He pushed his failing, poisoned body out of the rigid leather seat.
His fractured ribs ground together. He ignored them.
He reached down into the dark with his right hand.
His silver-etched iron fingers grabbed the heavy leather straps of his empty iron-wood rucksack.
He slung the bag over his shoulder.
He walked to the heavy steel side-door of the cabin.
"What are you doing?" Zylia asked, her voice trembling in the freezing dark.
"We are disembarking," Caelan stated.
His voice was a cold, unyielding iron rasp.
Jax looked up, wiping the tears from his swollen face.
"Disembarking?" Jax choked. "Into that? It's an ocean of acid! We'll sink!"
"The mobile fortress is dead," Caelan replied.
He gripped the heavy rotating locking wheel of the steel door with his iron claws.
"A sealed coffin is not a tactical advantage."
"We can't walk in that mud!" Jax argued, panic making his voice shrill. "The shadow-beasts are out there! The leviathans!"
"They are already out there," Caelan corrected.
He engaged the heavy hydraulic servos of his grafted arm.
He forced the heavy locking wheel to turn.
The steel shrieked against the pressure of the rising sludge outside.
"If we stay, we die as a mathematical certainty," Caelan declared.
He slammed his shoulder against the heavy steel door, pushing it open against the weight of the black water.
The door gave way.
The toxic, freezing wind of the Abyssal Tide howled into the cabin.
A shallow wave of the black, acidic sludge washed over the threshold, soaking Caelan’s steel-toed boots.
The stench of rotting kelp and dead biology was suffocating.
Caelan did not step back.
He looked out into the endless, bruised black sky.
He raised his left arm. The [Venomous Chitin Graft] gleamed dully in the faint golden light bleeding from the rear deck.
He had built a god. He was not going to let it rust in a swamp.
"Get up," Caelan commanded his broken retinue.
The Warlord stepped out of the cabin and directly into the apocalyptic flood.
The grueling, suffocating march through the abyss had officially begun.