was his own and that he had an impossible half mile of ground to cover, at least, to be clear of the enormous fury's descending power.
He realized with a cool and practical certainty that he simply wasn't moving fast enough. There was no way he was going to get clear in time.
Ehren stood up slowly from his seat beside Count Calderon on the citadel's bench at Garrison. He watched as a mountain - as the mountain - rose from its resting place in the form of man, twice as tall as the mountain itself had been, unthinkably huge. Sheer distance clouded its features into haze, though Ehren could see that it was built heavily, disproportionately, a being of ugliness and spite and horrible power.
"Bloody crows," Ehren breathed, as he watched that far-distant form move, raising a foot as a man might to crush an insect. "What is that?"
Bernard stared at it and shook his head slowly. "Great furies, boy," he muttered. "Are you mad?"
The ground shook hard enough to slop water out of the improvised healing tubs that had been crafted from the stone floors in the old hall of the ruined steadholt. Amara steadied herself against a wall and hoped that the earthquake wouldn't bring the hall down on their heads. After a moment, the tremors subsided, but did not quite stop, and startled, incredulous cries were added to the din of cries of pain and agony.
Amara glanced over to where Isana and Odiana and the healers of Octavian's Legions labored on the wounded, too far gone into their own battles and crafting to take any note of their surroundings. Then she staggered to the door and met Lady Placida there. Placidus Sandos had been found beneath a mound of dismembered vord nearly eight feet deep, badly wounded but alive. Even now, he lay on the ground nearby, and this was the first time Aria had left his side.
She and Amara both stared out, at the incredible form rising from the mountain to the northwest, its brow crowned with thunder and lightning, its shoulders cloaked in storm clouds and rain, its vast and terrible shape blotting out miles of blue sky. Something like a mouth gaped open, and its roar shook the ground again. The two women had to grab at the frames of the doorway to stay standing.
"Great furies," Amara whispered.
"Aye," Lady Placida breathed, her eyes wide, her face pale. "Two of them."
Tavi managed his next bounding leap, useless as he knew it would be, frantically calling the wind for all that he was worth - and was suddenly hit in the back by something moving at incredible speed. Pale arms twined beneath his shoulders, preventing him from falling, and Kitai shouted, "Hold on!"
They accelerated as the mountain's foot fell toward them, blotting out the sky, darkening the morning to twilight. Kitai's windstream drove them faster and faster toward the rapidly dwindling strip of trees and sunlight at the mountain's base - and as they grew near, that passage to survival suddenly filled with a small legion of windmanes, their inhuman faces stretched into eerie howls, their claws reaching.
"That's cheating!" Kitai declared hotly - even as their forward pace increased in proportion to her outrage.
"Mind your eyes!" Tavi shouted back.
He lifted his right hand, noting with a touch of surprise that he still held his sword. An effort of will let the weapon burst into flame. He lifted the weapon awkwardly, still being held under the arms by Kitai, then shaped the familiar blade-shaped firecrafting into an elongated, white-hot lance, reaching out in front of them. The terrible speed of their passage didn't simply blunt the end of the lance; it spread the fire out into a concave disc a dozen feet across. The heat from the fire flooded back to them, distinctly uncomfortable, a hot wind that scorched exposed skin - and sent its own wind flowing out and upward from it.
As the fire-lance met the first of the windmanes, it bowled the feral furies aside - doing them no harm, but sending them wailing and spinning from Tavi and Kitai's path. Trees at the base of the mountain began to crack and shatter as that vast weight came down, and the darkness grew until only the lance of fire lit their way. Hundreds of terrified birds flew with them, darting shapes in the sole light of the fire-lance.
They shot into the open sky as the mountain smashed down onto the ground below, trees snapping and popping