《The Moon's Mercy: Throne of Ashes》全部章節：第 41 章 - 第 50 章

The line in the sky turned from ink to iron.Through the frozen atmosphere the black streak Leo had pointed out did not disappear. It split the horizon like a chisel hitting slate. The sky made a metallic noise. The noise was not the whistle of the mountain wind but a raw rough sound being forced through dead stone. The purple ice above the garrison didn't just crack, it began to shed long sharp shards of ice which rained down into the courtyard and embedded themselves into the frozen mud."Get under the hull!" General Cole shouted. He swung Leo down from the observation deck into Jasmine's waiting arms. He did not look back to see if they obeyed. He ran across the buckling iron of the Aurelian's Ghosts bridge. His bare dirty chest was heaving as he grabbed a discarded axe. "Miller, get the recruits into the secondary fire-bays! That’s not a weather pattern. That’s a mobilization!"Elara did not move from the silver log. Her right hand was still stuck to the data-points. The new weste

The fall was not a drop; it was a horizontal grinding.A huge ship like the Aurelian's Ghost does not fall like a stone. When it let go of the gate-house it settled into the riverbed with a loud screeching sound of metal on rock. The three-hundred-mile trench that Elara's reverse current had made became a slide. Without water to float it, or salt-brine to cushion its hull, the ship was a big metal object sliding down a rocky slope, driven by gravity and its own dead weight.Elara was stuck to the observation rail like a bug on a card.Her right arm was still connected to an iron stanchion, her silver fingers mixed with the metal of the ship's bridge. Every time the hull hit a rock, a strong shock went through her arm and into her collarbone threatening to break her skin. The wind in the canyon made a hissing sound compressed into a knife of air by the ship's speed.Through the sparks flying from the ship's front, a wall of orange fire lit the canyon walls, she could not see the garris

The feeling of going down was not like falling. It was like being squeezed through a hole.The big whirlpool of ink did not swallow the Aurelian’s Ghost one piece at a time. It took the ship the huge iron hull bending inwards, as the gravity under the Sovereign Tomb took away the ship's ability to float. The limestone walls of the cavern did not look like stone anymore. They looked like a slippery tube of wet charcoal rushing past Elara's face so fast it flattened her eyelids and took her breath away with a cold harsh sound.She was no longer on the observation deck. The deck was not a place you could stand on anymore.The ship had turned into a vertical spinning machine throwing all the broken things. Tables, keys and porcelain, into a big column of wreckage that was falling ahead of her into the dark. Her left ankle was still stuck in a wooden grip that had grabbed her during the surge upwards. The thin elegant fingers did not let go. They were stuck to her bone by the downward forc

The ink-hand did not pull Elara down like a man drowning. It drew her down with a precise movement, like a piston going back into its place.The deep hole beneath the white quartz gallery did not drop Elara into a pool of petroleum as she expected. The three-hundred-foot fall through the mountain was very fast but it felt like time was standing still. It was as if she was being lowered through a liquid that protected her hips and filled her ears with a dull metallic sound, like an old clockwork machine underwater. The light from Damon's eyes vanished above her like an orange spark that was quickly put out by the rising tide of deep-tier ink.When her heels hit the ground there was no splash.She was standing on a circular table made of solid blue stone that sat in the center of the fifth tier. The air was heavy, damp and smelled of copper and chemicals. Above her, the white quartz mountain had closed its opening, leaving a faint green line on the ceiling to show where the High Courts

The air that came up through the ceiling was not hot like the air from the vents. It was cold. It felt like the air one breathes when they are high up on a mountain.The fingers that were holding Elara's wrist were made of porcelain. They were very strong. They were also very shiny and white like they had been polished a lot. As Elara was pulled out of the part of the mountain, she could hear the sound of the fifth tier collapsing into the oil lake. The sound was getting fainter and fainter like the sound of a stove cooling down in an empty house.Below, Elara could see General Cole. He was stuck on a ledge made of flint and his leg made of parchment was very visible against his dirty uniform. Damon was also there, his black armor standing still against the wall. His eyes were not shining as bright as they were before like they were hiding behind a wall of defense.The mountain did not change shape this time. Instead, it opened up along a line that had been cut by a diamond drill. The