The old man stood only a few steps away from the exit, his eyes moving rapidly between Kael and the dark doorway carved into the beacon behind him. For the briefest moment, the fear on his face looked almost pitiful. He had torn down the bridge, left three people stranded over an abyss, and sprinted until his lungs felt ready to burst, all because he had convinced himself that Kael would be the one to throw him away first. Now, seeing the same enormous bastard standing in front of him with Christy and Hakim still alive and clinging to his back, the old man looked as if the desert itself had decided to mock him.
Then his gaze shifted toward the threshold behind him, and some of that terror drained away.
He was still closer.
