With my hands still tied, I kicked back in the water. A fist flew out to meet me. I barely had time to dodge to the side. All of that would’ve been uncomfortable up on land but in the water, it was damn near impossible. The taste of adrenaline and lake water were at the back of my throat while I ducked and weaved away from the tusked man.

“Bastard!” He lunged out for me again.

For any of the good moves I could’ve used from the self-defense classes I taught at the community center on the weekends, probably the worst one came to me. I held back my wrists until he came close and slammed them against the side of his throat. He choked in surprise and clutched at his neck. That wouldn’t save me in the long run though.

“Come close!” I shouted to the cat girl. “Now!”

The cat girl swam over and tried to pass me the knife. “Take it! I can’t even cut bread, I couldn’t possible—!”

In that exact moment she touched me though, there was that freezing feeling. I jerked up to look at her. “What the—?”

“I’m so sorry,” she hurried to shout. “Please, don’t tell anyone—”

Every time her hands went back to the water, I could see the blue tinge that slipped from her, like coldness literally seeped out of her fingertips.

I stared. “Is that ice?”

“It only happens when I’m afraid—”

That explanation wouldn’t exactly save us in the midst of the yelling and screaming alongside the canoe. “It doesn’t matter. Just cut the ropes!”

“Behind you!”

The previously-laughing guy with the tusks had enough of the games. I shifted back just to see his hands, trying to grab me again, and he shoved me under the water. All my breath left in a second. Water pressed in from all sides as he tried to hold my head under, until I reached up and grabbed his arm too, yanking him down with me.

If I was fucked, he was coming with me.

Bursting up to the surface, I took the longest breath in the world. The tusked man soared through next to me and a girlish voice let out a scream. “Let go of him!”

The cat girl tried to stick him with the knife. If I had enough brain power, I would’ve been touched by the gesture. But the tusked man was too quick. He dodged away and grabbed her hand holding the dagger.

She gripped it with all of her might but he wouldn’t let go of her. I pushed through the water just as the grin crossed his face. He had us and he knew it. I had to think of something. Something good. Something better than the dagger. Crossing over, I yanked the girl’s left hand up and pressed it against the side of the man’s neck.

He glanced over to look at me so fast, I could hear his neck crack again.

No further resistance came.

A sharp breath released out of him, frigid and cold. The cat girl let out another scream but a blue tinge crept up his neck. Ice lodged in his throat, cooling his blood. His eyes never blinked again.

An arrow thunked against the canoe and I suddenly realized the audience we had.

At the shore of the lake, more slavers bellowed curses at us. They trudged through the lake water, shouting at others to grab the stragglers, the slaves who were too close to the waterline. Those prisoners fell captive immediately. We didn’t have time.

“DIVE!” I shouted and into the water we went.

Kicking as much as I could with my hands still tied, I swam away from the slavers with fury on my mind. Part of me wanted to get up there and show them how fucking grateful I was for those ropes that they’d tied me with, but I wasn’t a moron. I’d been thrust into a place that I didn’t understand, in a situation that I wasn’t familiar with, and I needed to get some distance between me and the slavers before I could figure out how to deal with this.

And how to deal with them.

Another arrow flew past me in the water but I continued on, pushing away from the slavers. Surprisingly enough, the cat girl was there, right along with me.

“Oh, gods.” The cat girl sucked in a breath when she could. “He died…the man died…”

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“He was going to kill us,” I said once she paddled next to me.

“But I killed him.”

There wasn’t time for moral dilemmas. We could deal with those later. I kicked through the water and off towards the far shore, empty and desolate of slavers, or people in general. It wasn’t the same pebble shore that we’d almost gotten captured at. This one had larger, more imposing rocks that promised a torn up canoe if anyone came close. That was where I wanted to go.

Another arrow zipped past but plunged into the water, almost six or seven feet away from us. Clearly, they weren’t going to hit their marks.

It took long minutes before I felt something brushing below my shoes. It was the silt and sand and rock of the shore of the lake. Pushing up at last, I stumbled up on the bank, to the soft moss of the forest’s underbrush, and heard the sputterings behind me. The cat girl had made it too.

“Do you still have the knife?” I panted.

“I—I—”

While she got her footing back, I ushered her behind a few of the thickest trees and held out my arms.

She squeezed her eyes shut. “I’ve never…used one.”

“A knife? You’ve never used a knife?”

“Y—yes.”

“What about to eat?”

“My nursemaids always cut my food for me.”

For some ridiculous reason, a big part of me wanted to laugh. It wasn’t malicious - the whole was too ludacris for words. We’d been captured by slavers, almost died, and this was the part that put an obstacle in our path. It wasn’t funny though. Her wide amber eyes gazed back at me with earnest embarrassment. She knew how silly it sounded and we did need the ropes cut if we wanted to make it out of the forest alive.

“I’ll walk you through it,” I promised.

With all the encouragement I could muster, she cut at them gingerly.

“I’m so sorry…” The cat girl took a struggling breath. “I—I couldn’t…I can’t…”

“It’s okay. Just keep cutting.”

Her fingers touched the side of my wrist and electricity passed between us. If I didn’t know this girl could make literal ice appear from her fingertips, I would’ve thought it was something else. The cat girl must’ve felt it too. She took a stumbling step back, still with the knife clutched in her hand.

“That shouldn’t—”

“Hey.” I held out my hand. “You take a moment, okay? I’ve got the rest of it.”

She gave me a grateful nod, passed over the blade, and the two of us walked in silence. I sawed at the ropes. That was a good first step but a better one would be to get the hell away from everybody we’d left.

After I cut hers as well, I almost let the ropes fall where they may but I hid them under a rock instead. Rubbing at my wrists to get the blood flowing again, I said the obvious. “We need to keep moving.”

“We won’t make it.”

The pessimism made sense but it wasn’t something I could subscribe to. Even if I was in a brand new, weird world. Part of it had to do with the fact that if I allowed doom to dictate my actions, I should’ve just swam back to the slavers and tied my wrists up myself. We’d be dead already.

The other part was pure calculation. The slavers had a number of new prisoners and they were definitely rowdy prisoners to handle. In all that chaos, we couldn’t have been the only two who escaped. I had a feeling that if the two of us hiked far enough, the manpower to find us would outweigh the benefits.

I didn’t say anything before nodding towards the path in front of us but the cat girl followed just the same. We descended into the forest.

Too much had been going on for me to take a good look at her. The cat girl was something else. Her large amber eyes flickered up to meet mine and when our eyes met, she looked away with a flush to her neck. I didn’t look away though. She was the first woman I’d ever met with actual cat ears and ice powers. To say I was curious was an understatement.

Beyond that, she had to be one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen in my life.

Her dark blue top had pieces of metal that crisscrossed over her neck, tying her full, heavy breasts together. They nearly spilled out. Her skirt wasn’t connected to the shirt which bared her midriff, but her skirt itself was three or four layers of fabric, showing off her perfect hips and ass. Poking out from the skirt was a furry, little lynx tail, with the same black end that her cat ears had. The thing had a mind of its own, twitching the whole time. It was hard not to look at it.

Those weren’t the only things I noticed. Too much of the whites of her eyes were showing. The steps she took were quiet and she kept glancing over her shoulder, making sure that none of our captors were following us. Whatever she’d been through had taken its toll on her.

Or, I guess, whatever both of us had been through.

I still had no idea where I was. And, what the cat girl had said earlier kept scratching at my thoughts.

There was a girl who’d come into this world with me. I couldn’t quite remember the circumstances around it but I had the weirdest feeling that the girl was alive and that I knew her. Not in some kind of spiritual, magical way but a real way. I knew the girl. Somehow, she’d come here with me. Yet, there were only pieces and fragments of my memory as hard as I tried to recall them.

My coworker Maeve likes to say that you always need to count your blessings. Those were easy to think of. My hands were finally free, nobody was enslaving us, and as many mysteries surrounded what happened, none of them were overwhelming. I would take it one step at a time. That had to start with an introduction.

I tried the softest voice I could because the cat girl was struggling. “I’m Warrick.”

The cat girl hesitated for a long moment until I honestly thought she didn’t hear me. But she took a deep breath and hurried up a little to match my stride. “Warrick, how did you fall out of the sky?”

“Aren’t you going to tell me your name?”

“My name?” Her wide amber eyes blinked at me. “You don’t know my name?”

“Nope.”

“Princess Byrid of the House of Brycht,” she whispered. “And they’re going to kill us.”