Zyneth sits across the table from me, grimacing. I use my cloak to conceal my movements as I unstring my core from my neck and slip it out of the pouch. I set myself down on the table and unfold my legs from around my core, wobblily climbing to my feet. It’s only been a week since I last moved around in this form, but it already feels strange to be leaving my human-shaped body behind.

“You are remaining suspiciously quiet,” I say as I situate myself. I experiment with releasing my control over my glass body, carefully letting it slump into its seat as I ensure it doesn’t fall over.

“What, do you want me to keep telling you how terrible this idea is?” Zyneth says. “Because I can do that. I am happy to list all the ways this will go wrong.”

“I was more hoping for optimism and encouragement.” Cautiously, I let go of the last of the glass on my main body. I’ll be moving out of its range soon enough anyway, and I’d rather it not collapse to the floor and shatter when that happens. Luckily, it just sits there, inert, head resting on the table, without falling over. Yeah, totally not suspicious.

“Optimism?” Zyneth repeats. “I am optimistic we will get caught. I encourage you to consider other options.”

“Unless you have any new plans or discoveries to share, this is the only option I can think up,” I say. I recall the Attuned void from my body next. Who knows, might come in handy. The blobby black follows my extra signing glass around like a storm cloud.

Zyneth’s frown pinches into concern, and he holds out a hand. “Just please be careful. I can’t help you from this side.”

I tap his finger with one of my legs. “I will only be poking around. I should be back soon.”

He sighs. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

That makes two of us.

Turning away from Zyneth, I walk over to the edge of the table, where the surface rests against the edge of the fountain. Down here from this vantage point, the gentle current looks a whole lot swifter. But now’s not the time to chicken out, and hesitating will just add fuel to Zyneth’s anxiety fire.

Without the ability to take—or hold—a breath, I jump in.

For a moment, I float at the top of the fountain, bobbing along like a bubble. But as water splashes over me, I’m met with the distinctly unpleasant sensation of water seeping in through the crack in my glass. I squirm as the water drips into my vial, cold discomfort tickling me from the inside. My vision warps, split between air and water, and slowly but surely, I slip beneath the surface.

Air bubbles out of the crack as I gently sink toward the bottom and focus very hard on not having a panic attack. It’s fine. I don’t need to breathe, so I can’t drown. I’m sinking gradually and not about to crash to the floor. I’m not actually in mortal peril.

But try rationalizing all that when you’re watching the surface grow farther and farther overhead.

Instead, I try to focus on protecting my core. I gather all my signing glass around me like spines of a pufferfish as I slowly tumble toward the bottom of the basin. When my glass finally brushes against the stone on the bottom, I’m met with a delightful muted scratch of glass against stone.

I use my void to help cushion the contact and stop my aimless drift. After another minute, the bubbles finally stop, and the uncomfortable sensation of filling with water is replaced by a marginally better feeling of sluggishness. Okay. Time to figure out where I’m going.

Reactivating my Inspect as a Skill, I don’t have to look far. There’s a sinister dark hole at the base of the fountain where the water is moving—though strangely it seems to be coming and going through that pipe. Magic, man.

Now to figure out how to get over there. Between my signing glass and void, I have enough control to tow my core around like some kind of knock-off toy submarine. Each nudge of the current sends me floating off track, but I’m able to bob my way in the right direction eventually. Soon, I’m sitting on the lip of the pipe, the opening yawning and shadowed beneath me.

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With all my glass electrified by my nerves, I force myself to roll forward. The darkness swallows me as I’m falling once more.

My vision vanishes. I lose all sense of up and down. The predator’s mind brushes against my own, curiosity leaking through our bond—it wonders what I am doing—but I slam it away in a panic. At that simple touch, coupled with the dark, the disorientation, fear crashes through me from nowhere. It feels just like being engulfed by the void. Drowning in its mind. Claustrophobia tightens around me, and I lash out in a panic. I can’t fight. I can’t escape. No, no—

I struggle to wrangle control over myself. It’s just a memory. It’s not real. The predator is here, but it’s cowering away from my overflow of emotions. Nothing is controlling me. I can’t freak out. Not here. Stop freaking out.

Slowly, the pins and needles retract from my mind. The tension of dread eases.

Shit. What was all that? I can’t let it happen again, not when I’m somewhere dangerous like this.

Keep it together, Kanin.

In the confusion, I lost track of where I was going. I try to sense which way I’m falling, but with the mix of currents, drafting both up and down, I’m not even really sure anymore. I focus on my glass instead. Where’s my body? Ah, there. Like stars in a night sky, I find pinpricks of familiarity that I use to orient myself. It’s strangely comforting, and the knowledge helps ground me. The last few knots of anxiety relax from my mind as I regain my sense of self. Okay. Back to business.

My glass body isn’t out of range yet, but it will be soon. I press my void and signing glass against the walls of the tunnel, slowly tracing my way down as I follow the thickest bands of magic. My path turns off to a side, and I follow, shifting my glass around to push against gravity once more and keep from scraping against the bottom of the pipe. I still can’t see a damn thing, so I focus on my sense of touch instead.

I feel the predator’s presence in my mind again. I tense, ready to repel an attack, but I can feel it knows as well as I do that it would lose. It’s not here to pick a fight. It’s… agitated.

Now is really not the time, I say, pushing it away. Irritation pulses from the predator, along with nervousness. It doesn’t like something, and it’s getting antsy.

Danger. Something is dangerous.

Was it worried I was going to die down here? I would be touched if it weren’t because it only sees me as a glorified life raft.

But no, it’s something else. A discomfort—something I’m starting to feel, too.

I try to ignore the sensation and focus on navigating the pipes. Looks like I need to take the next turn, then go down another floor, and then I should be close to the source of all this magic. But as I grow farther and farther from where I started, the glass in my body eventually passes out of my range, and the feeling of unease only grows. It’s like there’s a tension in my soul. A spring that’s getting pulled steadily apart. The predator paces the back of my mind, restless and prickly. It doesn’t like this, and to be frank, I don’t either. Is it because I left all that glass behind? I’ve never been separated from so much Attuned glass before, but I have lost bits and pieces here and there and never felt anything like this. Well, it’s too late to turn back now. I’ll just have to power through and—

It can’t wait any longer. It has to do something.

Hey, wait! I say, alarmed by the sudden clarity of the predator’s thoughts. What are you doing? No—never mind. What am I thinking? I don’t have to ask it to stop, I can make it stop.

I reach for the predator’s mind, intending to snuff out whatever plan it has and force it back into obedience. It hears this thought and darts away, but we’re tied together, and there’s nowhere for it to go. I pull it back in, and the moment I do so, I catch a glimpse of its plan.

Ah, shit.

I feel it a moment later—darkness rushing through the black. The void crashes into me, sweeping me through the pipes and along the path I’d intended. There’s bits of glass mixed into the void—pieces of the bottle that had, at least a minute ago, been containing the predator. It must have managed to break the glass when I was distracted.

Goddammit, I growl, seizing the predator’s mind. It doesn’t put up a fight, relinquishing control to me the moment I reach for it. It’s just relieved: The pressure is gone.

It’s right: That mental tension has evaporated. So it was the distance between us that was causing the discomfort?

I don’t like that. I don’t like it one bit.

Not to mention, Zyneth’s probably freaking out up there. However the predator managed to break its container, I’m not sure, but either way Zyneth must have seen it go into the water after me. If I was still within range of my glass or translator, I could tell him that I’m fine. As it is, though, I’m just going to need to get out of here and get back to him before he turns the building inside out.

My much smaller amount of Attuned void has mixed with the predator’s, and now I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. Another thing I’ll have to sort out later. In the meantime, I use it to propel myself through the water, which is alarmingly effective. Some of it moves ahead of me, using Elemental Radar to map out my path like sonar, while the rest is cushioned around me in a macabre parody of a lifejacket. I’m making way better time now, the void rocketing me along and responding to my will before I’ve even finished the thought. I try not to think about how easy it is. How natural all this seems to be coming to me.

I make the last turn, and suddenly light is spilling through the tunnel. Popping out the other side, I find myself in a stone basin once more. The void buoys me up to the surface.