Yllamaris drags the glowing dome across the frost-bitten grass, each step pulling violet threads through the air. The ash-born thing hisses inside the barrier, clawing at nothing as the field bends around its light. Bram and the Gray-Cloaked Guard push after him, wary of every crackling pulse.
Bram
Keep it moving. Don’t let that thing anchor itself.
The ruined wall falls behind them, and a narrow sinkhole opens ahead, rimmed with black reeds and old stone. Cold mist breathes up from below, carrying the smell of wet earth and buried ash. Yllamaris forces the dome down into the hollow, where the ground dips away into a hidden path.
Elowen
That shaft, it leads under the fields.
The dome shudders as the ash-born attacker throws itself at the light. Violet lines flare across the barrier, then the shape slips, shrinks, and is dragged down into the opening with a scream of cinders. Frost flakes from the reeds as the air turns sharply colder.
Gray-Cloaked Guard
Below ground is better than loose in the open. I know these old tunnels.
Yllamaris reaches the lip of the shaft and the others crowd close behind him, peering into a stone stair swallowed by dark. The sinkhole swallows the last of the violet glare, and the field above goes still, listening.