And Ult Tower, around him, flickered and turned golden. The walls, the air…

Everything had a golden hue, as if he was peering through gilded goggles. "Taeauna!" he shouted. "Tay, I'm coming!"

In the mirror, Taeauna's head jerked up, and she stared around, wide-eyed in hope, for all Falconfar as if she could hear him.

Against his palm, the orb suddenly started to burn. Around him, the golden hue blazed up brightly, until he could no longer see the walls, the mirror, the very floor under his feet…

There was nothing under his boots, nothing at all! Though the orb was painfully hot and getting hotter, the air around had acquired a chill and was moving, the faintest of whistles rising past his ears… Was he falling? Hurtling down to his death, smashed on unseen rocks below? It didn't seem as if he was descending…

"Taeauna," Rod snarled, clinging to his last image of her, head lifted in hope, looking around for her. It didn't feel as if he was falling at all. Around him there were no walls now-nothing but a fading golden glow, a radiance as thick as mist that hid his surroundings from him, yet showed him space, empty air, further away from him than the walls of Ult Tower around the magic mirror…

He was rushing along through a great nothingness, as the golden glow around him ebbed into silver; a strained and thinning hue that he could see through now, could see a golden, roiling cloud ahead, a cloud he was rushing to meet at a speed that made him blink and swallow.

He was still swallowing when he raced into the depths of that cloud, surging golden flows of energy that slowed him and thrust against his arrow-swift flight, shoving him and buffeting him… as if in a dream, he became aware that some of the enspelled armor he was wearing had flared into angry radiances of its own, and was melting.