Finn spits out a mouthful of sand, pushing himself up to his feet. It was always a relief to see that Jake was handling things, for even just a moment while he collected himself. It wasn’t even something he thought about, relying on it on a deeply unconscious level.

“Jermaine, watch out!” Scrambling across the sand in a run, Finn jumps, wrapping an arm around Jermaine and heaving him out of the path of the largest falling sand chunk. They both stumble, gracelessly falling backward, Finn still holding tightly to his brother. Smaller hunks of sand shower around them.

“You gotta be careful, bro, these sand golems aren’t messing around,” Finn’s tone was casual to a degree that he could have been talking about the weather. And it might as well be, for how often they encountered this sort of thing…even Jermaine would be aware of that, even if the realities of actually fighting those monsters in direct combat on the day to day wasn’t really his idea of a fun afternoon.