The silence following the closing of the whale's jaws was not an absence of noise, but an amputation of reality. Lloyd remained with his arm outstretched, fingers still curved into the void where, a millisecond before, Alice's presence had anchored his world.
The mist that milky, mindless shroud flowed in to fill the gap left by his servant, as if she had never been there, as if she were a footnote in the chronicle of an infinite nothingness.
Lloyd' s fury was not a volcanic eruption. It was a condensation of absolute cold, a hydrostatic pressure that collapsed his chest and, by a law of violent compensation, ignited his magic.
"You disgusting monsters! I' m going to burn you alive until there' s not a trace left of your pathetic existence!"
The air began to screech. The Primordial Fire, that red flame that burns not by oxidation but by the negation of the false, began to pour from his pores.
