Beta Draven gave it two blocks before he made his first attempt.
"The citadel should be visible from the next elevation change," he said, voice steady, eyes forward, gently reminding the group that they had a mission and the mission was not a walking tour. "If we take the eastern staircase, we gain sightline advantage and cut our approach time in half."
Blair nodded. "Agreed. Eastern staircase. Let's go."
They made it forty feet.
A vendor was blowing glass in an open-air stall. The molten orb at the end of his rod was cycling through colors that didn't exist in any spectrum Brennan had studied, shifting from violet to something past violet that the human eye had no business perceiving and was perceiving anyway.
Blair stopped.
"The thermal manipulation required for that color shift suggests they are using light-based oxidation rather than mineral additives," she observed, eyes locked on the glass. "That changes everything I assumed about their material sciences."
