Dozens of footsteps pounded through the mud as soldiers ran toward them, splashing through puddles and shouting things that were barely words. Captain Venus was at the front, his face caught somewhere between disbelief and desperate hope.
He reached the pile of bodies in the mud and stopped.
"Voss?"
Holden opened one eye. There was mud in it. He blinked.
"Hey, Captain."
Venus looked at the crater where the portal had been, then at the muddy pile of academy students, then back at the crater.
"Where's the portal?"
"Gone."
"Gone how?"
"I broke the thing that was holding it open. Then the dimension collapsed."
Venus stood there with his mouth opening and closing, looking like a man who had been holding his breath for days and had just been told he could finally breathe again.
He turned to the soldiers behind him. They stood in a loose group, covered in mud and blood, wearing the blank expressions of people who had been fighting nonstop for seventy-two hours.
