Everything seemed to hang still for an instant as the spear flew--it shot right past Yoshi and the general, both of them turning to follow it in surprise.

It landed, quite easily, lodged in the Cynn of Aetheri's chest.

The wood back of the chair cracked audibly in two as the spear cleared Cynn Numair's heart and exited through his shoulder blade. There was no scream, nothing but a quick tense of every muscle he had.

"Holy shit," Liya whispered. The spear had split through him so easily; the red-headed man smiled smugly.

There was a millisecond's pause, and then a loud hissing noise, like air escaping a tire. For a moment, Liya couldn't work out where it was coming from, but then the red-headed man's face fell into one of tight panic.

"No," he murmured.

Thick blue-green smoke was leaking from the Cynn's chest, around the spot the spear had entered him. It was followed by tiny prongs of bright blue-green lightning, lunging out of his wound and darting up the length of the spear.

The hissing noise got louder and louder as the Cynn's face lifted again to look at the red-headed man, eyes blazing. The smoke got thicker and the lightning more excited as the Cynn wrapped a hand around the spear's shaft, as though to pull it out.

"No!" the red-headed man shouted.

The Cynn's tunic, Liya realized, was dissolving. And so was the rest of him, the thicker the smoke got.

In a matter of seconds he'd unraveled into a smear of color and smoke, and lightning that wriggled over the broken chair. All that was left was the brooch that had pinned his tunic to his shoulder; it fell and bounced off the arm of the chair with a soft clink.