Thrown clear, Rooks scatter like so many rik-jum cards, ripped from their moorings like birds thrown from straw nests. Light from the feeding grounds disperses, dumping power from the Pyramid’s base. The seers of the Rooks begin to panic.
Those still hooked into the network begin feeding off one another, killing one another for light. Terian watches in horror as more pieces fall, crushing panicking seers, tearing abilities and knowledge from the communal pools. Lifetimes’ worth of accumulated structures crumble to dust, no longer able to hold to the shared mind of the Pyramid, useless without it. Terian’s own structures begin to flicker, too, then to crack, dimming more as the pools unravel.#p#分页标题#e#
He feels it as a drop in power so severe that at first he thinks he is dying.
Then, it gets worse. He feels the Pyramid detach.
It breaks away, Headless.
Terian feels her again. She laughs happily above that whispering dark, and he hates her for the sheer joy he feels in her light.
He screams into the reaches of the Barrier, calling the Dreng back.
But it is too late. The gap between the silvery clouds and the creation stretches too long.
The Dreng are nowhere to be found.
I spin through a weave of multicolored light, laughing without knowing why, tears flowing down my light face. I have never been so happy. Light dismantles the Pyramid while I watch, tearing it off from its broken moorings.
Souls disperse like leaves freed by a warm breeze.
I feel humans on different continents blink, come awake.
Even in their pain, their innocence brings up so much feeling I laugh again, unable to help myself, with no other way to express it. Light pours from the Barrier itself, a cleansing torrent that blasts away the dusty, broken remnants of the Dreng.
The lynchpin pulled, I have only to watch.
It is the break in the clouds...sunrise without annihilation.
Then, I feel something else.
Allie, he says. It’s time to go. We’re in danger...
I open my eyes, fighting to see through the light...
...and found myself lying on something hard that jutted into my back. I was in a dust-filled space, colored only by light from a small, square window with rose-tinted glass.
I looked around, trying to get my bearings.
Revik’s long body lay next to mine. A low boom trembled the floor beneath my back. It brought down dust, and the sound of coughing around me, some male and some female. I saw a broken lamp swinging from the ceiling above, and realized I lay in a stairwell.
Voices grew audible above me.
I heard Maygar first. “Well, we can’t stay here!”
“You heard what Eddard said,” Jon said. “The next floor is completely blocked! We’ll have to...” Jon held a gun when his eyes swiveled to my face and widened. He nearly dropped the gun. “Allie...jesus! You’re awake!”
I looked over at Revik, whose chest rose and fell as he lay on his side on the same wooden steps as me. His eyelids flickered, enough that I hoped he’d come back half-conscious. I fought to sit up, to force myself upright, when I got hit with a sudden rush of dizziness.
Before I could fall, arms slid around my waist, catching me.
I glanced up, surprised to see Maygar.
“You’re back,” he muttered. He held me against his shoulder. Plaster drifted down from the ceiling as the building shook, dusting his hair. Maygar looked up as another booming sound rattled the windows.
“Is Cass okay?” I asked. “Where’s Cass?”
Her voice rose, shaky. “I’m here.” I saw her gripping her own shoulder, leaning against the stair’s handrail as she peered down at me. “What are we going to do?”
Maygar’s voice shifted into the tone of a military report. His words were directed at me, I realized, as if I was in charge.
“They’re blowing up entrances and exits...presumably in case we try to take control of their people,” he said. “I’ve counted at least twenty inside. I can’t feel any below the ground level, but it’s only a matter of time. They’ve got seers with them, and the elevators are all down, as well as everything in the building fitted with organics. They’ve got trank guns too, and gas.”
Maygar grunted, motioning his head towards Revik.
“Rook-boy taught them well,” he added sourly. “Eddard still hopes to get us out through the underground tunnel. He thinks it’s not on any of the plans, but they may have collapsed it by now. They could gas us at any minute. These two...” He nodded at Jon and Cass. “...Made us carry you both. It slowed us down too much.”
I smiled at him, shaking my head. “You want me to feel sorry for you because my friends wouldn’t leave me behind to die?”
His eyes flickered, once. “I wouldn’t have left you,” he said.