The blow hit me like a freight train, and I went flying, spinning through the air end over end. Before I could right myself, the Dark Prince caught me in midair with a pommel-assisted overhead crunch, and I rocketed into the ground with a sound like a thunderclap. I crawled, slowly, every effort full of pain, to the edge of the crater he'd made using me. My gemstone flickered, went dark, and my transformation ended. I could barely raise my head off the ground, now, but I could see the others around me, their broken bodies barely moving.
When I dream about it now, the light is always what starts it off. Silvery, like starlight, like a galaxy. It surrounded us. It took our pain away.
I remember looking up, and seeing her there. Our leader, the worst fighter and best friend I'd ever had. She'd somehow made a sword out of starlight, and had blocked the Prince's sword with it. She was saying something - I couldn't hear it then, and I never learned what it was.
In the good dreams, she talks to me, calls over her shoulder that she loves me. That I shouldn't worry about her anymore.
I don't think that's what she was doing. I think she was talking to the Prince.
What I remember is the moment. That perfect, awful moment. She let her guard down, deliberately. Slid her sword around the blow, forcing the Prince's blade straight into her chest.
I remember the look on his face. Not triumph. Just total and complete shock. And instead of being corrupted by the sword, as so many others had been, her light traveled along it, and illuminated him.
The good dreams end there. They don't end with me running, a burst of adrenaline forcing me to move on a broken leg. They don't end with her falling. They don't end with her in my arms, with me covered in her blood, with her final smile.
No, the good dreams end there. Her, suspended in beautiful light, and her opponent being consumed by it.
