Page 94 of A Monsoon Rising

A hailstorm? In Nenavar?

That was odd. Alaric squinted.

The stones grew in size—they weren’t falling from the sky, they were being hurled at the windows by unseen hands—

—and they were all uniformly rounded at the sides and conical at the base—

Shells.

Alaric broke into a run, making for the tables. Talasyn and her friends were too near the windows, too far from him. He couldn’t move fast enough. The ceramic shells hit their marks and the vast chamber rocked with myriad explosions as every single pane of glass disintegrated, the shards raining down on the crowd.

Ambush situations were nothing new to the Shadowforged Legion. Years of training and the long war with Sardovia had equipped Alaric to deal with such crises, but in that moment it seemed that all his wits had fled. He was consumed only by one thought. By one name. A name that he shouted over and over again as he pushed his way through the frenzied mass of screaming nobles. Figures clambered in through the broken windows,shooting crossbow bolts at the ceiling and the walls. The great chandeliers came crashing down and the fire lamps were snuffed out, plunging the ballroom into darkness, but Alaric barely paid any mind to the chaos. He thought only of getting to Talasyn.

It was an uphill battle. The Nenavarene jostled and shoved and stumbled, their cries drowning out Alaric’s voice as sheer instinct repeatedly tore Talasyn’s name from his lips. He removed his unwieldy golden mask, letting it fall to the floor, strewn with the bodies of all those who had tripped or been knocked over in the stampede.

Talasyn had vanished. He scanned the ballroom frantically—and something in his soul snapped in half. The Shadowgate left him, leaving nothing in its place but an aching void. Alaric had felt this before and knew at once what it was: a sariman nullification field.

He’d ordered Nenavar to remove those cages from his presence a long time ago, and there weren’t any in sight now, but still the effect set in harshly, causing him to stagger against a nearby pillar. Clutching it for support, he looked around in a belated attempt to make sense of the situation.

The horde of assailants moved purposefully through all the chaos. They were in leather helms and armor, and several carried void muskets in addition to hand crossbows. They weren’t shooting indiscriminately into the crowd, a sure sign that this was no mere attack on the Dominion. Rather, they appeared to be looking for someone.

And it didn’t take Alaric long to figure out who. Bolts of amethyst light zipped toward him.

“Stay here,” Talasyn hissed. “Don’t make a sound.”

Jie, Niamha, Oryal, and Bairung nodded, arms around one another, eyes wide.

Talasyn had herded the four noblewomen under a table as soon as the windows shattered. Now she crawled out from under it and threw herself into the commotion, searching for Alaric and Elagbi.

The Lightweave vanished then.

Sariman, she realized with a sickening clench that made her freeze—for just a moment, but long enough for the stampeding guests to knock her to the ground. Someone started running across her torso as though she were the floor, and she reared up, knocking the other person off her before their weight cracked her ribs.Sorry, whoever you are,she thought with a twinge of guilt, kicking off her shoes and scrambling to her feet, upright again—

—and staring down the barrel of a Nenavarene musket, gleaming bronze in the moonlight.

Talasyn yanked off her mask and hurled it at the assailant. The man yelped as the large, jewel-encrusted butterfly hit him in the face, and she made a grab for the musket, twisting it around in his hands and firing it into his chest. The sound was echoed by several more in the distance, violet magic illuminating the gloom.

She liberated her new weapon from the man’s corpse and charged toward the light.

Alaric ducked behind the pillar in the nick of time. The granite reverberated with the fury of a dozen void bolts, and then he was off, disappearing into the mass of bodies scrambling for the exit. Common sense dictated that he head there as well, but he wasn’t leaving. Not without Talasyn.

More shots rang out behind him. Alaric used the shifting crowd to his advantage, going wherever it was thickest and most chaotic. Two of the flowering marble pedestals had beenknocked over; as he neared, they reflected the Voidfell’s amethyst glow and he dove behind them, lying flat on his stomach. The pedestals trembled as the magic made contact, and the sickly sweet smell of decaying roses filled the air.

Alaric crawled forward on his elbows until he reached the sitting area at the edge of the dance floor, where most of the tables and chairs had been overturned in the havoc. One such table was lying on its side, and a slim arm shot out from behind it and hauled Alaric close with surprising strength.

“Are you—are you okay?” Talasyn whispered.

“Yes.” He ran his hands over her body in the dark, hardly daring to believe that she was alive, and with him. “You?”

“I can’t aethermance,” she said. “How are they doing this?”

Alaric went through the layout of Iantas in his head. “There’s a terrace wrapped around the ballroom. If they put the sariman cages there …” He trailed off. Each sariman could project its nullification field only within a seven-foot radius. The attackers wouldn’t be able to cover the whole ballroom, unless—

“They’re amplifying it somehow,” Talasyn finished his thought for him.

He sighed. “Hopefully Sevraim and Ileis are all right.”

Despite the circumstances they were in, there was something oddly charming about the way she wrinkled her nose at the mention of his legionnaires. Or perhaps just Ileis. “Why are they here?”

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