Everything was falling.
Anna felt that so much happened in that brief instant, that brief instant seemed to stretch infinitely, that brief instant felt like it would never end. First, there was a flash of red, charging from behind her toward that rising smoke. Even with her elf's eyesight, she could only glimpse a red afterimage. She didn't know where it came from, didn't know what it was, didn't know its purpose, only saw a beam of red afterimage. Then time suspended.
The enormous siege hammer was still in mid-air, still in the midst of its descent. Wislin's body vanished into the smoke, along with the red shadow. Just as Anna wanted to fix her eyes on it, trying to capture Wislin's last figure. Because she knew, once they fell, no one could escape from the serpentine army, especially the much-despised Wislin. This glance was the last glance.
