"Summer! Summer!!" Within my head I could hear Ethan screaming through the mind link, his voice filled with fear and urgency. His urgency was a kind of urgent beat in the back of my mind, pounding and constant.

"I'm alright," I answered, though my body felt like it had been crushed by the weight of the world. I lifted my head, weary with muscles and wet with the earth and ash of the explosion. I tried to see what warriors lay on the forest floor. They groaned and panted, yet began to ...