“Kanin!” Zyneth calls.

“I’m alright!” The void stretches as it lowers me to the ground. Once I step back to the unsteady floor, I let go of the handhold and retract my severed glass arm. “Well, mostly okay.”

“Everyone alive?” Gillow’s voice echoes through the loudspeaker.

Zyneth grimaces as he catches sight of my broken arm. “Yes, fortunately.”

“Good,” Gillow says. “Because I’m going to fucking murder you both for what you just did to my ship. It’s not designed to be out of water! You need to reverse this right now!”

Whoops. I step to the window. Nothing’s moving outside. Then, hesitantly, I step out. My boots scuff over the surface of the pillar, now dotted with rippling puddles.

“Gods’ grace,” Zyneth breathes, stepping out beside me. “I’ve visited many Ruins, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

The roar of running water is all around us as I turn in a slow circle to take in our new surroundings. We’re still on the pillar, but we’re now in a large pocket of air, the water pushed back to form a giant bubble around us. Waves that defy the laws of physics swell and splash back down against the surface of the inverted ocean, held back by an unseen force, now dozens of feet away.

“Well,” I say. “Technically, it did create a bubble of air, like I said it would.”

Zyneth cautiously approaches the edge of the platform and looks down. “Don’t let Gillow hear you say that.” Instead of joining him at the edge, I float some of my glass over to look down for me. Sure enough, the bubble of air wraps beneath us too, bisecting the column about halfway down. Beneath that is the ocean. So much for clearing a spot around the spell circle down there.

“This is terrible!” Gillow cries, stumbling out of the Prismatic. Their hands are clasped around their head as they back up, eyes on their ship. “What have you done to her!”

“It’s just a little air,” I say. “You said she can withstand monster attacks—this shouldn’t be worse than that, right?”

The murderous glare they shoot me says otherwise.

“She runs on water magic, you idiot,” they snap. “Water arcanum to increase her speed. Water arcanum to track and steer her heading. Water arcanum to keep her from being crushed by the depths—or sea monsters. And that was all mostly powered by water I had Attuned—which has now been swept away, gods know where, thanks to your little spell.”

“Oh.” I stand there awkwardly. “That all sounds pretty bad.”

“Pretty bad. Pretty bad?” Despite their blue skin, I swear their face is turning red. “You’ve marooned us! Without those spells to protect her, the Prismatic is beached. She’ll be crushed like tin once this water collapses back in—and we’ll be crushed with her.”

“Can we get it back?” I ask. “Your Attuned water.”

In response, Gillow grasps the empty air in front of them, seeming to throttle some invisible foe.

“You know,” I sign to Zyneth. “I don’t think they plan to kill us. If they had, it would have been just now.”

“And stop doing that!” Gillow cries, pointing accusingly at my signing glass. “Don’t think I haven’t seen that! You keep saying things behind my back, I just know it!”

“Let’s all calm down,” Zyneth cuts in before I can make a quip about the likelihood of Gillow experiencing a mental breakdown. “I still intend to leave here alive, and I suspect I’ll need both your help to do so. Now is the time to gather ourselves. Take stock of our circumstances. What do we have to work with?”

Despite my bravado, I’m glad Zyneth’s here to ground us. I don’t know why I feel the need to needle Gillow—maybe it’s just so they won’t realize how scared I am that I really fucked things up here. Even if I’m able to end this encounter by escaping back to Earth, I can’t leave Zyneth stranded to die under the ocean. Even worse, knowing my actions put him there.

But he’s right. We need to focus. Figure out a solution. I try to keep calm and focus on just that.

“The spell circle is under the ship,” I say, scuffing my boot over the ground. “Even if we get the water spells back, I won’t be able to reach it unless we move the Prismatic.”

“And we likely can’t move the ship without water to lift it.” Zyneth rubs his chin with a frown. I know that look: We’re in trouble.

“What else do we have?” I ask. “The arcana containers?”

Zyneth tips his head to gesture behind us. “Two fell over the side. Likely somewhere in the ocean beneath us, but I can’t make them out.”

Damn. “Gillow,” I start, then pause when I see where they’ve gone. They’re grumpily seated at the edge of the platform, cross legged like some kind of yoga pose. “Er. What are you doing?”

“Searching for my arcana,” they snap. “I should be able to pull out anything that moves within my range. Luckily this bubble is just barely small enough that I can reach a bit into the water. And given some time, I might be able to Attune some new water to make up for whatever I can’t retrieve. No promises though.” They bare their teeth at me. “You better work on figuring out a solution to all this in the meantime.”

Fair enough.

Zyneth gestures me away, and we circle around the other end of the ship. We don’t have to go far to be out of earshot of Gillow, with the water roaring around us.

“We need to work on communicating your plans before you execute them,” Zyneth says. “And when I say we, I mean you.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“To be fair, I did tell you this plan in advance.” I glance over the edge of the platform with my signing glass. “It just, er, didn’t do what I expected it to.”

“I don’t know why you would have assumed a spell circle on this platform would have caused the spell to be cast down there, anyway,” Zyneth says.

Now that he puts it like that, it does seem a bit obvious.

“So,” Zyneth says. “Do you have any other ideas you’re not telling me?”

“I have tons of ideas,” I say. “Plans is another story.”

“Such as?”

“I could levitate myself down there,” I say, gesturing below us. “And then with the help of one of your charms, and, er, the predator, I could navigate the waters without being crushed or chopped in half. From there I could search for more dormant spell circles. Find something that would drain the area on the arena floor. Or, I could activate the trans-dimensional spell circle without draining the area, if I’m quick enough.”

Zyneth looks at me flatly. “And what happens if you get teleported away again and the charm runs out before you have a chance to get back? What do Gillow and I do up here while you’re down in the water? How do we get out of here even if you’re able to find a way home?”

“You asked for my ideas, not my plans,” I say. “I told you they were half-baked.”

Zyneth sighs, looking over the edge as well. “This isn’t good. We need to start turning some of these ideas into actions as soon as we’re able. This spell won’t last forever, but even before it runs out there’s the null currents and sea serpents to worry about.”

“We’ll figure something out,” I say.

“How?” Zyneth repeats, this time an edge in his voice. I lean back, surprised. “This is serious!”

He’s more bothered by all this than he’s been letting on.

“I know. Hey.” I take his hands and give them a squeeze. “I’m going to fix this. No one’s going to die here.” Well, I wouldn’t shed any tears over Gillow, but I’m not about to ruin my hero speech with that qualifier.

His frown softens. “Are you just saying that to sound brave, or have you actually thought of anything new?”

“Both,” I admit, and he chuckles softly. But he’s not going to like it, and to be frank, neither do I.

Alright, beasty, I say, and the predator perks up. You’ve skipped paying rent long enough. Time for you to start earning your keep.

The predator catches a glimpse of my thoughts and surges eagerly forward, reaching for control.

Not so fast, I say, pulling back. I double-check the Predator Influence stat: still at 33%. I’m the more powerful mind here, I have to remind myself. I’m in control. We’ll be doing this together, but you’ll be working for me. Like in Yedzaquib’s library.

Except, you know, for the whole part where I slipped up and the predator was able to pull more of itself from Between. It is mortally crucial that doesn’t happen again.

The predator only puts up a token resistance, which is fairly concerning. It’s fine. I’ll just remain more vigilant this time.

If you know you’re stepping into a viper’s den, does that make you more prepared? Or does it just make you a fool?

“Alright,” I say, tamping down my nerves. I let go of Zyneth and step back. “Let’s get to work.”

Zyneth frowns as he watches me. I’m sure he knows what I’m planning—somehow, he always manages to read me like an open book. But he doesn’t object; his look says enough, and I try to not let it cut me as I focus on summoning the void.

I only have to nudge the predator for it to fall into line, allowing me access to its control over the magic. The void spirals out from our coat, spilling into every nook of our glass, bracing our joints and strengthening our body. It’s amazing how much more powerful we feel like this, both types of arcana joining together to become something greater than the individual magics. And yet, we can sense we’ve barely tapped into the potential of either.

We can dwell on that later. First, the ship. We move to the side of the Prismatic.

“Don’t forget communication,” Zyneth finally says. “No more unexplained plans.”

We haven’t forgotten. Although talking in this form is slightly more difficult. Like the translator is struggling to interpret our merged thoughts—or maybe our thoughts have moved somewhat beyond words.

Still, we can force them out, if we focus. “Don’t worry. We were only planning to destroy the ship.”

His mouth twitches with the hint of a smile. “Oh, well, so long as that’s communicated first.”

Amusement ripples through us, and Zyneth’s tense stance relaxes a fraction. Good. We don’t want to worry him.

Dropping to the ground, we place our hands on the stone, running the void out beneath our fingers and squeezing beneath the tiny gaps under the hull. The sensation becomes like a second sight, mentally mapping out grooves cut into the stone. After a moment, we come across something familiar.

“There,” we say. “The spell circle. We can reach it.”

“Good,” Zyneth breathes. “Now we’ll just need to make sure Gillow has their Attuned water back and their ship’s spells reactivated—then we’ll have a way out, at least.”

We stand, withdrawing our void—or, most of it. We leave a pool sitting on the surface of the spell circle, ready to reactivate it when needed. While we’re in contact with the circle, we are also learning more things about it. Ways it can be tuned. Part of our mind splits off to ruminate on this while the rest of us focuses on what we need to do next.

Killing the nereid would make things easier. They’re going to fight us when they learn our plan. Best to eliminate the obstacle now—

No! No killing. We’ve been over this.

We know not to kill Zyneth. He is valuable to us. Besides, we are also valuable to him, so he poses no threat.

No killing anyone. Jesus. It’s not that hard.

It will be more difficult this way.

That’s fine. If it gets us all down to the circle alive, nothing else matters.

We send more of our void into the ship as we turn to Zyneth. “We are going now.”

His face is somber. “I thought as much. And you need me to charm you so your vial won’t break in the water?”

“Yes.”

His expression becomes pained. “I want to talk to you before you go. Just you, Kanin. As you normally are.”

We tip our head. “We are not leaving yet. You are coming with us.”

He raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean? Where?”

Ah, there. We’ve found what we’re looking for.

“The spell circle,” we say, pointing to the ocean floor. “In the Prismatic. You should get back inside. Gillow too, we guess.”

“You know, we just talked about communication,” Zyneth says. “If you’ve got a plan…”

“Yes.” We pull our prize from the ship. “You charm us for strength. We Identify and activate other spell circles, then move the ship to the basin when the way is clear.”

“With me in it?” Zyneth seems skeptical. “How are you going to manage that?”

We hold up the arcanum crystal, which we pried from the ship’s control room. Even without tapping into the magic, it feels alive, buzzing in our void.

Zyneth’s eyes widen. “Be careful with that. Do you even know what you’re doing? The amount of arcanum in there—it’s meant to power spells, not living things.”

“We are not alive.”

“Don’t say that,” Zyneth snaps. “Kanin wouldn’t say that.”

We would. This existence, this body, is not life. But that’s why we’re still fighting for the chance to change things. A chance to live again.

And the solution is right beneath our feet.

“Hey!” Gillow’s faint voice echoes from the other side of the Prismatic. “What did you do to my ship?”

We bare our core to Zyneth. “The charm. Please.”

Zyneth glances toward the ship, then swears. He whips out our spell scroll and smooths it out on the ground. “Alright. Quickly, now!” The lines of his spell are already glowing as he funnels mana into the circle.

We place our core on the page, but keep our body nearby as the magic takes hold.

“Get on the ship,” we tell him one last time, then send our body to wait in the cargo hold.

“Be careful,” Zyneth says, but without our signing glass or translator we can no longer reply. Instead, we wrap the void around our core, tighten our hold on the arcana crystal, and leap into the ocean.