The shock of the cold water hit my veins. I submerged like a rock and felt my back slam against the riverbed. Any breath my lungs had escaped and I began to be carried by the valley’s tributary. I swam up and broke through the surface. When I gasped for air, a wave washed the river into my mouth.

I spit the water out and swam to the end of the river but there was no sand, or clearing, or water dormant enough for me to stand. It was mostly valley. I tried clinging to the rock but my fingers became numb trying to hold against the weight of the current. I let myself be carried, attempting to conserve my strength.

“Kaavi!” I yelled.

“Egen!” I heard back.

I looked farther along the river, Kaavi’s thick head was bobbing in front of me.

“I’ll swim to you!” I cried out. I doggy paddled toward him.

“Kaavi! Egen!” I heard Yajaira’s dainty voice cry out and turned and saw that up ahead, there was a little clearing, where Yajaira and Barth were standing waiting to catch us. As well as some of the other boys.

“I’m coming!” Barth got out a long branch and held it out for us to grab hold. Kaavi reached for it first and succeeded. I reached out for it and missed it. I tried to swim upstream, tired from the fight, and the fall. Kaavi grabbed my arm. Then the rest of the boys pulled the branch back in, reeling us in from the torrent.

When we were safe and sound, Kaavi and I caught our breath. We looked up and thanked Barth and Yajaira. They were completely dry.

“What…. Happened?” I gasped between breaths.

“Barth’s Quilldrop!” Yajaira stated, “We merely floated to the clearing where Barth snapped off a branch of a tree and used it to fish the rest of the boys out!”

I was on my hands and knees and counted everyone that was there. There were three people missing. Apep, Porta, and Ghala.

“They might still be drifting down the river,” I said. I’m not sure for how long until there’s another small beach like this one,” I said.

“What should we do?” Yajaira asked.

Kaavi looked at me. He had caught his breath, “Egen…” he started to say, “I know the stakes are high but do you think I…”

“No….” I said in between wheezing.

“Oh,” Kaavi said again.

“No…. You don’t have to ask me for permission anymore,” I continued, “I was wrong, Kaavi. Forget about what I said. You’re the leader. From here on, I’ll only step in when you want me to. Got it?”

Kaavi processed the information and a big gap toothed smile spread across his face, “Got it.”

He kept smiling at me until I had to nudge him and said, “But decide soon because three of us are in trouble.”

“Oh! Well.. we can’t go back in the water or then we’re all in trouble! Let’s climb this cliff and get a good look.” He said

Solid plan. Only we did just get ourselves out of a spider’s lair.

“We probably need to move fast, but Barth and Yajaira, would you be able to scale this cliff?” I asked.

Barth and Yajair both looked at each other, “We may need a break. Would it be possible to go on ahead and meet us?”

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“Even better. I have a spell, Soccorro. It can help you find us later. For all of us, we’ve got Second Wind to get us up this hill.”

Ynec looked at us, “I stay and protect.” I nodded to Ynec.

All of the junior paladins cast Second Wind. Suddenly we stood up straighter. Our tiredness melted. The hill didn’t loom so large. We all jumped up on the hill and scaled it with relative ease. This cliffside was lower than the last one and we were sure to check for any trap marks before continuing.

We used our new patch of energy to race down the cliffside for a while, constantly peeking through the river, hoping to find them. There was no way we could catch up with the river’s current and Second Wind didn’t last long. We could only pray that they had somehow made it out of the river.

“Hey, all!” Kaavi said. “We can’t keep up for long and we’re only going to grow more distant from the duchess.” Kaavi said. Then he turned to me, “Maybe just use Socorro and hope they’re out of the water and come to us?

I nodded. Soccorro’s spell made it so that your teammate could find you. A red diamond would appear over your person and they would be able to see through the terrain to know exactly where you are, as well as where to look. It was a clever solution, but would it be wasted if the three were still in the torrent? Maybe Ghala had leveled up? Surely if he had, he’d have known to use Socorro just like I had. If only it worked the other way. If only I could use it to find them.

What if I could? What if I could alter the programming of the spell and reverse Socorro? How would that work? Could I assign it a negative value? In programming, the simplest method to reverse something would be to assign it a negative value. If you had a variable you wanted to operate on, and needed it reversed, you would simply use the statement x = -(x) and it would flip the value of the variable. Suddenly what was true would be considered false and vice versa.

In Sylvan, I said “The opposite of my next spell is my spell.” I could feel myself burning the candle of mana inside of me. The spell was active. Whether or not it worked remained to be seen.

“Socorro.”

“I don’t see it,” Said Kaavi, “There’s supposed to be a red diamond. Maybe it’s because Ghala’s not really a good teammate?”

I turned to Kaavi. It worked. Hovering right above his head was a green diamond. So too did they hang above the other boys. So two were Yajaira and Barth behind us. I released the mana from the elven spell. It cost me more to cast Socorro because of the added effect but it was worth it. The implications of this were far and wide but all I knew was that at this moment it had worked. I scanned the horizon, and sure enough, down the way through some cliffs, were Ghala, Porta, and Apep’s figure. Outlined in green.

“There!” I pointed in the direction and we all ran. Something was wrong though, they looked to be on the move, but not on their own two feet. They were smushed together and floating. That is to say they weren’t using their feet to move. They writhed next to each other.

“Something’s wrong!” I yelled but we kept going, “They’re… still being carried by the river? But that doesn't make any sense. They’re being carried by something.”

We kept running until we got to the decline connecting the cliffs to the valley. When I saw it, I jumped behind some bushes, “Hide!” I hissed. The boys huddled into the same bush with me.

One by one they poked their tiny faces through the brush and took a gander. There was a hooded figure carrying the three in a sack. The lumbering figure had a fishing rod on his back. The boys and porta looked impossibly small next to him as they bounced in the burlap sack. How tall were they? Were they even human? I watched as he kept walking up the incline, where he disappeared behind some trees.

“We have to see where they’re going,” I said.

Kaavi said, “We should probably send someone to collect Yajaira and Barth.” He looked at Huy, who was best at navigating through unknown terrain. The monkey boy let out a small ‘ooh’ that affirmed and galloped off on all four limbs back the way we came.

“We’ve got to see where he’s taking them.” I repeated.

We kept our distance, but hobbled along. We all moved from tree to tree as silently as we could, following the lumbering figure down the forest to his hut.

At one point, one of us stepped on a small pile of leaves. It might have been me. The figure turned around, his face was shrouded by the hood as he gazed out into the forest. He lost interest or decided that no one was there all along. He faced away from us as he removed his hood.

The first thing I noticed was the horn atop his head. This was how I knew he wasn’t human because humans didn’t have horns.

“A horn?” I asked. I turned to the other boys. Kaavi’s chattering teeth broke through the silence of our hidden position. I turned to see him shivering, he pointed his finger but it shook so hard.

“A… A …. A…. “ He could not get it out. His voice quivering when he said, “Cy…Cy-Cy.”

Just then, the giant turned around. His horn in full view, right above his big singular eye.

“Cyclops.” I said.

Big ol' one eye?!