"Mama!" Jasana said in wild terror, struggling under her. "Mama, are you hurt?"

"Cub!" she said in a gasping voice. "I'm pinned! You have to keep going! Go!"

" No!" Jasana shrieked, wriggling out from under her. "I won't leave you, Mama!"

"You stupid cub!" Jesmind shouted at her. "You have to get out of here!"

"I won't leave you!" she screamed, grabbing Jesmind by the arm and pulling with all the might her little body could muster.

Jesmind yanked her paw free, fixing Jasana with a penetrating stare, summoning up all her motherly authority. "I told you to go!" she said in a voice that would brook no disobedience. "You're all that matters, cub! You have to get out!"

"I will not leave you!" she declared adamantly. "Tell me how to get you out!"

She saw that this was argument she was not going to win. She couldn't force Jasana to go, so she realized that the only thing she could do was let her daughter help her in any way she could. "If only we had something to cut my leg off that wouldn't leave a true wound!" she said. She could tear her leg off with raw power, or use her claws to rend the flesh to the point where she could snap her leg off, but both would take time, and time was the one thing that they did not have.

Jasana took on a look of dreadful concentration, and to Jesmind's surprise, the woodcutting axe that they had used in Aldreth appeared in her little paws. "Will this work?"

"How did you do that?" Jesmind asked, forgetting the terrible danger they were in.

"It's Conjuring, Mama," she told her. "I realized I could do Conjuring a few days ago. I was going to use it to get away from the evil man."

Jesmind gave her daughter a fiercely proud look. A Druid! Her little Jasana was a Druid! Just like her father! She took the axe from her daughter, twisted around, and did the deed with one swift blow. She severed her own leg just below the knee, feeling that wild sting of pain, then the angry burning that heralded the rapid growth of a new foot.

As soon as that foot was fleshed out, she scooped up Jasana and raced into the dust once again. The whole pyramid was coming down around their ears, and they absolutely had to get clear as quickly as possible.

She had no idea how long she ran along that passage, wildly dodging falling stones collapsing pillars, and holes that suddenly appeared in the floor. It all blurred together in Jesmind's frenzied mind, a mind consumed by the absolute need to get her daughter out of the pyramid and to safety. But time caught up to her when she saw light ahead of her, piercing the dust-induced gloom of the treacherous passageway, and it caused her to redouble her efforts. Now that she could see the exit-the way out!!!-her utter desperation to reach it caused her to speed up, to move like an arrow shot from a bow, to get her daughter out of the deadly tunnel and get nothing but empty air over them. Her eyes fixed to that light, growing stronger and stronger with each racing step, narrowly avoiding a house-sized block of stone that dropped from the ceiling to crash into the floor behind them, shaking the ground with the might of its impact. Her only sight, her only goal, the very focus of her entire life was that light, and it was with almost religious joy that she suddenly burst from the darkness, burst from the dust, leaping out of the collapsing tunnel just ahead of a shower of stones from the archway that marked its entrance, leaping free of the pyramid and setting foot on lush grass.

She didn't look back. She raced forward with all the speed she could muster, rushing towards a column of smoke where huge winged figures circled over something. They were dragons, and she realized quite unahppily that the dragon that was supposed to be there to pick them up was not there. What had happened? Was it late? Had it already come and not found them? The area around her was empty, all the Goblinoids moving forward to engage the armies that the gods had brought here to deal with them. With Tarrin fighting Val, why weren't the gods doing something about the army? Couldn't they just destroy it? She raced on as the ground shook and rumbled beneath her feet, and she realized to her horror that the fissures that had collapsed the tunnel were also snaking out into the earth itself around them, tearing the very earth apart. Far to her left, a geyser of molten rock erupted from the ground in a deadly spray, flying hundreds of spans into the air to spatter back to the ground, killing anything that it landed upon and setting fire to the lush green grass. She angled away from that horrid display almost unconsciously, and was forced to leap over a ten span wide gash in the earth that stood in her way, a gash that had a terrifying reddish light and powerful heat rising up from it as she sailed over it, so hot it singed the fur on her feet and lower legs.

Gods above! If someone didn't come to get them soon, they may not live to reach safety!

Ahead and to the right, to her terror, she saw a chunk of land that had be be a half a longspan in area suddenly sink down into the earth itself. A gout of fire and magma flew into the air a few seconds later, and an ominous black column of smoke rose over the pit.

Goddess! The land was sinking into the liquid fire that was beneath it!

Not seconds later, a hideously sharp shudder in the ground under her feet told her that the same thing was happening right under her! She saw the earth start to rise before her some twenty spans ahead, felt the lightness in her stomach as she started to fall down under the earth with the land on which she was running, and she leaned forward and sprinted with all her might as the land got higher and higher, leaping hugely when she got close to that rising land. She soared over that edge with plenty of room to spare, and the instant her feet touched solid ground, she fled away from the growing pit behind her blind panic, knowing that a plume of flying lava was going to erupt out of that pit as soon as the earth fell into the lake of liquid fire that was consuming it. If any of it splashed on her, it would mean her instant death!

"Mama!" Jasana screamed in terror, burying her face in her mother's chest.

"I know, cub, I know!" she said in a strangled tone. "Where are you, you damned dragon?" she huffed in a terrified voice. "Goddess, if you're out there, I need your help!" she pleaded as she ran. "If someone doesn't come and get us, we're not going to make it!"

As if in answer to her prayer, a shadow appeared over them and then vanished. She looked up to see a dragon circling over them, one with deep blue scales, but was an order of magnitude smaller than Sapphire. This one couldn't be more than fifty spans long from nose to tail, a truly tiny dragon compared to the immense matriarch who was Tarrin's friend. Jesmind's relief at seeing that scaly beast defied rational explanation. It was as if it were a personal gift from Tarrin's Goddess, a magnificent chariot to whisk them away to safety.

"I'm here!" it called in a breathless voice. "Sorry, a couple of Demons slowed me down!"

It landed quickly and heavily fifty spans before them, hunkering down as they rushed towards it so they could climb on as soon as they reached it. "Quickly, the earth is shifting under me!" the dragon called in concern. "We don't have much time!"

"What's going on?" she demanded as she reached it, jumped up onto its back and in front of its wings, settling between two spines at the base of its neck. She stuck Jasana in front of her, putting her arms around her daughter protectively as the dragon turned quickly on the ground and unfurled its wings.

"The army's pulling out as quickly as it attacked, and the Goblinoids are running right behind them!" the dragon said. "The entire tundra is shaking, and fissures are opening up everywhere! This war is over, biped! Nobody's going to fight on a battlefield like this!"