The world exploded around Min. There was a flash of light of every hue, so bright it dazzled her eyes, accompanied by a loud screeching sound that went on and on, driving into her eardrums. The ground shook as the whole crown ring trembled. A burst of willpower like she'd never felt before smashed against her, knocking her flat onto her face. Fear turned her insides to water—a foreign fear mixing with her own terror of the unknown.

  The noise died. Min blinked. She still saw purple and violet spots, but her eyes returned. She forced herself up onto her hands and feet and looked around. Everyone else had apparently experienced the same thing. The members of the Brotherhood all around her lay groaning and twitching. One woman's face was to her, her eyes open and staring, a little trickle of blood draining from her mouth. Min knew she was dead.

  Min got to her knees. Around her, one or two others stirred. Where was her grandfather? Fear filled Min, giving her the courage to stand. She got to her feet as new cries and wailing broke out all around. The rumbling was still going on. It was like being on a boat in the lake during a storm. The very tower itself was swaying, but that was absurd. The Riceflower never budged, even in the fiercest storm.

  Min took an unsteady step toward the table where her grandfather was seated. He was sprawled out on it, half out of his chair. As she watched, he slumped slowly to the ground, his arms dangling limp. She struggled toward him. Each step was agony as the shaking continued and the screaming went on.

  Min made it to his side and knelt. He stared up at her, and to her immense relief, he blinked. Thank the ancestors he was alive. His mouth opened as he tried to form words, but no sound came out. Or maybe Min's ears hadn't recovered.

  She shook her head. "I don't know what's wrong," she said in answer to the obvious question in his face. She got an arm under his shoulders and helped him up to a sitting position. Some of the Brotherhood were getting to their knees. The only two on their feet so far were Brother Stone and Disciple Sho. Stone looked toward her.

  "What do we do?"

  "Help the others," she ordered and turned back to her grandfather. The rumbling went on and on. Should they try to flee? Was the Riceflower itself in danger? What had happened?

  There was a new screech and a sound like metal rupturing above her. She looked up as light flared, and suddenly it was as though the full moon had risen, but in two halves. A pair of brilliant lights, each nearly as bright as the sun, though far smaller, hung overhead.

  A sizzling bolt of multicolored light connected one to the other for an instant, and then they broke apart. Min realized impossibly what she was seeing: two of the prisms hanging in the sky overhead. And from the look of it, as the second light hurled a bolt at the first, they were fighting. This wasn't good.

  "We need to..." She paused, because what should she say? They needed to get to safety, but where was safe when prisms were fighting in the air over your head? "We need to find Chang-li," she said to herself more than her grandfather. He might know what to do, more than anyone else here would.

  She helped her grandfather up into the chair. He leaned heavily against the table, shaking his head. "You need to go," he said. "Get our people to the Brotherhood Hall. I'll be fine. Leave Brother Stone."

  She shook her head. That was no good. She wasn't going to abandon him here. More cries and shouts filled the air, and now people began running past the square. They were heading for the nearest ramp downward. There were only a few ramps off of the Crown Ring, and with the number of people who had been present for the festival tonight, getting caught in that crowd could be a death sentence.

  Instead, Min, still shaky, left her grandfather and headed for Brother Stone. He was helping more Brotherhood people to their feet.

  "How many of our acolytes are here?" she demanded. "Ones who have taken their first steps already?"

  "Most of them are here," Stone said, looking about. “Somewhere.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  "Get them all together.” She paused, because a man had just detached himself from the fleeing throng and was making his way toward her. It was Noren. The Grandmaster looked grim, his robes shaking as he walked, his hair coming out of its tight coil on the top of his head.

  She hurried gladly to meet him. "What's happening?"

  "A great deal, I fear," Noren said. "But the most important is we're about to have a tower eruption. That's the cause of the shaking.”

  Min's heart sank. There had been a small tower eruption from one of the lower floors when she was a child. She was too young to have been exposed to the details, but she remembered the days spent huddled with her mother in the Governor's Palace on this very ring, waiting in terror for any word from the soldiers and servants until a cultivator had come to put an end to it.

  "Which floor?"

  "All of them," Noren said grimly. "Where's your grandfather?"

  Min led him over. The Patriarch of the Oaken Band Brotherhood looked up weakly. "You're the man I hired to head the Morning Mist Sect?" he asked.

  "I'm head of the Morning Mist Sect," Noren replied.

  "Good. I need you. Help me get my people to safety."

  Noren held up a hand, cutting him off. "I have more to worry about here tonight. There's a tower eruption going on. Nowhere will be safe. The middle floors that the bridal squads have more or less cleared out will be safest, so your Brotherhood Hall and all there are more likely to survive than those in this ring or the lowest third of the tower."

  Fear gripped Min again. "How do we stop this?"

  "There are cultivators enough here to put an end to it if they organize themselves, but with a Prism battle going on," Noren looked skyward. "They're going to want to keep their heads down. No, you're on your own for this."

  "Can you get word to Chang-li?" Min asked as she instinctively felt that Noren, while not intending to stand beside them, wasn't planning to flee.

  "Yes, but I won't be telling him to come to your aid. He and his friends have more important task here tonight. Your focus needs to be survival." Noren snapped. "Stone, Shou, Cui, Yang,” he barked, and they appeared from out of the crowd, drawn by his shout. "Gather the acolytes. It's better to make a stand here than to go anywhere else. You'll need to teach everyone here to practice cycling Harmony of Soul."

  Min didn't recognize that pattern. Brother Stone apparently did. He frowned. "Why?"

  "If they keep it up intently enough, the ravening tower beasts that are about to explode out of the nearest entrance will probably overlook them. As long as they don't do something foolish, like run about screaming. Get everyone inside one of these buildings and teach them. They should all have a core full of lux thanks to that elaborate display by the prisms earlier. If they don't, don't allow them in. They'll draw the beasts toward the rest of you. I know it sounds like a hard thing," he told Min, who was opening her mouth to object, "but it's the only way anyone here is going to make it through the night. Lady Min, you are in charge." He turned to go.

  "Wait," Min said. "Where are you going?"

  "To make sure there is a sect of Morning Mist come the dawn," Noren said, and he was gone.

  Brother Stone turned to her for help. "Lady Min, should we do as he said?”

  "I don't have a better plan," Min said. "Get everyone inside. Teach them the pattern. Um," she added, "but teach me first."

  Stone demonstrated the technique for her and her grandfather. It was simple, barely an addition to the Way of the Faithful, but as Min cycled it, her lux felt like a comforting blanket all through her.

  With her encouragement, her grandfather cycled. "I'm much too old for this sort of nonsense," he grumbled. But he obeyed, and after a minute or two, he sat up, looking refreshed. "Maybe this cultivation business does have something to it. I must say, I never got that out of cycling before."

  "Having a core full of lux makes a difference," Min agreed. "Inside the tea shop, grandfather. Everyone else will listen once you're there." She hoped she was right as she went to help Brother Stone calm the others.

  By the time they had the Brotherhood more or less listening and moving into shelter, terrified people were thronging into the square, perhaps attracted by the aura of peace all around.

  "Go," Min urged them. "You need to flee. This ring isn't safe."

  "There's a crush on the ramps," one woman sobbed. She was clutching a child to her legs, a little boy with eyes wide as saucers. "We can't get past that way."

  Min started to tell her to keep trying when a fierce roar split the air, a new one this time. Her blood froze. That must be a tower beast on the loose. What were they going to do?

  "Get inside," Min said. “You'll have to cycle. Listen to the cultivators at the door." She allowed more refugees past the entrance to the tower and ordered the Acolytes to start constructing a barricade across the front. “Brother Stone?”

  “Yes, elder sister?”

  “You make sure everyone masters the cycling pattern the Grandmaster told us. If they can’t…” she hesitated. “Then you tell me, and I’ll handle it.” She desperately hoped the refugees would manage. It wasn’t too different from Way of the Faithful. The little boy’s scared face floated in front of her eyes. One, or many…

  She would make the call, if it came to that.

  “What about us, Lady Min?” Acolyte Nai called as he helped pile furniture into a puny barricade that wouldn't stop an angry man, let alone a ravening tower beast.

  “Us?” Min asked, as she changed her cycling pattern to another pattern and conjured her lux bow. “We prepare to fight."