Jaruna skids to stop, just as the hall­way explodes with blue-white light.

A bolt of light­ning streams in from the ceil­ing, shat­ter­ing the stone ground not a foot away from the mys­tic. Rock frag­ments and dust explode from the impact and rain down on the hall­way.

Jaruna rolls away, just as another bolt spears down. The thun­der­claps echo and rever­ber­ate in the stone hall­way like the sound of an avalanche, drown­ing out all sound and thought.

From one knee, Jaruna com­poses him­self and swiftly launches an arrow up through the hole. The unseen sor­cerer above answers with another explo­sion of light­ning. All the hair on Gil’s body sticks straight up.

He can barely hear her. She thrusts a big shield from one of the hoplites into his hands. He hefts it—it’s heavy, but not as heavy as it looks.

The two of them form a lit­tle pha­lanx of their own, crouch­ing down behind their shields with Ayan lin­ger­ing behind them. Gil peeks above the edge of his shield, keep­ing an eye on Jaruna—

Gil remem­bers the incan­ta­tion and actu­ally man­ages to avert his eyes this time, just as the hall­way flashes bright white. Another light­ning bolt blasts down in response, but it’s well off its mark.

Then a vio­let glow bathes the hall.

And with that, the mys­tic van­ishes, warp­ing up through the hole in the ceil­ing into the orange sky.

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