The horizon is purple and the sea dark, stars still glimmering overhead. I’ve been here for two and a half months now and I’m still not used to seeing so many stars in the sky.

It will be the last time I see such a sight.

“Damn,” I say. “That’s fucking beautiful. Shit.”

Zyneth is unimpressed. “If you’re just going to swear every other word, I’m going to take that upgraded translator back.”

“No!” I cry, clutching the charm to my chest. “I’m just testing it out, is all. Do you have any idea how good it feels to use contractions again?” Not to mention the timber is a little deeper now. Still not my voice, but at least a little closer to something I might be comfortable with.

Too bad it took until my last day on the surface of this planet to get it.

Zyneth chuckles. “I’d say I can only imagine, but you’re leaving very little up to interpretation.”

“Well excuse me for expressing myself.”

He leans against a rail along the dock. “You know, I’m starting to see it.”

“What?” I ask. “See what?”

“The theater career,” he says, smiling mischievously. “The more you can speak the more dramatic you get.”

Good, then I’m successfully masking my nerves. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

His smile softens. “It’s not.”

Aw, hell. My soul feels like it’s shredding itself apart, and I have to look away. “Where’s Gillow, anyway? Didn’t they tell us not to be late? I don’t see anything nearby.”

Okay, maybe I’m not as smooth an actor as I like to think.

“I’m sure they’re close,” Zyneth says. “And it’s before dawn, still.” The purple in the distance is bleeding into the pink hints of a sunrise.

“Not for much longer,” I grunt. “So here’s a thought. They show us aboard, we figure out the controls, you kill them before they kill you, and we both sail to Emrox without worrying about getting stabbed in the back—Bing, bang, boom.”

“Not the worst plan,” Gillow says. I whip around, searching for the source of their voice. I don’t find it until they speak again. “But Zyneth would never kill me. Not unless I tried to kill him first.”

They’re in the water beneath us, their head bobbing with the gentle waves, only barely breaching the surface.

Whoops.

“And you don’t strike me as a type familiar with death, Glass Homunculus,” Gillow continues with a sneer.

At that, Zyneth and I glance at each other. Gillow blinks. “Oh? Perhaps I misjudged.” Their lips curl into a smile. “How fun.”

I decide it’s best not to acknowledge the death pitch I’d just made. “What are you doing down there? Where’s your ship?”

“You might say the Merchant’s Guide and I are somewhat at odds,” Gillow says. “The Prismatic does not have passage in this harbor, so we’ll need to board covertly.”

“That answered absolutely nothing,” I say.

Gillow’s hand snaps out of the water, quick as a shark, and something is sent flying through the air. Water glimmers off the object, which Zyneth deftly catches.

“What is it?” I ask.

“A water breathing charm,” Gillow says. “I assume you won’t be needing one?”

“No way,” I say, looking between Zyneth and Gillow. “You don’t mean…”

Gillow grins, revealing all their pointed teeth. “I told you, we need to be covert.”

Zyneth tosses the item back to Gillow, and for a moment, I am relieved. “I won’t be needing this,” he says, pulling an amulet from his pocket and clasping it around his neck. One of the many items Zyneth purchased yesterday on our Try-Not-To-Get-Killed-By-Gillow shopping spree. “I’ll be using my own.”

Gillow shrugs. “Suit yourself. Meet you two under the waves.”

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“Wait,” I say. “But I don’t know if I can swim!” Gillow is gone before I can even say the last word. “God dammit.”

Zyneth pats my shoulder. “You’ll be alright. Just focus on controlling the glass.”

“I’m going to sink like a stone,” I object, but with Gillow gone there’s no convincing them now. “You going to be okay?” I ask instead. “That charm they gave you—was it broken?”

“Not that I could tell,” Zyneth says. “Drowning me before you even get on board wouldn’t serve their goals very well. But I don’t trust it anyway.” He touches the stone on his amulet, and an aura of blue magic flushes over his skin. “Ready?” His voice is slightly distorted.

“Well,” I say, “not particularly, no.”

Zyneth jumps in anyway, making a perfect acrobatic dive off the dock.

I sigh. What is it with these thief types and dramatically vanishing beneath the waves before I have a chance to finish speaking? And what if there are, like, rocks down there or something?

I sit down at the edge of the dock, the swells lapping at my boots. I miss having that inventory space. Sure would be great to save my clothes a soaking. But short of leaving them behind, I guess I don’t have a choice. Wrapping extra coils of void around my arms for reinforcement, I lower myself slowly into the water. The tide pushes and pulls at me, and I’m suddenly reminded I’m a fragile glass body only one large wave away from being smashed against the dock. I hurriedly push away, and immediately slip beneath the surface.

Sound is swallowed by the waves. All the faint noises of the city I’d taken for granted are now gone, replaced by a dense quiet through which the echoing clank of metal occasionally rings.

I also hadn’t anticipated the dark. Panic wells up in me as the dim light of the surface rapidly vanishes above, replaced with only a sensation that I’m sinking—fast. Remembering Zyneth’s words, I try to arrest my momentum, focusing on keeping my glass steady. Without any reference points, however, it’s hard to know if I’m floating or falling rapidly toward the rocks.

I activate my Glow spell, and my signing glass turns into a small bubble of light in front of me. All around is still darkness. I feed a few more points of mana into the spell, upping the brightness, but I might as well be trying to fend off the night with a match. The darkness presses in as thick as the nothingness of Between.

“Kanin.”

The word is so muted and faint, I at first think I imagine it. I swivel my head around until I finally see it—a glow of yellow light.

“Here,” I say, though the interpreter is equally muted beneath the water. I will myself in the light’s direction, and finally Zyneth’s form takes shape.

He’s channeling light through his blade, which bathes him in a small bubble of yellow. Outside our little bastions of sight, the ocean vanishes into uniform, unnerving black. I try not to think about what might be out there watching us. Nerves prickling through my glass, I sweep my Glow spell down beneath us. Surely, we must be near the bottom now?

A shadow moves in my peripheral vision and I swirl sharply around, void poised at the ready. But it’s only Gillow, mutedly laughing at my reaction. They gesture for Zyneth and I to follow, then flip around and lithely glide away.

“Let’s follow,” I dully hear Zyneth say as he kicks after Gillow. He’s nowhere near as agile as Gillow in the water, but I still feel like a stumbling toddler in comparison; I briefly attempt to pinwheel my arms and kick my legs before I determine neither are achieving anything. Fighting against years of instincts, I instead focus on controlling the glass. As I do, my speed gradually builds, but it’s a far cry from what anyone would call swimming.

The journey is eerie and quiet. I can see Gillow and Zyneth swimming ahead of me, but without accompanying sounds there’s an unsettling dissonance, like when I first encountered a campfire in this body and couldn’t smell the smoke. I don’t like that I only have these tiny bubbles of sight and sensation, and anything else might be out there in the dark, watching. I can feel the predator’s hackles raise as well, perhaps some of my paranoia bleeding over into it. Any other time I would be nervous at how intently the predator is watching over my shoulder, but right now I’ll take whatever extra vigilance I can get.

After a couple minutes—maybe five, maybe twenty, it’s hard to tell down here—a faint glow emerges from the dim. It grows steadily brighter, until Gillow vanishes. I don’t understand what’s happened until I see Zyneth sinking over the lip of the drop off as well. Abruptly alone, I hurry to catch up, gliding over the edge of an underwater canyon.

And all at once, the ocean is alive.

Far, far below us, a forest of glowing plant-life sways in the currents. Schools of fish flash across the valley by the thousands, while larger finned creatures slowly drift across the plains. Giant phosphorescent coral rises in craggy spires, from which uncountable varieties of plants and animals have made their home. They’re every color imaginable, some pulsing with light, others dimly luminescent, swirling the sea in a chaos of light and color.

I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.

I’ll never see anything like this again.

As I slowly sink down the cliff, hypnotized by the exotic vista, I don’t realize anything’s wrong until I hear Zyneth let out a startled cry. An enormous shadowy limb reaches up for us.

Shit! I extinguish my Glow, snapping my glass into place to prepare to fire off a Lightbeam as a second limb joins the first. Then a third. One is going for Zyneth while another is snaking toward me. I can’t see Gillow anymore. My mind races. Do I have enough mana to hit all the limbs? What happens if I miss and I hit Zyneth? What else can I do?

The predator’s mind presses against me. We can fight. We have the void, we could slice this enemy to ribbons. Eager certainty settles over us as the ink swirls around our arms, forming scythe-like blades over our—over my hands. I wrench myself away from the predator, holding onto the shapes it had formed with the void even as I repel its mind. I’m too panicked to deal with that little stunt it tried to pull just now. Where’s Zyneth?

The limb blocks my vision as it slowly reaches to surround me. I strike out with one of the void blades, but instead of slashing through flesh, the blade punctures the skin and sticks in place like an ax lodged in wood. The giant tentacle doesn’t even flinch as it constricts around me, and fear spikes through me as I desperately slash with the other arm, simultaneously firing off the Lightbeam. The spell and the void puncture holes in the limb, but the creature doesn’t even react to the attacks as it curls around me. The void strains against the force, then buckles. My arms are pinned to my chest, and in another moment, I’ll be crushed.