Dahun shrieked in agony as the now unbalanced forces in the pit began to discharge massive explosions like lightning and balls of fire. Pug could feel waves of heat rising up and instinctively raised a protective shield around himself and Magnus.

With the shield in place, they could only watch.

Dahun lay writhing on the soil, his mouth gasping much like a landed fish. His body contorted in spasm and twitched wildly, while around him flames roared up from out of the pit.

His legs and tail still hung over the pit and they began to smoke and blister and he screamed in pain but was unable to move. Magnus sent to his father, It’s over.

Pug replied, “Not quite yet.”

A second tower began to tremble and Pug used his magic to send a warning to the remaining magicians. “Get out!”

They fled, two flying, and one just leaping from the low wall to the outside of the fortress and running south as fast as he could.

The third and fourth towers also began to come apart and tumble inward, and another tower of flames erupted from the pit. Now all of Dahun’s lower body was consumed, and his eyes rolled up in his head and were vacant.

Then suddenly a huge sucking sound was followed by a trembling from below and Dahun was jerked from where he lay and vanished back into the pit in an instant. All the masonry, towers, loose stones, and dead bodies nearby were sucked into the pit as if a massive vacuum had inhaled everything around the pit. Anything loose within the confines of the walls vanished into the pit, including dropped weapons and armor.

Then it was still.

“Now is it over?” asked Magnus.

“I think—”

The explosion was massive.

A shock wave that was visible to Pug and Magnus rolled out of the pit, carrying dirt, parts of dead bodies, and debris before it. It blasted out with enough force that the small building and the outer walls of the fortress were swept before it like a child’s hands knocking away toy blocks.

Only Pug’s shield kept his son and himself safe, but the ferocity of the blast caught him off guard.

The speed of the shock wave had the area before them cleared in seconds, and when they looked down, there was no sign of the pit, or any construction. The blast area was also devoid of any plant life and as smooth as a patch of marble floor, but otherwise unmarked.

“What happened?” asked Magnus.

“The rift closed,” said Pug. “We unbalanced the magic and it…rebalanced itself.”

“It looks as if there’s nothing down there.”

“Well, we have some people down there, if they survived.” Lowering himself and his son down, Pug said, “We’d better start digging them out.”

“I hope Kaspar got his men far enough away to survive that blast,” said Magnus.