“Ella will be fine,” Five says. “The Beloved Leader wants her alive.”

“He wants her alive? For what? I thought he wanted us all dead.”

Five merely smiles. He turns back to Nine.

“What’s he want with her, Five?!” I scream, feeling a fresh rush of panic. He ignores me and stalks towards Nine. I hope Nine can withstand him long enough for me to heal Six. I scramble back over to her and hold her head in my lap. Her skull is cracked, her nose and jaw broken. I try to concentrate and channel the icy energy of my Legacy.

I’m distracted by a feral shriek. Over in the mud, Eight has managed to pin down the monster. Two of its heads are already hanging limp. The middle head is still working, though, and it snaps violently at Eight. He manages to catch the jaws with six of his paws and wrenches its jaws open until they snap apart. The beast’s head is practically torn in half; its monstrous wings thrash once more and then it finally goes completely still and slowly begins to disintegrate.

Five has turned to watch. “Well done!” he yells to Eight. “But believe me, there’s more where that came from.”

Eight is left kneeling in the mud. He’s back to his normal shape, unable to hold on to the avatar form for any longer. I can tell he’s wounded, bloody teeth marks up and down his chest and arms and even on the palms of his hands. He pushed himself hard to defeat that beast, but he still shakily picks himself back up.

Five looms over Nine, his steel skin glinting in the fading sunlight. Nine sneers up at him defiantly. “You going to hit an unarmed man, you traitorous shit?”

Before Five can reply, Nine reaches out with his telekinesis. His pipe-staff, which he must have dropped when Five first grabbed him, lifts out of the muck and comes zipping towards him.

Five snatches the staff out of the air. I make a mental note that he catches the staff with his right hand, which means the stones he’s using to power his Legacy must be clutched in his left.

Five raises the staff and brings it down across his metallic knee, snapping it in half like a piece of kindling. “Yeah. I am.”

Before Five can move, Eight teleports between them. He’s hunched over, breathing heavily, and bleeding from multiple wounds. Even so, he stands his ground. “Stop this madness, Five.”

I’m trying to keep an eye on the scene playing out next to the tree while also concentrating on Six. I can feel her skull starting to mend, the swelling on her face decreasing. I hope that I’m working fast enough. We need her badly.

“Come on, Six . . . ,” I whisper. “Wake up.”