Jaruna lets his arrow fly.

It skew­ers the heel of the sorcerer’s hand.

The sor­cerer screams and jerks his staff upwards, right into his fel­low sorcerer’s arm.

At the same moment, his staff dis­charges a blast of light­ning.

The bolt carves out a skewed line across the cir­cu­lar benches and plows right into the row of now-screaming hoplites.

The room erupts into a storm of light­ning, flames, and shat­tered stone. A vor­tex of black smoke streams up towards the ceil­ing win­dow.

Glow­ing vio­let streaks criss­cross the smoke cloud.

The mys­tic warps across the room in low arcs of light, rolling safely behind pil­lar after pil­lar for cover to draw and nock more arrows. A sor­cerer drops from the ceil­ing like a dead bird, crash­ing against a shat­tered stone bench.

Jaruna emerges from his cover and takes a shot at Satrap Nim­rod.

Nim­rod raises his scepter—and the arrow curves off course in mid­flight.

The scepter hums and its black astrate gems swal­low up light. Nim­rod waves it again, and the mys­tic is lifted off his feet, as if his body were sud­denly pulled up by unseen strings. A flour­ish­ing ges­ture with the scepter sends the hov­er­ing mys­tic sail­ing back­wards, towards a wall of flame.

But then Hat­van whirls his weapon and las­sos Nimrod’s scepter, tug­ging the satrap off bal­ance. Jaruna falls to the floor like a dropped rag doll.

A hoplite breaks ranks and slices Hatvan’s rope with his sharp speartip, free­ing his commander’s weapon—and not a sec­ond later plum­mets to the floor scream­ing and gar­gling, an arrow pierc­ing his neck.

As if in answer, some­thing explodes so fiercely that Gil’s hear­ing is blown out.

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