“They’re… standing now,” I noted to Hazuzu in between breaths. “We need to get those shackles off of you.” I eyed him as we ran. I noticed his jaw clench, though he never turned to look me in the eye. Instead, his focus was only on the hill above, on his wife and daughter.

“There’s no time,” he said, still pushing the pace. “Charybdis will eat her alive.”

“Then it’ll be faster to portal up there – and out of there, too,” I said, grabbing his arm and pulling him to a halt. Or tried to, anyway. His larger mass had too much inertia and I just ended up dragging myself along with him for a step or two. Fortunately, he took my advice and stopped. I breathed a sigh of relief. My muscles were screaming, my calves burning, and my lungs on fire. It seemed that the demon king was in slightly better physical shape than me.

“Get these off of me, then,” Hazuzu said through clenched teeth.

Wordlessly, I rustled up the key I had stored in my pocket and unlocked them, deftly slipping them back into my pocket. Hazuzu gave me a nod, a silent agreement that now was the time, and he stepped aside to generate a portal for us.

He kept flicking his eyes up the hill but turned his focus into the portal. As I’d seen before, he stood at attention, his body rigid with his palms upwards. The light from them grew and grew until it became a rip of space, a blinding white void for us to step into.

We went through the portal, our feet touching grass at a much high altitude on the other side.

Ahead of us, still a safe distance away, was Callie and Charybdis. But just as we had appeared, with Callie’s back to us, a giant creature emerged from the ground. Terrifying, tall, heat simmered from around it. I didn’t catch sight of an aura, so it wasn’t a demon. Whatever it was, it acted quickly, spouting fire from its maw at Callie.

I flinched backwards, instinctively ducking for cover.

But the fire flew over her, around some sort of shell she had created.

Hazuzu stood next to me, grimly staring at the scene in front of us.

“We have to get closer to her. Charybdis is bound to notice us sooner or later, but for the meantime, we need cover.”

We glanced around the hillside. There was no cover to be found, only the hill in front of us, and the ocean below at a sheer drop beyond the cliff behind us. Fortunately, Charybdis seemed to still be thoroughly engrossed with the battle below, and Callie with her fire creature. The only thing had even potentially noticed us was the fire creature itself, and it seemed to only be concerned with Callie. Although it was hard to tell. Body language on foreign creatures I’d never heard of nor seen before wasn’t exactly my forte.

Then, rocks shot from the ground like reverse rockets, splitting the dirt and spraying soil everywhere. I saw a crack of light – Callie must have cast another shield. The rocks, just out of our reach, now provided perfect cover for Hazuzu and me. We knelt down behind the nearest one, then peeked around.

My eyes lit upon a prone Callie, cradling her arm. But I’d seen the light of her spell – had her shield not worked correctly? I of all people knew that magic was volatile and difficult, and she’d never cast it before. It was entirely possible that her shield had failed, or simply wasn’t strong enough. The fact that she’d been able to produce anything at all was worlds better than anything I’d been able to do.

“Hazuzu,” I whispered. “Callie’s hurt! We have to kill that creature before it kills her!”

He nodded. “You distract it. I’ll take care of it.”

Whatever that meant, I hoped that Hazuzu would be able to put that thing back where it came from before it turned me into a human s’more.

Taking in a shaky breath, I steeled myself for the bravest act I’d probably ever done.

I leapt out from behind the rock to see the fire creature bellow, its mouth already filled with flame, ready to spit it at its victims. I spared a glance to see Callie weakly trying to create a shield, curled in on herself in the fetal position, and it nearly broke me. My fearless and strong friend - I never wanted to see her looking so terrified and helpless ever again.

“What’s up, fucker!” I shouted at the fire creature. I waved my arms around frantically, hoping the movement would divert its attention to me. I jumped over a rock – nearly tripping over it only to catch myself on the next one – and climbed on top of it. I teetered on the edge, clinging to balance as my lifeline. I gulped. “Uh, you suck! Limp noodle of a rock! Suck a dick, dumb shit! Look over here!”

Well, that was probably the stupidest thing I could have come up with. But it had worked. The fire elemental creature had swiveled its makeshift head towards me, its black as night eyes focused on my general direction. It took a lumbering step towards me, its feet sticking to the earth as if it were mud sucking it in. It opened its mouth to shoot fire at me, and a bright white light popped into existence right next to it, out of nowhere. Hazuzu stepped out of it, startling both myself and the creature, even though I’d guessed it would happen. The light shut out, snuffed by Hazuzu, then another formed in its place. This must have been what he meant when he said he would take care of it.

The portal grew, Hazuzu standing still and building it. The creature turned to him, probably just as surprised to see him there as I had been. It opened its mouth, preparing. It must take a second to power up all that flame, because by the time the flames licked outside of its lips, the portal had grown tall enough to swallow it. Hazuzu drew out his great sword and swirled around with it at the creature. It stepped, unbalanced, and fell into the portal Hazuzu had just made.

It screamed the fire from its mouth, but as it fell through the portal, I heard the sound come from behind me now. I carefully extracted myself from my precarious position on top of the rock I’d been perched on just in time to turn around and see the fire creature falling through the air over the cliff. A hearty splash a few seconds later proved that it had fallen to its presumed death in the swirling ocean below. Whether it was dead or not, it wasn’t bothering us any time soon.

I ran to Callie, zig zagging in between and around rocks to get to her.

She looked up at me, astounded. I wondered how much she’d seen and heard.

“You came for me,” she said, her voice wondrous.

“Of course, I did,” I said. “I’ve got your back.” I smiled, and helped her up, careful about her injured arm. Now standing, I realized that Charybdis had turned her attention to us. I swallowed thickly. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.