With a spasmodic, infinitely dreadful movement the
Disk closed--
And closed upon her!
Norhala was gone--was shut within it. Crushed to the
pent fires of its crystal heart.
I heard a sobbing, agonized choking--knew it was I who
sobbed. Against me I felt Ruth's body strike, bend in
convulsive arc, drop inert.
The slender steeple of the cones drooped sending its
faceted coronet shattering to the floor. The Mount melted.
Beneath the flooding radiance sprawled Keeper and the
great inert Globe that was the Goddess woman's sepulcher.
The crater filled with the pallid luminescence. Faster
and ever faster it poured down into the Pit. And from
all the lesser craters of the smaller cones swept silent
cataracts of the same pale radiance.
The City began to crumble--the Monster to fall.
Like pent-up waters rushing through a broken dam the
gleaming deluge swept over the valley; gushing in steady
torrents from the breaking mass. Over the valley fell a vast
silence. The lightnings ceased. The Metal Hordes stood
rigid, the shining flood lapping at their bases, rising swiftly
ever higher.
Now from the sinking City swarmed multitudes of its
weird luminaries.
Out they trooped, swirling from every rent and gap--
orbs scarlet and sapphire, ruby orbs, orbs tuliped and irised
--the jocund suns of the birth chamber and side by side
with them hosts of the frozen, pale gilt, stiff rayed suns.
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