Chapter Nine: Martin

Again. Ever since entering this place, all the fragmented memories had returned to him, relentless and brutal in their images. With the removal of the time obfuscation spell and with physically seeing the place he'd stepped foot into over five months ago, everything returned, fresh as a new wound.

Screaming. Panic and shrieks were loud and echoed and deafening in the cavern. Why's the water rising? We should have hours yet! WHY IS IT RISING!

Yannick tried to get into the water, then backed up, jabbering something about not being able to swim. Then someone suggested they may have an air pocket and that it'll be okay. Someone else said they'd die of hypothermia first. Voices blended into one another, mixed with terror and desperation. There was a foot in his face as the waters rose and covered everything – no gaps for air, nothing at all…

Now, it was happening again.

"All right, I've got this," Willow said, stepping forward as the waters shifted into the cavern at a shocking rate. He cradled Yannick, vaguely realizing he never quite remembered if Yannick was in the swirling mass of panicked friends and limbs. He only remembered the chaos and the sensation of his lungs running out of air in the darkness and feeling his way along the tunnel until his lungs were close to bursting. Then he shifted for that extra surge of strength, using his claws to push against the rock and propel himself out faster.

He remembered blacking out as he reached the surface and then waking up in the woods with three of his friends around him, wet and not moving.

The waters filled up the cavern faster than what should be possible, but Willow remained calm, solid as a rock, and lifted her hands. She waded forward and down. "Follow me. It'll all be fine. Trust me."

Professor Z'hana followed first. After a hesitation and a nod of encouragement from Professor Umber, Martin went next with Yannick. Instead of the water soaking him – it seemed to push away and around him, inches from touching him but never crossing the barrier between dry and wet. He was in a perfect pocket of dry air, which maintained itself as he walked into the depths. The tunnel was awkward when carrying Yannick, but what was even stranger was seeing the water in front and behind him but unable to touch him.

Willow's magic. It's working.

His palpitating heart calmed. I'm okay. We're okay. The waters couldn't reach him!

He grinned, hardly daring to believe it. Of course, this was the result he wanted, but all the same, it was easy to fall back into panic and lose some sense of rational thought.

All seven of them, the unconscious Yannick included, made it through the water-logged tunnel without incident over the course of a few minutes. In the end, however, they needed to swim up, and Marlon hurriedly took Yannick's body.

"Martin!" he barked. "I need you to transform. Transform and be ready to attack the creature that's approaching! Professor Umber, do the same! Become a dragon!"

Everyone stared at Marlon.

"We don't have much time! I had to rewind! Trust me!"

"Oh, crap," Kati whispered. "Tell us what to do."

"Z'Hana, Kati, get out of the way. Willow, if you can use your water magic to slow whatever it is or bind it or something, please do. And keep the bubble around Martin so he can go through the water."

"What is it?"

"It's a monster!"

Martin watched as Marlon carried Yannick, making it to the steps with Z'Hana and Kati. He then shifted into tiger form. Trusting Willow, even though his heart pumped wildly, he pounced into the deeper water, noticing how clean his movement was with the air pocket skin-tight against his body. His powerful arms pulled, his back legs kicked, agile as a seal.

Something emerged from the depths, a huge, shadowy something, long and serpentine, with multiple heads on sinuous, snake-like necks.

He snarled in surprise, having never seen anything like this.

"Kill the hydra!" Professor Z'Hana screeched, her voice cutting through the water, and Martin galvanized into action. One of the hydra heads snapped for him, but with a graceful kick, he avoided the snap and swiped at the long, tapered neck. Whatever Willow was doing for him, it worked perfectly – his claws left deep gouges on the hydra's neck. The hydra let out a whistling shriek and tried to turn more heads toward him, but its movement was oddly slow, as if it were swimming in custard. Martin noticed water currents weaving around the hydra's body and knew instantly that Willow was slowing it, interfering with its natural movements.

Suddenly confident and hearing Marlon's screaming instructions to drive the hydra upward, he dove down, beginning to slash at the hydra's underside instead. In a slow, agonized motion, it swam upward, away from him – only to then be doused in an intense gout of flame from Professor Umber, now flying in his draconic form.

The hydra writhed and flailed, and Martin kept harassing it from beneath, clawing, biting, trying to find the vulnerable parts and give it no chance to strike out at him. He gripped hard and, in the typical cat-like fashion, began using his back claws in a pounding motion as if wrestling with a toy, except this toy happened to be ten times bigger than him and a lot angrier.

Another flash of flame tinted the waters orange and red for a moment, and then the hydra, in a swarm of red, went limp, no longer able to fight him off. He attacked it a little more for good measure before sensing that they'd managed to finish it off.

He swam through the cloud of red to the surface and saw that all of the hydra's heads had been incinerated.

Marlon was jumping up and down, laughing in mild hysteria from the steps above the waterline. "That's right, bitch! You don't get to kill any of us this time! We killed you! Yeah!"

"I take it the original timeline you just took us from didn't work out well," Z'hana said wryly.

"Two of us died. I stayed long enough to figure out what was most effective – Professor Umber actually suggested the strategy – and then rewound before it got me. We went back about fifty seconds."

"Damn."

"But let's get out of here before anything else shows up. I don't know if I can do that again."

Wordlessly, they all hurried up the pathway, only to find that the path itself was fogging over, making it more dangerous and harder to traverse. Before Martin had even reached the top of the path, the fog cleared away, and his paws instead trod upon solid ground.

The world around them had shifted, becoming the woodland just beyond Oakwend.

They were safe and sound. He shifted back into human form, still quite unable to process the full thing – especially when it came to time. He hadn't noticed anything. One moment, he was in the tunnel; the next, Marlon was screaming instructions for something only he could remember.

"Who died?" Kati asked softly.

"I don't think that's worth knowing since no one died this time," Marlon said gravely.

"I'm curious, though…"

"I assume not me since I was able to give you a strategy," Umber said, now back in his human form, picking something from his teeth. "Too much fire gives me a little heartburn these days..."

Marlon sighed. "Willow and Professor Z'Hana died. Z'Hana first, then Willow was too freaked out to react and got eaten before any of us could process what was happening. Martin ditched Yannick in the water and went on a rampage underwater – I don't know exactly what he did, but it caused the hydra to emerge. Professor Umber then suggested what to do before distracting it, and… and I returned."

"Wow," Martin said.

"Literally everyone was needed," Willow said, a little pale from having heard that, in one scenario, she'd died. "This stuff is way more dangerous than I ever expected. I'm not sure it's the kind of life for me…"

While Willow looked pale, Martin dwelled on what Marlon had said about him going on a rampage. Maddened by grief? Rage? Both? He shivered, a sudden sense of loss flooding through him at the thought of losing Willow. That couldn't happen.

He and Willow had so many more memories to make together.

Professor Z'Hana examined the weary group before her. "Well, needless to say, you're all getting extra credit for all this. Going in and out of a fae realm alive after dealing with a fae hydra, of all things, is pretty good. Willow, as well; you better keep practicing that magic. You'll go a very long way like that."

She smiled briefly, though still appeared troubled. They headed back to the academy, and though Martin could swerve and go home, he instead trailed behind with Willow, holding her hand and not caring who saw.

She leaned against him and exhaled in relief. "I feel so tired all of a sudden… how are you holding up?"

"Happy," he said. "Happy we found Yannick. Happy we're all alive." He didn't quite dare to say I don't know what I would've done if I lost you, but it was implied in the way he hugged her then, and she leaned harder into him.

"It's weird. Thinking that I actually died, but I don't know or remember or see it."

"Maybe Marlon was right; maybe it wasn't worth knowing."

"Ah, but then I'd be too curious." Her fingers ruffled his hair in a pleasant, familiar way. "We did it, though. We broke the enchantment. We made it out."

"We did," he said, still uncaring that the eyes of others were on them as he breached the distance to kiss her firmly on the lips.

"Does that mean you'll be returning to the academy, then?" she asked against his mouth, her cheeks flushed, eyes glazed over in the faint stirring of desire.

"You can bet on it." He kissed her once more, hugging tight, before letting go and holding her hand all the way back to Dreadmor Academy.