"I cannot," she said heavily. "But we at least can survive to give aid, if any aid will suffice."
"There's gotta be a way," Pierce said. "Can you at least fold us to the Temple?"
Again she said no.
"It's a one-man ride, kid," Agrathor said.
They raced on.
When at last they reached the concentric rings at the city center, the place was awash with disaster. Shops and shrines that had just been bustling with healthy activity that morning had been supplanted by the emergence of the obelisks. The low hum was acute and pervading all at once. Cracks were spreading across every stone surface in sight. Pierce continued to wonder what the aim was here. Why conquer a heap of rubble?
The city's defenders had fallen into formation on the Temple grounds, and everyone waited nervously for the next phase of attack. As yet they had seen nothing that had been expected. No infantry, no dogran cavalry, no siege equipment. Whatever power Kash had stumbled upon, it was unprecedented.
Ess, Agrathor, and Pierce were allowed through the ranks of men and women warriors, and soon they joined Axebourne and Scythia, and the officers now under the red-bearded man's command.
"If this sound gets any more intense," Axebourne was saying to Scythia, "You'll have to activate it, and we won't be able to talk."
Scythia nodded. "We'll have to rely on signals during whatever comes next."
"Can you protect the men?" one of the officers asked. "What's the range?"
Scythia looked to Ess and said, "I can do about five yards."
Ess mulled this over.
"As much as fifty yards," she said, but shook her head slightly. "But it will fluctuate according to distractions and my adrenaline. Do not trust the perimeter as a sure thing."
"It's better than nothing," the officer said.
"Alright," said Axebourne, "everyone clear on the plan?"
"Yes," said Scythia. "There isn't one." Her husband smirked.
It was true, though. How could they plan for whatever was coming next, if it was as unusual as all of this?
A drumming sound boomed from the city all around them, disparate pounding impacts that shook the ground and air alike. The deep, percussive strikes gradually came synchronized in a steady, simple beat. Agrathor's eyes dimmed as if he were calmed by it, but everyone else looked uneasy.
"Do it," Agrathor said.
Scythia reached into her tunic at the bosom and pulled out the Amulet of Silence. It was a narrow, white gem filled with misty light, cradled in a silver setting that dangled from her strong neck on a silver chain. Ess came near to her, but took no visible action. Scythia did nothing more than to grasp the gem, and the world went silent around her.
Pierce felt like he'd gone deaf. There was no sound to be heard. The air was still, though the ground continued to reverberate with the shock of collapsing buildings and the drumming of distant titans. It was an uncomfortable feeling, yet everyone around Pierce looked like some of their unease had been relieved. Though it hadn't been long since the appearance of the obelisks, their sickening drone had been so encompassing as to feel like a natural part of existence. They had always droned, cracking stone and voiding people's guts, and they always would.
No sooner had everyone settled into the relief of silence than the Temple grounds themselves shifted from merely rumbling to a violent shaking. It was like something a hundred times larger than even the mega-Monstrosities had the earth under the Temple in its hand, and was jostling it back and forth like a toddler with a new toy. A true titan.
Parts of the Temple complex began to collapse. Glass burst upward from galleries and the stained windows of domes and minarets. Walls fell outward or inward, fissures opened up in the ground.
No one called the second retreat, nor did anyone signal it. The garrison troops, officers, and Gorgonbane simply fled in the eerie silence, trying to get clear of the Temple grounds.
Rarely had Pierce felt this frustrated. Give him a clear enemy, or even a hundred foes, and let them be slain at the edge of his sword. This was... well it was unfair, dishonorable, crooked. It was exactly what one should expect of the Underlord and his minions. Why would they show themselves and fight when such utter destruction could be achieved with such apparent ease?
How did the Blacksmith expect this to temper his creations, his children?
It was not another obelisk that emerged from the ruination of the Everlasting Temple. It was the wide domes and towers of a citadel of dark, green stone. Its tightly fitted blocks dripped with the Underlands' pervading muck. They did not seem stressed in the slightest in pushing aside the still-collapsing walls and walkways of the Temple. The whole place was lit by a ghostly grey aura.
"Testadel," Axebourne breathed. "How..."
Pierce had the odd thought that seeing the place again was like returning to a friend's house. Now he knew where things were inside of it, and something of how the place worked. He'd even lived there for a short time, albeit in the dungeons.
Is Forgemaster 77 in there somewhere?
People who had taken refuge inside the Temple were caught up in the rising structure's ramparts and spires, trying in vain to get a grip on anything that might keep them from falling to their deaths. They must be screaming, but Pierce couldn't hear them.
He saw that mighty sculpture of the Blacksmith, carried up off the ground in the space between two greenish domes. The Blacksmith's look of pain and toil seemed appropriate.
Still, the defenders were helpless. This was not something any of them could fight. They would have done better to evacuate the city, rather than to become trapped behind its ruined walls, but no one could have known. Pierce had only guessed. He wondered how this was even possible, but there it was, happening right in front of him, a harsh blow of the Blacksmith's hammer.
Testadel ceased rising and
