Kordas felt his exposed skin drying in the ambient heat. Ash fell from the orange sky, in flurries like snow, and the earth itself heaved upward from the Palace outward. He wiped at his face. Tears distorted his vision.

“My Lord,” Star said loudly from beside him, and gripped his upper arm. “This is too dangerous for you to stay!”

“I have to,” Kordas bellowed back. “I have to see this. It’s my doing. It’s—it’s not something I can turn my back on.”

A deafening, explosive shock came from the Palace, and a set of bright yellow molten-metal knifeblades—no—claws ten stories high punched upward through the center of the Palace complex, and Kordas fell to his knees. Lightning crackled in jagged bolts through the clouds of ash, which itself was now expanding up and outward, utterly covering the sky. The canals of the City drained toward where the Palace once had been, and Kordas felt his eyes dry out. Where water once was in the canals, pyroclastic flow now raced toward them, and if Kordas was screaming, he couldn’t hear it. The City’s remains heaved, then burst into a flower of fire and molten stone. More searing claws emerged, and a pair of red-hot jaws emerged from the lava, snapping at the air, like a fish snapping at a fly just above the water, and as the torrent of ash and fire began to cook his skin, Kordas was pulled back through the Gate by Star.

—

Kordas couldn’t register anything from his senses quite right. He was drowning, he was gasping, he was burning. There was yelling, and he was being prodded at and lifted. He fell. Shapes moved around him but none were distinct. There might have been voices, but mostly, there was incessant ringing in his ears, and crackling when he moved his jaw. His tongue was dry, and he tasted nothing. He was jostled and carried, and his nostrils were caked in blood and ash. Time passed, but he didn’t know how. He sensed Mindspeech and then stinging sensations, and feelings like being . . . peeled. He did not like that at all, and was nearly sure he coughed up blood and ash. He caught himself blinking and took it to be a good sign. If he could blink, he was alive. If he hurt, he was alive.

He thought he heard cursing, and then things snapped into a clearer version. Someone removed the Carcanet from him, and then the soothing warmth of magical Healing flooded into his core. He felt water poured over him repeatedly, and much fuss around him. It could have lasted days. He had periods of coughing, periods of drunkenness. He felt himself being bathed. Outside of that, there was continuous commotion. Several times he lost all sense of balance. He knew he’d tried to stand up and had been laid back down again.