The Captain reached into the shaft, his fingers closing around the smooth, warm surface of the crimson crystal, and pulled it free.
The anchor point rose out of the darkness in a pulse of dense red light, sitting in his palm like a beating heart while the barrier around the statue flickered and stuttered as the power source was severed.
He was reaching for his claymore to finish it when a spike of stone punched through his shoulder from behind.
The impact was so sudden that his body did not register the pain for a full second, he felt the cool air hit the wound before the fire, a delayed explosion of agony that ripped through his arm and sent the blade tumbling from his grip.
He spun around, his good hand reaching for the weapon, but the thing that had hit him was not about to give him the chance, pulling itself free from a collapsed pillar at the far end of the ruins, stone scraping against stone as it rose.
