The air smelled like ash, and it was dry enough that it felt like my mouth and body were being leeched of moisture.

End of Days. He’d caught me, seeing me before I’d seen him.

My heart was pounding. I couldn’t bring myself to speak, because I was afraid I’d scream. The best case scenario was that at this vital, critical moment I’d been shunted out and away, to some strange, dark place.

The worst-case scenario was that it was a permanent shunt.

A small sound escaped my throat as I looked around.

A minute passed.

Two minutes. When my eyes played tricks on me through the darkness, I saw Valefor’s jaw shattering. I imagined the battlefield, as it had been.

Anger took over the devastation and surprise. I fidgeted. I adjusted my costume. I flew around in circles, trying to get a sense of what this place was like. I stopped when I flew into a tree I couldn’t see.

I watched as the light grew brighter, as if it shone in through invisible cracks that were widening. The cracks soared tall and wide, and the light flooded in, blinding.

I was hauled out of that dark, strange world and back into my reality, and I felt the change in air pressure, the moisture of the drizzling rain. And I saw that things had happened in the meantime.

Sveta and Capricorn were fighting side by side, with Love Lost and a crowd of controlled civilians between them and Rain. The presence of the mob of Valefor’s affected hostages kept Sveta from getting to any of us, and complicated her skirmish with Love Lost. Two of March’s group members were part of that same crowd, trying to fend the civilians off, and they weren’t trying to be gentle about it like Sveta was.

Rain, meanwhile, was trying to fight Snag. Snag was above him, pushing him to the ground, knee on Rain’s stomach. He’d destroyed one of Snag’s arms and his two good arms were at the remaining, damaged one, which had a slice taken out of it. His other two mechanical arms were gripping Snag’s normal arm, no longer encased in the giant, oversized prosthetic part. Even with their combined strength, the two mechanical arms were losing, cracking and splintering under the pressure.

This was the chaos Snag had wanted.

I flew to him, praying I wouldn’t get another End of Days timeout.

I was halfway to him when Rain’s arms broke.

The blades fixed in the midst of the breakable shells continued up and out, piercing Snag’s forearm and scissoring the space between them as his weight came down and made them shift.