Page 170 of Cast in Conflict

To the side were buildings—or what might have been buildings; there seemed to be an organized structure to them but they certainly didn’t look like the streets of Elantra, high or low. She was certain magic must have been involved in the building—and the maintenance, if any was still being done—because normal buildings would have collapsed in all kinds of disastrous ways otherwise.

But the weeds were strange, too. Almost everything was; it was like reality but slightly off. And as she gazed down the street, it was much more than slightly off.

She clenched her fist, and felt—although she couldn’t see him—Mandoran’s hand. She couldn’t feel Terrano’s arms, couldn’t hear Bellusdeo or Emmerian’s roars. Wherever she was now was not the same place that she had been. But Mandoran was here.

Mandoran was almost here.

She shifted her stance, bent into her knees, and pulled. There was no resistance: Mandoran immediately fell into the street. So did Kaylin. She didn’t let go of his hand.

“I don’t think we should be here,” Mandoran said as he looked at his surroundings.

“Tell me what you see and don’t let go of my hand.”

“Why not?”

“Just tell me what you see.”

“We’re standing in a...street. There’s something like stone beneath our feet and most of the buildings look like they’re about to collapse on our heads.”

She nodded. “Okay, so we’re mostly seeing the same thing.”

“Weren’t you supposed to get me out?”

“Shut up. Can you hear the cohort?”

He nodded, but hesitantly.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“It’s a yes but...their voices are less distinct.”

“Blurry? Fuzzy?”

“Not clear. Or not as clear as they normally are. Why exactly are we here? Where is this?”

Kaylin had a guess. She didn’t want to say it out loud because she wanted it to be wrong in every conceivable way.

Mandoran grimaced. “How are we going to get out?”

That was the question, wasn’t it?

“How did you get here in the first place?” the Barrani cohort member demanded.

“I don’t know—I was trying to listen to your voice.”

Both brows rose in the center.

Kaylin tried again. “I could hear you—but you were fuzzy. It’s like...like your words were caught in some kind of tiny space and the echoes made it hard to distinguish individual syllables.”

“And now?”

“Now I can hear you easily.”

“Which...doesn’t tell me how you wound up here.”

“Because some of the blurry words I heard, some of the echoes, weren’t actually from you. They weren’t your words. You weren’t speaking them. I needed to hear them more clearly than I could hear you.”

“And?”

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