The ranks would have vanished like dissipating smoke as soon as the new recruits realized that a military career was not all heroic fun.
The front ranks vanished, and the line broke, attacking the ship that hung above them now.
The lower ranks of floors vanished in the flash and the gouting smoke and rubble; the upper floors dropped, settling onto the ruin of the lower, then continuing to collapse in a slow motion cascade of crumbling architecture.
Nature's army had thinned, the leading ranks had vanished beneath the pine forests on Mantern's lower slopes, only the late-comers strode across the Causeway Fields, weary from long journeys.
A good trader who has accumulated power with a few years of big profits can become fearful that his rank and prestige might all vanish in a bad year.
If the rank, the μ-invariant, and the λ-invariant of a finitely generated module all vanish, the module is finite (and conversely); in other words its underlying abelian group is a finite abelian p-group.
That high rank may vanish soon.
The two outer ranks simply vanished, stamped out of existence under the Zungans' feet or smashed down by whirling spears.
The last rank of spears had vanished down the road.