The backlash from the western vent moved faster than a thrown spear. Across the flooded basin, Ilyra was still wrenching her marsh-iron spearhead free of the western valve shaft. On the eastern flank, Daro Kesh was twenty paces away cutting down a falling timber brace before it could crush two fleeing town herbalists. Neither of the Deeper Bronze fighters could cross the boiling water in time to reach the southern sick room threshold where Mina and sixteen-year-old Tarek were dragging the pinned foundation boy out from under the roof edges.
Seyun didn’t stop to calculate whether his Dual-Route Flame could survive a ten-foot wall of scalding limestone melted rock waste and broken cedar beams. He pushed off the western water gate curb on his sound right boot and landing flat on his braced left heel in front of the doorway. He threw both scarred palms forward and spread his Flame mantle as wide as his chest channels could sustain, angling the two routes of his breath like a peaked roof to deflect the heaviest stone blocks above Mina’s head.
“Get flat against the threshold stone!” Seyun shouted over the roar, bracing his right knee for a crash he knew would tear his Flame mantle apart on the first beat.
