Jaruna stands there, dazed, hold­ing his bow in one hand and a loose arrow in the other. He slowly puts the arrow back in his quiver.

Dron­aja picks it up off the dusty ground. It’s a bolt-wand, tipped with blue-white astrate. He holds it in his shak­ing hands—and then promptly drops it as if it were a dead rat.

The old man runs past Gil and Kiddu, grabs a few bags from the ante­room, tears the rug off the ground, and leaps straight down into the dark­ness. Kripa and Hat­van burst into action too, run­ning around the perime­ter of the main sanc­tu­ary, peer­ing out from the thin win­dows and then promptly shut­ter­ing them. Kripa runs to the main door and hefts the huge wooden cross­latch up and over its hinge, bar­ring it shut.

Jaruna just stands there for a moment in the mid­dle of the sanc­tu­ary. Then he rewraps his fin­ger­guards and checks his bow­string.

The ground shakes beneath their feet—Dronaja appar­ently just col­lapsed a tun­nel. Actu­ally, it sounds like he blew up a tun­nel. The bags he grabbed must have been flame­craft.

Kiddu slowly walks up to Jaruna and his sis­ter. Gil fol­lows her, restrain­ing him­self from clutch­ing her arm. His teeth chat­ter.

Jaruna’s atten­tion snaps from his bow. Gil is struck by how young and afraid the mys­tic looks.

They obey, run­ning past the rows of cir­cu­lar benches and hud­dling behind one of the four fat pil­lars that hold up the domed ceil­ing. It pro­vides cover from the direc­tion of the main Tem­ple door—but Gil still feels quite exposed to the open hole at the top of the ceil­ing.

Even with the small win­dows shut­tered, Gil can hear thun­der­ous march­ing from out­side. Another explo­sion from the under­ground tun­nels rocks the floor like a minia­ture earth­quake.

Jaruna ges­tures to his sis­ter.

Jaruna runs behind another pil­lar and kneels. Gil is glad to see the mys­tic aim­ing his bow upwards towards the hole in the ceil­ing.

They wait. Gil’s teeth won’t stop chat­ter­ing and now he starts wor­ry­ing that it’s annoy­ing the oth­ers. He won­ders, skep­ti­cally, if the Akka­di­ans have any rules pro­hibit­ing them from storm­ing into a native Tem­ple.

Ayan begins mut­ter­ing prayers. Kripa takes a guard posi­tion near their pil­lar, heft­ing his big club. Hat­van joins the big native, expertly twirling his rope-and-weights around him­self in a deadly gyre.

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