Then the giant leaned forward. His right foot was in the air, straining against the fine threads but unable to move forward, and his balance was gone. Slowly at first, but with the awful force of a toppling mountain, the enormous statue started to fall.

Alice danced backward as he came down, arms out to catch himself on his palms. The weight of the impact drove the statue’s hands into the floor in an explosion of flying rock chips and dust, and Alice ducked behind a severed pillar to shield herself. Then, leaning out, she shouted, “Now, Isaac!”

Isaac was already running toward the giant, his hands glowing red with the power of the salamander. He reached the huge thing’s foot, and paused a moment in concentration. The light from his hands went from red to yellow, then to a furious blue white that shone so brightly it made her eyes water. Through the streaming tears, she saw Isaac plunge his hands against the steel of the giant’s ankle, which shifted like wax under a hot knife and began to glow with a dull red light of its own. Isaac tore at it, pulling out huge handfuls of molten stuff and flinging them aside. In a few moments he had torn the statue’s foot completely away from the leg, and he hurried over to administer the same treatment to the other.

Hurry! Between the scream of metal on stone and the crack and zing of fragments, Isaac would never hear her, but she willed him to work faster. The giant was pushing himself up, drawing his leg underneath him. Isaac had only gotten halfway through his other ankle when the statue pulled it away from him, leaving him in the middle of a circle of smoking, molten metal. The giant struggled to get his remaining foot underneath him, rising to a crouch—

And, with a metallic crack like a cannon shot, the weakened ankle snapped under the strain of the statue’s immense weight. The huge thing toppled sideways, hands flailing wildly, and crashed amidst the ruins of the pillars. Alice jogged well clear of its reach, to the base of the stairs, and beckoned the others to join her. Isaac was still surrounded by shimmering waves of heat, and Dex lent her arm to Soranna, who was limping.

“I don’t think he’s going anywhere now,” Alice said, raising her voice to be heard over the clatter as the giant tried to rise again, only to be thwarted by his maimed legs.

“Are you all right?” Isaac said. He shook his hands, spattering the ground at his feet with molten metal, and then stepped carefully aside before letting the salamander’s power fade away.

“More or less.” The pain of the swarmer’s death was fading from Alice’s chest, but slowly. “What about you, Soranna?”

“She was cut by flying rock,” Dex said. “It needs bandaging.”