Chapter 423
The smoke was too thick to see through, and she choked her way through it. She stumbled over rubble to come to a clear spot, and then even her coughs choked off as she stared in horror. Verchiel said they'd been through this before, but he was wrong. It hadn't been anything like this. She was in what had once been the fountain room, but only rubble and gurgling water remained of the fountain. Two of the walls were completely gone. Through one she could see the neighboring rooms, through the other the foundation and then up and over to the street and the world beyond. Heavy black smoke billowed through the fractures up into the starry sky and street lights shed the only illumination.
The curving stairs were ruins and she could dimly see a pile of rubble where the guard's station had been on the level above. She could only imagine what was left of the rest of the building; it probably wasn't much.