1

Nevan woke up shortly after Keshon and sat beside her on the edge of her bed. “How’s he doing?”

The Grimalkin healer just shook her head. She stood up and said, “Come with me.” They walked to the door, out of earshot of the other two occupants of the cabin. “When he goes…” she started.

Nevan raised his eyebrows. “When?”

“Okay. If he quickly deteriorates, I need you to get Kylah out of the cabin. I don’t want her to see him die.”

Nevan exhaled loudly. “Yeah, I don’t want that either. But it’s not going to help her guilt or her grief.”

Keshon crossed her arms over her chest. “I know, I know.”

They stood in the doorway silently, staring at the injured hunter. Behind them, the first spillover from the flooding started snaking through the dusty road. It glistened under the new day’s sunlight, but went undetected by the two teammates, who returned to their position beside Lorenzo.

2

Seemingly linked by fate, Kylah and Lorenzo woke at the same time. She rose quietly and dressed while the injured hunter’s eye flashed open.

“Unghhh!” he moaned as he tried in vain to will his body into movement. His eyes found Keshon, and he moaned again.

The healer grabbed Nevan’s arm. “It’s happening,” she said. “Get her out of here.”

He spun around and scooped up his daughter.

“What are you doing?” Kylah protested, but he didn’t answer as he rushed the two of them out onto the road.

“What the hell?” Nevan cried as he held Kylah in his arms and gazed at the six inches of water that washed over his boots. He turned to face the river. The delineating line between the river and village was long gone. Heavy streams of water gorged through the village road. More water came splashing down the hill just to their north. It swelled between the trees and bushes, bursting against the sides of the cabin.

“Put me down,” Kylah yelled, and Nevan slowly planted her back on her feet. She dashed for the cabin, but he grabbed her hand.

“No,” he shouted more forcefully than he had intended. “I won’t let you go in there.”

“Maybe we could help,” she pleaded, but Nevan remained firm, wrapping his arms around his daughter’s shoulders.

“There’s nothing you can do,” he replied. She started crying, and he could feel her body tremble against his. He held her tightly as her tears flowed and the water raged past them. Looking up, he could just detect the edge of the glitch on the northern border. He hadn’t been able to see it over the trees before. Around them, the soaked road churned, creating a cacophonous noise.

Keshon appeared in the doorway, her eyes blank, not seeing the flooding right in front of her. “He’s gone,” she said numbly, and Nevan felt Kylah shudder in his arms.

3

“When did this start?” Keshon asked after a few seconds of stunned reflection.

Nevan shook his head. “Sometime this morning, I think.” He continued to hold Kylah, who sobbed quietly in his arms. “We have to get out of here.”

“To where?” the healer asked.

“Back to the landing zone.”

“But you two can’t swim?”

He nodded. “Yeah, but once we make it through that lake, we’ll be safe.” He gestured to the surrounding turmoil. “We don’t know how bad this is going to get.” He smiled weakly at her. “You can take turns guiding us to the submerged portal.”

The healer sighed and looked to the interior of the cabin. “I wanted to bury him.”

Nevan shrugged, knowing the circumstances made that virtually impossible.

“It was a stroke that eventually took him,” she declared matter-of-factly. “If we can’t bury him”—she turned back to face Nevan—“we’re taking this cabin down. I don’t want the animals to…” She trailed off.

Nevan looked nervously at the rising water level and tried to dissuade the healer, but she held firm to her decision. After telepathing Harper and telling her about Lorenzo, the expanfing river, and their plans, Keshon walked back into the cabin and returned with some of Lorenzo’s weapons.

“These dropped onto the floor when he passed,” she said. “Nevan, you should have these.” She gave him three more steel spears and four more steel spurs.

The two adults tore the cabin down with their Boulder spells. When it was over, they paid tribute to the fallen hunter.

“At least he was religious,” Nevan said. “Maybe he’s with his God now.”

The other two looked at him skeptically, but held their tongues when they saw the conviction in his eyes. After a few moments, they turned away from the cabin and walked toward the south. Before they left the village, Kylah grabbed her father’s hand. “Does that look like a canoe?”

4

“I’ll be damned,” Nevan said as they examined one of the cabin’s destroyed logs. It sat at the front of the timber and rubble, a fourteen-foot-long wooden beam that the force of a boulder had gouged down the middle. Despite that, the wood remained largely intact. They tried to pull it away from the pile, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Let’s coordinate our boulders,” Keshon suggested, and the three members used their spells to shove the log across the road. As they got closer to what had once been the river, the water grew deeper, and the log started slowly floating away from them. Withdrawing their spells, the teammates tugged the log back to an earthen mound, anchoring it temporarily.

With the water up to his knees and his feet soaked, Nevan held onto the log with both arms. “Go find us something we can use as paddles,” he said, straining to keep the makeshift canoe from pulling away.

Keshon took Kylah’s hand, then waded through the muddy water toward the western side of the village.

5

Nevan watched them check the cabins, only to return with disappointed expressions. They trudged further down the road and wrapped around the side of a cabin, disappearing from his sight. Moments later, they returned with a garden shovel and a length of wood stripped from a wooden bed.

“This’ll have to do,” Keshon shouted over the cacophony of the rising waters.

Knowing that once the current took them, they’d have little control over their craft, the teammates devised a strategy.

“If we get into trouble and end up back in the water,” Keshon said to the two non-swimmers, “Kylah will be my responsibility. Nevan, you’ll have to manage on your own.”

Keshon said she’d take the front while Nevan would sit at the rear of the makeshift canoe. “Kylah, you can plant yourself in the middle, between us, and have your mage spells ready,” she added. “Attack anything that even approaches the boat.”

The healer asked if they had any last words. No one did. Keshon and Kylah hopped into the hollowed-out opening, then Nevan pushed the log toward the current. When he felt the canoe slipping from his grasp, he jumped in, hung on, and allowed the overflowing river to take them.

6

They’d expected the current to overwhelm them, but they were still unprepared for how quickly the canoe accelerated. Keshon tried to steer with the shovel at the front, while Nevan ruddered at the back. Cold water splashed into the canoe, freezing their tightly confined bodies. Within minutes, they soared past the orchard on their left. Shadows from the forest chilled them despite the heat of the noon-day sun.

As they swerved down the twisting path the river had carved through the woods, they avoided obstacles. Most were Douglas fir or pine trees that had collapsed and were almost fully submerged in the gathering depths of the water. On one occasion, as they ducked under an overhanging limb, Keshon cried out. “This is crazy,” she yelled, “but we’re making great time!”

At the rear, Nevan laughed. His bed-frame rudder was entirely useless. At another point, the land and river suddenly swooped downward, and the canoe plunged into the water. As the startled teammates gasped for breath, Nevan saw Kylah float away from the canoe opening.

“No,” he shouted in a bubbly, underwater voice that no one heard. He pressed his legs against the sides of the canoe and grabbed the middle of her body.

As he hung on, the boat bounded out of the waters like a cork popping from a champagne bottle. It shot fifteen feet in the air and the teammates leaned forward, trying to level the canoe. Nevan coughed against the soaked canvas of his daughter’s jack of plates armor, still squeezing her tightly.

“Daddy, I can’t breathe,” Kylah cried, and he loosened his grip.

They continued their rapid voyage on the waves, leaning to their sides to keep the makeshift canoe balanced and on course. They watched for monsters, but saw none.

“I think it’s because of our speed,” Nevan shouted over the din of the river. “They barely see us before we’re gone.”

As they sped through the last of the forest, the lake opened up before them. “Holy shit, we actually made it,” Nevan marveled, then looked up at the sky. The sun had arced to the west. They had spent hours riding through the river like a rollercoaster gone mad, but now they floated serenely out onto an eerily calm lake.

“It’s deeper,” Keshon remarked as they rowed slowly toward the realm’s southern border.

7

Kylah spotted the portal first and pointed to its location. From their vantage point on the surface of the lake, it was the size of a quarter and shone green in the murky depths.

Keshon dunked her head into the water and stared at the underwater environment for twenty seconds before pulling up for air. “It’s definitely the portal,” she gasped. “And I don’t see those bunyips or anything else down there.”

As she gulped for air, she scanned their perimeter. It was surprisingly tranquil. There wasn’t an animal or beast in sight. She glanced at the other two members, who looked worn from the day’s events. “With the conditions the way they are, I think we should do this now.”

They agreed and selected Kylah to go first. She and Keshon took a huge breath, then splashed into the lake. Keshon grabbed the teenager’s hand, and they kicked toward the bottom of the lake. The temperature got colder the deeper they went, but their descent into the waters was much more serene than the last time they entered the lake.

Minutes later, with their lungs ready to burst, Keshon pulled Kylah through the portal. They landed on the hard surface of the portal room’s painted floor. As they stood up in the puddles of water they had created, the two women inhaled deeply. They walked hand in hand into the landing zone and gazed up at the black TV screen.

“We’ll worry about that later,” Keshon said. “This is our home for now.”

They strolled back into the circular portal room. The healer took another large gulp of air and jumped through the green portal to get Nevan.

Left alone, Kylah waited. And waited.

After twenty anxious minutes, the two members burst through the portal and Kylah ran to the both of them. Keshon telepathed Harper, telling her they had arrived at the landing zone.

Is anyone on the TV screen? the veteran mage asked.

Keshon glanced at the two other members. No.

After a brief pause, Harper surprised her with her next response. Don’t tell that to anyone on my team for now. Okay?

The former nurse hesitated, then reluctantly agreed. Harper explained that she didn’t want the other members distracted by the news. Keshon understood that, but she still felt uncomfortable withholding the information. She rejoined the other two in the portal room. Kylah was using her Fire Scorch spell to flash-fry some squirrel meat on the floor. It wasn’t exactly sanitary, but Keshon’s grumbling stomach would not allow her to refuse the meal.