Round 146

The wardstone pulsed harder this time—like an angry heartbeat thrumming through the stone itself—and Jeane felt her hold on the barrier spell waver. She'd maintained it for minutes already, channeling arcane energy to contain the worst of the corruption leaking from the artifact buried somewhere beneath them. But every pulse made it harder, demanded more concentration and power. "Silra! No!" Her voice snapped out sharp and commanding, but the slim elf had already pushed past Halie's barricade into that dark corridor beyond. The building groaned around them like a living thing in pain.

"Get back here!" Jeane couldn't let her go alone into whatever waited there while holding this spell against the wardstone surge. But she was the only thing keeping the energy contained, and maintaining the barrier required every ounce of concentration. She could feel the corruption trying to seep through her defenses, cold and wrong against her skin. The makeshift barricade creaked under Halie's weight as the human woman strained against the door.

"Jeane?" Halie called out, voice tight with fear. "How much longer? I can't hold this much longer..." Her hands were already burned from earlier contact with the wardstone energy seeping through cracks in the door frame. The mirror she'd braced it with shifted dangerously on the slick floor covered in water and spilled lubricant.

Jeane gritted her teeth, fighting to maintain control over the spell while answering. "Two minutes. Maybe three." She lied about the time frame—it was more like one minute now, maybe less—but panic would only make things worse. The wardstone pulsed again, harder still, and she felt her concentration slip for a fraction of a second before snapping it back into place with an effort that made her vision blur. "Silra! Get your ass back here right now or I swear to every hell I'll leave you to the collapse!"

The dark corridor beyond the door seemed to breathe in the bad light, shadows shifting in ways that had nothing to do with the building's structural failure. Something moved there—Jeane couldn't tell what it was, but she knew it wasn't empty. She needed Silra back behind the barrier where she could at least try to protect everyone from the worst of the wardstone energy. Because if that spell failed completely...

The building screamed around them, a sound like tearing metal and cracking concrete. Somewhere far below, glass shattered in a waterfall cascade. They were out of time.