Lucas Tigana, displaced prince of Tigana still fighting to reclaim his homeland-dies with a thousand others as hot geysers of air erupt from the ground and scorch them completely.

Ascendent Zaraya Zaraki guarding one of the way points for an inter-world ley line fights a number of unknown vampire opponents and is presumed dead along with two of her disciples.

The walls of Paradisum crumble from quakes and the shifting landscape. The buildings of Hilton are blown apart but a spray of water coming from a fountain that has sustained the inhabitants for generations. Teá, a proud Norse warrior woman with her entire family disappears in the resulting explosion, it rains around the area for days until a lake results where the city once was. Forests recently planted with the coming of the fae in the previously hilly and flat grassland of the Tundra are swallowed by the ground.

The large building and towers build in and around the heart of the Sandorian kingdom crumble. King Magnus Sanderson first of his name along with many of his children, wives and advisors is lost in Capital City with many of its inhabitants.

Damage and his whole clan drown while crossing under the Undine Straight in the complete flooding of the tunnels.

*

John

I don’t know which way is up, orientation probably doesn’t even matter at this point. I’m sure I’m sore all over but that is the least of my worries, there is nothing to grab on to. All of my gear and maybe even my clothes have been ripped off me and even that isn’t what has my attention.

I’m drowning, and it is the sweetest torture I have ever experienced. I’m twisted around occasionally bumping into objects or barriers I can’t identify, my eyelids are blasted open by the pressure on my face but I can’t see a thing in the sudden deep darkness I find myself pulled through. My lungs are seared by the burn of water in passages that should never accommodate it..

My screaming is silent if it can be called screaming at all, I know I should be dead 3 or 4 times over by now but still life persists and each ‘breath’ is sweet torture to all my nerves. Back on earth I used to think of myself as a relic of a time long passed.

A curious cyber-nerd that looked fondly to the past where people where more hands on and lived most of their lives outside. I imagine this is what water boarding must have felt like, the feeling of drowning without actually fully drowning in the water. I breath in the water and I expel it, a torture I can’t scream to express or pass out to escape.

I think I am losing my mind because as painful as it is to have water in my lungs I’m not actually suffocating, now I can hardly feel my body at all. The really scary part though is the underlying joy, the underlying pleasure I seem to be taking from all this. We are dead, surely we are dead but there is something in the water that I very much want more of. Maybe I’m even inhaling more than is necessary to just relieve my tortured diaphragm.

I wake up hacking water from my hot chest and burning sinuses. Luckly I’m already lying supine so as I cough water out it stays out. I hear the crashing of waves first, then the tingling all over my body that is also a kind of sweet torture. Am I a masochist? With the things I’ve done with Ava maybe I might be.

I hear the shouting next, the confusion and fear in the voices as people call out to their loved ones. I try to get up but I’m so very tired and the sand is so soft...

I wake up again now under the shade of a tent, the crashing of waves, no the crashing of something collapsing into the waves wakes me. I get out of the 2 person tent and watch the last of the cliff sink into the foaming water. I look at everyone and I’m shocked at what I see.

The state everyone is in is appalling but that’s not what shocks me at all. Looking at the giant Onimorē I know his height, weight, age, primary weapon, mana abilities. The man is leaning over the dead body of the dark skinned elf Sirimiri, I don’t know how I survived. I look at Nikita and Aurora huddle together with Ingwe and Divina under a tree, they look lost but each of them is breeming with mana. Everyone is, even me as wrung out as I feel.

I look at Mirabalis and I know her specialty is illusion magic and chakra skills, I know she weighs 65kgs, I know her height her age her primary weapons of choice. I know she is now a 2nd tier awakened, so is almost everyone that was 1st tier before we all drowned.

‘’Are you okay?’’ Michael asks me putting a hand on my shoulder. I try to respond but croak instead. How can my throat be so dry after swallowing so much water?

He nods as if he understand and passes me a water bottle he summons from a storage item. My eyes widen as I see the puff of mana as the object is summoned, I take the bottle and drink but I’m soon coughing again as my attention was on the ring Mike has on his finger. The things I can see about, things he can do he has never told me about nor have I ever seen him do.

‘’Slow down,’’ he says then sighs and looks away. ‘’we lost Edward.’’

‘’What?’’ I’m sure I’m gawking like an imbecile but I’m so confused right now.

‘’We pulled him out of the water but he never woke up, there is no pulse...’’

I try to figure out what must have happened but its no dice, I look around for what feels like the first time in my life and the world around me is awash with colour and sensation I had never before paid attention to. I can tell how old the trees are if I concentrate hard enough, I can tell how durable the rocks, I can tell that Michael doesn’t have a scratch on him but Max over there is riddled with torn muscles and ligaments.

Before all this I could ‘read’ certain people on occasion but that was in user interface format like I had seen displays back on earth when I had the chip in my head. Now though its all that information about anything I concentrate on but the knowledge is innate, I don’t see it I just know it. I pass Michael back his water then slump on the sand suddenly grateful that I survived that.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

‘’What happened?’’ I ask over the voices, Sachi, Ingwe and Mira still looking at the foaming ocean and shouting into the wind.

‘’Hannah!’’

‘’Hannah!’’

They shout, the name itself sounds like a plea for help coming from Sachi’s cracking voice. I look first at Mira then him trying to get something out of them. I look at Mira and something looks back, something old and malevolent so I quickly look away. Sachi also has something, something deep that previously scared the shit out of me but now mostly leaves me dizzy.

‘’The tunnel collapsed, our escort guards are out there looking for Hannah, another ran up to their camp or something-‘’ I stop him with a wave of my hand.

‘’I don’t mean that, I mean what happened to cause all this?’’ I say waving my hand at the fallen trees, broken cliffs, bubbling ocean, scattered people and the few dead bodies we have in our mists.

Michael looks around and there is nothing happy in his expression, the worry as he looks far into the horizon is clear for me even without any ability. ‘’I don’t know,’’ he says finally and we stay like that. Shocked in our own ways, numbly watching things progress around us, Ed is dead huh?

You know what, maybe this isn’t all a dream after all. Maybe this is really my life now, wouldn’t that be strange?

*

Sachihiro

‘’I’m going to go find her.’’

‘’Sachi, we cannot separate at a time like this. We don’t even know if these un-dine creatures can be trusted and what may lie ahead on our journey.’’ I can hear the worried pity in Fraye’s voice but no my daughter isn’t dead, I know this.

‘’We cannot go further south from here either way so I don’t see why my son can’t go look for Hannah.’’ Da agrees with something I’ve said for the first time in a while.

‘’What do you mean we can’t travel further?’’Tóma asks with a scowl with her hand resting on my arm to calm me. I shake it off.

‘’Divina and I have spoken to the Jar Marine Captains, all their ships are grounded until the tidal storms settle down and that might be a while if it happens at all. None has seen anything like this and its not getting better.’’ Da says.

‘’Then who will help us look for Hannah?’’ Mira asks gritting her teeth.

‘’I’ll row myself if I have to but I’m going in 15 minutes, and I’m going alone.’’ I say to Mira who looks at me in challenge. I shake my head, ‘’I have a water affinity and am very difficult to drown. You’ll slow me down if we go overboard or I have to go under, Cicilia lets look at the stones.’’

‘’Of course,’’ Cici says and moves to an open space on the sand floor of the hut we now find ourselves refugees in. From her storage ring red crystal fragments of blood fall out, each representing a person in the family. All besides one a healthy red showing that everyone except Rigs is alive.

‘’That one is Rigdis’?’’ I ask to confirm and almost audibly sigh in relief when Cici nods affirmative. The dull one is Rigs so Hanna is still alive wherever she may be according to her blood-crysta.

‘’Which one is Hanna?’’ I ask as all of them look the same to me.

Cicilia sifts through them checking on the micro-runes carved into them until she spots one and passes it on to me. I nod and again look at the other ‘healthy’ looking crystals for comfort, my children are still alive and hopefully made it safely home by now.

I turn and Mira is standing in my way, ‘’Hanna is also mine and you better not thing yourself the only capable person here.’’ She says with slitted eyes. ‘’Now we all gained something from that little swim as I’m sure you can tell, some more than others I admit.’’ She says acknowledging the little mist that seems to be circling around me since the Awakenings. ‘’But going alone half cocked back into that will get us no where.’’

‘’Son, if Hannah is still alive in that then we have to believe she has found a way to adopt with this mana filling the air and water. She shouldn’t be in immediate danger but you will be if you go back into that,’’ ma says pointing at the foaming water.

The last few people to exit the water died. With the desperation cause by drowning plus the Awakenings we all seem to have experienced no one should have drowned. Logically all our primitive instincts should have help us use that Mana to survive, but Ed and Siri are dead, drowned. I look at the tiny blood-crystal in my hand, how is Hannah still surviving out there.

With my affinity with water and reaching the 2nd tier of Awakening I can feel that this is no longer normal ocean water, but even the air I’m breathing doesn’t feel like normal air. I look up at the darkening sky through the gaping hole in what used to be a roof there at every tired face around me. I shake my head; there is no way I’m not going to look for her.

‘’We’ll look for a few hours but return before that reaches the isle,’’ I say pointing to a black cloud overtaking the grey far in the distance. Mira nods and we push out of there quickly.

There are only two semi survivable rafts on the beach which we take with a few swipes of our blades and a broken nose to show the seriousness of our resolve. Mira pushes the thing into the water and we jump on, using improvised sticks as oars we pull ourselves deeper into the water. The water bubbling as it sprays and lands on our torn clothes.

Mira creates a transparent bubble of air around the raft that keeps the water and some of the wind at bay, I’m grateful but I say nothing. I row, the crystal held in Mira’s hand as she makes minor adjustments to our heading. I keep rowing, eventually figuring out a way to part the water slightly so there is less resistance. We leave the coast far behind until I can’t even see the top of the isle we had landed on.

I keep rowing as the darkness comes from afar preceding the normal retreat of the sun. My arms are lead when we swap places but pretty soon I have removed spears from my ring and helping Mira row even faster, the crystals stays a healthy red on my lap, then it dims.

‘’No!’’ I say in shock finding myself standing with the raft wobbling below our feet. The crystal flies through the air catching a few rays of the sun as it tumbles. It moves seemingly in slow motion but I’m also in slow motion, everything is slow motion as that red glow dies with my hopes.

We splash into the foaming dark ocean in the middle of this lquid desert as I capsive us having tried to reach the fucking crystal. The cold arid blistering water brings me back to my senses and its all Mira and I can do to get ourselves out of there.

Our clothes slough off our skin then, our skin burns and bubbles but for whatever reason more mine than hers. She uses her Air to get the raft right side up and I use my Water to get it baileyed and ready for occupation. She climes on from one side while I climb from the other and we slump onto the little boat naked and more tired than we should be.

I stare at nothing, ‘’she’s gone...’’

Mira silently stares at nothing. ‘’Maybe that stone was wrong, she could be alive somehow. Who knows what her fae heritage is capable off? Isis and Cicilia and Shea made those stone, what do they really know about life tracking rituals anyways? There is so much they have been figuring out as they experimented with things, I’ve seen them fumbling about...’’ she stops, stress at me and starts crying.

I look away, unable to comfort her while I need my own comfort. I’m so so tired all of a sudden, my skin blotchy and red with large boils. There are so many enchantments, spells and ritual tied to all the people in my family. All those seemingly little things like Shea collecting everyone blood, people drinking Ingwe’s breast milk, even the collection of my seed. All ingredients used in things like these life tracking crystals, spells of spiritual protection, binding ties of loyalty, runes tattooed on our bodies.

All things that makes me feel now that Hannah is really gone from this world, there is a void where she used to occupy space. Crystal or no crystal deep inside I know that my baby is gone.