The dragon gave that low, cruel growl from the mine, the one that had chuckled and gone through Gwen like the echo of everyone who had ever laughed at the idea of a woman in armor—now, it laughed at her for thinking of love.

Then it ripped that away, too.

She felt as though she were dangling from a cliff over an infinite pit, and that to fall into it would consign her to an eternity of madness—that if she fell, she would be abandoning all that was ever good and bright, abandoning even the memory of ever having lived some other life.

The only thing she had left was a distant, wavering memory. Isobelle’s face, her voice. I’ll be there, when the moment comes.

Gwen gasped and wrenched her mind away. She would not let the dragon take that from her too—and somewhere, in the last flickering recesses of her thoughts, she knew that to think of that last hope now, to use it to cling one breath longer to the edge of the cliff, might warn the dragon of whatever Isobelle meant to do.

So Gwen turned her mind away from hope with one last, wrenching effort, let go of the edge of the cliff, and fell.

Interstitial

Imagine a ship.

A single vessel, silver in the moonlight. An undulating sea of grass stretches all around it, in every direction. The little boat is entirely alone, drifting at the mercy of the currents.

Before it is a sea monster, wounded and full of rage and all the more dangerous for both these things. It moves, sinuous, toward the boat, as we watch from above.

That’s going to be the best vantage point for what comes next.

Gwen is our silver ship, clad in armor made of ingenuity and courage. The dragon is our sea monster, centuries old, its history littered with the knights it has killed. And as Gwen abandons the last of herself on that moonlit sea of grass, it’s clear there’s only one way this ends.

. . . Or is there?

Lady Isobelle of Avington is still at large, after all.

Her torch flares to life, a tiny spark—a single guiding star in this great black sea of night, beckoning Gwen back home, to hope.

Nothing happens. Gwen is no more than a crumbling statue, her mind lost in the darkest of dreams. The great dragon slides toward her, with a low growl calling for her blood.

Isobelle’s torch waves wildly, but still she draws no attention from either of them, even as she begins to run toward the girl she loves, a single shooting star, seen from above.

Is she too late? Is it too little? Will she be forced to watch, the way one does in a dream, running as fast as she can but never coming closer, too late to throw herself between Gwen and that great dark maw?

Perhaps not.