Terrance sounded pissed. How he managed to shout so loud that I heard him half a mile away I’ll never know, but I could guess what was about to happen.

I had only been incapacitated twice while aboard the cruise ship (if you didn’t count my own panic and poor decisions). The first time was when a giant wave of psychic fuckery washed across the ship and took out everyone. The second time, a very similar but smaller effect had been emitted by Terrance after I had fought off Mr. Rasp. Now that I knew what to look for, I could feel a spell build in the distance. I could feel it coming from the ziggurat.

And it was building fast. I quickly formed a spell in my mind, similar to the mental shield ward I had slapped on the back of my neck back then. It wasn’t best cast off the cuff like this, as I hadn’t spent the time to adapt it to my casting style. I’d only translated it to work as a ward, so what I was doing now was a lot of guesswork and shoving a square into a circle hole with pure brute force. As you might guess, this wasn’t the most efficient method of spell casting, and the feedback was already spiking.

As I cobbled together the mental spell I crossed over and placed myself in front of the group of prisoners and Alice. I could feel Alice try to cast a spell but she couldn’t maintain the concentration with her head wound.

I felt the spell in the distance reach a crescendo just as I finally smashed the last piece of the spell together and raised my hands in front of me, casting it forward with a shout.

“Hlíf!” I cried.

The hardest part about modifying the spell on the fly had been making it cover a greater area than myself, which, from what I understood, it wasn’t meant to do. I had—to use a terrible metaphor—taken a raincoat and stapled it to a picnic table to protect against a rogue wave… while also stretching it impossibly wide.

Just as the energy left my hands, a wave of energy crashed into it. The two energies reacted to one another violently, shedding excess power as light and heat, creating a wavering light show just ahead of me. But unlike the previous two times I had experienced this spell, it wasn’t a simple wall of energy that flew by. It was a flood. Me and my piddling spell was a house in that flood, with a shitty foundation.

“Colm!” Alice yelled. I couldn’t spare the concentration it took to look back at her. She was probably concerned with the blood pouring out of my ears, eyes and nose. I should be too.

I could feel the energy being given off by Terrance more clearly now that I was butting up against it. Even though I had likened it to a flood, it didn’t behave like water. The energy that hit my shield splashed out to the sides and above, but didn’t fill in behind like water flowing around a rock. Anything behind me existed in a shallow valley, safe from the mental attack.

I did the math. Terrance was stupid strong. He also had a place of power to cast from, one he’d been using to strengthen himself for who knows how long. I… I had tricks. I felt like someone who was self-educated on wikipedia trying to compete with someone with an established practice. He was also using the whole islands ward scheme to amplify—

Oh my God!

“I’m not a fuck-up!” I shouted, no doubt getting a very worried look from Alice.

I brought my tentacles forward, having momentarily forgotten them, and began drawing a big ward around me. At first I only used one, but as I got into it I added another, then another until I was drawing with all four of my interdimensional limbs. I craned my neck behind me, pausing my writing/drawing to catch Alice’s eye.

“Take them to the town! Find Ida!” I shouted. “Now!” I continued when she hesitated.

Alice nodded shakily and began to move toward the prisoners, which is when I stopped paying attention. I needed everything I had before I cooked my brain. The ward started to take shape around me, but was slowed down due to the calculations I had to make to better make use of the preparations I had made earlier in the night. I normally spend days, if not weeks, doing this kind of work to make sure I didn’t fucking accidentally kill myself. I guess I could take solace in that if I ended up exploding my brain, at least Terrance wouldn’t be able to sacrifice me.

“C’mon you fucking prick,” I muttered, unsure if I was talking to myself or Terrance. Every time I detected a flaw or mistake in the ward I was making it felt like my stomach fell out of my ass as I hurried to correct it. I could tell my body temperature was climbing, and if I was just a regular human with a regular body I’d probably be passed out by now. I was sure my temp was climbing into the hundreds. That was when you started losing brain cells, right? Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I finally completed the ward… and nothing happened. I swore sulfurously as I scanned the ward for mistakes, finally finding the problem. Or at least, the first problem, as I discovered more as I worked to fix it. It was awkward as hell as I had to stay facing in the direction of the ziggurat, as I didn’t want to mar any of the lines with my feet by accident and also keep the fucking pain tsunami at bay.

I was working on two of the five problems I spotted when the ward suddenly snapped into operation, and I nearly fell forward when my protection spell suddenly had a lack of resistance. I dropped it and my arms to my sides, sweat pouring off me in sheets as my body tried to desperately cool itself off. I started to take long, gasping breaths as I had been concentrating to hard and forgot to fucking breathe for the last minute. Still not wanting to mess up the ward I squatted and put my head between my knees.

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But only for a few seconds. The ward was blocking the wave but wasn’t doing the second effect. I got back to work, and now that I wasn’t panicking I could see where I went wrong. The fix didn’t even take five seconds.

The ward, which had been acting as a boulder to the wash of psychic pain, now started to hum. The vibration ramped up as the seconds passed, until it matched the pitch of the feedback the warded sticks I had placed earlier. When the two got in sync, the low wine of magical interference that’d been in the background suddenly rose in pitch, rising higher and higher like a motorcycle engine being throttled into the red.

It kept rising in pitch, and my eyebrows rose in astonishment. I felt as if it should make a noise, something I should hear, but only those of us with magical senses would be able to tell what was going on. Which, apparently, Terrance had cottoned on as he cut of the psychic assault. But it was too late. The feedback I’d introduced into the system had built its own momentum. While it was slower now without Terrance’s bonkers attack feeding it, it wasn’t stopping.

But the amount of feedback was incredible. The wards on this island were incredibly robust and efficient. Without the amount of energy Terrance had accidentally supplied, there’d be no way I could have shorted them out on my own. Holy shit.

Being very careful not to touch any of the lines around me, I sat down in the middle of my ward, feeling like a wrung-out rag. I could feel the wards on the island weakening, like being in an old house during a storm. One more gust and the whole thing would fall over.

There was a flash. That wasn’t entirely accurate, actually. Maybe a pulse? There was a brief ripple that was visible to the naked eye, like heat on a desert road, only over your entire vision. That was the energy being released as the wards of the island finally broke, releasing a psychic backlash that even I, under two layers of protection from my hastily crafted amulet and big ass ward felt. I hoped Ida, Alice and crew were okay.

Over all it had taken a good ten minutes for the wards to break, I think. I was impressed and a little intimidated by the spell work involved in the island. I’d have to really work to improve my own defenses at home.

I took another minute or two to rest before leveraging myself to my feet like an octogenarian with bad knees. Hopefully Terrance didn’t have psychic protection and was out cold like most of the islands inhabitants. But if I was a betting man, I’d bet he was still awake and really fucking pissed. I turned and started heading towards town, a stumbling walk the best I could do.

Boy, I hope I don’t have brain damage. Can I repair brain damage with my body power? I gotta come up with proper names for these things.

My mind drifted in that manner as I slowly walked toward town. On the way I discovered a few unconscious prisoners and pirates, some I recognized from the group Alice had taken into town. They must have gotten separated somehow?

I tried to wake up the prisoners but they were out cold, some with blood coming out of their ears. None were dead, thankfully, but holy shit did I ever underestimate the integrity of the islands wards.

There were five prisoners, and I tried to get my brain to work long enough to figure out how to get them to town. There was nothing I could use to carry them nearby and, while I may be strong, carrying 500-900 pounds of people on my shoulders just isn’t feasible, even if I could get them all there. The person on the bottom would suffocate probably and I doubt I’d be able to keep my balance.

Eventually, I shifted my tentacles to the frequency where they were more solid and non-destructive. I lifted the two heftier individuals over my shoulders like sacks of flour and looped a tentacle around the torsos of the final 3. I’d have to drag them on their asses, which would really suck and give them some road rash, but it’ll beat being left behind or murdered by Terrance when he shows up.

I felt like hamburger. Just—just beat up. I don’t know what kind of feedback that spell gave me, but it felt like I held onto an electrical conduit for hours. My muscles twitched and felt enervated, and I had to pay attention to what each of my limbs was doing to avoid falling over. Plus, the added weight of the prisoners made it clear how—weak was the wrong word. I could still move, but there was underlying damage that I’m sure wouldn’t show itself until tomorrow. Maybe the best way to describe it would be to say I felt cooked, I guess. Which, considering how high my body temp had gotten, may be more apt than I know.

Getting all of us in motion took me leaning forward a bit to dig my feet into the dirt, plus using my final free tentacle to jab into the dirt ahead of me and pull forward like one would use a handrail when ascending stairs with an overfull backpack. Once I built up a bit of momentum, the free tentacle was used to help keep the prisoners on my shoulders. Boy, were they going to have some bruises tomorrow.

The trip to town took the better part of an hour. I was afraid of going too fast and damaging my charges and I also just didn’t have it in me to go faster. I’m glad this island is so small.

My thoughts were interrupted by something shouted in French. I looked up and was surprised by all the fire. I was so tired I’d just let my body go on automatic and kinda zoned out. Half of the town was on fire, and it was spreading quickly. Luckily the road to the docks was wide, which was helping it stay clear of flames and keeping the other side of the town safe, for now. I blinked slowly and regarded the handsome man pointing an AK at my face.

“Ida,” I said. “I need help. Get me Ida.”

Recognition flashed across his face. I assumed he was one of the dozenish people Ida had recruited to stage our escape. The fact that he didn’t recognize the tall man with tentacles said a lot about this situation. Or maybe he wasn’t too bright. But he lowered his rifle and said something into his radio.

I must have zoned out again because the next thing I know people were pulling the prisoners off me and laying them gently on a gurney. Nope, scratch that. It was a trolley hand-truck thing with hard rubber wheels, used for moving tools and equipment around a shop. There were two of them and they managed to get the five prisoners onto them without it looking too comical.

“Colm!”

I turned and saw Ida just before she crashed into me in a hug, nearly knocking me over. She immediately drew back and looked at me with alarm. “What happened? Where’s Alice?”

My blood went cold. I glanced at the ex-prisoners being taken away, then back from where I had come. I heard my voice, like it was someone else speaking.

“I… sent her ahead. She didn’t arrive?”

I didn’t need to hear Ida’s reply.