The Ivory formation came apart at the park line four minutes before anything reached it, which is the detail every account since has led with. Nothing had touched them at that point except the equipment their own guild had issued them that morning.
Thirty-one hunters were standing on open grass between Blackforge and a corridor that forty thousand animals had now walked twice.
The order had not come from Regina Vance, and she has been careful in every filing since to say so in plain words. It came from four guild figures at sponsor level who went over her head, then put her name at the foot of the deployment sheet.
They had been sent out to stand against Vell rather than against the tide, which is what the sheet actually says.
Luna read the second page of it first, as she does with everything, so she had the deployment clause before she had the preamble.
[Ivory Guild: deployed. Target designation: Blackforge command.]
