The ground had no choice but to accept it, cracking outward from the point in jagged lines, a crater opening from the center like a mouth, dirt and stone and root material flung upward and outward in the ring of displaced earth that surrounds the point of catastrophic impact.The smoke came up with it.Not fire smoke, earth smoke. The dust and the particulate and the debris of everything in the impact radius being violently relocated, rising fast and thick and spreading across the clearing in a cloud that had weight and density and turned the afternoon light inside the clearing from clear to the specific dirty gray of disturbed earth.It was everywhere.The smell of it hit before the sight of anything cleared, cold dirt and broken root and the metallic edge of disturbed stone, the smell of something deep in the ground that hadn't been surface-level until thirty seconds ago. Sharp in the nose. Dense on the tongue.Roderick was coughing.He had his forearm up across his face, the insti

He said the title the way you say something you find faintly ridiculous and are reporting rather than endorsing.Jabber's eyes moved to him.Slow.The purple settled on Benimaru's face and it sat there and it did not shift and it did not blink and the thing behind it was not the thing Benimaru's flat expression had been built to handle, because the flat expression was a tool for managing situations and the thing behind those purple eyes was not a situation it was a presence and the presence was old and it was cold and it communicated something in the looking that was not language.Benimaru's mouth closed.He had not decided to close it. It closed on its own, the involuntary response of a mouth that had said something and had received a response that was not a word and was understood anyway. He looked straight ahead. Said nothing more.Gabimaru made a sound.A laugh, short, genuine, the specific laugh of someone who has watched something they found funny and could not help the response

She knew the rhythm.She knew the weight of those footsteps.“‘Asta…"His name came out of her before the decision to say it had fully formed, pulled out by the sound and the laugh and the purple glow she could see moving between the trees at the forest's edge, the shield blade still tracking, still following, the thing Loki had built to chase not having stopped chasing.She was already moving when she said it.Her feet found the direction and committed to it without ceremony, no pause, no assessment of the situation, the clean forward movement of someone who has heard something and has decided that what comes next is going toward it. Her axes were in her hands. The flame on them had come up automatically, the fire knowing what the hands were preparing for even before the head had finalized the plan.She hit the tree line…And stopped.Not because she chose to.Because Gabimaru was there.He appeared the way things appear when they have moved faster than the eye allocated processing

The voice came from directly behind his right ear.Not from below. Not from the branches to his left or his right or from anywhere that would have required something to climb or approach through the space he had been watching.From behind his ear.Intimate. Close. The specific proximity of something that had positioned itself in the space just past the edge of his peripheral vision and had been there long enough to wait for the right moment."Found you."………….''''''Asta's blood went cold.''''''''''''Not metaphorically, the actual physical sensation of the body redirecting resources away from the surface and extremities when the central nervous system receives a specific category of input, the cold that lives in the chest and the stomach and the space between the shoulder blades.''''''''''''He did not move.''''''''''''For one full second, one complete, terrible, endless second,he did not move.''''''''''''The purple glow came over his right shoulder.''''''''''''Slow.''''''''''''J

The purple in his eyes flared, bright, sudden, the desperate brightness of something fighting a rapid compression, the light of something that does not want to go back to where it is being sent. His hands moved, trying to reach the rope, trying to find the edge of it, the beginning of it, anything that could be pulled or broken or addressed…"''What is this…''"The sealing marks activated.The light of them moved, each mark on each coil lighting in sequence, the sequence running from the first coil to the last in under a second, the whole rope going from glowing to burning with the specific white-gold of a seal at full function.Loki's legs went.Not slowly, immediately, the body dropping from the position of standing to the position of not standing in the single instant when the sealing took the thing that had been keeping the body standing and removed it from the equation. Jabber's body folded and hit the ground and did not catch itself because there was nothing left inside it at t