Vivi tossed the bipartite corpse into the glistering waters as a lure or sacrifice, then drew herself up and unleashed a wailing cacophonous threnody in no known tongue. Punctuating her actions, she drew out her flare g*n and fired a charge out over the lake. Borne by a small parachute, the sputtering charge drifted down. I glutted my eyes, taking everything in.
The ceiling of this vast chamber was, so far as I could tell, walled in stone with a ceiling of solid ice. A glacial plug had covered the open gorge that held Lake Alph. The dome of ice was vaulted with the entrances to dozens of tunnels and vents, angling up like chimneys. Half a mile away, a turbulent flume of water roared in from a break in the stone wall—the falls of the ancient River Alph. In the distance, the icy vaults angl
