31. Second Contact

“Before we move on, I think we need to say goodbye to our guide,” Annabeth suggested. “When we run into more teams, they are going to try to attack her as well. We won’t always be able to protect her, and I would hate for her to get hurt because of us.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” I nodded. “We’re obviously at the edge of where the regular teams are, so we should be able to figure out our way from here, especially now that we have the cartography skill.”

The only one who didn’t agree with our plan was the worker. She was adamant she had a job to do and she was going to do it. I argued that this wasn’t realistic. The teams we met along the way would surely attack her. There was no way Annabeth and I could protect her from everyone.

She still stubbornly insisted she was our guide to the end. I was only able to convince her to compromise after telling her that trying to keep her safe would make our job harder. And there was no way we wouldn’t do our absolute best to make sure she stayed safe.

The compromise we reached was that she would stay with us until we ran into a team that actually challenged us. Until then, she would remain our guide and hang back when there was fighting.

Before we set out again, there were a couple more things I wanted to do. The first was that our fight had produced several floating motes of magic. It looked like they were all from the frost bolts.

I hadn’t noticed any left over magic with my other fights, but maybe that was because I hadn’t been looking for them. Right now, we needed all the magic we could get, so I was happy to spend a couple minutes and let the Granny Godmothers do their thing.

While they did that, I decided to do a healing cycle on our guide. The healing cycle had worked very well on Annabeth, but we were sworn to each other. I was curious to see how it would affect a mundane creature. It might not help much, but it certainly couldn’t hurt.

I had to push my way through her aura, but the results were fantastic. The healing cycle built on what Tea had started and went even further. It strengthened her in every way, and I thought it started new growth where she had lost her leg. Only time would tell, but I was hopeful she would eventually get her leg back again.

Meanwhile, the Godmothers had finished collecting and cleaning the frost magic, and now they were loading up the purple octopuses for Annabeth. I checked her magic levels, and I could see her power coming back. She was maybe at thirty percent, which still wasn’t great. She was absorbing the neutral magic quickly, though, so she should be even better before our next fight.

I still had a moment left, so on impulse, I decided to do one more thing. I pushed the tiniest bit of my magic into the worker and then used my new presence abilities to pull almost all of my colors back out of it. That left her with a tiny nucleus of neutral magic.

If the red magic made the red-eyes bigger and stronger, maybe a tiny bit of magic would help the worker ant for many years to come. Since the magic was neutral, it should eventually adjust to her aura and do what was best for her. Also, as unaspected magic, it shouldn’t make her crazy or have any adverse side effects.

Our worker didn’t seem to notice any difference and the Godmothers were finished, so we headed down the tunnel again. Bermuda had managed to sleep through the whole fight, but now he woke up and poked his head over my shoulder to see what was happening.

That didn’t last very long. He was sandwiched between Annabeth and me, and when he wriggled around and stood up in my back pouch, she gave him a kiss. She’d done that many times before, but I guess this time was just too much. He gave her a disgusted look and vanished into my Throne Room.

“Well, excuse me!” Annabeth laughed, and I laughed with her. Cats sure were mysterious creatures sometimes.

Once again, we heard the fighting before we saw anything. I also heard another sound I couldn’t quite place. Water, maybe?

I sent a Surfer Dude ahead to scout it out, and he raced down the tunnel. Since there was fighting involved, our worker ant slowed down and held back.

The map filled in with data, and once again, it was a fight between mages and red-eyes. Except this time, the red-eyes outnumbered the mages, and they were clearly winning. There were two bodies on the floor and three mages still standing—facing off against five level one red-eyes.

The tunnel took a sharp turn to the right, and abruptly, we ran into the cavern with the fight. It wasn’t that large compared to the cavern with the black warriors, but it was plenty big enough for five red-eyes to do their thing. Part of the space was taken up by an underground stream on the right. It wasn’t very deep, only about thigh high, but the water was moving swiftly.

As we watched, three red-eyes ganged up on one mage, who quickly went down. Only two left. After that, they would turn on us.

Fighting five red-eyes at once wasn’t terrible, especially since they were just level one. I’d already fought much worse.

I was mentally getting prepared for the fight, when a premier team showed up out of the far tunnel. They looked sharp, with matching deep blue uniforms sporting highlights of electric blue. In the dim lighting, they looked like something out of Tron, only more modern.

“Five hard targets,” the woman in the middle declared. She sounded firm and professional. “That’s more than I like. But there’s at least a hundred points here, and I think it”s doable. Thoughts?”

“We got this,” one of the guys said, smacking his fists together like he was in a boxing match. He looked like a heavyweight boxer too. The other guy rolled his eyes but still nodded in agreement. The two remaining women on the team nodded also.

“Help us!” one of the mages from the previous team shouted. “Together we can take them! We’ll give you all the points.” He sounded desperate, with good reason. Getting swarmed by five red-eyes was no joke.

The leader gave him a thumbs up as she issued her orders.

“Ivan, Leon—you both take point. Emily and I will take the soft targets. Ava, backup Leon.” Again, everyone nodded, and the two guys stepped forward.

I checked out the information displayed over their heads. They were called the Wrecking Crew, and they followed the Path of the Formless Weapon. I wondered what that would look like. Did they fight with a ball of magic like Karl?

Regardless, this team looked tough! The two guys looked like linebackers—solid and able to take a hit. The woman who was issuing orders seemed solid too. She was tall, like a model, but thick, like a pro wrestler. I would hate to meet her in a dark alley. The final two women seemed more normal sized, and if I had to guess, they were the ranged fighters of the team.

“Let’s do this quickly and safely,” Hannah, the leader, continued. “We’re running low on juice this round.” Her teammates nodded like they already knew what to do and they’d heard this several times before. That was good enough for the leader, though, as she kept going.

“Shields level eight. Weapons level ten. Look alive, people! Let’s make it hot.”

This was exciting! I was going to see a premier team in action.

They activated their shields, and for the first time, I saw mages use something other than a traditional shield charm. The magical protection covered their body like plate armor, and it was stunningly beautiful. It looked like something off the cover of a fantasy novel, with gold and rubies inlaid over the steel. The whole thing had fantastical layers and swirls that would never have worked in actual manufacturing—it would have been way too heavy and awkward—but looked amazing here. Since it was made of magic, the more details it had, the better it was. It looked thick and powerful, and I couldn’t wait to punch it and see just how well it held up.

The armor seemed to be anchored by a copper bracer, which most of them wore on their left arm. Only Ivan, the more aggressive team member, wore it on his right.

The two guys and the leader also unclipped what appeared to be handles from their belts. They were thick, like ax handles, and about a foot long. The first guy flicked his handle, and a long magic war hammer grew out of the shaft.

Once again, it was a freaking work of art, with blood red rune-looking things etched into the steel. I didn’t think the runes were real magical symbols, like my force rune, but even so, the level of detail in the hammer allowed it to hold a tremendous amount of magic.

The other guy, Ivan, flicked his handle also and made an identical hammer. Then he seemed to reconsider and flicked the handle again. The hammer morphed into a massive ax, which again looked like it was drawn by a fantasy artist. It had the same red runes as the hammer, and I realized what the Path of the Formless weapon was all about.

This team could probably transform their handle into just about any weapon.

Fascinating!

Meanwhile, the team leader flicked her handle and turned it into a spear. She glanced at Emily, who nodded and reached for what appeared to be a set of throwing stars.

All of this happened pretty quickly, as the two remaining mages of the previous team were about to get overrun. The main guy glanced at the premier team suiting up, and he screamed for them to hurry.

The lead woman, Hannah, flicked her spear, and it grew at least twenty feet longer. The mage from the other team didn’t even have time to scream as she stepped forward and stabbed him through the heart.

“Damn!” Annabeth exclaimed softly. “That’s cold.”

“He was going to die anyway,” I replied. “She just took the opportunity to get the points for his kill. But, yeah, it was cold.”

The remaining team member exited the tournament right behind him as Emily’s throwing star grew in size and started rotating like a buzz saw. It sliced through his neck, then curved in the air and returned back to Emily’s waiting hand as the guy”s head fell to the floor.

I thought that was pretty cold too.

Deprived of their prey, the five red-eyes turned and immediately attacked the Wrecking Crew. There were five red-eyes and five mages, so numerically, the battle started out even. The red-eyes were rabid with powerful mandibles and thick chitin. The mages had powerful weapons that morphed and their own thick armor. I squeezed Annabeth’s legs in excitement. This was going to be fun to watch!

The two guys in the front tried to hold off all five red-eyes, but it quickly became obvious that wasn’t going to work. So Hannah switched tactics and moved to the front line herself.

Her elongating spear had worked well against the mage, but it was a terrible weapon against the monstrous ant. The point just skittered off its chitin without finding purchase, allowing the red-eye to get in close and chomp down on her head. If her armor hadn’t been so good, she’d have been out of the tournament in a second.

She quickly switched her weapon to a round shield and used it to fend off the red-eye. It looked weird because it was still coming out of the handle, making it look like she was wielding an umbrella. If I hadn’t just seen her be so ruthless, I would have cheered her on as a battle Mary Poppins.

Emily and Ava came to her aid, and their throwing stars seemed to be doing the best damage out of all the weapons. They were cracking the chitin and even lopped off a leg.

Leon, with the hammer, was swinging as fast as he could. He held off two red-eyes, which was a nice feat in itself, but he wasn’t able to take the time to center himself and dish out any good blows. He managed to do some damage to his enemies, but that didn’t seem to slow them down at all.

Ivan, the energetic one with the ax, was doing just as bad as Ruthless Poppins. He probably thought the bladed edge of his weapon would hew through chitin like soft wood, but that wasn’t the case at all. Instead, the slick chitin turned the edge of his ax just like it turned the leader”s spear.

Choosing an ax would have been a good idea if he could have gotten to the side of the ant and chopped at its narrow neck segment. He was fending off two red-eyes at once, though, so he didn’t have time to do any fancy maneuvers.

Instead of switching weapons, he continued trying to fight with an ax, and that poor decision quickly caught up with him. He was trying to land a powerful blow on the forehead of one red-eye when the other slipped inside his guard and clamped down on his ankle. It immediately backed up, pulling Ivan off his feet before lifting him in the air.

The red-eye’s mandibles couldn’t get through the armor, but it didn’t matter as the red-eye shook him like a dog. I didn’t care for the guy, but I still winced in sympathy. I knew exactly what that felt like.

Or I thought I did.

His bones obviously hadn’t been reinforced like mine, and a few shakes later, I heard his leg snap. Ivan screamed in agony as his body started whipping around in ways it had no business going. His leg bent at weird angles, like part of him was made of Play-Doh.

The red-eye released him mid-swing. He flew through the air and crashed against the wall. The red-eye then ran over, grabbed the arm with the bracer, and started shaking him again. It wasn’t long before I heard another snap as his arm gave way.

He was still screaming, but he must have kept some of his wits about him because his armor suddenly flared with light. It pulsed with power, and before the red-eye had time to react, his protection blew up.

The entire front half of the red-eye vaporized, leaving only the back half and three legs to scrabble around a bit before settling down in death. Ivan hit the ground again, still screaming, as the battle paused in surprise.

Ruthless Poppins cursed as a thin shield formed over Ivan again. Whatever special attack he’d used, it had clearly drained his bracer of most of its power. Hannah cursed again, and the battle quickly resumed, except this time the premier team was on its back foot.

The numbers were still even, four red-eyes versus four mages, but now the Wrecking Crew only had two front line fighters. It didn’t take a genius to see that the mages were going to lose. One by one the front line fighters were going to mess up and get shaken out of the tournament. Then the two ranged mages, who couldn’t take the hits, would quickly follow them.

Unless something drastic happened, this team was going to wipe out.

“Get ready,” Annabeth whispered, giving my shoulder a squeeze. I guess she was thinking the same thing.

I spared a quick moment to be grateful and amazed at just how much my Marks had given me. When I’d been shaken like a chew toy, my bones hadn’t broken. It hadn’t been fun at all, but I’d been able to recover and keep going.

Through them, I’d also learned how to center myself in the earth so those red-eyed bastards couldn’t pick me up in the first place. Being immovable had not only kept me from being tossed around, but it had also given me such a strong base that Spike and the Knuckle Crew could punch through their chitin.

I had been feeling like my skills may have been lacking. Now, seeing how a premier team was faring, I finally appreciated just how good my skills were.

I guess Ruthless Poppins had figured out the same thing about her team”s chances as she barked out a command.

“Ava! Weapon overload! Help Leon!”

Ava caught the star from her latest throw and paused for a sec. Then she threw it again, but this time it was double the size from before. It spun so fast it shrieked like a banshee as it streaked through the air. It hit one of Leon’s red-eyes and just obliterated it. Most of the head fell to the ground, but the rest of the ant splattered the walls like an exploded slushy.

The leader did something to her weapon as well, and it morphed from a protective umbrella to what looked like a huge sword of pure energy. She swiped once, twice, and both her opponents fell apart.

The attacks were awesome, and Hannah had made the right calls to save her team, but it wasn’t without cost. Ava’s throwing star lost its power and bounced off the wall with a light clink. Instead of returning to her hand, it fell to the ground and stayed there. Meanwhile, Hannah’s sword flickered and almost went out. When it stabilized, it was much smaller with a lot less power. Now it looked like she was wielding a dagger with an oversized handle.

“Emily, Leon, finish that last one,” she directed. Then she started cussing again. Clearly, she was upset and frustrated.

With only one opponent, Leon focused his hammer blows better, and it wasn’t long before he started cracking the red-eye’s skull. Meanwhile, Emily’s throwing star was taking out its legs, limiting its mobility.

The red-eye quickly collapsed, barely alive, and Hannah took that opportunity to jump in with her dagger and vent some of her frustration. I guess Ava didn’t have a backup weapon, as she just stood there and watched.

Finally, it was over, and for a moment, the only sounds were the team trying to catch their breath and the murmur of the stream. I guess somewhere in here Ivan had passed out, as I realized he wasn’t screaming anymore.

“What a bloody mess,” Hannah finally said. She sounded like she still wanted to beat on the dead ant a bit more, but she was holding it all inside. She was the leader, after all, and there were things that needed doing.

“Three treasures wasted, and it’s only the second round,” she grumbled. “Actually, four treasures if I heal Ivan.”

She stood there for a moment, lost in thought.

“So, are you going to heal him?” Ava asked.

“I don’t know,” Hannah admitted. “On one hand, we could really use the muscle. On the other hand, he’s stubborn and impulsive, and we might end up in this situation again.”

She stood there, clearly wrestling with the decision but not coming to any conclusion.

“What kind of treasure could heal Ivan?” Annabeth asked softly. “I haven’t heard of anything like that.”

“Me neither,” I whispered back. Apparently, premier teams had premier toys.

“I guess let”s see just how bad he is,” Hannah said finally and started walking towards Ivan’s crumpled body. Then she suddenly stopped and looked around.

“Who gathered the points?”

The rest of her team shook their heads and looked around in confusion.

I took a look around myself and realized all the red-eyes, as well as the fallen mages, had been collected. I hadn’t noticed when the bodies had vanished, but it was just House Louisville and the Wrecking Crew in here. Even if another team had dark clothing like us and had stayed quiet, I’d still have been able to easily find them with my magic sight.

What the heck?

That’s when I noticed a very satisfied dragonfly winging its way back to us.

‘Crystal, what did you do?’ I demanded.

‘I gained us some more points,’ it said smugly. ‘The majority of the points will still go to the Wrecking Crew, of course, as they made the kills. However, some of the points always go to the collector.’

‘Really?’ I asked

‘The rule is designed to reward the survivors,’ my Crystal explained. ‘After all, in a real battle, it doesn”t matter how well you do if you don”t survive.’

That made sense, and I passed the information on to Annabeth. Meanwhile, the other team quickly figured out something was amiss.

“There they are,” Hannah said, pointing in our direction. “Leon, take care of them. And make it hurt!”

“Gladly,” he said with an eager chuckle. He switched his hammer to a sword and started towards us.

“Kill stealing is a bad, bad thing. Unless we’re doing it, of course.” He laughed again. “In which case, it”s perfectly fine.”

Then he paused. “Why are you wearing her like that?”

“We”re conjoined twins,” Annabeth said playfully. “Have been since birth.”

Leon looked confused as I reached up to give Annabeth a high five. Then he shrugged.

“I guess it doesn”t matter. You”ll both be begging me to put you out of the tournament when I”m done.”

He stepped forward and swung low. I think he was planning on cutting me off at the knees. Like, literally.

I responded by stepping forward so I was inside his guard and throat-punched him. The look of shock on his face was priceless.

Most of the force didn”t get through—he still had on a thick layer of protection, after all—but it was enough to make him step back and look like he”d tried to swallow a frog.

I followed him to remain close—giving a guy with a sword room to maneuver is a bad mistake—then Annabeth and I cut loose.

I knew it was going to take some work to wear out his special shield armor, so we got right to it. Annabeth did a double shillelagh whack-a-mole on his head while I focused more on his body. His shield armor was thick, and I quickly discovered all those fancy flared layers weren”t just for show. They got in the way of my punches and made it hard to land a solid hit. So I switched my focus from his body to his main sword arm. That still wore his shield down, and it was unexpected enough that he dropped his weapon handle.

I kicked it out of the way as Annabeth gave a victory cheer, though I quickly found out that disarming him wasn”t a good thing. While he had a sword, I”d been inside his guard, so his offense was poor. Now he was weaponless, he was free to fight hand to hand, and he was much better at that.

He seemed to have a background in muay thai kickboxing, and he quickly started hammering me with short kicks to the thighs. I”d seen videos of this style before, and it was deadly. Because the kicks were low, they were hard to block. And just because they were short didn’t mean they didn”t have power. One good kick could shatter a thigh bone. Even if they didn’t break a leg, repeated blows to the thigh muscles would quickly cripple a fighter.

All that was just their lower body abilities. Their upper attack was almost as deadly, using fast elbow strikes to the sides of the head. When their opponent got stunned, their finishing move was to grab their opponent”s head and pull it down into a knee smash. Few fighters recovered from that level of damage.

Following his chosen style, Leon unleashed a storm of blows on me that would have taken down most mages. Annabeth and I weren”t most mages, though.

For starters, we had Red, who simultaneously distributed the impacts all over my body and used the force rune to slow the strikes down. Not only that, the force runes increased the resistance as he got closer, like a defensive version of relax-and-tense-on-contact.

I could tell this was annoying the crap out of Leon. Instead of feeling a satisfying thump as his blows landed, it was more like he was attacking through a bunch of pillows. I estimated he was hitting at half his normal power, and the more frustrated he got, the more his timing suffered.

In addition, Leon was a big guy, and I think he was used to intimidating and overwhelming his opponents. I was sure in his mind I was just a skinny wimp carrying around a small woman. However, Annabeth and I had both trained against opponents made of sand. Our training dummies were bigger and much heavier than he was. Even though they were made of sand, they were faster too. So fighting a large powerful guy didn’t bother us at all. If anything, it felt comfortable.

I got hit a lot at the beginning. I wasn’t expecting Leon to have such a powerful style of fighting or to be so good at it. But I quickly recovered and was soon giving as good as I got.

“Finish them already!” Hannah yelled. “They’re a bloody House team. You should be able to walk through them with ease.”

She was kneeling by Ivan and putting some sort of paste on his body. It glowed brightly to my magic sight, so I figured it was the healing treasure she was talking about.

Leon didn’t bother replying. He just grunted in frustration and tried to attack even harder.

Meanwhile, I was having a wonderful time. Sure, I had some deep bruising, but Tea was already working on that. Fighting monsters with vastly superior stability and reach had been frustrating. Fighting a normal human, even with all his powerful treasures, was a relief.

Leon stepped up his game, so I stepped up mine. I picked up speed, and soon I was punching at least three times for every kick he threw. I tried blocking his kicks at the beginning but found dodging them was so much easier, even with Annabeth on my back.

Pigeon-stepping at angles threw him off, and he constantly had to rotate to kick again. Meanwhile, I laid into him hard and began to see his shield armor starting to thin.

Leon was in trouble, and their leader knew it.

“Emily, help Leon,” she snapped.

Emily nodded and fired up her throwing star. Meanwhile, I imaged a quick plan to my Dudes.

Leon knew what to do, as he darted to the side, leaving me exposed to Emily. She was obviously expecting this because she immediately threw the star at me.

It buzzed like a saw and expanded to about a foot in diameter. It wasn”t its most powerful form, but it wasn”t a half-assed effort by any means.

The cavern wasn”t that big, and we weren”t fighting that far away, so I”m sure she was certain that she couldn’t miss. I saw her body relax, as she expected her star to cut me in two and finish the fight.

Instead, two Surfer Dudes, one on either side of the star, took control and nudged it out of my way. She looked surprised but determined to try again as she held out her hand and called the star back to her.

The weapon curved in the air like a boomerang and headed back towards her side of the cave. Unfortunately for her, my Surfers were still in control. They took the predictable trajectory of the star and modified it. They also massively increased its speed, and before anyone could react, they shot it right into Ava.

She”d been standing there weaponless, probably figuring she was out of any future action. She had reduced her shield armor, I guess to save on magic, and that proved to be her undoing. The star only hesitated briefly as it cut through her shield and buried itself in her chest.

Ava”s shocked expression said it all as she was kicked out of the tournament. Her placeholder body splattered blood everywhere and then crumpled to the ground.

The Wrecking Crew froze as they tried to come to grips with what had just happened. Hannah, in particular, looked stunned. She”d made all the right calls to keep her team together, and suddenly she was another person down.

I think Emily was acting on instinct as she called the star back to her hand. Big mistake.

My Surfer Dudes were still there, waiting for another opportunity, and she”d just given them one. Once again, they accelerated the spinning disk and diverted its course.

I guess her pull was stronger this time because they couldn”t divert it as far. Instead of burying in her chest, it took off her hand. Emily stared at her stump in shock and then started screaming.

Annabeth and I had been hitting Leon’s magical armor as hard and fast as possible, so it was about to come down soon. Once that happened, Leon wouldn’t stand a chance. That would leave only Hannah remaining, and I was sure that together we could take care of her.

I couldn’t help but smile grimly as I saw the win within our grasp. This premier team had good training and powerful toys. But that still wasn’t enough to take out House Louisville!

I must have jinxed myself, as right after that it all went to hell.

“Leon!” Hannah yelled as she left Ivan’s side and sprinted towards Emily. She didn’t give a specific command, but even I understood what she meant.

It was time to go all out.

I saw a flare of power as Leon triggered another treasure on his chest. I was unsure of what it would do, so I started to back off. I’d seen Ivan’s shield vaporize a red-eye, and I didn’t want that to happen to me.

Leon’s shield stayed the same, but suddenly, he started moving faster. Like, a lot faster. Even with my magic sight and enhanced perception, I was having trouble keeping up with his attacks.

He was also hitting a lot harder. Leon effortlessly moved around my defenses and started pounding me with so much force that Red and the Hexagon Network couldn’t keep up. They slowed down the blows and distributed the force as much as possible, but most of it still got through.

Shock waves bounced through my body, and I started shaking like I was being electrocuted. I’d completely lost control of the fight at this point, so I wasn’t surprised when Leon punched upward into my solar plexus and lifted me off my feet.

Tyler had always taught that being in the air was a bad thing. When a fighter is in the air, they have no leverage, no way to dodge, and no foundation to block or strike. It looked great in the movies when the hero jumped towards the villain—leg extended—screaming with awesome power. In reality, the hero was a big fat target waiting to get his ass handed to him.

In this case, that hero was me. And Leon was cooking up a big steaming pile of whoop-ass.

At least I had a split second to realize Leon wasn’t in great shape either. Moving at that speed and power required a super human body, and Leon wasn’t there yet. He must have been bleeding internally, as every part of his skin that I could see looked like one giant bruise. Blood was flowing out his nose and ears, and his eyes were bulging out so far I thought they might explode.

Leon needed to finish this quickly, or he was going to collapse. Unfortunately for me, that is exactly what he did.

The entire power of his shield armor flowed to his right hand. It formed a dense nova of magic that was so thick it seemed solid. The whole thing felt momentous, like it was an anvil poised to crash into me.

Then he struck, and my world went white. I felt like I’d been hit point blank by a cannon.

Red and the Hexagons distributed the force the best they could.

But it was too much.

They overloaded and exploded, leaving the rest of the force to slam into my chest—sending a huge shockwave through my system.

My heart stopped.

My body bowed almost in half as I flew backwards through the air. I think I blacked out for a second as Annabeth took the brunt of our impact with the wall.

‘Emergency Override! Prepare for immersion!’

My Crystal processed events at high speed, but none of that made any sense to me in the moment.

‘Accessing party interface! Overriding Annabeth.’

Our momentum was so strong we stuck to the wall for a long second. It was long enough to see Leon collapse before friction gave way and we slid into the stream.

The intense cold jolted me awake for a moment, and I realized this was both good and bad. It was good because without my shield I was a sitting duck. At least the flow would quickly get me out of this room and away from Hannah.

It was bad because I was being whisked away to parts unknown. Where was I going to come out? Would I get stuck? Would I have air?

This water was so cold I could die of hypothermia. Red had not only protected me against magic and blunt force trauma; he’d also regulated my temperature.

I wanted to panic or at least do something constructive, but the world was turning black again.

‘Help,’ I sent out to anyone or anything listening. Then I knew no more.