As soon as Madame de Cedoux summons the flames, the mistlike apparition's mouth (?) gapes wide open and quivers in a silent cry. It dives sharply forward, circles closely around her flames and careens straight into her first, where it dissolves in a showy explosion of blue flame and sparks.

The flames do not cast any heat. Neither do the sparks -- in fact, they feel like a brush of icy cool air, like the frosty breath of a winter's night.

And as quick as it happens, the mist-thing is gone, nothing but a faint trail of glimmering particles twisting through the corridors this way and that, a serpentine trail marking a beacon back to its bearer. The trail lasts for but a few moments, as now a brand new flickering mist-sentinel drifts by the nearest window. There it hovers, taking up exactly the station where the previous creature left off. And it seems to be terribly preoccupied with that flame-fist the woman wields.

The second sentinel waits and watches the Madame, silent, inscrutable.