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stopped in his downward journey to place surprises for those who dared the
cave. These traps scared the shit out of her, but while some were triggered to
quick movement and some to magical force or strong magical shields, none
seemed to be set to catch someone stealthy.
Lauren opened her eyes from time to time as her nerves got to be too much for
her; she couldn t convince the animal hindbrain that she wouldn t fall into a
hole walking around with her eyes closed; and every step felt like moving over
a cliff anyway. But when she opened her eyes, the darkness got darker.
Baanraak s faint trail disappeared, and she lost all sense of where he was,
where she was, and where the traps lay.
Lauren hated dark, damp places. She loathed the idea of being underground,
which was entirely too close to death for her. She was fine with a roof over
her head, but not the remains of a mountain. She shuddered at the idea of
cave-dwelling animals brushing against her she had no idea if this world had
bats, or cave snakes, or giant spiders. Anything might live in the darkness,
and from time to time she would hear cheeping, or creaking, or soft low moans
that convinced her that anything probably did.
She wanted to turn around and get out. But she didn t. She fought down the
panic and the disgust and the dread, closed her eyes, and once again found the
faint trail of light and stepped where the monster Baanraak had stepped.
A step at a time, moving on nothing but faith and a faint connection through
her dead-but-returning sister to the monster she hunted, she crept downward.
Dalchi
Seolar wished fervently that he could rise above the battle to see where his
people made progress and where they lost ground. In his mind s eye, he could
see the vantage point he wanted; in the air, high enough that he could look
over everything before him and behind him, high enough that the rrôn
Baanraak s outcropping lay just beneath him, but not so high that he could not
make out detail.
With the gate behind him blazing its green fire and the shield Lauren had
created for him holding off every attack, he felt safe enough to hold that
vantage point and abruptly the ground fell away beneath him and he found
himself and the gate and the bubble of his shield high in the air, rising to
the exact point where he thought he might get the best view of the battle.
The aerial view offered more than he d imagined. He could see the shields that
Qawar kept in place over each main group though he could see no sign of Qawar
himself. He saw instantly a place where some of his men were moving into a
trap; he called out a warning to them, willing them to hear him, and they
managed to get out of trouble before the enemy flanked them and killed them.
He saw a great opportunity to bring two units together at one point where
heavy fire already had a cluster of dark gods pinned down, and directed the
leaders of those two groups. The pincer was working better than he had
hoped his men gained ground against the dark gods, and might yet win the day.
Then one of the dark gods soared over his head. Seolar knew he was in a
vulnerable position if his enemies could get through the shield; what he
didn t know was whether they could get him through the shield.
He didn t need to wonder for long.
The rrôn circling over his head bellowed, and two more monsters materialized
from out of the clouds. Seolar wondered what they d been doing up there; he
realized that he didn t know how to fight gods. All three rrôn angled their
wings and dropped down at him, striking his shield from underneath with heads
or bodies. They began bouncing and tossing him upward, flinging him through
the air as if he were a toy. He lost his balance and fell with the first
strike, and did not have the chance to regain his feet again.
They were forcing him into the clouds. He wondered why, and realized that he
had to do something to keep from finding out. He needed to get back to the
rise, close to his men, so he could keep the gate down where he could pull
them through it as soon as Lauren appeared. And he needed to do it quickly.
He almost couldn t think. The rrôn had caught him off guard and were keeping
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