The effect was immediate. Now that he knew what to expect, Tarek could make far better sense of the experience. He felt his flesh turn cold and flash to mist in less than a heartbeat, the scattering of all his senses turning the world into a jumble of textures, temperatures, and muted vibrations.

Tarek clung to his sense of self, to his mind, feeling the chaos of dissolution tugging at him. The susurrus of his now-empty clothes crumpling to the ground thundered all about him. The pound and crunch of rapidly approaching footsteps reminded him of a storm on the horizon, and the vibrations of Xochil’s voice were recognizable but undecipherable. The warmth of the earth caressed his formlessness, and the eddies and swirls of air created by Xochil’s movements and the settling of his vacated leathers to the ground sent him spinning in a dozen directions at once. Beneath and behind all these other sensations Tarek felt the echo of his own heartbeat, reminding him that there was no time to waste. He flexed his mind, trying to hold the pieces of himself together.

Tarek wondered whether the sounds he could detect coming from Xochil were frustration, fear, or anger. He couldn’t tell, and in the end, he decided it didn’t matter. Xochil doesn’t matter. I’m done with him. With an effort, he directed his flowing, shifting bits toward the cooler air of the mist barrier. The old man wouldn’t notice a few wisps of moisture trailing across the ground in the dark.

The feeling of his heartbeat thinned and became tenuous. Tarek wished he knew how to hurry in this form. His jittering, shifting droplets of self seemed to move faster over the still-steaming ground that Xochil had burned, so he guided himself to the hottest spots he could find within reach, slinging himself from one patch of embers to the next, swirling, confused, fading. He clung tightly to his dispersed self, trying to remind himself that he was human, but he dared not flex back into his body quite yet despite the urgent call of his fading heartbeat. I have to reach the mist! If I reappear where he can see me, it’s all for nothing. The effort felt like walking on a rope strung between two trees while blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his back. Except I don’t have hands right now, do I?

Tarek entered the mists and felt a shock akin to being thrown in a river. His wet bits of self merged with the stuff of the mists and expanded, attenuating his attention and stretching his mind until he could barely recall himself. He could feel every wrinkle in the ground for hundreds of paces in every direction, every leaf of every tree, sense every eddy of air created by a thousand moving things – everything that the mist touched was a part of him. He knew that if he simply stopped holding on to the edges of himself that he’d be able to reach even further and feel even more. The oblivion of all-encompassing presence beckoned, and Tarek’s mind scrambled away from it, pulling desperately at that faint, echoing heartbeat. Where are they? I have to find them.

Sorting through all the sensations that pulled at him was like trying to sift through a cup to find a particular drop of water, but he persisted. Footsteps. Lots of them together. Heavy ones, but not too heavy. No, not that huge thing. What could that even be? Air movement, too. They’ll be walking fast. There? No, too small, too far off the ground. Monkeys, maybe, or a family of squirrels. His heartbeat faltered. What am I looking for again? Oh yes, my friends. What are their names? Wait, over there? Could be. Yes, those are footsteps. Vibrations in the air – are those voices? It must be them. Either that, or I’ll find a lost tribe in the mists that will murder me. No time!

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He centered his mind on the disturbances he felt and willed himself toward them. It was an incredible sensation to wrap himself around the bodies moving in the mist, to sense every movement and subtle vibration. He knew his friends in that moment in a way he grieved to think he’d never know again… unless he stayed like this. The thought was growing more tempting by the moment.

Tarek could no longer hear his heart. His thoughts were scattered, muddled. In desperation, he clawed his sense of self together, thought of the face he’d seen carved into the wall of the pyramid, and flexed.

Nothing happened.

Panicking, he tried again. There was a faint sense of coalescing and a slight stirring of the mists, but one of the unseen walkers stepped through it, and it dispersed. Please! Again he flexed his mind, and it felt like lifting a boulder. Still nothing. The bits of him were spread too far, and his thoughts were about to fade. Within just a few heartbeats he knew he’d be gone – and he didn’t even have that internal marker to depend on. I need more strength. I need power!

He knew where to find it. One of the many parts of himself wrapped around his friends could feel the faint heat and echoing sweetness of the gash on Zulimaya’s forehead. He focused on the sensation, imagining that the droplet of mist that wafted about her was a tiny piece of his mouth. He felt the blood, felt its movement as it shifted, mostly coagulated, within the cleft of the wound. He felt its power, and he pulled on it.

It felt like the prick of a leaf-needle. It was next to nothing – an infinitesimal part of him drawing weakly on blood that mixed with sweat and condensation. But in the empty, echoing chamber of Tarek’s self, it was enough. Again he flexed, and he felt himself drawing out of the mists.

It wasn’t like when he’d come back when he escaped the Iktaka. That had happened all at once, like a mudslide. This was agonizingly slow as he pulled the distant bits of himself out of mists that stretched forever in both directions. He focused his thoughts on the space in front of the walkers, and with a gasp of the mind like that of a drowning man surfacing for the last time, he flexed his mind.

Tarek fell in a heap to the ground, trembling uncontrollably. His body was cold, so very cold. He couldn’t control his limbs. His hand hurt like fire, for some reason, but he couldn’t even make himself grasp at it. He thrashed on the ground like a caught fish, naked as the day he was born and gasping for air as if he’d been held underwater.

“Tarek!” Tavi cried, rushing to him.

“What…?” Bachi stuttered, half a step behind Tavi.

Pahtl laughed and ran in a circle around them. “A good trick! The old one must be furious.”

Zulimaya said nothing, and with his eyes spasmed shut, Tarek had no idea what she was thinking, but he heard her steps draw near. Can I feel her? No, it wasn’t enough blood for that. Was it? I wasn’t even in my body.

Bachi pulled off his ridiculous cape and covered Tarek with it. “I told you it would be useful,” he said smugly. Warmth flowed into Tarek, and his muscles began to relax.

“What happened?” Zulimaya demanded. “How did you escape?”

Tarek couldn’t quite bring himself to speak or open his eyes just yet, so he simply shook his aching left hand free of the cape-blanket and held it up for everyone to see.

Gasps of shock were not what he had expected to hear.

“Tarek, what happened to your hand?” Tavi whispered. He sounded horrified.

Opening his eyes, Tarek looked at his hand. The ring he’d meant to show them wasn’t there. Neither was half of his hand. Where the last two fingers had been was smooth, scarred flesh, as if he’d lost that part of his hand in an accident many years ago. He could still feel the fingers, but they weren’t there. That part of him was floating somewhere out there, dissolved in the mist. He hadn’t pulled hard enough when he drew himself back.

“Oh,” was all he could say.

Then the grayness all around them exploded into motion and the monsters hidden in the mists attacked.