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“No idea,” Griff replies with a frown. Everyone else shakes their heads that they have no idea either and Griff continues, “The problem is that there are a few realms that all look similar, so unless you go to one of the ones that has a defining and obvious feature about it, like the one that’s surface is nearly all lava, and the inhabitants live within the ground rather than on top of it, you have no real way of knowing where you are unless you speak to the inhabitants. ”

“That’s a really good point,” Doc agrees. “But sometimes you’re better off not meeting the locals, there are quite a few realms where they aren’t very hospitable to outsiders.”

Ransom frowns, “Yeah, I’ve heard some pretty awful stories. Let’s get this done as quickly as we can. I don’t like that it looks like late afternoon. I don’t want to be still here when night falls.”

River pulls a face, “We were in the woods for a long time.”

“Don’t forget time could work differently here, their days could be shorter,” Raiden reminds, and River nods.

“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Reed says, as both he and Griff transform.

Well, Griff transforms into all of his gargoyle glory, but Reed only lets his wings free.

“Be careful,” I tell them, as I bite my lip with worry. Something isn’t sitting right with me, but I think it’s because I don’t like the idea of us splitting up. That never works out well for anyone in the movies.

Griff smiles, “Don’t worry, we will.”

I nod, but don’t reply as I watch them take off. I don’t dare take my eyes off them as that feeling of unease grows.

“Guys, something's not right,” I finally say when the feeling gets too much.

As soon as the words leave my mouth, there’s a massive explosion, and a geyser of lava shoots high in the air heading straight for Reed and Griff.

I call out in panic, and feel magic surge from beside me as a familiar glowing golden light wraps around them and pulls them out of the way of the lava stream just in time.

Relief fills me as I glance to the side and see Ransom watching the guys closely, as he controls the magic around them.

Just as we all breathe a sigh of relief, thinking that they’re safe, another geyser erupts, and seems to set off a chain reaction that has multiple streams of what at least looks like lava shooting high in the air.

“Fucking lava,” Doc curses. “After this whole experience, I now have a very strong dislike of lava. I was indifferent before.”

“Oh, I am definitely there with you,” Van agrees. He looks at Ransom, “Can you bring them back? How long can you hold the protection?”

Ransom looks at Van with surprise in his eyes, “For as long as I need to.”

I get the feeling that he’s putting on the strain in his voice because he should, so he doesn’t let on how strong he is, and not because he’s actually struggling.

Evander must assume the same thing because his eyebrow does this tiny little twitch, and Ransom pulls an equally minute expression in return, and that’s that.

You only get that sort of level of easy and subtle communication from working and living with each other for a long time. It’s impressive.

“Pull them in as quickly as you can then,” Van orders without missing a beat.

Ransom nods and starts muttering under his breath, using hand gestures as well to bring the guys closer, dodging and weaving through all of the streams of magic. Although I suspect that both the muttering and the gestures are unnecessary for him to do as well.

The guy’s got quite far across before the lava decided to try to eat them. Does lava eat things? I don’t think normal lava does, but this isn’t normal lava, it's supernatural lava, so maybe it does?

Ransom’s brow is beginning to furrow with the effort of having to go around all of the sudden explosions of lava.

It gets to the point where I am genuinely concerned that he is pushing himself too far.

The glowing ball holding Reed and Griff flashes on and off briefly before Ransom gets it back around them just in time to avoid a lava stream.

“Shit, are you okay man?” River asks Ransom.

Ransom grimaces, “Something is fighting against me. It’s pulling on the other side of the bubble that I have wrapped around the guys, meaning that I’m having to put in twice as much effort to get them here, and dodge through the streams of lava.”

“Can we help?” Doc asks, looking worried.

Following my instincts, I move to Ransom’s side, and he glances down at me, allowing me to see the worry in his eyes that the situation we’re in is causing him.

I step closer to him, and since his hands are busy and I think that they are actually helping now, I slide my arm around him and lift up the side of his shirt slightly so I can rest my fingertips against his bare skin.

He looks down at me, confused for a brief moment, before a surge of magic flows from me to him.

“Fucking hell, gorgeous,” he mutters quietly, barely above a whisper. He smiles softly, full of pride, as he leans over and kisses my forehead, “Thank you.”

I smile proudly and, at a normal tone, say, “You’ve got this, bring them back.”

Honestly, I have no idea if I’ve just messed up by helping Ransom, but it’s not like I was going to let him struggle, and I definitely wasn’t going to let Reed and Griff die just because we don’t want people to know what we’re capable of, or that I’m not actually human.

I’m hoping that no one picked up on it and that, if anything, they will just assume that we’re together.

“We’ll help,” Doc suggests. “We can lend our power to help boost yours.”

Ransom smiles and nods, “Please, I won’t be able to do it on my own.”

I know for a fact that I’ve just lent him enough power, but as the guys surround us both and lay their hands on Ransom, I realize that it’s for show.

Anyone who was watching would have seen that Ransom was struggling.

If he stopped struggling the moment that I touched him, then it would be obvious that I’m the one who helped.

So by all of us touching him, then we’re all lending our magic and helping, so it looks less impressive.

Within a few short moments, Griff and Reed are back.

“That was fucking close,” Griff says immediately when the golden bubble drops.

“You have no idea,” Ransom mutters.

“So, flying is out then.” River states. “Which means we’re going to have to thread our way through the rocks and hope that we’re heading in the right direction.”

“It’s not ideal, but we can do it,” Van replies. “We need to move as quickly as we can, we definitely don’t want to be caught out here in the dark, especially since we don’t know for certain which direction that we need to head in, but we also need to be really careful.”