The ur-viles gibbered and gesticulated like incarnations of mania. Below them, She Who Must Not Be Named reared higher, extending Her maleficence as if She dreamed of feeding until She filled the cavern. Some of the skurj approached directly. Others arced around the company’s position, perhaps to close off any possible retreat, perhaps to ascend the ledge themselves.

“Linden!” cried Liand. “Water! Water!”

She hardly heard him. Her gaze followed the line of the loremaster’s iron jerrid toward the ceiling. In the radiance of fangs and ferocity, she seemed to see the exact place that the jerrid indicated; see it as if the loremaster had marked it for her by sheer force of will.

The last of the Demondim-spawn had sacrificed themselves for her repeatedly; extravagantly. Nevertheless they wanted to live.

As she did. As long as Jeremiah needed help, and Covenant remained to redeem the Land.

One blast: that was all she had left. Just one. Then she would be finished, for good or ill.

Make it count.

Her parents would not have approved. They had chosen death. But for a moment longer, she refused their legacy. Spiders and worms could not cause more torment than they had already inflicted.

Saving her energies for flame, she whispered the Seven Words as she flung Earthpower toward the ceiling.

“Melenkurion abatha.”

Tenuously balanced on the brink of herself, she aimed fire at the damp patch of stone which the ur-viles indicated.

“Duroc minas mill.”

Every remaining shred of her love and need and fear, she committed to the written wood of the Staff until they formed a blaze of theurgy as brutal as a battering-ram.

“Harad khabaal.”

Centipedes and horror hampered her. The bane’s nearness drained her. The example of her parents promised futility; abject surrender. Defying them, she struck—

—and the ceiling held.

But she was not alone. A heartbeat behind her blast, a great gout of vitriol rose from the wedge and its loremaster. Strange magicks as corrosive as acid, and sour as self-loathing, smashed against the rock where her power burned.

Smashed and detonated.

Together the concussion of dire liquid and hot flame tore a cascade of stone from the ceiling.

From the breach, water trickled as though Linden and the ur-viles had partially unclogged a rainspout.

A rumble as throaty and unfathomable as the bane’s livid beat resounded among the spires. Tremors ran through the rock, shook the ledge. Clots of damp debris fell, loosened by a subtle convulsion among the mountain’s roots. The entire cavern groaned like a wounded titan.

Still some distance away, tortured faces wailed at Linden. Her father had killed himself in front of her. Her mother had begged to be slain. The excruciation of beetles and maggots intensified.

“Ware and watch!” shouted the Ironhand. “This perch may fail!”

She Who Must Not Be Named screamed from a dozen throats. The skurj paused as though they were capable of surprise.

An instant later, the damaged ceiling ruptured.