They sailed skyward from bubble to bubble, the bubbles popping almost instantly as thousands of glass shards rained upon them, Delaney summoning three, four, five bubbles just to put down one they could hit before it burst, each bubble weaker than the last. Like vibrant festoons the staircases collapsed, the floors of each story dented inward, debris rained down, Delaney had to summon bubbles above to protect them, and bubbles to protect the bubbles they needed to hit, so many bubbles, fucking bubbles, why had it been bubbles all this time, what kind of barrier was a fucking bubble, bubbles popped, that's all they did, the words "bubble" and "pop" were inextricable, fused at the hip, one of two verbs you could adequately apply to bubble, the other being "float," pop and float and pop and float, up and up into the upper echelons of the Pillar of the Plains, the whole city spread in endless sprawl in three hundred and sixty directions around them, Delaney's arms wrapped around Sloan's torso, altering direction with each jump, a hundred tiny lacerations across her skin from all the glass, and the archon scraping after them, its light like a rising pool always at their feet no matter how fast they leapt.

(Chapter 27)