Isole was the first to move.
She always was.
Before anyone else had properly understood that the fighting was over, Mara was sitting on the fallen trunk with Isole kneeling in front of her.
"Arm."
Mara looked down.
There was a cut along her forearm.
She blinked at it.
"I didn't notice that."
"I know."
Gold and dark moved together through Isole's hands.
The wound closed.
Then Ashe.
Ribs.
Then Valerica, whose hands would not stop shaking after holding Event Horizon twenty minutes past the point where she should have released it.
Nobody talked.
There was nothing useful to say yet.
Vane sat in the dirt where his knees had put him.
He stared at the fissure.
Forty meters.
Clean-sided.
Too clean.
The strike had opened the earth from one end of the clearing to the other, a wound so straight it seemed less like destruction than someone had simply decided the ground should no longer continue there.
Far below, something still glowed.
Orange fading toward red.
