When Ting reappears, she's immediately trying to get a feel for the maze, seeing if she can get ahold of the temporal gate she'd come through, just...anything.

Ting's senses should double back on themselves at the point where the gate used to be, as if a mirror has been placed there.

She wrinkles her nose. Oh...great. The "sixth house" is in trouble. Also, she's in a lot of trouble.

A while later - perhaps fifteen minutes - a power source wells up not too far from the house.  There's a divine aura to it, but the center of it boils with antimatter energy. Also, it feels a lot like Meir'cillus.

After a number of failed attempts to contact her mother or anyone, Ting is in the kitchen, sitting cross-legged on the counter and waiting for some tea to steep to calm her nerves. She has had one useful idea, though, and is quickly scripting a tough line of spells.

Stiffens, just seconds before really sensing Xen'tal. Lower lip quivers a little, thinking of how her aunt and Yoru had looked just a few minutes ago, then stills it, breathing in slowly. Breathes out. Scootches closer to the wall, a claw drawing a line of blood across her hand, and she lays it to the wall, murmuring something. Trying to activate the fourth of the compound's five levels of defenses.

A few moments pass. Xen'tal's signature seems stalled.

And then the shield strains.

And then it cracks.

All this as Makyon wonders why he can't get back to Deru to warn Ting.

Ting's eyes snap open. She grabs her spell and her teapot and sets off sprinting for the lower levels, the ones designed against Sheran Tanru. Hopes she'll have time.

Meanwhile, the moment the second of the multiple shields cracks, the entirety of the third bursts finishes shattering it and bursts outward in a truly cataclysmic assault, one inspired by the Dome of years past but immeasurably more powerful, the one that Felina had warned Moorn against when he was trying to crack them during the demonic attacks.

Nothing happens, for a while. Calmness. Tranquility, even.

And then Makyon and Xen'tal Yerosyn appear in practically the same flash of light. Xen'tal stands, annoyed, bleed from a cut on his cheek and aching all over, but uninjured. He dusts off his riding suit, a snow white suit of tactical armor reinforced by Felara's spells. He's had it for years, and the thing conforms so fully to his muscles it's practically a second skin. Over that, his equally white cloak, with a black underside, falls most of the way around his body. Unlike the old Meir'cillus, the only black he wears is the reinforced patch over his left eye, and the crack claws on each of his hands. 

He's still short, though.

Makyon peers up at him from the ground. The slip mage had caught the edge of the attack and lies prostrate, eyes half open, every rib broken, every humerus shattered and most of his face burned. He hardly looks like the same man.

Xen'tal looks down at him.

Then promptly ignores him, moving to search the house.

Ting, breathing hard and hopefully covered by the many cloaks on this level, is busily finishing up some complex psychic tricks on one of her mother's several creepy, soulless flesh-and-blood golems. It's been re-shaped to look exactly like her. That part was easy. The hard part is transferring parts of her energy signature over. But she thinks she's done. Breathes out. The golem is wearing a white coat that completely hides its energy. Her "grandfather" had made both twins one in the course of the conflict for safety, much like the one he'd made for his own daughter so long ago. Of course, Ting's is more stylish.

"Okay," she tells the golem... "one, two, three!" This said as she very quickly snaps the cloak from its shoulders to her own. "Now, run off and hide! Don't let the creepy short guy catch you. Use the shields in these rooms to hide behind!

And the Ting-golem, perfectly expressionless, obediently runs to do as bidden.

The real version breathes out, and pulls her hood over her face. This is the real deal. This is big time stuff, and there's no one to help her. Runs off in the other direction. Every good shelter has a back door.

It doesn't take long for Xen'tal to get a fix on them. That hint of energy, a slight alteration in the shields to compensate... yes.

From the front door of the house, the divine drow holds out one hand in the direction of the discrepancy - the Ting golem. Runes of five colors form, one at each fingertip, and move down to the center of his open palm.

His eyes narrow a little. The runes fade into gray.

From his vantage point, lying near the pond, Makyon can feel his ears popping from the blast's pure concussive force. A psionic beam twirls and wraps around an antimatter projectile, ringed in white-hot flames that pierce ground, earth, and house en route to the shields. This is the weapon he'd used against Mara-kuru.

The golem looks up with those expressionless eyes at the approaching attack. It's been given no order to defend...though the real Ting remotely throws a shield in front of it for realism. Needless to say, it shatters the instant it exists.

The hole seared straight through the powerful house is immense, and trails far, far into the earth below, faintly echoing with the shattered energy of the destroyed golem. From outside, the effect is obvious...it creaks slightly, and then what's left of that entire wing collapses into what was previously one of the most secure locations in the mortal universe.

Xen'tal closes his fist. The runes can be seen flowing back up his fingertips, lodging in the last knuckles before winking out of sight. Then his hand opens again. He scans the area, listening, and watching.

Satisfied that Ting is either vapor, or fleeing, Xen'tal winks out of sight in a black spiral of smoke, leaving Makyon right where he is.

Ting looses a shaky breath when he disappears, but doesn't dare to move yet. She's pinned under rubble...hurt, but not badly. Nothing troublesome for a creature of her ability. Coughs a small cough in the black, dust-choked air.

Oh. So that's how her aunt had been defeated.

After a couple of minutes, a small light flicks on, and she resumes scripting the orignal spell she'd been working on, snuffling occasionally against pain but relieved to be alive. What eventually coaxes her out of hiding isn't finishing the spell or thinking that it's safe. It's the overwhelming feeling that she's not goign to like the effects of not going to the pond. She pushes herself out from the stones she's trapped beneath and carefully, very carefully, folds her spell into a pocket and tightens the jacket to her throat.

About a minute later, a small, clawed hand reaches up through the earth beneath Makyon, wraps around his wrist, and pulls it down, holding it there gently as it alights with the type of healing energy she's long known to be best suited for him.

It's not instant, but before long he begins to stir. Moves his head.

And then abruptly shifts away, to his feet, looking around desprately. Defensively, even. He's completely disoriented, unaware of anything that's gone on in the last few minutes.

Ting closes her eyes. He's confused...well. Maybe that's good. She's not sure he wouldn't tell Xen'tal she was alive. Says nothing. Just pulls her coat to her more tightly under the earth, and tries to head off to Istan Aiga.

There's nothing to stop her. Makyon, however, gathers himself as quickly as he can and tries to follow. He has to tell her. Not that she doesn't already know.