"You found that path with your sister, didn't you?"

The Paragon looks at him in the electric glow of their bathroom lamps, the cold light making her seem pale, ghostly.

"If you remember it, so will she."

"Lei-Lei, we have to hurry. Keep up, hold my hand."

"She won't have told the Imperator about it."

Allayria frowns skeptically.

She won't tell because it would get her into trouble.

"Even if she didn't," Allayria persists, "Isati knows."

Isati knows...

"Isi!"

"Isi, wait: put your helmet down."

"Lei—"

"Put your helmet down. Can you see it?"

The monster had caught them outside the safety of their rooms that night, caught them in looming darkness, so their dirty, scraped knees knocked together, and clumsy, block feet stumbled over each other. They scrambled, only as kids can do, running down into the shed, their secret room. They had rehearsed this, planned for this specific occasion. If the monster found them outside of their beds.

Isi had stolen the old helmets, Lei, the practice sticks.

"The brain's the important thing," she had gravely told him only weeks before that, tapping the rusty thing clanging around on her head. "You can live without an arm but not a brain..."

He had shivered then at the thought; he didn't want to lose an arm or his brain.

He only remembers snippets of the chase now, mostly how it felt: the bone-marrow coldness of the night, the pelt of rain against his cheeks, the tight but warm hold of his sister's hand over his, and the flashing darkness of a lightning-lit corridor and the way his breath heaved inside it as the dark thing thundered behind them. They brought the sticks to protect themselves, but when it came to it, they were too afraid.

"We gotta run," she had said, tugging as he started to lag. "We gotta keep going."

They ran outside the palace grounds and the thing screamed behind them. He remembers how his sister's hand tightened over his own, he remembers hearing her over the noises, repeating the words.

We gotta run. We gotta keep going. We gotta run.

They ducked into the narrow places: the small corners, the low entryways. Around fence posts, through thickets and secret shortcuts, known only to kids through the games they play. The helmet was heavy on Lei's head; he kept having to push it up with the fist holding his stick, but then that got caught in a thicket and Isi said, over the thunder and the rain:

"Leave it!"

And then the sky lit with webs of lightning; they fell into the adjacent bush, metal helmets clanking on branches, twigs digging into shins. Lei had scrambled to get up but Isi yanked him back.

"Wait," she had whispered, her dark, long hair plastered around her moon-shaped face.

They couldn't see it anymore, but they could hear it, clamoring around somewhere in the maze of alleyways behind them. They hunkered down low, and Lei tried so hard to keep quiet, but it was wet and cold and his lungs were heaving in his chest. He clamped his free hand over his nose and mouth to stifle it, and his wide eyes peered out, through the leaves and from under the drooping helmet.

And he saw the metal boot crunch on the cobblestone street in front of him.

The jab of Isi's elbow followed his stuttering gasp and he clutched his mouth tighter, watching the twin boot come into view. The feet had shuffled then, turning, and he knew the rest of the monster was twisting too, looking, and Isi's hand was gripping his so tightly then, tight enough he thought his fingers might break, tight enough that they might be fused, that they might never be able to let each other go—

And then the monster shrieked. It had found Lei's stick.

"Don't look back," Isi had said, and he didn't because she was already nine and she knew things. Her stick was gone too, and they ran, they ran and ran and ran and his feet were tired and his hands so cold, and still they ran until they hit the edge of the fort, until their pale hands scrabbled against icy, dark stone.

"No, no, no, no, no, no," Isi had moaned then and Lei had felt the butterfly flutter of panic too. "We gotta climb, we gotta climb."

They tried, heaving and clambering, their feet and fingers slipping and sliding, the terrain before them nothing but shining, sharp blackness. They could hear it behind them. They could hear it coming, and Isi was sobbing.

He remembers her whispering in those futile moments, so quiet underneath all the thunder:

"Lei, please, Lei, please hurry, hurry, hurry."

And he tried so hard, tried so hard to move his limbs quickly, he jumped and clung and crawled and just as his boot slipped on a slick rock his helmet clanged forward over his eyes and he nearly shrieked, his nails digging into the rocks and—

"Isi!"

"Lei, hurry!"

"Isi, wait: put your helmet down."

"Lei—"

"Put your helmet down. Can you see it?"

He doesn't confirm it, but he knows Allayria knows by the way she looks at him.

"It's our best shot," he tells her, even if it's a poor consolation. "Better just her than..."

Better just her than the monster.

He had, toward the end of that climb, looked back, just once. In the glow of the city's lights he could see her at the bottom, the monster, prowling the edge of the fortress wall, screaming and raging. The rain and the distance made it so he couldn't see it clearly, but he was glad; it seemed to him that the scariest part of the monster was that it wore his mother's face.

"Lei-Lei," Isati had shrieked because she had seen him looking. "Don't stop, don't stop!"

He hadn't; he wouldn't—she had needed him, and he wasn't going to leave her.

And he didn't; not then, not after. In the end it wasn't Lei who stopped running.

It was Isati.

A/N: My poor, frazzled duck is back, paddling frantically against the turn of the tide.

In other, traumatic news, I've learned that this emoji 😈 is not suggestive of a certain level of maniacal evil I occasionally aspire to and sometimes obtain, but is suggestive of, well, being suggestive AND EVERY USAGE OF IT IN MY LIFE HAS FLASHED BEFORE MY EYES. Is this true? What have I done? FORGIVE ME I DID NOT KNOW.

Also can someone make an encyclopedia of what emojis actually mean? Asking for a friend.