Here’s where the predator’s abilities become crucial.

The ocean tears at us and streams of null magic slice through our void, but we shield our core from the angry buffeting as we plunge into the depths.

We shield the arcana crystal, too. We’ve taken that with us, in case Gillow tries to do anything to stop us. But we’ll need all the mana we can get for this next stunt.

Activate Inspect.

Nothing happens. Echo does not confirm our spell.

We turn our attention inward and can feel our interface, barely out of our grasp; reaching for it feels like pushing through mud. We press harder, will our magic into existence, and a sharp pain lances through our mind, as if we’re about to split back in two. We can’t let that happen though; if we lose our void manipulation now, we’ll be exposed to the whims of the null magic. We’ll certainly die.

Slowly, Echo fizzles into our mind, voice corrupted with static.

[Activated…]

Relief spills through us as glowing lines of magic appear on the pillars next to us. That’s not enough, though. We need to see everything. We draw on the arcana crystal, just the tiniest amount, and are immediately flooded with energy. Before the power can overwhelm us, we funnel it all into the Identify spell. The world lights up with magic.

The entire coliseum has become a circuit board of luminescent lines, all criss-crossing each other, looping around pillars, connecting the intricate web of spells that were programmed into this place centuries ago.

(And there’s a distinct, overwhelming familiarity to this place. We’ve seen this before. We’ve been here.)

We trace the spell patterns around us, dissecting how they intersect and what they mean. We force Echo to explain them to us, to show us what we’re looking for. It takes work. Reaching her is like digging through wet cement. But we do, and she tells us.

(This place was different before. It wasn’t empty. There were people. As indistinguishable from fish as the fish are from the sea. We hadn’t even realized what they were at the time. What is one system of chemistry compared to another?)

First, the pillars. The water races around us, null currents tearing against our void as we rush through the water. We pick up null arcana as we go, stashing the magic within us. Echo tries to document this: [Bo-s M-na: 23-2] but bits of her voice and visuals cut out. It’s the void, we know. It’s interfering. Neither of us understand why.

(We could see lines of magic flowing through everything, like the pulsing arteries of an animal. They led to bubbles of air, where visitors resided; they led to the city’s defenses, which kept back the untamed beasts and currents; they led to fields of kelp and ecosystems of coral; they led to the telepad, consumed by a featureless black dome of magic. The people of Emrox swam in and out of that hemisphere at will.)

We activate the spell circle the next column over, beginning to drain the water. We understand what these structures were for, now: platforms for transportation. Where you could wait before transit. This entire stadium was for transportation.

(It’s so different, so strange experiencing this place with a new understanding of what we see. With… linear thought. Distant memories—no, shadows of memories—take on new meaning.)

Before the water can fully drain away, we rocket through the turbulence, activating the spell on the next platform, and the next. Pockets of air begin to populate the stadium, overlapping and merging to form a giant bubble. We spiral down to the stadium floor this way. The null arcanum is thickest here.

(The inhabitants stopped what they were doing as a great shadow descended over their home.)

We wrap null arcana around us, any and all we can get our hands on. Draw upon it to concentrate the void. Back on the platform, we wrap it around the Prismatic, too, hoping Zyneth made it back on board. In both places simultaneously, around the Prismatic, and at a space just in front of us, we pull the void tight. Compressing it. Compacting the magic smaller, even smaller.

(They were looking up. They were looking at us.)

The water around us is draining away. We settle onto the ground as the tide recedes, and focus instead on our magic.

(We noticed none of this. So much magic condensed in one place—it was irresistible. We reached out for the energy—for the life force that sustained this place. Why wouldn’t we? It’s what we craved.)

The void is now denser than matter can achieve. We funnel every ounce of null arcana we can into the act, and pull even more from both the ocean and the arcana crystal. There’s a swirling ball of physical shadows in front of us, like a miniature black hole, and even still we compress it. With one last swell of magic, we overcome some invisible tipping point of spacetime, and the singularity we’ve been forming turns inside out, and then—

(A black cloud eclipsed the metropolis.)

The Prismatic slips through, from one point in our void to the next, and appears abruptly in front of us.

There’s still water around us, quickly draining away, but it’s enough to cushion the ship’s sudden appearance. We recall the void still left back up on the platform, the other end to our tunnel, and it comes spilling down to us in a wave of black.

[...pell obtained!]

As the last of the water washes away, pushed back against the now massive dome of air surrounding the stadium, the last of the null currents wash away with it. All that is left is us, the ship, and the giant spell circle under our feet.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

(Death. We hadn’t understood death before.)

Zyneth and Gillow spill out of the craft.

“What did you do? What did you do?” The nereid stumbles out of their ship. “My crystal! Give it…” Their angry tirade comes to a stuttering stop as fear flickers over their face. “Gods above. What are you?”

Zyneth is looking around with apparent surprise. “How did we get down here?”

We can’t speak—not in any sounds that would make sense to their ears—so we summon our glass body from the Prismatic. Half of our void rushes to retrieve it, filling in the joints like cartilage, attaching to the limbs like black muscles on crystal bones. It walks out of the ship on its own. Gillow scrambles out of its way as it strolls to meet us. Void flows back into void, the glass returning to our structure, as we become whole. The rest of the void—the null arcana we’d borrowed from the surrounding waters in order to achieve our spell—hangs about us like a dark cloak.

We turn to Zyneth now that we have our translator back. “Void.”

He eyes us warily, but stands his ground even as Gillow draws a defensive blade. We ignore them.

“What do you mean?” Zyneth asks. “How did you move us down here?”

We’d done it once before, when the tempo squid teleported us away. In fact, it was that creature who showed us how the void could be used. Not to mention all the times before that we experienced null magic with the telepads. It’s spatial magic, after all.

We struggle to put this into words. “We connected two points within our void.”

And it doesn’t just have to be within our void. With a spell circle, it could reach much further. Between worlds. Into extra dimensions.

Our mind spins with these thoughts. There’s layers to them, other meanings, like stacks upon stacks of transparencies, each with their words, and we’re trying to understand which sheet the print is on. It’s dizzying. We need a break from this.

Just for a moment.

As we stop pulling from the arcana crystal, as we separate our mind once again, the range of our void collapses back into its original painfully small radius. The Identify spell flickers out.

[Mana depleted,] Echo says, her voice finally clear.

Without the predator’s strength, weariness hits me all at once. I at least have enough awareness to catch my core, no longer attached to my body, as the void puddles to the ground around me. Without it there to help hold me up, I stumble, then sink to my knees, mentally exhausted.

Zyneth rushes over, dropping down in front of me. “Are you okay?”

I shake my head. My mind is buzzing—from all that magic or the predator’s thoughts, I’m not sure. “It’s been here before. I—I think it did something to them. I think it hurt people.”

“What?” Zyneth holds out his hands. “What are you talking about?”

I place my core in his grasp, too tired to get it strung back up on my own. I’d probably drop it. “The predator. This place. I think… I think it was here before Emrox was a Ruin.”

Zyneth gingerly clasps my core back on my chain, where it bumps lightly against my chest. It’s not inside a pouch any longer, but I can’t be bothered to find one, and the double vision doesn’t bother me as much now anyways.

“What are you saying?” Zyneth says, lowering his voice. “You think it’s what caused Emrox to become a Ruin?”

I put a hand to my core, like I could massage away the headache that’s forming. “Maybe. I don’t know. Those memories—I think they were memories—they weren’t from the predator, exactly. They were from something…” I can’t even describe it. It wasn’t even seeing, in a way that I would consider sight. It wasn’t hearing, in a way I would consider sound. The way it interacted with reality was beyond anything I can experience. “...The memories were from something much more vast.”

Zyneth is quiet for a long moment. “I’m no mage, Kanin, but all of this… it seems beyond me. That thing in your magic—we’re out of our depths.”

My soul sinks. It isn’t what I want to hear, but I think I’ve always known. “I know.”

“We can still turn around,” Zyneth says. “You don’t have to go through with this. Gillow attuned enough water that they think they can get the Prismatic running again. Let’s leave this spell circle behind and head back to civilization. See Noli and Rezira again. Please, Kanin. Come back with me.”

My soul feels like it’s being squeezed in a vice. “But what about the predator? It’s why we came here in the first place. Open a portal Between—trap it there between your world and mine.”

Zyneth gives me a critical look. “We came here because you wanted your body back. That was the goal, even before the predator became an issue. But there’s bound to be other ways to restrain that creature. We haven’t even begun to look.”

“We can’t go back to the Athenaeum,” I say.

“It’s not the only library in the world.” Zyneth takes my hand. “Let’s leave this cursed place behind and search for an answer. You can figure it out another way. We can figure it out another way.”

The predator is listening to all this, tense with anticipation. It’s waiting for me to decide. It doesn’t want me to leave—which makes me think leaving must be the right answer.

But I’m so close. I’m so close to the only way I know to get home. To retrieving my body. Can I give that all up, right when I’m on the threshold?

Zyneth watches me, pain etched over his features, waiting for me to respond. I feel like I’m being torn in two. If I do this, if I activate the portal, then I’d be giving him up, too.

I steel myself. In my heart of hearts—or, I guess, glass of glass—I know what I should do.

There’s a blur of motion from Gillow. I react. My void shoves Zyneth out of the way, but the spear of water still clips his shoulder. Their attack deflects off Zyneth’s arm and stabs instead into me—into my core.

Pain explodes through me. My mind is sent reeling, dizzy, stunned by the numbing agony which leeches away into a distant chill.

[15 points of Piercing Damage sustained. HP: 4/10]

The predator’s anger erupts through me, and I’m too disoriented to temper it. What just…

Its outrage swells like rising a tide. I try to push through my disorientation, but it’s like swimming through mud. The wave crashes over my head, and I drown in it.

We leap at Gillow, seething at their arrogance.

(A piece of glass shifts with the violent motion. A distant voice says, [HP: 3/10].)

How dare they try to hurt Zyneth. How dare they hurt our anchor! Gillow braces themself, terror and defiance clear on their face as a whip of water circles them at the ready. It’s not their magic we are concerned with, however. Their soul glows bright in their chest. Yes, it is past time we devoured another. We’ve been holding back. Our anchor didn’t want us feasting—and he held up his end of the bargain—but we cannot sit idly by as this prey breaks our only foothold in reality.

Our void clashes with their water, which turns to ice on contact. The shock ripples through us with a sting of something unfamiliar—pain.

[HP: 2/10]

“Don’t!” Zyneth cries from behind us.

We ignore him, wrenching our void from Gillow’s ice as we stab at them again. Spears of black come at them from several directions at once. They raise a wave of ice, chips of it shattering off from the impact of our attack. Before we can withdraw, it turns just as abruptly back into water and collapses on us.

[HP: 1/10]

“Stop!” Zyneth cries, dashing after us. “You’re falling apart!”

We struggle to escape from the water, but it’s nearly as intangible as our void, slipping through our attacks—stabbing for our core. And finally we understand what that pain means—what Zyneth was saying. Our anchor is about to shatter.

We try to cluster our glass around it, but our control of the strange material is clumsy, imprecise—we need our other half to help with this, but it’s no longer fighting us or Gillow. It’s tired—drifting—fading.

We stumble back from the icy attack, clutching our shattered anchor as an unfamiliar emotion fills us: Fear.

Our soul. We’re going to lose our soul.