The “kill” captions made their first appearance 33 chapters ago exactly. Another fun callback.

Sundar knows enough to stand behind the magick users, but he’s still ready to buy Syr’Nj a few seconds if need be.

E-Merl, intriguingly, is not using his usual bag of tricks but joining Clair in her elemental wind magick. Trying to coordinate their defense makes sense, and the circlet is close enough to general wind manipulation that it’s not too much of a jump for him, especially if he’s following her lead. But this also foreshadows a time when E-Merl won’t need the “training wheels” of his talismans to cast combat spells. We’ll see him develop that in general terms over his remaining appearances.