They knelt to her.
The entire front rank of the Sentinel army had gone down on the black obsidian bedrock and stayed there. Towering figures of geometric light and dark iron, every one of them, with their massive heads bowed toward the soft, mortal shape of the mother of dragons.
I didn't breathe out. I kept my hand locked around Wren's hilt and stepped slowly into the gap they had opened.
We walked down the silent avenue of kneeling giants. The air between the iron constructs smelled of ozone and deep winter, cold enough to sting the inside of my nose. Their geometric grids hummed with a quiet, waiting latency, but not one of them raised a finger to tidy us into the void. Ilse's math had gotten us into the formation. Tiamat was the only reason we were walking out of it.
Devant strolled past the bowing iron legs, turning his dented tin cup over in his hands. He wasn't hurrying, and an army of iron giants that could erase him with a tap didn't seem to bother him in the slightest.
