The light­ning stops. The chok­ing dust begins to set­tle. Through the ceil­ing hole, Gil sees duel­ing lights in the sky: vio­let arcs of tele­port­ing arrows, slash­ing forks of blue-white light­ning.

Gil isn’t so sure about that. Cough­ing from all the dust, he keeps an eye on the ceil­ing, hop­ing to get a bet­ter glimpse of the bat­tle above.

Then a shadow blocks the shaft of light.

An armored fig­ure slowly descends from the hole, unnat­u­rally drift­ing down as if the air were water. He lands with a clank, and his red cape flut­ters around him. On his head is a horned hel­met with three glow­ing gems. In his hands he holds a long wooden staff.

The sor­cerer points the end of his staff at Gil. A gem is set in the gnarled tip, glow­ing the same blue-white color as the gem in the cen­ter of his ornate hel­met.

The sor­cerer doesn’t look. Instead, a thin tongue of light­ning erupts from the tip of his staff. It explodes into Kiddu’s shield, shat­ter­ing the pearl­stone plat­ing and send­ing her fly­ing back­wards.

Gil drops it. The shield clat­ters hol­lowly on the ground.

He obeys with­out hes­i­ta­tion. The floor is hot and jagged with debris.

Gil hears Ayan word­lessly lay down behind him.

The sor­cerer stalks towards them. From the ground, all Gil can see are his legs and san­daled feet. Pearlstone-plated greaves sheathe his calves up to his knees. Each one is inset with a black gem­stone that seems to absorb light.

The tip of the sorcerer’s staff crack­les louder and louder as he approaches, lash­ing Gil with pin­pricks of sta­tic.

Gil strains to look up at the sorcerer’s face, dark black and shad­owed beneath his hel­met. He wants to call out again to Kiddu. And if she’s dead, he wants to kill this man, or die try­ing.

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