The youths donning immaculate garments and gleaming boots, retreating as if fleeing, exited the thicket, abandoning the denizens of the Twentieth Ward—who had huddled together in sheer terror—and a corpse resting upon the earth in their wake. Until the footsteps and the weeping shrieks of the maidens amidst the Botanists faded into absolute silence, this was precisely what those lingering within the thicket presumed.
The exquisite sensations their vessels had yet to acclimate to relinquished their dominion to the former masters of the house: dread and despair. Even Baybars remained paralyzed where he stood; Mel lay solitary upon the grass pulverized beneath his bulk.
