Oliver swept his light across the cavern until it found the speaker. 

He was a short man, with pale skin and short hair so blond it was nearly white. He was dressed in jungle camouflage and sat cross legged on a pillar that jutted up from the darkness, leaning his elbows on a large backpack that rested across his knees. Oliver pointed the light at his face, causing him to squint and hold up a hand to block the light.

“No cause for that, Oliver. I didn’t mean it,” the man shouted. 

The face and voice were familiar to Oliver, but he knew the man couldn’t be a friend. In his line of work you didn’t exactly make a lot of friends who shared the same profession, except for the occasional retired relic hunter who enjoyed sharing stories, or less than scrupulous museum acquisitions directors who would be happy to share a drink and listen to stories that they would forever deny hearing. 

No, this was a rival, someone who Oliver had met at least once before.

“Don’t recognize my voice, Oliver?”

It clicked. “I recognize you. Leo, right? From Iceland.”

“That’s me,” Leo replied, resting his arms on the backpack and grinning at Oliver. 

“I don’t have to tell you that I’m not happy to see you.” Oliver called back. His memory was clear now. “I was hoping that you’d been murdered by your associates in Iceland. Those guides I hired from you were worse than useless.”

“Now that was a fun little diversion, wasn’t it?” Leo said, still grinning.

“They tried to kill me,” Oliver said, keeping his gun aimed at Leo, even though he was clearly trapped on the stone pillar, which stood alone in the dark room at the center of a wide chasm.

“Yes. They did fail at that, didn’t they. No matter. That’s all in the past now and you seem quite healthy. Successful, even, to have arrived at this place so shortly after I did myself,” Leo said.

“Only because I wounded one and left them both behind in the ice cave,” Oliver replied, edging to the left so he could get a better look at Leo’s hands. There seemed little chance of the man attacking him as, at the moment, Oliver was probably Leo’s only hope for rescue before the traitorous bastard starved to death. 

The cavern was nearly a hundred feet in diameter, with a ceiling that arched a hundred feet overhead and was spiked with dozens of long stalactites. The doorway through which Oliver had entered opened into the cavern about half way up the wall. A raised walkway of carved stone jutted out a dozen feet into the room before terminating in a sudden drop to the floor fifty or more feet below. Looking down over the edge of the platform, Oliver saw the vicious tips of a hundred stalagmites thrusting upwards. The rippling red mineral deposits were damp with dripping water and humidity that made them appear coated in a sheen of fresh blood. Across the floor of the cavern, the field of stalagmites was interrupted by rings of black stone, out of which jutted pillars of various heights. The pillar on which Leo stood was the highest of these and sprouted from the floor at the center of the cavern.

“Yeah, it’s a nasty puzzle,” Leo said. 

Oliver flicked his flashlight back at the man and saw that he had risen and now stood, his backpack supported between his feet, a hungry glaze in his eyes. “I thought I’d solved it, but the pillars only stayed up until I reached the center, then they all dropped back into the floor again. Not that I had much warning, what with them rising and falling the whole time.”

“Serves you right,” Oliver snapped. He was inspecting the pattern of circles set into the floor, searching for the most likely path through the maze. 

“Really, Oliver, you think anyone deserves to die alone in a cave?”

“It’s what you paid those guides to do to me, as I recall. If I hadn’t insisted on going into that cave myself they’d have killed me and brought the artifact to you.” Oliver focused his flashlight beam directly into Leo’s eyes and smiled as the man flinched and looked away. He didn’t plan to kill Leo, but he certainly wasn’t opposed to leaving him down here for a while longer, assuming that he could work out a way to bypass him and get to the far side of the cavern without becoming trapped himself.

“That was all, what, two years ago?” Leo said.

“More like fifteen months, but who’s counting,” Oliver replied. He turned his back on Leo and began searching the walls surrounding the doorway for any sign of Maori carvings or hidden levers set into the wall. 

A bright light clicked on behind him, casting his shadow against the wall like a puppet in a play. “Come on, Oliver. All of that was in the past. We can help each other now.” Oliver turned to see Leo holding a large flashlight and sitting, legs dangling, on the edge of the pillar. “Just let me out of here and I’ll help you. You can even keep whatever we find.”

Oliver chuckled and shook his head in amusement at that. “Nice, Leo, but no thanks. I think I should leave you here to rot and let your bones remain as a warning against other grave robbers.”

“First of all, it’s a temple, not a grave. And second, you’re just as much a grave robber as I am.”

“Quite true, but I’ve got a different proposition for you. Here it is: You give me something that’s worth your life, and I let you out of here when I’m finished. Otherwise, I’ll get past this puzzle all on my own and leave you behind.” Oliver flashed Leo a wide grin and turned away from him again to inspect a section of wall that had caught his eye when Leo’s light lit up the room. 

A circular section of the stone wall had been carved into an inset panel, about the size of a generous medicine cabinet, with gently curving sides and a polished back. A variety of polished stone pegs protruded from holes drilled into the stone. They were carved from a variety of different stones, some solid in coloration, others displaying a cross section of variegated reds, whites, blacks, and greens. At the center of the collection, a single large rod of polished white stone stood out above all the others.

“That deal doesn’t sound especially good to me,” Leo called. 

Oliver shrugged and continued inspecting the assembly of pegs. “Then enjoy watching your flashlight batteries die. There don’t seem to be any of those little blue gas lights in this part of the cave, so you’ll die here in the dark. Maybe I’ll come back and ‘discover’ your body in a few years. It’s not as if anyone would know that I just left you to die.” Oliver slipped his gun back into the inner pocket of his vest and rested his flashlight on the floor at his feet, then pulled out his phone and swiped through several screens until he found the document he wanted. Without turning away from the puzzle set into the wall Oliver said, “I think I’ve got the solution to this little riddle all on my own, so you’ll need to offer something more.”

“Yeah, well, so did I,” Leo spat.

Oliver gave a derisive laugh and shook his head in mock sympathy. He knew that Leo was smart. He was, in fact, something of a legend in their small and secretive community of relic hunters, but it was clear that in this situation Leo had overestimated his skills. “I suppose you thought that you had the stone bridge figured out also?”

“Obviously. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“For?”

“For solving that little puzzle. I don’t mind telling you that it took me a good while to put that story in order and figure out how to extend the bridge.” Despite his desperate situation, Oliver could hear an edge of pride slipping into Leo’s voice. 

Oliver grinned wickedly at the prospect of blunting the man’s pride with some hard truth, then he felt guilty and swallowed the sarcastic response that had sprung to mind. 

Then he chuckled and decided to say it anyway.

He called back over his shoulder, “Oh, so you think I walked right over the bridge that you left open for me?”

“Obviously,” Leo said. 

“Hate to tell you, buddy, but that bridge retracted about two minutes after you crossed it.” 

Oliver reached up and pulled a green peg, streaked with white, out of the wall, considered the array of holes for a moment, then slipped it into a new hole. He moved two more pegs, then paused and compared the arrangement of pegs to some notes on his phone. The key, he was certain, lay in understanding how each peg represented a particular tribe. If Oliver was correct, the correct holes indicated the positions of the various Pacific islands that the tribes would later colonize, relative to the position of the island on which he now stood. The whole point of the relic he sought here was that it seemed to have the power to unlock a capacity for intellect and forward-thinking in those who possessed it, so such an arrangement of pegs made sense. 

Satisfied with his solution, Oliver put the phone away, picked up his flashlight, and turned back to face Leo, who was still sitting on the edge of the tall pillar, his face as hard as the stone around him.

“Like I said, I’m willing to help you,” Oliver called out. “You just need to offer something that’s worth your life.”

“Like what?” Leo spat. He pulled himself to his feet and stood, arms spread, glaring at Oliver. “I’m stuck in the middle of a deathtrap with nothing but my exploring gear. You want a few more chemical lights? How about a new poncho? How about my backpack, I bet you could use a new backpack for hauling around all your fancy camera gear.”

“Funny, Leo. You know what I want,” Oliver said. 

Leo glowered at him for a long moment, then hissed back, “Well you’re not going to get it.”

Oliver shrugged, doing his best to appear nonplussed, though inside he was seething with anticipation. What he truly hoped to get out of the deal was Leo’s collection of research notes. His own collection was his most valuable asset, which was why all of his own full copies, whether on his phone, his home computer, or in one of his secure backup locations, were encrypted with 2048-bit ciphers. To the private relic hunter, a well organized and detailed set of research notes was second only to a solid client list in importance. 

“Have it your way then,” Oliver said. 

He leaned heavily against the post in the center of the peg panel. 

“No, wait!” Leo shouted.

The sound of rushing water came from deep in the stone walls. Oliver stepped quickly to the side to avoid the several jets of cold water that spurted out from the empty holes in the panel. The floor shook as the rumble of heavy stones shifting deep under their feet echoed through the cavern. Oliver shone his light out into the open space and saw Leo had dropped to his belly on the stone pillar and lay, legs splayed out, one arm gripping his backpack to him as the hand of the other grasped at the edge of the pillar. Below him, the pillar began to sink towards the cavern floor. All throughout the cavern, Oliver could see dozens of other pillars rising and sinking in a chaotic dance of impossibly shifting stone. Every few seconds a pillar would drop suddenly, followed by the echo of heavy stone slamming into other stones, sending out violent tremors that shook the floor, walls, and ceiling of the cavern. Several stalactites shook free of the cavern roof and came hurtling down to shatter in bursts of sharp stone fragments. Oliver threw himself into the doorway and rolled into a tight ball, forehead pressed to his knees and hands protecting his neck. 

When the noise stopped Oliver stood, dusted himself off, and shone his flashlight into the cavern. The beam cut through a haze of dust to reveal a meandering line of pillars rising up from the floor of the cavern. None stood directly beside another, but many were now close enough that a daring person could hop from one to another with little difficulty, assuming that they had a good sense of balance. He shone the light towards the center of the room and saw Leo still clinging to the top of the central pillar, which had now sunk to the point that the top rested only about twenty feet from the floor of the cavern. 

Oliver smiled, strode to the ledge by the nearest pillar, and jumped. He landed atop the stone pillar, spotted the next one about three feet away, and hopped to it. After a few more hops he paused to survey his surroundings and rest his legs. He was now almost half way across the cavern. At the closest point, the meandering path he needed to follow would take him within ten feet of the central pillar before it swerved away towards the side walls of the cavern in a wide arc. 

“Going to rethink your position, Leo?” Oliver called out. 

Leo pushed himself upright and made an obscene gesture at Oliver. “You could have killed me,” he growled. 

“Unlikely,” Oliver said, shrugging. “I didn’t anticipate the movement being so violent, but you had a nice wide place to hold on to. Now, are you going to take my offer or not? A couple more jumps and I’ll be at the best place for you to pass me your notes. After I pass that place, well, I guess you’ll be glad of the reading material until all your lights burn out.”

Leo glared at Oliver in the harsh light of their flashlights. His jaw worked with barely repressed anger and Oliver knew that the man would like little more in that moment than to kill him, but even if he was armed Oliver still represented his best hope at escape. 

“Fine, it’s yours,” Leo snapped. He knelt and began rummaging through the contents of his backpack. 

Feeling it prudent to be prepared for a desperate attack, Oliver dropped to one knee and pulled out his gun, aiming it at Leo while he searched for whatever he kept his research notes on. 

Leo looked up, hands still in his bag, and froze at the sight of Oliver’s gun. “How do I know you won’t just shoot me when I give this to you?” he asked. 

Oliver shrugged, keeping his gun pointed at Leo’s chest. “You don’t. But if you know enough about me to know my real name, and my business, then you should know enough to recognize that I’m no killer.”

“You’re threatening to kill me now.”

“There’s a difference between threatening and carrying through with a threat. If you pull a gun out of that bag, sure, I’ll shoot you, but that would be to defend myself. I promise you, Leo, if you toss me your notes and wait calmly for me to finish my business here, I will help you escape.”

Leo seemed to consider this for a long moment, then shook his head in resignation and stood, holding a large book wrapped in thin oiled leather and bound up with a leather strap. “This is years of my life, you bastard.”

“You’ll have many more years ahead of you to put your notes back in order. Besides, I highly doubt you’re foolish enough to keep just one copy. Am I right?”

Leo shrugged noncommittally.

“That’s what I figured,” Oliver said. He put his gun away and hopped to the next pillar. “All you’re doing is giving me a bit of a leg up on finding the next shard, or some lovely relics, assuming that I can even interpret your notes. You won’t even be out of the game, just a bit behind me again.” He jumped twice more and paused at the pillar closest to the one on which Leo stood. Oliver rested for a moment with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. The last few jumps had taken more out of him than he had expected. After a minute he shook his head, looked up at Leo, and said, “Now, lets have it.”

Leo took a deep breath and gazed lovingly at the notebook containing his research notes, then straightened and prepared to throw. He weighed the book with one hand, judging the appropriate force and angle of the throw, then tossed the book towards Oliver’s waiting arms. Oliver caught the volume and clutched it to his chest, a smile breaking out across his face.

He quickly undid the leather ties and flipped through the journal, giving it a brief inspection to ascertain that it did indeed appear to be Leo’s research notes. The book was nearly full of a tight scrawl, neat diagrams, and pasted-in photographs. Tattered sticky notes clung to several pages which, on a cursory inspection, appeared to bear notes about the Maori civilization. Oliver wrapped the volume and once more tied the straps, his grin growing wider as he thought about all the valuable clues he might find in the book.

“No need to gloat about it,” Leo groused.

“Spare me. If the situation was reversed you probably would have killed me by now,” Oliver replied. He pushed himself to his feet, then his head spun and he stumbled and nearly fell off the pillar. He dropped back to one knee and breathed in deeply, but he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. He shot a look at Leo, immediately suspecting him of somehow poisoning him, perhaps with a skin-permeable toxin on the pages of the book, but Leo was looking back at him with a confused expression. 

“Oliver! Are you alright?” Leo called out. “Don’t fall now, I need you to get me out of here.”

Oliver ignored Leo’s cries and, moving sluggishly, pushed himself back to his feet. He felt his breath coming more easily then. Turning his back to Leo, Oliver leapt to the next pillar, which was positioned about three feet away and a foot higher than the one on which he had crouched to receive Leo’s journal. He landed hard on his hands and knees, still clutching the journal in his left hand, then struggled to his feet. His breath came easier and Oliver began to feel his head clearing. His heart, which had been pounding against his chest, started to slow and ease back into a more normal pace.

This seemed a good time to rest, so Oliver paused long enough to shrug out of his backpack and drop the journal into it. As he rummaged through the bag he spotted his spare water bottle. He pulled it out and glanced back at Leo, who was sitting on the edge of his pillar, watching him. 

“You have any water left?”

Leo shook his head.

Oliver held up the bottle. Leo held out his arms and Oliver tossed the bottle to him. He caught it, unscrewed the heavy plastic lid, and took a deep drink before looking at Oliver again.

“Thanks. I still hate you.”

“Likewise,” Oliver said. He turned away from Leo, took two more deep breaths and, convinced that he was not about to collapse, jumped to the next pillar. 

He continued hopping from one pillar to the next until he reached the far side of the cavern. Once there,Oliver turned the beam of his light to survey the perimeter of the cavern. He saw the now familiar notches cut into the wall, where blue light should have flickered from the lead nozzle of a primitive, but ingenious, gas lamp. All of the lamps in this room had somehow been extinguished. 

Oliver turned from the darkness of cavern, ignoring Leo’s shouted urgings for him to hurry, to the dark doorway set into the wall. Shining his light into the passage, Oliver saw a set of wide stairs which climbed upwards for at least fifty feet before ending at another dark opening. 

“Let’s see if there are any more traps,” he muttered, and began climbing up the steps, searching for any sign of traps as he went. Unlike the steps he had descended before entering the cavern containing the underground waterfall, these steps were almost completely bare, with only a thin layer of dust covering the polished black stone.

Ascending to the top of the stairs without incident, Oliver discovered the end of the passage through the heart of the mountain. He sank to one knee, chest heaving from the climb and a lingering sense of breathlessness, and gazed through an ornately carved doorway, the edges worked in carvings of beasts and heroes from the depths of Maori myth, which opened into a narrow chamber that glittered in black and refracted rainbows. This chamber had been carved out of a single massive block of black volcanic glass deep under the mountain. Oliver played his light across piles of desiccated vegetables, carved sculptures in stone and crumbling wood, chunks of uncut gems, and the stained bones of fish, birds, and men.

“Oh, yes,” Oliver whispered, his face breaking into a wide smile. 

He resisted the urge to bound forward and paused for a moment to consider the likelihood that the room was trapped. The place had a feel to it, an ancient and dark majesty that he had experienced before in secret chambers and long lost temples, which made Oliver believe that it would be safe to continue. In places like this the traps were more like challenges, which served to test those who would dare to enter and weed out the unworthy, those who lacked adequate knowledge or faith, before they could attain the inner sanctum. It was altogether different from the feeling that he got from tombs, which also had a different atmosphere from decrepit castles and their dungeons and treasure vaults. He approached the doorway and shone his light into the depths of the chamber, hoping that the prize he sought would still be there.

At the far end of the chamber, about thirty feet from the doorway, a shard of glittering silvery metal rested on a raised shelf above an altar of glittering black volcanic glass, which appeared to have been sculpted from the glass at time that the room itself was carved. Oliver felt his pulse quicken as he approached the altar and stood, gazing down on the shard. The air in the chamber was far cooler than that at the surface of the island, perhaps in the high fifties, which was to be expected so deep underground in a region where all volcanic activity had ceased several thousand years before, but it was certainly well above freezing. Despite this, a delicate tracery of ice coated the glass shelf on which the shard rested, condensed from the air and frozen by the chill that emanated from the shard. A puddle of meltwater had collected in the basin of the altar, and Oliver wondered whether the basin had been carved to collect the blood of sacrifices, or if the ancient people who had worshiped this shard had known that water would collect here.  

Oliver extended a trembling hand towards the shard and paused just before he would have grasped it, fingers prickling with cold and anticipation. It was unlikely that any poison would have remained on the shard after so many years of it collecting and freezing atmospheric vapor, and he didn’t see any way in which a trap could be concealed in the flawless, unbroken expanse of volcanic glass. But still... He glanced around nervously, searching the shadows at the corners of the room for any sign of supernatural guardians waiting to spring upon him. 

You’re starting to get superstitious, Oliver, he thought. 

He shook his head to drive away the fear, then grasped the shard.

The moment Oliver’s fingers touched the shard, he felt an uncomfortable warmth rise inside his shirt, pressing into his chest with a heat and subtle vibration reminiscent of grasping the lid of a pot filled with boiling water. He gasped and dropped the shard, letting it clatter and splash into pooled water of the altar basin, then clutched at his chest. The heat faded away immediately, leaving a prickling sensation in his skin. Oliver set his flashlight on the altar and quickly unbuttoned his shirt, heart pounding, half expecting to find the pinprick of a poisoned dart in the center of his chest. Pulling his shirt apart, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just the skin of his tanned chest and, resting against it, the fragment of polished and smoothly curved heartwood that had fallen out of the staff of Moses when he had shattered it, a little over a year before. The wood was wrapped in a tight monkey’s fist of oiled leather and hung around his neck on a loop of the same material.

“That was strange,” Oliver said, shaking his head in bewilderment.

He reached down into the water pooled on the altar, which was already beginning to shiver with curls of ice spreading out in white fractal curls across the bottom of the basin, and plucked out the shard. 

The instant his fingers touched the shard, the knot of glistening heartwood hanging around his neck pulsed hot against his skin. The surface shifted in luster, as if a surge of oil had pulsed to the surface of the wood, bearing with it the scent of olive wood and the heat of a glowing ember. The heated wood pressed against his chest like a brand, flushing his skin red and threatening to raise a blister. Oliver flinched and gritted his teeth, but did not drop the shard again. His hand darted to the bag at his side and he deposited the shard into it alongside the book he had taken from Leo. The heat faded as soon has he released the shard, but the skin of Oliver’s chest was now flushed red with a mild burn.

He pulled the leather strap over his head and inspected the heartwood. The heat had dissipated and he could see no sign of damage to the wood. He nearly put it back around his neck, where it had rested for much of the last year, but at the last moment he slipped it into a zippered pocket on the inside of his vest. The question of why the heartwood had burned him would have to wait for safer surroundings.

He pulled several battery powered lamps out of his backpack and positioned them throughout the chamber, hiding them behind the piles of offerings and clusters of carved wood and stone idols. The light spilled from the lamps in dramatic bursts, which reflected from the chipped walls of the chamber in glittering bursts of color and cast deep pools of shadow upon the path that led up the center of the room. He unpacked his camera and filled several memory cards with photos from a variety of angles. This adventure was already a massive success as far as he was concerned, what with his capture of the shard and the added bonus of Leo’s journal, but that was no reason to neglect his cover story. These photos would sell well to any number of magazines and websites, and should be sufficient evidence for him to sell the directions to this temple to one of his more respectable, though not completely scrupulous, contacts within the archaeological community. 

After about half an hour he packed up his equipment, added a particularly dazzling stone carving of a figure he believed to be Māui to his backpack, and set off back down the stairs to the cavern of pillars. 

He reached the cavern and found Leo still sitting on the central pillar, a glum look on his face. 

“You get what you wanted?” Leo called across the darkness as Oliver emerged from the staircase. 

“More than you could imagine,” Oliver said. It felt wrong to gloat, but his blood was still rushing with the hot glow of discovery and, at the moment, he didn’t care. 

“Good for you. Now, about getting me out of here,” Leo raised his right arm, a small handgun gripped in his fist. Oliver noted that his gun arm was shaking rather badly. “Thought I was helpless, didn’t you? I just didn’t see much point in burning my only bridge, but since you decided to poison me...”

“Poison?” Oliver shouted.

“Yeah, that’s right. Poison.”

“Leo, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I certainly didn’t poison you,” Oliver said. 

“Explain this then!” Leo shouted, lurching to his feet and brandishing a half-empty water bottle in the hand that was not pointing a gun at Oliver. “I was feeling just fine until you showed up here. Then you come along, mess with the pillars, toss me this bottle, and now I can hardly breathe.” Leo stopped shouting and coughed deeply, nearly tipping over the ledge of the pillar, then he caught his balance and fixed Oliver with a deadly gaze.

“Leo, I didn’t...”

“Save it. You’re going to get back over there and reconfigure the pillars to get me out of here. Make one wrong move, try to get away, reach for your gun, anything like that, and I’ll shoot you dead.” 

Oliver wasn’t sure he believed that Leo could reliably shoot in the right direction, let alone hit him in the dark room, but it wasn’t worth the risk. “I’ll do that. I was planning to all along. Can I move now?”

“Yes. Get over there now,” Leo growled. He dropped to one knee and settled into a kneeling position, elbows resting on his backpack for support, and trained his flashlight and gun on Oliver. “I said go!”

Oliver moved cautiously to the edge of the platform, keeping one eye on Leo even as he approached the ledge. He paused to cinch his backpack straps, glanced at Leo again, then jumped to the first pillar. It didn’t take Oliver long to navigate the twisting path of pillar hops path back across the cavern. As he approached the center, half way through his journey, he kept both hands well away from the pockets of his vest. Leo tracked him with the flashlight beam, though he directed it sluggishly, hardly keeping up with Oliver’s pace across the cavern. It was clear that there truly was something wrong with Leo, but Oliver knew that he hadn’t poisoned the man. A dull ache settled into Oliver’s chest as he crossed the low pillars at the center of the room and he was soon panting for air again. Last time he had assumed that the exertion of jumping from pillar to pillar so rapidly was more strenuous than he had anticipated, but as he pushed onward through the pain and began ascending towards the exit, and felt the pain in his chest lessen, Oliver was struck with a terrible thought. He turned it over in his mind, inspecting all the elements and trying to find another explanation, but nothing else seemed to fit.

He arrived at the balcony of cut stone that thrust out from the cavern wall before the exit door and turned to face Leo. The man had risen to his feet again, having been unable to keep Oliver in his sights while remaining seated, now that the pillar had sunk towards the floor.

“Right. Now change the pillars so I can get out and we’ll both walk out of here alive,” Leo said.

“I’ll do that, but first I really need you to put that gun away,” Oliver replied.

“Like hell I’m putting my gun away. I just wish I’d had it out when you showed up, then I could have made you let me go long ago.”

“Leo, I need you to understand, if you shoot that thing in here we’re both...”

Leo’s whole body jerked as he stiffened his gun arm, aiming somewhere above Oliver’s head. 

He opened his mouth to shout something and pulled the trigger.

Oliver saw the deadly glint in Leo’s eye and knew that he was going to shoot even as he began to move his arm. He dove for the mouth of the passage back to the waterfall and was back on his feet running as fast as he could, even as the sound of the shot shattered the stillness of the cavern. The crack of the gunshot was instantly eclipsed by the roar of thousands of cubic feet of natural gas igniting in a hellish conflagration of blue fire.

Next Chapter: The Shards