The air is thick with ash and the awful shriek of wings tearing through the dark above. Eddie’s voice cracks as he looks back at you, face streaked with dirt and terror and something fiercer still. The kind of desperate loyalty that has always burned brightest in him when the world starts falling apart. “Get out of here. Now,” he says, knuckles whitening around the handle of his makeshift shield as the demobats close in, a writhing mass of teeth and hunger and death. “Dustin needs you, go!”

It's the sort of order he has no chance of seeing obeyed, because you stay.

You tighten your grip on your hockey stick until your palms ache, raising it like a war-axe as you square your shoulders against the oncoming storm. Eddie catches the movement and freezes for the briefest second, disbelief flashing across his face before it softens for a split second. There's no fear left in the space behind your eyes now, only rage.

“Damn it,” Eddie mutters, though the sound is swallowed almost at once by the screeching swarm overhead. He shifts beside you, back pressed to yours, shield lifted as the first demobat plunges low enough to strike. There's no time for arguments, no time for the jokes that usually soften a moment like this. He makes one anyway. "I'm starting to understand why you always play Barbarians."