“AAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!” screamed Turquoise. She wasn’t really the type of person to scream at all, but falling to their death will do that to a person. Turquoise tried to twist around to see how close to the ground they were, but she couldn’t. And she had the feeling that even if she had managed to, it would’ve been hopeless to try to see through the rain and wind whistling around her ears.

Suddenly, there was a noise that neither Turquoise nor Sapphire had heard before, a noise so loud that it drowned out the loudest of thunder. It sounded like a hammer pounding on metal, but a hundred times louder, and twice as fast.

Turquoise was surrounded by a wall of heat, crushing her and Sapphire together along with their CrystalDragons. There was a loud thump, as if they had hit the ground, but Turquoise didn’t feel anything. They waited a long time like this, crushed together and running fast out of oxygen, until the sky was quiet.

Then the wall around them collapsed and Turquoise got a brief look of something rainbow and sharp before it spun around and... stabbed Erinite and Tanzanite! Turquoise felt a shot of horror as her best friend was stabbed in the back, but Erinite didn’t seem fazed at all. Turquoise realized with a surge of relief that it was their spikes, somehow. She hadn’t known that CrystalDragons could do that--form a ball with their spikes. Also, there were their wings! There were four of them! Turquoise knew there hadn’t been four before, and wondered how they had just randomly grown a new pair.

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Turquoise had heard rumors (that Sapphire had told her) that wild CrystalDragons could create protective shields out of their spikes and had four wings, but she never believed them. She’d never seen a CrystalDragon with four wings—but now she had.

Sapphire looked as if she felt as shocked as Turquoise. She recovered and looked around. They were stuck in some barren wasteland, with no plants whatsoever. Little holes dotted the gray ground, but that was it. Turquoise spotted Archer’s broken body on the stones and quickly looked away, trying not to hurl.

Sapphire climbed a nearby hill. Turquoise soon followed her, her stomach a knot of worry. When Sapphire turned around, her look confirmed Turquoise’s fears. Her eyes were wide, the irises tiny. She was terrified.

“Turquoise,” Sapphire whispered, “Where are we?”