What was that?

Between the three of us and them was a ring of curdled moon flames,
swirling about the Shining One and its priestess, pressing in upon
them, enfolding them!

And within it I glimpsed the faces of the Three--implacable,
sorrowful, filled with a supernal power!

Sparks and flashes of white flame darted from the ring, penetrating
the radiant swathings of the Dweller, striking through its pulsing
nucleus, piercing its seven crowning orbs.

Now the Shining One's radiance began to dim, the seven orbs to dull;
the tiny sparkling filaments that ran from them down into the
Dweller's body snapped, vanished! Through the battling nebulosities
Yolara's face swam forth--horror-filled, distorted, inhuman!

The ranks of the dead-alive quivered, moved, writhed, as though each
felt the torment of the Thing that had enslaved them. The radiance
that the Three wielded grew more intense, thicker, seemed to expand.
Within it, suddenly, were scores of flaming triangles--scores of eyes
like those of the Silent Ones!

And the Shining One's seven little moons of amber, of silver, of blue
and amethyst and green, of rose and white, split, shattered, were
gone! Abruptly the tortured crystal chimings ceased.

Dulled, all its soul-shaking beauty dead, blotched and shadowed
squalidly, its gleaming plumes tarnished, its dancing spirals stripped