The violence along the rest of the line did not cease all at once; it died by degrees, hemorrhaging momentum as the primal terror of the duel consumed everything else.
It began at the fringes nearest the epicenter. The soldiers there, demons who had been howling for blood, and Aethelgard spearmen who had been fighting for their lives found that their rage had simply evaporated.
Continuing to swing an axe at a comrade while a cataclysm was unfolding twenty meters away felt increasingly absurd, almost pathetic. Then, the stillness spread outward like a spreading rumor, a cold shiver running through the ranks.
Demon soldiers lowered their serrated blades. Aethelgard spearmen let their points drift toward the blood-slicked stone.
Within ninety seconds, the northern corridor, a space that had held the largest, most desperate engagement Erosyne had witnessed in four decades, had fallen into a deathly, ringing quiet.
