It was there—at that "ground zero"—that the really freaky things were happening. There, the air glowed with such intensity—not brilliance, as such, but intensity ... and there is a difference—that it could almost have been solid: gases chilled to the point where they crystallized, and then the resulting crystal lit from within. Above ground zero the roiling, turbulent cloud deck bulged downward, as though the center of the glow were a partial vacuum, drawing air and clouds into itself. Static discharges lashed from point to point within the cloud deck, and from the clouds to the ground. They flashed through and among the dozens of guardian spirits that still swirled in their approach-avoidance display around the Dance and around ground zero itself. My ears were filled with the howling and wailing and gibbering of those spirits, with the titanic whipcracks of the static discharges, with the low-pitched, fundamental thrumming that conducted itself as well through the rocks as it did through the air.