Tabitha's sword crashes deafeningly against Xin's Sihedron, only to have her repulsed by some invisible force that flings her back against the ground leaving her stunned.  Xin turns around in annoyance, but upon realising that the paladin tried to directly attack his artifact flings an open hand at Tabitha and squeezes his hand into a closed fist.  Almost instantly, something snaps tightly around her neck, lifting her off the ground until her feet are dangling almost a foot from the ground as she feels herself being throttled by unknown forces, choking the life out of her.<br/><br/>"Little fool, did you think you could really harm the Sihedron with your paltry little sword?" he snarls.  Though angry, there is a tinge of amusement in his voice.  Behind him, the floating artifact crackles and Tabitha can see spidery cracks beginning to spread from the one that Caeldon made.<br/><br/>"I should have you quartered for the effrontery; yet you are woman fair to look upon – I may yet keep you for a slave of my slaves!" Swinging around, whatever force holds Tabitha aloft moves with him, now leaving her dangling in the open space before the pyramid, above the recovering crusaders and Xin's minions whilst the master smiles maliciously.  "Once they are done with you, you will be so-"<br/><br/>Behind Xin, the artifact flares again, this time streaking harmless silver electrical discharge, and it is to this that Xin stops to turn his attention to.  He opens his mouth as though to say something when the disruption turns violent, the static arcs turning into stabbing lightning bolts that smashes rocks and stone stairs and blasts explosions that sends screaming men and cultists flying.  Abruptly, the wizard turns his attention back to Tabitha, glaring balefully: "You–!"<br/><br/>Flinging his hand sends Tabitha flying through the air with enough force that it will surely break every bone in her body if she crashes into a wall or the ground below.  Yet Tabitha abruptly looses momentum in mid-air, and Tabitha's course changes from a hurtling rocket into a aimless floating, as though gravity has suddenly stopped working.  Upon the stairs of the pyramid, Xin is in the middle of a tempest of lightning, seemingly unaffected and utterly furious.  The silvered lightning is now intermixed with angry lances of red and green and purple.  The angry display suddenly caves in upon itself and then, it all explodes.<br/><br/>In the moments before the expanding wave of multicoloured energy washes over her, some spining fragment of the shattered Sihedron slices through the air, piercing Tabitha's armour and embedding itself in her shoulder and then, the unleashed power of the destroyed artifact envelopes her in its fiery conflagration and the world turns black as she loses consciousness.