'Oh, crap,' Dragon thought. 'Ohcrap ohcrap ohcrap.' Of all the things he had feared would happen at this confrontation with his godmother, he hadn't even dared to imagine something this bad. He felt like a colossal failure, suddenly ashamed of his stupidity. He had acted without thinking all the way through this and now Travesty had captured the two people he cared for most in the world.

And now he was truly and completely alone against her. No more backup would be providing protection and everyone he had brought with him was now either down for the count or preoccupied holding back Serenity. What little forces he had brought with him were now disabled.

He didn't understand. How had this happened? And how had she even known how he felt about Kit?

It didn't even matter anymore. She had either learned about it or figured it out for herself, but she now held them and was going to use them against him. He wanted to panic but he forced himself to think. The whole point behind Travesty's actions was to get into his head and make him slip up, he was positive. He couldn't let her have the satisfaction or the advantage from it.

But she was right about one thing. He had to make a choice. Both Kit and Dani were suspended in the crystals and he would only have time to free one of them before Travesty clinched the other. The decision lay before him, and he stood stock still, deliberating.

If he saved one, the other would definitely not make it out of this alive. He knew Travesty well enough to know she would never set the stakes any lower. So, someone's life was in Dragon's hands right now. He did not relish that kind of pressure.

If he chose Dani, Kit was going to die for something that wasn't her fault and that he had tried to keep her out of. She deserved better than that, not only as his teammate and friend, but as the only woman who ever loved him. He couldn't imagine a life worth living through if she wasn't in it in some form.

But if he saved Kit, he'd be betraying Dani yet again. Dani deserved better than that, too. He'd been beaten and nearly killed and it was Dragon's fault he'd been further assaulted by Serenity. Now, he was barely clinging to life and Dragon wasn't sure he'd make it regardless of if he saved him or not.

Dragon hated himself for the choice he was about to make.

But then, a thought struck him. He could take a third option.

And save both of them.

He'd have to spring into action too fast for Travesty to prepare. But she was already keyed up and ready for him to move. That could work for him, too, if he made her wait just long enough to put her off her expectations. He was gambling with all of their lives at this point, but they were already in too deep. There was no chance to turn back or change things. He had to work with what he had.

Dragon stood, attempting to appear to still be hesitant to act. He darted his eyes between them quickly as if struggling to choose. Then, he let his eyes slip into the middle distance as if in thought again. But, he kept his attention focused while his eyes were not. Travesty moved slightly, her smirk only seeming to grow. Then, as if an intuition was growing in her mind, her smirk slowly slipped away until she was left looking displeased.

'Now,' Dragon thought. He sprinted into action. Travesty only stood holding his twin and the love of his life a mere fifteen paces away. He got about twelve paces away before Travesty reacted. She seemed to want to retreat, but the spell anchored her body and she moved sluggishly. Dragon enjoyed that he had so off-kilter as he acted.

Dragon always thought of his fireballs and fire-breathing as something of a yet-uncharted scientific field called kineticism. But there was more to it than just science. Though the fire he called was real fire thanks to the laws he understood through science, it was also in part granted from magic. Flames of that nature, he had realized, could burn through other enchantments, if enough power was forged into them.

At eight paces away, Dragon ignited the hottest fire he could stand- and by far the hottest he had ever handled personally- around his right fist and threw a cross punch at Kit's crystal. The Fae magic that had wound the spell around her into the crystals imprisoning her was different from the draconic magic Y'ggdrasil's scale had given him. As such, they met like two forms of matter met. One goes around or is broken by the other, but they did not intermingle.

The most powerful pyrokinesis Dragon had ever wielded burned so hot it singed through the Fae crystal in the space of about a second. The spell, now fractured heavily in one place, was surprisingly easy to fully shatter. Dragon set his clawed fingers into the hard stone and physically tore them apart.

After a few seconds work, Kit was free from the crystal and he pulled her motionless body from the remaining stone.

However, several seconds had ticked by and Travesty had reacted immediately. Dragon turned to face her and she cackled gleefully while she stared with maddened eyes at Dani's crystal. With her hand still extended, she wrapped the remaining free strand around Dani's crystal and steadily, the crystal was cracking and small chunks were falling from the shape.

But she wasn't breaking through it, she was pressurizing it and him within it. She was crushing Dani alive.

Despair raced through his veins. Was this it? Had he truly lost?

'No.' He refused to accept that. He hadn't come this far to lose it all now.

Dani had been through the ringer and subjected to more physical abuse than most people would experience in their entire lives, but he was Dragon's brother and darnit all, they were tough young men. It would be up to Dani to fight through it, but Dragon could give him his chance. He had to fight for that chance.

Dragon roared. He roared a loud, wordless challenge of such primal fury that it shook the ground they were standing on. With clenched fists he rose from where he had laid Kit gently down and turned on Travesty. "DIE!" he repeated, his voice guttural and starting to break as he charged her from nearly arm's reach away.

That seemed to do the trick. Travesty couldn't keep up the assault on Dani and withstand a berserker blow from Dragon. The strings connected to her instantly severed, dropping the crystal holding Dani to the ground and the Fae shifted out of sight. Dragon cast his gaze all around but caught no sight of her. Left utterly alone now with his fallen or preoccupied teammates, Dragon let out a frustrated roar.

He could either stand around, watching and waiting for her to come back so she wouldn't catch him off his guard, or he could help his brother. The decision was easy to make.

He kindled his hottest fire again and once again broke and pulled apart the crystal holding Dani. He hefted his brother's body from the broken spell's remnants and laid him beside Kit on the ground.

"Dani, bro, please still be alive, please…" he pleaded as he laid two scaly fingers on Dani's neck, searching for a pulse.

Several daunting seconds went by and Dragon felt nothing. His heart seemed to stop beating.

Then, a weak but definitely-there throb passed under his fingers. Dragon lifted his head and felt his eyes grow wide. Then it happened again. He was alive! Dragon's heart soared and raced with excitement, filled with pride for his twin.

That victory infused Dragon with a fresh sense of hope. Not only did Travesty have a weakness, and not only had he drawn the first blood in their fight, but they had taken everything she could throw at them and they were both still alive. He wanted to cheer and scream with joy, but he remembered Travesty was still somewhere nearby and held the impulse at bay.

Travesty may have disabled his friends, she may have removed their ability to act freely and she even tried a few times to kill them outright, but she couldn't stop them, she couldn't keep them down. The Garrons and their team were tough-bitten fighters to the end.

She wasn't all-powerful. She had a weakness, just like they did. Dragon was going to use that against her.

Dragon pulled the unconscious Kit and Dani across the clean, white ground to lay them down beside Pharis and close to Dust, who still held Serenity bound and gagged with his sand-mist.

"Dust, how we holding up over here?" Dragon asked.

"Oi, this lass puts up a lot of fight, but I've got her held fast. She's not getting loose until I let her."

"That's good news. Watch these two the best you can while I finish this."

"Aye," he said with a brief nod. "And Dragon?" Dragon turned his head back to him for a second. "Good luck and Godspeed."

"Thanks, Dust."

Dragon returned to where he last saw Travesty.

"Godmother, are you just going to run and hide? Don't you have any spine at all?" he called out into the empty air.

He waited a long moment, but nothing stirred and the Fae didn't appear. Taunting her, appealing to her pride, wasn't working as well as he'd hoped. Time to try something slightly different.

"All the fuss you put up, all the trouble you went to and put us through and this is it? I guess you've lost your chance at us. We've taken everything you can dish out and we're still standing, you giant Faerie wimp!"

Dragon heard the sound of something shuffling behind him and half-turned before a magic bolt like the previous ones hit him full on in the back.

"Not quite everything, child," Travesty whispered as Dragon fell to his knees. He felt Travesty's cold, bony hand reach over his shoulder to lay on the left side of his chest, over his heart. More teal energy appeared between her hand and his scaled chest and pain erupted from his chest. He felt like his heart was in a vise and it was tightening and squeezing the life out of him.

The spell, he realized. The spell she had laid upon his heart was her weapon now. She was finally showing the spell's original purpose. Dragon fought to stay lucid through the pain but it proved to be too much and he collapsed to the cold, white floor and everything went white.