“Just a little farther.” One step in front of the other. He could hear her voice, beckoning. At intervals, his vision blurred, but he kept course by dragging fingertips along the rock wall. By then, his skin must be scraped to bloody, but all he could concentrate on was the steady throb of pain resonating from his lower back. Each leaden step sent flames licking up his spine, and he knew that even if he made it to the end, he’d have no way to get back.

Tears streaked down his cheeks, mingling with the layer of sweat on his face. “It’s not fair… I don’t want to die here. I was so fuckin’ close…”

  “It’s not fair!”

“Life ain’t fair, kid.” Though Alvarez’s eyes were sad, his jaw was set as he pushed Locke away from Rachel’s door. “You’ll meet someone new, I promise. You’ll love again.”

  The sweltering heat caused him to sweat through two layers of clothing. The glow of the lava had burned his retinas, despite his best attempts to avoid it. He stepped over poisonous anemones and avoided creeping lizards by the grace of the gods alone, for he no longer had the ability to judge his own steps with confidence.

He teetered down a staircase wrought from stone and faced two paths. Wiping tears, sweat and muck from his eyes, he squinted in each direction. One path was brighter, leading up to another staircase with a pedestal atop it. No creatures seemed to block the walkway. Perhaps the Imperials placed some sort of ward there to keep them away. If the treasure was to be kept anywhere…

Completely ignoring the other path, he trudged onward. A hiss resounded from somewhere, but he excused it as a figment of his addled mind or a distant vent. The heat increased with every step until it became oppressive. “Son of a bitch,” he breathed, removing his bandana and squeezing the sweat from it.

Something heavy hit his backpack, sending him sprawling. As his face made contact with the granite, he watched all of his weapons, supplies, and various spoils from the upper floors skitter across the ground with the tatters of his bag. That was strong canvas! What the hell had—

A deafening roar hammered his eardrums and then he heard nothing at all. Through the pain of his previous injuries and encroaching exhaustion, he somehow managed to roll onto his back. And then he stared into eyes the size of his fists, burning more brightly than the lava that had assaulted his eyes for the last hour.

A dragon, the size of a house, loomed over him, covered in red scales like thousands of knights’ shields. They slid over one another in mesmerizing beauty, distracting his fevered mind from the imminent danger. His eyes only returned to focus when jet black talons impaled him. Screaming, he arched, feeling flesh and bone give way beneath what, to the dragon, must have been a tentative touch.

Oh, did he scream, and he couldn’t hear anything, only feel what would be the last rush of air from his lungs. A saving grace, perhaps, not being able to hear his own death. Would it be easier?

  “I never should have left her side.”

He couldn’t bear to face them, these people he’d come to call comrades. Family. Now all of him was laid bare before them, all of his failures, and they could do little more than stand, completely silent.

“Oh, my dearest friend,” Edgar always used to say, with that look in his eyes that one reserved for a three-legged dog. For all those years, Edgar watched him paddle against the current, never realizing just how close he was to drowning.

  And now, so close to his destination, he could feel it… He could hear her voice… He wouldn't fail her. Not now, now while he still drew breath.

I ain’t gonna just lay down and die for you. A thousand years from now, if humans still walk the earth, I want ‘em to see the scar I gave you.

Hissing, he groped for something, anything, on the ground beside him. His fingers closed around leather and he felt a throb.

Heat and cold, all apiece, creeping up his arm. Vigor somehow returned to him. A blade. He had a blade in hand. One turn and he slashed upward. The dragon’s scales gave way like so much paper and it reared back, howling.

Am I hallucinating?!

Blood trickled from a gouge in the creature’s neck. It scraped in irritation at the flesh just beneath its jaw, seemingly confused at Locke’s counter-attack. He stared down at the knife in his hands—it was the tinny-looking piece he picked up just before falling. Power thrummed through his nerves and he actually managed to sit up.

The dragon had other plans. Ear fins flattening, it moved to the side, neck arching skyward. Light began to build in the air between the two combatants, sucking all the moisture from the surrounding area. As the hairs on his arm stood on end, Locke realized what was transpiring. He’d seen Celes cast this spell before, only once—

Flare.

I’m dead.

Whorls of fire spun through the air, gunning for him before he had time to wince. And then they dissipated, shimmering in a smooth arc just out of Locke’s reach, returning from whence they came.

Reflect…?

Columns of bright blue ice ascended from the sky. They battered the dragon relentlessly, driving it back five steps, ten, twenty, until its tail dipped into the molten rock behind it. Strong, cool hands were at Locke’s back and he turned.

Celes’s face loomed before him. Her lips moved, but Locke heard nothing. She forced him to lay down, looking him over with the speedy efficiency of a combat medic. Soon she got to work, passing fingers over his wounds as healing magics sank in to his skin. The pain faded and he sighed in relief. A loud whistle issued from his ears and sound bled back in.

Familiar voices rang out nearby, mingling with the dragon’s cries. A rainbow of color passed across his field of vision.

“You came… you all followed me.”

Two fingers pressed against Locke’s shoulder, keeping him down. “Stay there,” Celes commanded, before rising to her feet and drawing her blade.

Were they truly here? Or was his mind only conjuring them, seconds before death, as it cooked in his own skull?