I was watching Cal out of the corner of my eye as we walked. He had been lost in his own thoughts ever since his brother, Wulfe, had shown up unexpectedly. We’d been moving campsites almost daily because no matter how well hidden I thought we were, Wulfe would turn up within a day, to taunt Cal. A few days ago we’d managed to find a wooden platform well hidden in the canopy of a tree, and so far Wulfe hadn’t managed to find us there. Cal’s spirits hadn’t lifted any though, so I’d managed to arrange for our old friends, Root and Will, to travel down and join us for a trip down into the dungeons – a place that seemed preferable to the surface right now. Cal was usually the light and joy of any conversation, so it hadn’t taken them long to realise that something was very wrong. Cal was still trying, still chatting to us all, but his usual spark just wasn’t there, and whenever he didn’t think anyone was watching him, his ears went down and his eyes gazed off into the distance. Cal never talked about his childhood, so I had no clue why seeing Wulfe had affected him this way, but it was breaking my heart.

So far we hadn’t really run into much on this dungeon run – a couple of small traps that were easily avoided, and since we all knew each other well, the conversation was easy, even for me. The room we were currently crossing was absolutely enormous, big enough that our torches couldn’t light any of the surrounding walls, so it felt like we were just moving through complete darkness. All of a sudden, a cold wind blew past me, so hard that I had to brace against it and it extinguished my torch immediately. The others, all significantly lighter than I am, weren’t lucky enough to brace against it and tumbled to the floor in a heap. With all the torches gone, it took a few seconds for my eyes to begin to adjust to the darkness.

‘Is everyone okay?’ I asked.

The others started to reply, but were interrupted by the sound of stone on stone, and then the floor beneath my feet began to shudder.

‘Get up!’ I shouted. ‘I don’t know what’s happening, but be ready to run!’

I saw them all gain their footing, as I continued to peer into the darkness for any sign of what was about to come. And then I spotted it. The thin line that crossed the floor in-between where I stood and the others were, where they’d been blown by the blast of wind. It was widening unbelievably fast, and together with the sounds of stone gears grinding, I put together that this was a trap designed to separate a party.

‘TI’ Cal shouted.

I stared at him, and even in the darkness I could see the look of absolute despair on his face, the terror at the thought of losing me. The abyss in the floor was already at the very edges of what I could safely jump, but looking at Cal’s distraught face I realised I didn’t have a choice. I don’t know what had happened to him as a child, I don’t know how to make him feel any better about Wulfe, but like hell was I going to leave him to face anything alone. I wheeled around, galloping as fast as I could towards the abyss that now stretched a massive distance between us. I heard Quill and Root scream ‘NO’ as I pushed off the edge of my rocky outcrop, and leaped.