It caught me in the back. Fire from the fuel and the oil. Glass from the windows.

[The compulsion not to hurt him sits on one side of a set of Nald'thal's scales, balanced against the determination not to hide things from him. But he knows what that breath means, and where the panic that precedes it derives from, and shifts to reach up and touch the side of Ryn's face with a gentle drag of fingertips down his cheek.]

And to think after all that, we even still succeeded in our mission. The one we — the one we failed came later.