“At our wedding, ingenuous child!⁠ ⁠… The scorpion opens the ball.⁠ ⁠… But that will do!⁠ ⁠… You won’t have the scorpion? Then I turn the grasshopper!”

“Erik!”

“Enough!”

I was crying out in concert with Christine. M. de Chagny was still on his knees, praying.

“Erik! I have turned the scorpion!”

Oh, the second through which we passed!

Waiting! Waiting to find ourselves in fragments, amid the roar and the ruins!

Feeling something crack beneath our feet, hearing an appalling hiss through the open trapdoor, a hiss like the first sound of a rocket!