Hoots rose up in the water. Directly up like she was standing on some sort of elevator platform.

“Hoots? How did you get under here?” Triss asked. Trepidation filled her voice.

Odessa thought of Rhys’s body again, just floating there in the water, no longer containing the part that made him Rhys. She thought of that greenish-grey flash of something moving very fast and she looked at Hoots standing right in front of her with that greenish-grey skin. It was obvious, and yet, her mind couldn’t quite believe it. She felt like there was something she was missing. Was there another way in perhaps? A different tunnel that Hoots had gotten into the cathedral through? But no, she knew that wasn’t the case. There was only one way in. Just like there was only one way out. Hoots had killed him. Hoots had killed them all.

“What are you?” Odessa whispered as the goblin-grandma drifted ever closer.

Hoots paused a moment as if to consider Odessa’s question. Then she smiled, and she sniffed. A long, shivering sniff, as if they were a delicious Yule roast.

“Mmm, gods, I haven’t had human in so long. You’ll be my last. A sweet treat at the end.” Hoots winked at her.

‘Remember our plan, Dess.’

Odessa glanced at Triss blankly but Triss was focused on the goblin-grandma. In her hand, close to her side she clutched a knife. She looked calm, and ready to fight.

‘Worst case,’ Triss reminded her.

Right, that’s right, Triss had said, worst case Odessa was to use the phone and Triss would fight the monster.

Odessa gave a single nod. There was no time to argue. She had a plan. She would get help.

‘On three,’ Triss thought to her.

Odessa readied herself mentally. She didn’t move yet though. She didn’t want to give the game away.

‘Three.’

‘Two.’

‘One.’

‘Go!’

Triss telekinetically pulled Hoots towards her. She pulled the knife in front of herself, ready to stab the old lady monster thing.

Odessa didn’t wait around to watch. She wouldn’t waste a second that Triss bought her. She was in the water before the fight started.

She put her regulator in her mouth as she dropped down into the dark void. The water wrapped around her like cold glove or a coffin. She kicked forward as fast as she could. She found the tunnel they had come in through and was about to enter it when something grabbed her by her air tanks and yanked her back. Out of the corner of her eye she long white fingers reaching for her. Way too long to be anything nice.

She ditched her tanks.

Before her logical mind had even caught up she hit the quick-release straps on her BCD. The waist strap fell away easily but she struggled to get her arm out of one shoulder strap. So she cut it with her dive knife instead. Taking one last deep breath she removed her regulator and kicked the entire BCD and tanks back into the goblin, hard.

The force pushed her in the other direction, towards her exit. But as she approached it, she felt herself start to sink. Without her BCD and tanks her buoyancy was no longer neutral.

She dropped her weight belt. It sunk down into darkness.

Her fingers reached up for the the lower edge of the exit tunnel and she pulled herself inside. Deftly she twisted her way through the tunnel without even an octo for air, trying not to think about how much further she still had to go, or what might come up behind her at any moment. She focused on the tunnel before her and her plan to get help. Somewhere in the back of her mind she faintly registered a frantic beeping sound.

She reached the halfway shaft and kept going. She’d free dived before, many times. She even held records for it. But she’d never done it with a roof over her head.

The tunnel felt wider now that her tanks were off and Odessa moved fast. She could hold her breath for 4 minutes if she had to. It took her 3 to get back to the main hole.

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Rays of daylight streamed down around her. She was so close to the surface. And yet so far.

At this depth the air in her lungs was condensed. As she rose the pressure would decrease and that air would expand. Go too fast and not exhale enough and her lungs would rupture. And if she didn’t hemorrhage or get eaten in the process of getting up, decompression sickness would almost certainly get her. Up was not an option.

But there was another way. In the darkness beneath her, caught on the dive line, was the body of a man without his head, a man who no longer had any use for the air in his tanks.

She had no choice but to descend.

There was only one problem. She was now too buoyant. There was one sure fire way to make herself less buoyant though, and that was to breathe out.

She pointed herself down and made herself streamlined. She could see Rhys’s body, still floating at roughly the same depth and surrounded by a red glow. She didn’t think about what that colour was, about what she was swimming down into, or what was behind her. She focused on one thing only, getting those air tanks.

She exhaled and kicked her way deeper.

She began to move slow. Too slow. There wasn’t enough oxygen to last that long. She wasn’t going to make it.

But as she breathed out the last of her air, the water pressure around her increased, and so did her speed.

Slow down.

Triss’s words from their earlier dive were etched in her memory, a reminder not to underestimate the pressure.

She was traveling too fast now.

She knew she should have taken it slower but her lungs burned and all she could think about was reaching that air. Either way, she had no BCD to stop her descent. She just had to make sure she didn’t miss Rhys and go flying off into the darkness below him with no way of stopping.

She needed Rhys’s tanks and his BCD or she would soon see what really lay at the bottom of this hole. Too bad she wouldn’t stay conscious long enough to register it.

She approached Rhys at speed. She wrapped her arms around his corpse and her momentum carried them both down.

She felt a sharp tug as the dive line he was attached to overcame the friction of whatever it was caught on at the surface, the only thing that had been holding his body in place.

But her attention was focused on getting the regulator.

She reached for it, only to find an open hose and a gauge that read empty.

Of course, the thing had eaten his head, and along with it the regulator. There would be no air in his tanks just like there was almost no air in her lungs.

A flash of yellow caught her eye. The pony bottle! With it’s separate regulator. It remained intact.

She put the octo in her mouth, gaining herself 11 more minutes of life-giving gas. It wouldn’t be 11 minutes if she didn’t fix her other problem though. Immediately she shifted her focus to their uncontrollable descent into the darkness.

His tanks were empty, nothing to inflate the BCD any more than it already was. If she cut him loose and took it she might stand a chance but she still had to get up and she didn’t have enough air for that. And even if she did, she still had to get past the goblin. A goblin with very very good hearing.

She looked upward toward the shrinking daylight and for a moment she almost gave up. Just let the peace and serenity of the hole claim her. There were worst places to die after all.

Except, right now, it wasn’t peaceful. There was that horrible incessant beeping. Why did it not stop?

Oh, right, her heart rate monitor.

As they barrelled past another hole in the cave wall, she had an idea. One last chance.

She clipped herself to Rhys’s BCD so she could use both hands.

She removed her watch with the heart monitor. There was a test button on it. One that made a permanent beeping sound while it was held down. She fixed it between his body and his weight belt, firm enough that the sound would continue to echo throughout the abyss. Then she cut him free of his BCD, strap by strap. And the tanks too.

She took the octo, the BCD, and his Rovex. Then she kicked as hard as she could upward, as his body fell away from her, and down into the unknown, to his final resting place.

Her descent slowed but not enough. She was still moving down. She just needed a little more buoyancy. She knew what she had to do but it was hard, especially when she’d just gotten this tank of air. But the air in the pony bottle was exactly what she needed. Lucky for her the adapters matched, but she was going to have to hold her breath again.

Not for long though. The cave they had just passed was the one Nico was still stuck in. He had air. But did he have enough for both of them? She figured it didn’t matter. If she didn’t make it to the surface, then nobody would be coming to get him out either. His main tanks would just have to be enough for him. Perhaps if she’d had a transfill hose she could have refilled the pony bottle and left him the rest, but not even Rhys carried one of those underwater.

She removed her regulator and connected the pony bottle up to the BCD. Then she dumped the remaining air from the pony bottle into the BCD.

It was enough. It stopped her descent and pulled her the couple of metres up to the tunnel.

She pulled her way inside. Her torchlight lit up the tanks they had left for Nico. A little beyond that she could see Nico.

She couldn’t think talk to him without Triss. She briefly wondered if Triss was okay? Had she managed to hold off Hoots? Maybe that’s why the old lady had come for Odessa so quickly and was no nowhere to be seen? Perhaps she had thought Triss too difficult a target? Maybe Hoots had reconsidered after Odessa had thrown her tanks back at her or maybe Triss had pursued Hoots? Maybe the goblin was gone and Triss would meet her on the ascent? Odessa half expected to hear Triss’s voice in her mind any minute. But apart from a faint, quickly fading beeping, the surrounding water was deathly silent, and deathly still.

There were no air bubbles in the tunnel. Nothing bubbled around Nico like it should have. Nothing moved, and as she got closer, she could see that his regulator was not in his mouth.

She pulled herself in as far as she could and came face to face with Nico’s beautiful, green, unblinking eyes.