Dyllan groaned and massaged his temples. Deep breaths - okay, not too deep, the air quality was terrible. Whatever, just… relax. He needed to relax. To stay calm. This was fine, this was normal. Any second now Andie would portal back up to the top of the mindscape. Yep, aaany minute now…
…okay, the air was pretty thick, and it had taken Andie a while to land the first time - this delay didn’t necessarily mean she was still underwater…
Still, he should probably check. Dyllan took a deep breath - far deeper than he would have liked, but the air was even worse outside, and he didn’t want to take in any more than he absolutely had to. Reluctantly, he pushed open the comic shop’s front door and scanned the sky above him.
Shit. Andie was nowhere to be seen. That meant she was still down there - which meant that either she had found something, or something had found her.
Dyllan peered over the edge of the asphalt island he was on, searching the water for any sign of Andie - but there was no sign of anything down there. The water was crystal clear, so unless there was some mindscape fuckery happening it couldn’t be obscuring his vision… but this was Cedric’s mindscape, so fuckery seemed likely.
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…Dyllan really didn’t like what he knew he had to do next. He released his held breath, and then slowly, laboriously drew in another deep breath. Ugh. Hesitantly, Dyllan then readied himself to jump in after Andie. Ugh. Then, with one last disdainful frown, Dyllan jumped in. As soon as he hit the water, his slowed descent jolted into a full blown plummet, and he started to fall downward.
“Shi-” Dyllan let out a reflexive exclamation and immediately regretted it. The water was thin like air - maybe thinner - but it was still distinctly water. And humans weren’t super great at breathing water. “Glrk!”
It was about then that Andie slammed into Dyllan at full speed, grabbing him by the collar of his jacket and dragging him along with her. It was all pretty sudden, and Dyllan was still choking on water - but in the chaos he managed to catch sight of a road of flames trailing through the gaseous water. It was the power of Andie’s Courage - the power to blaze a footpath through the sky. He watched as it got blown aside like something had smashed through it… but as far as he could tell, nothing had.