She drew her serash with her remaining hand, blade screaming through the air, slashing through the leader of the trio. The foul creature split in half, each piece vanishing into mist. The other two swerved to avoid the same fate, turning back toward her rapidly to attack from either side. She stabbed the first through the head, flattening herself to the rock as the other slid past, wings nicking her back but not carving deep enough for it to be more than a flesh wound. She offered it a slash of her own before it could retreat. She was rewarded with two more explosions of dark mist.

The battle had only just begun, the darkness suddenly filled with no fewer than a dozen winged enemies. She growled and swung her blade.

Ludo

It took him a few seconds to realize what was happening, his eyes refusing to believe what his instincts had already discerned. The walls were closing in. Which meant the crystal spikes were also closing in, pincering together like a massive, fanged mouth with him stuck in the middle.

“Ludo?”

He turned toward his name, mouth falling open. “Gado?”

“Ludo, I’m scared.”

The boy who’d once shared his face was in a crouch, eyes darting about as the spikes drew nearer. He was still just a child, as though the fires that had devastated Last Dawn all those years ago had frozen him in time like a memory.

“You’re not really here,” Ludo said, jamming his eye closed. “You’re dead. I watched you die.”

“Please. I don’t want to get hurt. I don’t want to die. Please, Ludo.”

Ludo’s eye flashed open and Gado was still there, cowering. He looked so real that, even if Ludo knew he couldn’t be, his every instinct urged him to run to his aid. One of the spikes was closing in, aimed directly at him. “I can’t,” Ludo said. “I’m sorry.”

“Ludo!”

Before Ludo knew what his feet were doing, he was off and running, hurdling one of the crystal spikes that sought to cut him at the knees, ducking under another that was head high, dodging and swerving past several others that scraped and tore at his clothing.

And then he reached his brother’s side, scooping him up with one arm while using the other to grab onto one of the spikes, gripping it like the limb of a tree to pull himself up. His feet found other spikes as he climbed, higher and higher even as the walls drew closer and closer. The space became so narrow that he no longer needed to locate crystals to propel them upward, simply digging his fingers and toes into rough spots on the walls themselves, clawing higher.

Clinging to him, Gado whimpered, tears dripping from his chin.