"Six days of a siege. Two hundred and thirty people who stayed at the walls when leaving was available to them because leaving meant a village got no warning and no time."
The rubble field behind them continued settling, with small sounds of debris finding its final positions.
"And at the end?" Maudlina asked.
"The binding that held them here," Jake said.
"A general who'd been waiting a long time for someone to walk in and ask the right questions." He felt the fragment's warmth in his closed fist.
"He asked to be freed."
Maudlina was quiet for a moment, running whatever internal process she ran when information arrived that required reorganizing existing structures to accommodate.
"The artifact," she said.
"The thing you're holding—that's what it was in the dungeon?"
"It's a fragment of a god's—"
Suddenly, he felt a sharp, hot, stinging-like pain.
AHh!
The fragment burned.
