The stone block sat in the middle of the military testing yard like a patient waiting for surgery.
Granite. Two feet square. Quarried from the Ironvein Corridor and hauled in on a cart that now sat against the yard's western wall, mule still hitched, driver watching from a safe distance. The block weighed roughly four hundred pounds.
Skrit Vekkol weighed sixty-two.
He crouched beside the stone and pressed his last measured charge of Mixture 47-C into a shallow groove he'd chiseled across the block's face. Nine grams. All he had left of the original batch — a thin line of dark powder with amber flecks, tamped into the groove with a bone tool. The ignition fuse — a strip of oil-soaked linen, six feet long — trailed from the groove to where Skrit now backed away, counting steps.
