The light golem was born. It existed. Suddenly. Cutter’s mirror shook as the thing moved. It stood, out of the foetus of light it had been. It was a man, or a woman, a broad figure made of illumination that was impossible to look at yet did not shed light but seemed to suck in what light was there and gave a violent hard glow that impossibly did not spread beyond its own borders. It stood and stepped forward, and the mirrors were tugged with it. Cutter and Thick Shanks were half-following half-dictating its movements.

"There," Cutter shouted, and they twisted their mirrors so the golem strode forward with a construct’s motion, past the outlying ranks of the Councillors who cried out, was this some seraph come to save them? They looked at each other with eyes momentarily occluded by its brightness, looked to its footsteps, which glowed with residue. The light golem strode into the yags. The golem stretched a little like some dough-thing, gripped the yags and began to shine.

Cutter felt weak. The golem wrestled them, and their fire did nothing against its solid light, and it grew brighter and brighter as it fought, became a humanoid star, shedding cold luminance that effaced the heat of the yags and grew much much too bright to see. And then the yags that had fought it were gone, washed out in its glow, and it was stronger. It moved with an unsound, a stillness.

Yags panicked. There were some that ran away in their animal motion across the landscape, and some who rallied and flew again at the light golem to be erased by its phosphorescence. There were elementarii whipping hard at the frightened fire elementals, but that enraged them and some in passing snapped petulant and pyrotic at their handlers and burnt them to death.

The militia were rallying. Little luftgeists like arrows hunted down the new gunmen, piercing them and drinking their blood. Drogon whispered his instructions, and the militia could not disobey him, and he made their whips flail destructively. They knew by then that he was their main enemy. They sent the proasmae toward him.

Cutter and Thick Shanks sent the golem for the militia, toward a group gathered around some kind of cannon. They were butchering animals. What are they doing?

They were siphoning something from the air, as their proasmae at last reached the newcomer gunmen and began to swim through them. The light golem came on. What were the militia calling?

A drizzle of luminance seemed to be pouring from the sky, very concentrate, a fine shaft just visible. It fell to the mechanism they surrounded. The light came out of the moon. The day-moon, just visible, very faint in sunlight. Out of its half-lustre came the moonlight into the machine, and at the end of the barrel a hole seemed to be opening.

In its deeps, something made of glow was moving. Cutter stared.