(Elizabeth Aurelius POV)
It came the length of my corridor without hurry, dragging its broken leg, and the walls I had made stood on either side of it and did nothing at all.
I was still holding them up. I had nothing left to make them do.
Then my hand slid on the flagstones, and the structure let go of me.
It didn't fall all at once. Stone never does. The walls I had shaped thinnest sagged first, and the overhangs cracked along their roots. Behind the creature, the corridor came down in a slow grey roar of dust.
Stone came down across its back. It didn't shake it off. It walked out from under the stone and kept coming.
Some of what I had made stayed up. Walls stood crooked all around me with nothing holding them now but their own weight. Above the ruin of the corridor, a shelf of cracked stone leaned out over nothing and didn't fall.
A shard had cut my forehead when the walls came down. Blood ran warm into my left eye. I blinked it away, and more came.
