Steel dogs

It was too late. One dog stiffened and spasmed in mid-leap, but the rest landed on the force bubble. The bubble collapsed with a flat, snapping implosion, spilling the dogs onto the surface of Droam's intellect. They scrambled after the ball, floundered through the delicate crystalline strands, shattered Droam into a cloud of glittering shards.

Aandred got to his knees, shuddering, his hands clattering against the floor. Droam's hulk had toppled and lay facedown, motionless. Inside the castle an emptiness spread, until it had swept through every niche and corner of that great pile. The first faint screams reached his ears.

A long time later, a red-haired boy of ten led his younger sister along a path through green woods. On a stone bench sat a statue of black metal. The statue's hand rested on the withers of a rusting steel dog; two similar dogs lay corroding at the statue's feet. The statue's face was mad, brutish, with horrible glaring eyes, and the little girl was frightened. «Ugly,» she said.

«No,» the boy said sternly. «Never say that! When we first came to Neverland, he killed a hundred monsters with his dogs and kept the rest away until they wore out. Without him, we'd all be dead.»

«Well, then, why is he out here by himself?»

The boy's face was somber, as if he remembered a sorrow too deep for his years. «He got slower and slower, after the last monsters were gone. One day he came up here with the dogs he still had left. For the rest of that summer, he would wink at me when I came to see him. But in the spring, he'd stopped moving.»

«That's sad.»

«Yes.»

After a while they turned and went back down the hill, toward their lives.