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Beneath me, Nighclaw shivered in response to my anguish. The battlecat's easy confidence had been replaced by one of palpable unease.
But what else could we do but go on?
Hours passed. Each moment an eternity of torment.
Snow-capped mountains and craggy valleys stretched out below. The wind howled in my ears.
We hurtled through the sky at an unforgiving speed, the battlecat's muscles flexing and coiling beneath my thighs.
The world was reduced to a blur of sensations. Windswept hair, chilled skin, the roar of the wind, the heavy thud of a heartbeat.
And yet through it all the absence of one presence rang louder than all else.
And then, abruptly, a lightning bolt pierced through the fog of my despair.
A veil was lifted.
I was inside.
Looking down at Morgan as she lay in a nightmarish-dungeon, waning candles casting shadows on her exhausted, blood-streaked face. Her eyes were dulled with pain and locked onto her tormentor. A man stood over her, looking down at her with a sinister smile that left me cold with rage. The armored breastplate that covered his chest was lined with a strange array of gemstones, each one pulsating with ominous power.
A touch of his hand and one of the stones responded. I watched as Morgan's life force began to wane, the frail tendril of her essence slowly drifting away.
My eyes landed on the sword. As she dropped to the floor, it fell by her side with a clatter, slipping from her grasp.
Excalibur.
The metal of the blade was leaden and dark.
The man stepped away, satisfaction gleaming in his eyes. I heard the words he said and something my heart twisted and compressed.
But my silver one was not yet defeated.
I watched as her trembling fingers reached out, brushing against the sharp edge of the sword.
Blood slid, slick and crimson, from her fingertips down the steel.
Excalibur began to shine with a radiant, golden light–a beacon of defiance in the suffocating dark.
She was broken and bleeding. She was fading away. I felt myself begin to break, bleed, and fade, too.
Beneath me, Nightclaw let out a mournful howl, just out of sight.
The golden light was all I could see. It spilled before my eyes, stretching out over the mountains.
It blazed with the power of a thousand suns.
And then the lightpulled.
I was wrenched from my seat. Spinning over snow-dusted peaks, twisting and turning as the air rushed past me, my stomach lurching as I fell through an abyss.
I landed.
Hitting the ground hard, my feet connecting.
Slowly I stood upright, flexing my fists.
A few meters away, the man in the strange black armor was turning, his blond hair glinting in the light.
