And the doom kneaded itself in the sky, fading into and out of visibility and danger-sensibility, chewing on the divinity and life of Borybran. A god-dragon seemed to be a large meal, even for it.
That gave everyone but Borybran a few minutes to escape. Some people were more effective about it than others.
⁂
The hovens, Mr. Kranbule and Mrs. Dasbrodie, at first had to shift for themselves. But Tultamaan snagged the former in his teeth, and swatted Evrath with his tail to compel him to rescue the latter as well. The undead did not bother to flee: they prostrated themselves before the still-distant doom. Undead have a peculiar relationship to existence.
Driaith — to pick a typical dragon — glanced at the dangersense fanfare of the doom, and the astral scars marking Borybran’s death. In an instant he calculated what sort of defensive spell would give a dragon any chance of surviving a single strike: more than he could manage without a week’s labor and Lliashatheny-made tools. So he collected whatever treasures he could gather in the precisely seventy-two seconds he allowed himself, and then fled for the portal to Hove.
He did not pass through.
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