Leo watched the three attacks peel away from Raymond's blade in diverging arcs of annihilation, as time seemed to stretch thin under the weight of inevitability, and in that stretched instant his mind tore through countless possibilities with ruthless clarity, stripping away hope, heroism, and fantasy until only the truth remained.
'I don't have enough time to save everyone here,' he realized, as the vectors and trajectories burned themselves into his vision and the gap between what he wanted to do and what he could do became brutally apparent.
'If Veyr falls now, after everything we sacrificed to free him, the army won't just lose a Dragon… they will lose morale and a sense of purpose.
It will be as though we fought this entire war for naught….
And hence, no matter what I can't let him die at the least.'
