It was a cauldron of chameleon flame.

It seethed with the Hordes battling over the remaining walls and floor.

But around the crystal base of the cones was an open zone into which none broke.
In that wide ring, girdling the shimmering fantasy like a circled sanctuary, were but three forms.

One was the wondrous Disk of jeweled fires I have called the Metal Emperor; the second was the sullen fired cruciform of the Keeper.
The third was Norhala! She stood at the side of that weird master of hers--or was it after all the servant?
Between them and the Keeper's planes gleamed the gigantic T-shaped tablet of countless rods which controlled the activities of the cones; that had controlled the shifting of the vanished shields; that manipulated too, perhaps, the energies of whatever similar but smaller cornute ganglia were scattered throughout the City and one of which we had beheld when the Emperor's guards had blasted Ventnor.
Close was Norhala in the lenses--so close that almost, it seemed, I could reach out and touch her.

The flaming hair streamed and billowed above her glorious head like a banner of molten floss of coppery gold; her face was a mask of wrath and despair; her great eyes blazed upon the Keeper; her exquisite body was bare, stripped of every shred of silken covering.
From streaming tresses to white feet an oval of pulsing, golden light nimbused her.