The balconies that had held so many a moment ago now held fewer.
The surviving Calymmians froze in place, their flames guttering with confusion and dread. The Ediacaran Primordial Architects near the top, who had been about to descend with their superior contributions, halted where they stood. The mountain's assembled population collectively absorbed what had just happened, and the absorption was not pretty.
Philemon Aristos stared down from his high balcony.
Both of his heads held expressions that had crossed from rage into something narrower, something that knew what dread felt like from close range. His plasmic golden flames had flickered down several orders of intensity while he watched his Calymmian forces burst across the lower levels of his own mountain. His two mouths opened together, and the voice that came out of them had lost some of the harmonic authority it had carried before.
"What power is this?"
His voice rolled down the slopes, unsteady for the first time.
