"Adora."

Something tapped her cheek. Distantly, she heard herself groan.

"Adora." The voice was insistent, worried—and very, very familiar.

"Adora, come on." A hand shook her shoulder, jostling her aching head and aching… everything. If she could have, she would've punched the hand's owner. "Please." The voice sounded like it was on the verge of cracking.

With another groan, she wrenched her eyes open—and snapped them shut just as quickly. Too bright. The light was too bright. It burned her eyes, boiled her skin. Everything was hot, too hot.

Her side burned, sending a wave of fire pulsing through her body.

No, that… that heat wasn't from the light, was it?

"Can you hear me?"

"Mmph," she answered. Then, blinking her eyes open, squinting against the light, forcing a quiet word out through her rough voice: "Yeah." Catra's blurry face relaxed in relief, and she tilted back almost out of Adora's vision to sit heavily on her heels.

Catra.

Memories flooded her fuzzy mind. She'd heard the sounds of fighting, before, then a cry of pain that made her stomach drop straight to her feet. Somehow, she'd managed to pull herself to her feet. Somehow, she'd managed to pick up the sword, force her way past the frigid, electric assault of its broken magic. Somehow, she'd managed not to scream when she saw Catra being held motionless underwater by Octavia, or cry with relief when Catra broke the surface, coughing and weak but breathing, alive.

Her hand reached up, missed Catra's arm, then latched on in her second try.

"You… okay?"

Catra huffed out an almost-laugh. "Yeah. I'm great." She took a shuddering inhale that turned into a cough. "Just a little water down the wrong pipe. I'll be fine."

Dismissive. Probably not true. Yet… familiar. Adora kept her hand on Catra's arm for a moment longer, letting the warmth reassure her that she was there, she was okay, and then let her hand fall away.

Etheria, she was so tired.

Catra glanced to the sword, laying nearby in the grass where it had fallen from Adora's numb fingers. "Pretty sure I told you not to touch that."

Despite her exhaustion and the lingering soreness of the sword's magic, a smile pulled at the corner of Adora's mouth. "You're welcome."

"I had it handled," Catra said with a wry grin.

"Sure you did."

Adora felt a vague sense of regret as soon as the words left her mouth, but the look of guarded offense she expected never appeared on Catra's expression. Instead, she looked strangely soft. Grateful, almost?

She must be imagining things.

"Thanks… for showing up when you did."

No, that was real gratitude. Grudging, but genuine. Adora felt a shocked smile forming.

Catra's expression hardened. "Now don't ever do it again."

Adora's smile was in full swing now, despite fighting the urge to let her eyes close. "No promises."

Catra's eyes narrowed and her tail twitched behind her in agitation. She inhaled like she was going to speak, then stopped.

"Can you get up?" Whatever she was going to say, that wasn't it.

Getting up was about the last thing Adora wanted to do right now.

"Do I have a choice?"

"Not really." Catra nodded her head toward a small piece of broken electronics a few steps away. "Octavia's parting gift. There's no way the beasts didn't hear the sound that thing made."

Adora's brow knit in confusion. "Sound?"

"Oh, right. I forgot you humans have terrible hearing." The corner of Catra's mouth quirked upward.

"Hey."

"And terrible eyesight. And terrible reflexes. And—"

"—terrible taste in friends?"

"Nah, that's the one thing you're amazing at, actually."

Adora snorted. "At least you're humble."

Catra's tone was light, Adora hadn't missed the way her eyes kept darting around the clearing, or the way her muscles stayed tense despite the occasional shiver that ran through her body.

She didn't look okay.

Adora didn't feel okay.

But the beasts were coming, and they had to move.

"Okay," she said, mentally bracing herself for what was not going to be a pleasant experience. "Help me up."

She was right, it wasn't a pleasant experience. Between searing agony that stabbed her abdomen every time she moved, the suffocating heat coursing through her, and her new, ever-present nausea, it was a miracle she hadn't thrown up. Catra looked a little green herself, stumbling a half-step before Adora's arm was once again situated around her shoulders. Her wet clothes immediately soaked through Adora's shirt, and she could feel her trembling against her side. The shivering started to lessen after a few minutes of being pressed against each other.

Ha. Maybe the fever was good for something after all. Adora shook her fuzzy head, instantly regretting the motion.

As they traveled further from the stream, the steady, gentle slope of the path they had chosen through the canyon finally began to take on a much steeper angle, rising up and above the trees. A glimmer of hope shone through Adora's foggy thoughts. With any luck, today might be the day they escaped this nightmare.

Of course, now that they had a way out, their pace slowed even further. They'd barely begun to climb before Adora's legs started to burn, and she had to concentrate all her effort into just putting one foot in front of the other.

For the hundredth time, Adora felt Catra tense under her arm, saw her eyes dart around the surrounding trees. One furred ear twitched anxiously.

"Do you hear something?" Adora asked, unable to keep a hint of apprehension from her tone.

"No. I—" Catra broke off, sighed. "Maybe. I keep getting this feeling, like we're being watched… but I can't see anything. Can't hear anything."

Anxiety bloomed in Adora's stomach, adding more fuel to her screaming muscles. Great. Well, if there was something out in the trees, at least it was taking the cautious approach and just watching them.

For now.

Adora just hoped they'd be able to get somewhere relatively safe before the beasts that took a more… direct approach showed up.

Another pulse of warmth washed over her, and her knee chose to turn to jelly just as she was putting her weight on it. They staggered, and Catra grunted, barely able to hold them upright.

"Sorry," Adora breathed, head down, trying to push the heat away and into its own little box alongside the pain in her side, the pounding in her head, the lingering aches of the sword's broken magic. It didn't work very well. She was running out of boxes.

When she raised her head, Catra looked pale. Adora's eyes flitted to the soaked bandage on her arm. Her dip in the stream had temporarily washed away the blood, but now it soaked the bandage red again, a thin trickle running down her arm from the saturated bandage. Her breathing had a slight rattle to it.

"Are you—"

"Fine," Catra bit out. Her eyes closed briefly. "Let's… talk about something."

The anxiety in Adora's chest grew. Catra only wanted to talk about something when she was having trouble staying awake. Even then it didn't always work, since she always complained about Adora's voice being so boring it sent her right off to sleep.

"Um." Adora took a moment, filtering through her foggy thoughts for a topic of conversation. "What do you know about the beasts?"

Catra snorted. "Oh, good. Now there's a topic that'll really take our minds off our looming demise."

"It's tactical," Adora defended. "'Know your enemy,' and all that. We can compare information."

"Ugh. Fine." They took a few more steps in silence, Catra still keeping a watchful eye on the trees. "Not much to tell," she said, finally. "All I know is the stories that got passed around the barracks. Three beasts, taken from Beast Island when they were small and raised to eat misbehaving cadets for lunch. Heard 'em howling a few times, never actually saw them." She glanced around the canyon with a distasteful expression. "Not until this delightful experience, anyway."

It all sounded familiar. The beasts were a popular topic on nights when the cadets would risk swapping stories in the dark. Beast Island itself was another, although the fact that the beasts were actually there, in the Fright Zone, made the fear more immediate. So did the bone-chilling howls that could sometimes be heard drifting through the night air, echoing down empty corridors.

It took more effort than it should have for Adora to push her wandering thoughts to the side. She groped for another question to keep the conversation going. "Do… do you think they sent all three of them?"

"Probably. We've already seen two of them—" Catra paused, awkwardly. "Well. I have. I saw a second one while you were out. In the cave."

She'd faced a beast? Alone? The anxiety in Adora's stomach turned to fear, despite how Catra was right next to her, alive and whole.

Well, mostly.

Catra must have felt her tense. "Relax. It didn't see me."

"Point is," she continued, "If two of them are here, the third one probably is too. You know, the one they told us could turn invisible?" Catra gave an empty laugh. "They really tried everything to scare us."

"Actually…" Adora shifted uncomfortably, "that part is probably true."

Catra's head whipped toward her. "What?"

"I think it really can turn invisible."

Blue and gold eyes narrowed. "How do you know?"

"When I was really little, Shadow Weaver took me with her to do—something, I don't know. All I remember is she left me in a room with three big, empty cages while she talked to someone. Except one of the cages wasn't empty. Two of them were, but the third one… I thought I heard breathing, so I walked a little closer… and then this huge, yellow eye appeared out of thin air. Staring at me." It startled her, and she'd screamed. Shadow Weaver… hadn't liked that.

Her face stung for a while afterward.

She shook off the memory. "Anyway, I thought I saw something like scales rippling for a second, like a trick of the light. But then it blinked, and just… disappeared."

There was silence for a moment.

"Wow," Catra said. "No helpful information, but now the beasts are somehow even more frightening than they were before! Great tactical meeting, Adora. Now I can really see why you made Force Captain so fast."

Adora groaned, wishing she had the energy to punch her in the uninjured arm.

"Oh, shut up."

Catra felt, to put it plainly, like shit.

Her shoulder ached incessantly, sending fiery tendrils of pain shooting through her arm whenever she moved. The claw marks on her arm burned and stung from Octavia's grip, and the smell of her own blood was starting to turn her stomach. They probably needed to do something about that—if she could smell it, other things could, too. Plus, the loss of blood was beginning to make her feel a little light-headed.

Or maybe that was just the aftereffects of being almost-drowned. She still shivered occasionally in her soaked clothes, at once grateful for and terrified of Adora's abnormal warmth at her side. She hadn't missed how it was getting harder for Adora to form a complete sentence, or the way her already halting steps were becoming even clumsier.

That just meant she needed to be on top of things for the both of them. Which was difficult, when all she wanted to do was sit down and sleep for a few days.

The feeling of being watched pricked at the back of her mind again and she tensed, glancing around the tall, dark trees.

Nothing.

Again.

So why couldn't she shake that feeling of cold dread?

Something was out there. She was sure of it. But between their clumsy, too-loud steps through the underbrush, the harsh sound of their own breathing, and the way her vision was starting to become wavy and distorted at the edges, she'd be lucky to detect the crashing sounds of an advancing Horde bot right now.

She should be relieved at the way the path had finally begun to lead them out of this blasted crack in the ground; happy about how the walls of the canyon were finally beginning to shrink—but despite it all, that chill kept running up and down her spine, never letting her relax for a second. Even if she couldn't consciously detect it, her body knew.

Something was watching them.

Between her intense focus on the trees around them and the way Adora seemed to be concentrating all her effort on staying upright, it took a moment before either of them realized that their surroundings had changed.

"Hey." The word was quiet, spoken between too-heavy breaths, but also… excited? "Catra, look." The arm around her shoulders squeezed slightly, and Catra finally stopped scanning the trees long enough to realize that the only thing behind them was… more trees. She swiveled her head to check their surroundings, but—No. There was no oppressive rock wall towering above them, trapping them in the ground. Not anymore.

They'd finally, finally made it out of that cursed canyon.

A day earlier, she might have felt elation. Now, she just felt the need to move.

"About time," she grumbled. Adora glanced around the trees, brow creased in some sort of confused recognition. A shiver ran through her, despite the sweat beading on her forehead and rolling down the side of her flushed face.

"I think… I know where we are," Adora said. "But it shouldn't be here…" she trailed off, sounding confused.

"What?"

"The castle. Where She-Ra—I train. I think it's nearby."

Catra felt her body go stiff. Oh, great. That place. The place that had messed with their minds, throwing them back to painfully relive childhood memories. The place where Catra had teetered on the edge before turning her back and advancing into shadow. The place where she'd let Adora fall into an unknown abyss, not realizing until far too late that she might actually care what was at the bottom.

She shoved her memories and guilt to the side. Now was not the time. "And?"

"And—" It was getting harder for Adora to speak, apparently, each word coming around short, pained breaths that were too hot near her ear. It grated on Catra to lose speed with the ever-present feeling of being watched, but she slowed their pace. "—maybe we can hide there. For a bit. No way… beasts can get in there."

"Wow, you're right. Being pulled apart by giant robot spiders sounds much more appealing than getting eaten by beasts."

"Ugh. Wouldn't be like last time," Adora protested. "I can… talk to the person who controls them now. Tell her not to attack us."

"Comforting."

"Maybe help with that, too," Adora said, glancing toward where the sword was thrust through the bag on Catra's back, broken runestone on full display.

"What makes you say that?"

Adora's face, impossibly, seemed to get a little redder. "The, uh. The sword told me. I think. It was a little fuzzy."

Catra stared. "Oh, well. If the sword told you—"

"It's magic, Catra. We need all the help we can get."

Well, she couldn't really argue with that.

Their conversation had distracted her so much that she almost didn't see it. In the distance, just where the shade of the trees made a dark space in the woods.

An eye.

Huge. Yellow, reptilian, unblinking.

For a moment, Catra thought she was hallucinating an image from Adora's story. But then she blinked, and the eye was still there—and it seemed closer, now.

She didn't dare blink again.

She stopped moving, and Adora stopped with her, confused. "Catra? What's—" she finally glanced in the direction Catra was staring—and froze. Catra felt the catch in her breath, the tensing of her muscles.

"Shit," she breathed.

The quiet word sounded like a shout. "Don't. Move." Catra said, so softly it was barely more than mouthing the words. Slowly, carefully, she reached for the knife still stuck through Adora's belt. Adora remained still, but she could feel her shaking with apprehension and the simple effort of standing upright. Her hand closed on the hilt of the knife, and she stopped.

What was her plan, here?

If she threw the knife, she might miss, and she'll have thrown away one of their only weapons. Their only weapon, if you didn't count the broken sword and her own claws, neither of which Adora could use.

If she didn't miss, she figured it was a fifty-fifty chance that either the beast would be spooked long enough for them to run, orit would become enraged and attack. If she didn't throw the knife… well, they'd have to move, eventually. She'd have to take her eyes off of it. And something told her that the instant she did, they'd be dead.

She stared at the eye, still floating eerily amid the trees. Her own eyes were starting to burn from not blinking.

Half a chance was better than no chance at all.

In one fluid motion, she pulled the knife from Adora's belt and threw it. An inhuman shriek rose through the trees as the eye blinked out of existence. Catra barely processed the handle of the knife jutting out in the invisible space just to the side of where the eye had been, or the way light rippled across the surface of the beast in a rainbow pattern as it cried out in pain, almost showing its true form.

It was big. That was all that mattered.

The instant the beast's cry split the air, they leapt into a sprint—well, something that should have been a sprint, but was in reality more of a frantic, uneven jog. Adrenaline and panic was the only thing fueling their movement,but it still wasn't nearly fast enough. The beast must have fled. If it had chosen to pursue them, they'd already be dead.

Their awkward run was hindered further by how Catra had to almost drag Adora after the first few seconds, trying to pull even more of her weight across her shoulders to keep her upright. Adora was trying, but it wasn't enough. Catra's chest ached. There was was no time to be gentle. Not now.

She didn't dare slow their pace until the trees thinned and the ground under their feet suddenly changed to a more recognizable path. She brought them to an awkward halt, blinking against graying vision, trying to pull air into lungs that felt like they were being stabbed by a thousand knives. Adora collapsed into her the moment they stumbled to a stop, her near dead weight pressing down on Catra's aching ribs and making every inhale that much harder. She blinked, squinting as her vision slowly focused on something rising high above the trees. A cracked, overgrown tower pointing toward the sky. That stupid place where Adora trained—the Crystal Castle, she'd called it. Catra never thought she'd be so relieved to see the cursed thing. It was surprisingly close; the woods must have hidden it from view until now. They could make it.

"Hey," she panted between deep, rattling breaths. Adora's head had fallen to Catra's shoulder the moment they stopped, her eyes closed. She jostled Adora's shoulders, feeling a spike of worry when she didn't move. "Hey," she repeated, more urgently.

Adora's brow creased and her eyes fluttered open. "Yeah," she managed.

"Look." Catra nodded toward the castle. "You were right. It's here."

Adora blinked in the direction of the castle for a second, as if trying to process what her eyes were seeing. "Mm." Her eyes slid shut again. "Good."

Heat was pouring off her, now; Catra could feel it coming in waves from Adora's too-red face. Fear twisted in her gut. She found herself hoping that whoever—or whatever—they found inside the castle would be able to help with more than just the sword.

On instinct, Catra glanced behind them—not that it would make much difference, with an invisible creature. But there were no signs of parting vines, no crushed underbrush, no sounds of pursuit. Another wounded cry rose up, but much more distant than before. Relief flooded through her.

The cry echoed, then was answered: two voices, wild and terrifying, and… closer. So much closer.

Relief turned to ice in her veins. The other beasts were here.

In the distance, Catra saw the canopy of a tree shake, then another, closer. Adora had straightened, somewhat, still sagged against her side, but the call of the beasts seemed to have brought back some awareness. She gave Catra a slight nod, mouth set in a grim line.

At the edge of a distant clearing, Catra thought she saw a flash of fur and teeth. She glanced to the towing silhouette of the crystal castle—so close, and yet so incredibly far.

Time to move.

Running.

Running was bad. Running hurt. Honestly, Adora had no idea how she was doing it—if she was doing it. They were moving, certainly. Moving quickly. She could tell from the way every step hurt so much more, the way the grass was moving by quicker under her feet.

The edges of her vision darkened further. The grass beneath them was about all she could see, at this point, and the darkness threatened with each jolting, agonizing step. Somehow, she pushed it back.

Not yet.

She stared at her feet. Step, jolt, pain. Step, jolt, pain. Catra was breathing heavily at her side. Faster. Step—

For a split second, the darkness won. She didn't know if the agonized sound she heard came from Catra or her, but the pain in her side was enough for her world to fade from black to brilliant white. A nauseating sensation returned; warmth spilling from her side and trickling down her skin.

Catra was saying… something, pulling her forward. Everything she had packed away in little boxes was starting to spill out. The pain, the heat—She couldn't process. Couldn't think. They had to move, but she couldn't. Her thoughts started to drift again.

Not yet.

Starting to run again felt like the hardest thing she'd done in her life, but she did it.

Things blurred after that. They weren't moving. Were they? Things were moving around her, but maybe that was just her vision. They had to keep moving, escape the beasts—

Something hit her face, and her head exploded in pain from the sharp movement. Her cheek stung. Somehow, the bright flash of pain in a new location on her body brought with it some brief clarity. Catra was shaking her shoulders, speaking frantically.

"Adora, come on. You gotta tell me how to open the door. Adora!" She gave a panicked glance to the side.

Door?

Sword. Castle. Beasts. Suddenly, she processed the enormous crystal slab that rose before them—The castle. They were at the door to the castle. Her face was burning, her side was burning, everything was burning.

With great effort, she wrenched a word from her throat.

"..ternia."

"What?"

Beasts. Beasts were chasing them. One was almost there—she could feel its steps vibrating through the ground, imagine its hot breath on her neck. Terror shocked her further to awareness. She straightened somewhat and forced the word out with all the air in her body:

"Eternia!"

The door swung down into a ramp and Catra shoved them both forward, tumbling down in a graceless heap of arms and legs. Rolling down the ramp was a fresh experience in agony, and the short drop from the half-open ramp to the floor drew a sound from her that was pathetic even to her ears—something that would have been a scream, if she had more energy, but emerged only as a breathless whimper. Distantly, she heard Catra shout for the door to close, saw the ramp almost shut just as the blur of a beast's leg shot through the gap, its enormous claws heading straight for Adora. Something yanked her just out of the way—her vision whitened at the pain—and she felt more than heard the deep gouges scraped into the crystal floor where her head had been a moment before. The door slammed shut on the beast's leg, unable to close completely. An unsettling yowl of pain and a cracking, crumbling sound as it worked its leg free, followed by a slam as the door shut the rest of the way. A sliver of light shone through the hole cracked in the entrance—too small. Far too small for any of the beasts to make it through. Her eyes closed. The sound of Catra panting for breath, and her own ragged breathing.

Then light flashed red through her eyelids, and a robotic voice rang out.

"Intruder detected."

Catra swore. Through what felt like a foot of water, Adora heard the ominous sounds of scrabbling in the walls.

Consciousness was slipping away from her again. She pulled it back.

Not yet.

A/N: *cough* Yeah, so, we're getting close-ish to the end, which means... more cliffhangers, unfortunately. (SORRY) Maybe three more chapters? Bear in mind that I'm awful with estimating remaining chapter count, so take that with a massive grain of salt. XD Not sure when the next update will be coming with the holiday season and all, but I generally post little status updates on Sunday night on my tumblr (adoras-last-braincell). Anyway, thanks as always for reading!