But it wasn't the destruction that terrified her. It was the numbers.
When she had left, there were about seven Syvrak.
Now, the hall was a sea of them.
Dozens of the creatures were crawling over the walls and the floor, a horde of diverse, elemental nightmares.
Some were small, twenty-foot scavengers; others were sixty-foot behemoths that breathed fire or spat molten rock.
In the center of the hall, surrounded by a ring of jagged ice, was Soren.
He was still fighting, but the strain was visible in the set of his shoulders. His ice was everywhere, massive barriers, lances of frozen air, walls that were being chipped away by the relentless assault. He was fighting on all sides, his power being pushed to its absolute limit.
He was breathing hard, his skin moist and a thin trail of blood running from a cut on his temple. He wasn't defeated, but he was being worn down by the sheer weight of the horde.
There were too many. Even for an Emperor, there were too many.
