[ The guards, the dead, the girl, the riot —; outside, the spell of white, thundered sound and the thrashing that quivers stone walls, and he knows, in the belly of the tower, on stairs descending to the prison halls, knows the dragon creature's unleashed itself.
Too many steps, brittle and spiked energy and the crackle of fire as the witches come alive in the corridor. The dead descend on them — in this, hand steady on his sword, pose serpentine before the strike, Lan Wangji is fortunate. Their pursuers are different from the dead of before, faster, more predatory. Lan Wangji pivots, nearly sets to strike, but then...
...one of the girls who had swum in the crowd of manic-stricken, white bright-eyed fleeing prisoners turns in her path. Fights to carve her way back, where the flood of dead proves unending, and Lan Wangji raises his sheathed sword, Bichen's iced gleam warning, introducing it to the side as barrier, to cut the girl's advance. Listen: ]
They will bar your path. [ No, she is young in this, they are always young before slaughter. He must speak the plainer for it: ] They will savage you.
e s c a p e
Too many steps, brittle and spiked energy and the crackle of fire as the witches come alive in the corridor. The dead descend on them — in this, hand steady on his sword, pose serpentine before the strike, Lan Wangji is fortunate. Their pursuers are different from the dead of before, faster, more predatory. Lan Wangji pivots, nearly sets to strike, but then...
...one of the girls who had swum in the crowd of manic-stricken, white bright-eyed fleeing prisoners turns in her path. Fights to carve her way back, where the flood of dead proves unending, and Lan Wangji raises his sheathed sword, Bichen's iced gleam warning, introducing it to the side as barrier, to cut the girl's advance. Listen: ]
They will bar your path. [ No, she is young in this, they are always young before slaughter. He must speak the plainer for it: ] They will savage you.