Like a gold knife, the shovel cut through the blue energy.
At that moment everything in the room seemed to explode.
I was smashed back against the stone, banging my head hard.
Tanda tumbled across the floor toward the door, coming to rest pressed against the wood. Her eyes were closed and I couldn’t tell if she was hurt or not.
Aahz was pressed against the stone wall beside me.
Forces like I had never felt before held me in position as the gold cut through the flow just as we had planned. So far it was working. I couldn’t believe it.
But then the shovel kept growing and growing as more and more gold poured into it. Something was wrong. Tanda should have unlinked the gold in the shield we built from the other gold around the area when the shield hit the energy. But there was clearly still more and more gold pouring into that shield. It had cut the side-flow, but now it was falling slowly toward the main flow, cutting into it as well as it kept growing.
Then the room seemed to expand outward and the pressure of my head against the stone sent me down into a blackness I didn’t much like.
“Skeeve!”
“Skeeve! Can you hear me?”
The voice sounded far off, like it was coming from over a hill. I didn’t care. It was still dark out and I wanted to sleep some more.
“Skeeve!”
The voice was getting closer, or so it seemed. I was in blackness. Pitch-black blackness. I tried to open my eyes, but everything still remained black. Every muscle in my body ached, and somehow I seemed to have fallen out of bed.