>>6117142Phridon spots the most useful safe spot in the entire area. It's right in the middle of the road, out of cover, near no rocks and no trees and no old stones. Any explosion from cannon or shot from musket or stray arrow would find a man here and make an end of his life.
But when the world is twisting at the seams and the Wrack is flying high and bits of stray fragment rain from the heavens as blocks of rock crash down and send them flying, can anyone really ask for better shelter than a pre-inscribed warding circle in a triangular defensive formation?
Caedo ducks into it and re-aligns a corner. Phridon steps across the threshold and breathing grows easier. Brushes up the crumbling line, used long ago to raise another kind of defensive. That wall to the east still stands. The ward was strong. The wall it helped raise resilient. Fortunate omens, when used as an emergency bunker against oddity on the wind.
Phraedon and Caedo both turn back around to see Icarus, a little less deft with the running, stumble to his feet and take a gasping breath. He makes it across the ward-line as another rain of fragments fall down.
The tower slides. Shifts. Shudders. The enormous edifice of rock sheds a little more mass. And somehow, in gross defiance of conventional gravity and architectural dreams, the tower stands. The light rain of crystal fragments cease - most of it was caught on the barrier ward and rebounded or absorbed. This convenient prepared secondary line of defenses simply ensure no harm or exposure could occur.
Sometimes, it all works out.
