Yuzuru acted quickly. He needed to get Gweyn to safety before the flashbang could wear off. With his eyes still closed, he took her by the arm, gathering all the frills and loose hair that was her, and lead her charging down the stairs.

“How did you do that?” Gweyn screamed as people stumbled around the ballroom, toppling over tables as their eyes burned. “Do you have more?”

Yuzuru started to make a joke but the Queen’s shrieks covered over him.

“Stop them! Cut them down! Where are my knights?”

Yuzuru tried to keep hold of Gweyn but she was sprinting on her own now, dodging bodies and swords as well as he was, with her skirt dancing madly around her.

They got to the doors. Yuzuru shouldered them open, revealing two lines of knights charging toward them.

Gweyn pulled him back. With a thrust of her palm, she launched a fireball down the hallway. The knights in the front scattered but the last few weren’t quick enough.

“Whoa,” Yuzuru exclaimed as bodies were engulfed in the conflagration. “Is this necessary?”

“They’re not my people,” said Gweyn.

“But you don’t have to kill them!”

The surviving knights regrouped and charged again. Gweyn slammed her foot down and a wave of stone collected their enemies and threw them into the next room.

“There. Happy?”

“Actually yes,” Yuzuru said, taking her hand. “Well done.” He led her down another flight of steps and down a long corridor. The main doors were in sight, with more knights streaming in from every room and hallway. Gweyn hurled bolts of lightning into the ceiling, causing it to collapse on their pursuers.

“Hold on,” Yuzuru yelled as he threw his shoulder into the thick double doors.

They fell into the open, tumbling down steps onto the dirt.

Sweet, sweet dirt.

Yuzuru spat out a mouthful and got up. Gweyn was already beside him. She said something then ducked as arrows began to stream from behind. Yuzuru felt one scratch his cheek.

“Get back,” Gweyn shouted, setting fire to the castle’s steps. “Tell me you have an escape planned,” she said to Yuzuru, a second before he tackled her out of the path of a flaming skull. The ball of blue fire smashed into the dirt with a deafening explosion, blowing the two of them into the trees.

Yuzuru’s ears ran as he picked himself up from his nest of branches and loose soil. He spotted Gweyn lying next to him.

“Gweyn,” he gasped. “Your face!”

“Beautiful as always, I know,” Gweyn joked, though she was grimacing. Blood was running down from a gash in her left temple, staining her dress.

“No. I mean yes, but no.” Yuzuru helped her up and gently touched her cheeks, where dark lines were forming under the skin. “Something’s happening.”

“Oh no.” Gweyn yanked off her tiara and looked at herself through its reflection. She sucked in a breath. “I was warned this might happen if I used too much magic.” She tossed the tiara into the bushes, grabbed Yuzuru and started to run towards the gates. “You better start thinking of a way to escape, because we can’t stay here!”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

They ran to the end of the castle’s courtyard. The guards at the gate were waiting with their bows drawn. Gweyn raised her hands but Yuzuru stopped her. “The skulls.”

There were many more here than around the castle itself. Consumed in blue flames, they seemed to be ready, watching for the slightest whiff of magic.

Shouts came from behind them. From the castle, armored bodies were streaming down the steps. More were already on the footpaths, clambering through the treeline.

“Get down.” Gweyn pushed Yuzuru away and leaped into the air, disappearing into a small bat.

It was the second time Yuzuru had ever seen Gweyn use this power, the first being the day they met. He’d forgotten she could do that, but he didn’t have time to marvel as skulls began shooting past him, following Gweyn’s flight path.

Yuzuru sprinted towards the gate, where the guards were firing at Gwyen. She weaved through their arrows, the skulls gaining just behind. Before they hit, she twisted and climbed sharply, causing the skulls right behind to smash into the gate.

The force of the explosion knocked Yuzuru back.

On the ground, he saw the sky was filled with skulls. Gweyn was spinning among them like a fighter jet, blue explosions lighting her path through the clouds.

He stood. The wall in front of him was in a smoldering ruin. The place where the ice retracted in on itself melted, revealing metallic gears beneath.

So much for not killing.

More detonations ran out as Gweyn dived and spun. The space between her and the blue balls of flame was getting smaller.

As a new wave of arrows began flying past, Yuzuru raised his hands to the sky and said, “Flame Touch!”

The moment his palms grew hot, some of the skulls chasing Gweyn broke off and shot towards him. Yuzuru leaped out of the way. The ground erupted, launching him into the air.

Gweyn flew straight upward, the skulls gathering below her into a stream of fire. They disappeared through the clouds and a second later, blue fire burst across the heavens, the sound shaking the castle walls.

Yuzuru spotted Gweyn falling. He got up and ran, clambering over broken ice and burned bodies, past the destroyed gates. Arrows kept whizzing past, some nearly hitting Gweyn. She seemed to be headed for the ravine.

The bridge stood unguarded. Yuzuru leaped onto it and kept running, eyes locked on Gweyn’s trajectory.

He got as close to the edge as possible, a chunk of wood breaking off under his foot and falling into the depths below. Gweyn was still too far, her body trailing smoke. Yuzuru strained to catch her, but as she got closer, the sinking certainty set in that he wasn’t going to reach her after all.

So he did the only thing he could think of, and jumped.

Time slowed. Yuzuru saw everything like slides on a screen. Gweyn was coming closer. Her clothes were gone and one side of her body was crawling with black vines. He saw his arms encircling her, felt her feverish skin pressing against his. Her hair smelled burned, but she was Gweyn and they were together and it was cold because Yuzuru was falling too.

He pulled Gweyn close and held onto her, as if he could somehow slow their descent by making sure no air was passing between them.

The winds grew fierce, living, and with the familiar sound of a massive creature’s roar, Yuzuru was suddenly reminded of what was down there, and how anything in the past day was made possible.

“Dragon!” he shouted. “Catch us!”

The world rushed away as steep walls yawned around them. Light disappeared, then there was no sound but the wind passing. Yuzuru looked up, in this case down, and saw nothing but darkness.

It wasn’t darkness. Darkness didn’t have teeth, or glowing eyes the color of blood, or jaws opening wide enough to swallow them whole.

Yuzuru’s heart stopped as the dragon’s final words echoed back to him.

Bring me the child of the traveler, and I will grant you the power to change this world…

He pulled Gweyn a little away to look at her. She was asleep, the prospect of their impending doom unable to affect her.

The child of the traveler. In his haste to get Gweyn out of the castle, he hadn’t thought about why the dying dragon had even given him a chance to do so.

Who was she, really? Honoka’s daughter? A princess?

As the dragon’s teeth closed in, Yuzuru closed his eyes. It didn’t matter, he decided. Gweyn was Gweyn. She was someone he saved, someone who cared about him, and someone who would experience the end with him.

That was enough.

He braced himself for the sting, or the burn, or whatever being eaten alive felt like, but then time started passing and he didn’t feel any of those things.

He opened his eyes. The dragon was a swirl of colors, rebounding and refracting through his mind, showing him the past of every traveler who had lived and died in Arcadia. He saw magic used, blood spilled, wars breaking.

These are the dragon’s memories. I’m seeing what he saw.

Yuzuru felt no pain. His body wasn’t his but an amalgamation of information, streaming in and out of existence as his insides liquefied and reshaped inside him.

He hit the ground knees first. He was still holding Gweyn. She was awake. She struggled out of his arms and started shouting, but Yuzuru couldn’t hear anything else over the dragon’s voice.

“I chose right,” it told him. “Now, traveler, put an end to the madness.”