The two-ton block of salt rock plunged like an executioner’s blade.
Elder Sterling surged upward from the stone terrace, his heavy longsword scabbard flaring with pale emerald light.
Under the crushing eighty-five percent suppression, the motion tore at his chest.
CRACK.
Sterling struck the falling boulder mid-air, deflecting its path by three feet.
The salt boulder crashed into the boiling magma fissure with a violent hiss, throwing up clouds of sulfurous steam.
Across the narrow trench, Old Barnaby threw his entire body over the low stone wall. He held a thick, soaked hemp blanket with his single good hand, shielding the delicate jade-green petals of the Jade-Marrow Salt-Orchids from the scalding spray.
“The roots are safe!” Barnaby wheezed, his beard spattered with gray salt mud. “The blossoms didn’t burn!”
