Adventure of Thornton Smith 1

The floor caves another span, and Thornton Smith hauls the Concubine hard against the splintering edge. Below them, the violet void pulses like a wounded eye.

The shadowy limb lashes upward, tasting the air, then rakes across the broken boards where the ritual once bled.

The Concubine catches her breath, dangling half over the abyss, then twists toward the fissure with wide, hard eyes. The glow beneath her begins to narrow, as if the wound is listening.

The fissure throbs once, and a deeper shape presses against the light from below, vast enough to darken the shattered hall. Thornton Smith has a clear choice now, hold the line here, or push the collapse toward the entity before it fully wakes.

Thornton Smith loops the binding tight, then heaves. The Concubine jerks free of the lip and rolls onto solid boards with a gasp, just as the fissure snaps wider below them.

The shadowy limb lashes up between the planks, missing her ankle by inches, and the violet glow flares white-blue with sudden fury.

Behind them, a whole section of the hall tilts inward with a roar of timber and stone, cutting off the route Thornton Smith just used.

Thornton Smith snatches the Concubine with the last of the binding and runs. Boards shudder under his boots as the violet glow hammers up through the gaps behind him.

The sorcerer stumbles after them, coughing dust, while the shadowy limb thrashes uselessly below the broken floor.

Thornton reaches the far arch as the hall groans around him, the exit yawning ahead through smoke and falling splinters.

Behind them, the center of the guild hall caves in with a roar, swallowing the fissure's edge in a shower of violet sparks.