Eris saw it happen in a series of disjointed, strobe-lit flashes. She saw the tail whip, saw the jagged ice-spike emerge from the blur of Vetra's motion, and heard the sickening, wet thud of steel-hard ice meeting human meat. Soren didn't scream.
He was suspended there, impaled through the side, his body dangled like a broken doll against the backdrop of the churning, purple-black sky.
For a heartbeat, Eris's world went silent. The roar of the Syvrak, the crashing of the palace walls, the thrum of her own blood—it all vanished, replaced by a cold, white static.
Then, the fire came. It didn't come from her hands or her breath; it erupted from her very pores, a tectonic surge of power that disregarded the limits of her flesh.
She didn't aim. She didn't think. She simply detonated.
The blast hit Vetra square in her multi-faceted eyes, a blinding, white-hot assault that smelled of melting stone.
