Indeed, just that he was conscious was a miracle in itself. That he had the strength to swim, trying to escape to the surface, even more so.

But that was where the miracles stopped.

He wouldn't escape, not under his own power. Even with the help of wings, he was not moving fast enough.

The giant white snake would catch him before it happened. He didn't stand a chance. He hadn't had it since letting it put him in such a situation. However...

As he had said, he wasn't alone.

The snake, which had been cutting through the water like a cannonball, suddenly stopped. It was only a few seconds, but he couldn't miss it.

Then it moved, but not resuming the chase. Scrambling. Struggling.

Desmond didn't turn his head back at any point. He couldn't afford to waste effort, energy or time on anything but getting out of there. But the sounds and lack thereof, in one case, was more than enough to make a mental picture.

He was trapped, somehow.

Desmond's body was burning. Especially his ripped arm. But, at the same time, he was buried in the cold, more and more so as he lost consciousness.

So he couldn't tell if the cold had increased, he wouldn't know the difference, really. But he guessed that had been Amy or Abigail, creating ice to trap the creature, if only for a few seconds.

Desmond broke through the surface.

He was free. At last.

He breathed greedily. But while what he had accomplished seemed like a superhuman feat, in reality he had only prolonged the inevitable.

For his situation hadn't changed.

As long as he was in the water, he would be an easy target. And he couldn't get to the boat, which was also an easy target, but slightly tougher.

Besides, it would give him time to recover, to think about what to do. And get back into action.

He couldn't do that. Not even with help.

Someone would have to do it with him.

Instead of swimming toward the boat, Desmond turned his head behind him. That single movement was almost more than he could bear. A dizziness came over him, he thought he would lose consciousness straight away.

He couldn't help but laugh at himself.

He'd been through worse, after all, and they hadn't gotten the better of him. On the contrary. This... was nothing more than an arm. He had cut off an arm himself and had continued to fight the rest of the night. This couldn't defeat him. It shouldn't.

The snake was trapped, as he had thought, by a block of ice. But not just around the snake itself. A chunk of water had been frozen.

That was what was holding it back. But it wouldn't last long.

That was also certain.

The snake's head, huge like the rest of its body, emerged from the waters, splashing water. The "wave" hit the boat like a tsunami, tossing it around, but not capsizing it at least.

It roared as it churned, struggling to free itself.

Desmond hadn't needed to see it with her own eyes. If it hadn't been trapped, it would have eaten him by now. But while that had restricted its movement enough for Desmond to surface, that didn't mean he was safe.

It was so big that even trapped it could come for him.

Fortunately, they came to his rescue.

Fortunately? Of course they would, they loved him, even if he didn't deserve it. And well, they were right there.

In any case. Abigail landed on the water.

What until recently had been water, that is. The water was frozen quickly, so she landed on a block of ice in the middle of the canal. He hadn't been paying as much attention as he should have, perhaps. He wasn't sure who had done that, Abigail or Amy.

Either way, he was saved. He was...

She grabbed his arm. The only one he had left, and yet it hurt like he'd squeezed the only one that wasn't there. Desmond bit his tongue to endure the pain. He bit his tongue, literally and figuratively.

"I've got you," Mom said, pulling him close.

"You've always had me... "he said, as if delirious, in a voice that lacked any power whatsoever.

The snake was already practically on top of them. But Abigail was faster. First, she knocked it back with a splash of water. It didn't seem to have hurt it, but at least it slowed its advance significantly.

Then, she propelled them back towards the boat with a jet of water shot from her other hand. As usual. They weren't safe, nor out of reach. He couldn't ask the impossible.

They were saved. That was the important thing.

"I'm sorry. That was too close," Mom said.

He could ask her why it had taken so long, but that would be rude and unfair. Too rude. Besides, he didn't think that's what it was about.

"It... dragged on and on, down there. Too damn long."

Yeah, it had just gotten long, with that thing behind his neck. Choking. Nothing more than that.

Abigail had acted as best she could and as fast as she could.

Speaking of which...

The ice that had held the snake back burst into a thousand pieces. It had indeed gotten rid of it pretty quickly. Now there was nothing holding it back, and he didn't think the same trick would work twice, for some reason.

The crew was shooting at the snake with the cannons. They had been doing it all this time.

To no avail, but the same thing was going for their own efforts, so he couldn't throw stones. The thing is, nothing was going to change. Not fast enough.

The snake made its huge body like a whip of sorts.

Towards the ship. The force of the impact would shatter it, or capsize it, it didn't matter. It would bring the entire crew of the ship into its territory. That was what counted.

——

Oh, that wasn't good. It wasn't good at all.

"Fucking hell," Christina mumbled.

She didn't usually talk like that, but lately she was blurting out every little thing, due to the circumstances. She had reached the limit of her patience and what she could handle, and the horrible surprises just kept coming.

But of course.

Simply put, any sane person would react the same way to seeing what she was seeing, now.

The body of a gigantic snake approaching to pierce them like a spear. To crush them along with the ship. It was too much.

Christina considered herself a fighter, and she believed she had proven that to herself all her life. She wasn't one to give up, even if it didn't seem like there was no hope.

So, of course, Christina gathered as many shadows as she could, forming a barrier.

She went fast enough. But...

She should have known it wouldn't do any good.

The snake's huge body simply pushed her shadows toward the ship, failing to slow down for even a few seconds, as if it had met no resistance at all, nothing but air.

If it had done anything, it had been to give the creature a weapon. Now her barrier was like a spearhead to tear the ship apart.

Not that it would have needed any help, of course.

"Hang on!" Amy shouted.

Hang on? It sounded like a good idea, but where to? Christina was kind of freaking out, with what was coming at them. Literally.

The snake's tail, plus her shadow barrier, impacted the ship. And, of course, it went to shit. Christina saw chunks of the hull sinking inward, wood flying. And the whole ship tilted.

Not all the way over, but enough.

In a moment, Christina found herself in free fall. Along with Amy and the crew still on deck.

The air was filled with screams. Almost burying the splashes of people falling into the water, into the white snake's territory, its hunting ground, so to speak. An even easier prey, there, they would have no escape. They could only hope that their fellows would be unlucky and not them as they made the most important run of their lives to the shore.

And what about her?

She saw it all as if time had slowed down. As if her brain didn't want to process what was happening.

Amy had managed to hang on. She had been relatively close to the mast, and had taken advantage of it. She was one of the few who had been lucky.

Christina hadn't.

As she had said, she was in freefall.

She tried to grab her friend's hand as she passed, and Amy, of course, tried to save her. But their hands didn't meet.

Oh no. I'm lost, she thought.

But it was wrong to think that way, as if she were tied to the same options as the sailors.

Bound to the physical.

There were shadows to spare within her reach, but Amy's was the only one she needed. She clutched it and reached out, grasping her own hand with it, then pulling herself up. Up toward the mast, next to Amy.

Christina grabbed onto the mast, too, hanging on.

And then... Then what, rather, what had she gotten out of this, exactly? They weren't in the water, but their situation hadn't really changed. They were still in danger, here and above they were easy prey.

Not as much as in the water, then they'd really be lost.

But it's not like they could stay up here until the fight was over. The boat was badly damaged. It wouldn't hold. Sooner or later, they'd end up in the water, too.

"Hold on. Hang in there," Amy said, trying to encourage her. Encourage her? Of course she was hanging in there. She could go on like this for the rest of the day, if only it depended on her.

What worried her was whether the mast would hold. Christina swallowed hard. How quickly things had screwed up, again. And they'd left with the hope of putting an end to all this shit. To finally be free.

"What do we do?"

She couldn't think, so she looked to Amy to tell her what to do. It was... it was kind of a cowardly thing to do, but...

"If we can get up there... I can create a bridge to the shore."

Climb?

Up the mast, sure. And then a bridge. It sounded good. It sounded like a plan. Something occurred to her, though. A small detail.

"And the princess...?" She hadn't gone up on deck with them. She would still be below, in the lower levels, which was the worst possible place. Even if they came back with the war won, if they didn't bring the princess with them, they weren't going to have a good time. It was a selfish thing to do, but....

"Don't think about it! One step at a time."

Yes. Christina should be even more selfish and just focus on the present. There was little they could do for her in the present circumstances. If they went in the water, they would be at the mercy of the snake. But Charlotte could escape easier than all of them, with the portals, so.... This was the right thing to do?

Assuming she hadn't lost consciousness after the impact in the first place. Christina grimaced.

It was for the best. But... Fuck. Fuck.

Supporting each other, they managed to climb up the mast and stand on it. A lot of nerves, with the snake so close and with the ship potentially ending up coming apart at any moment, but Abigail was fighting this monster.

Keeping it distracted.

Desmond was in her arms, and doing nothing. It was weird to think that, but he had only lost one arm. How strange.

But they couldn't worry about him, now.

He was fine with Abigail. In fact, he was in the safest place possible, despite his proximity to the snake. She could worry once they got out of this one. Still, she apologized internally. Feeling guilty. As if he would die here.

No one would die.

No one.

Amy turned around, sword in hand. She pointed to shore and did what she said she would do. Create a bridge from the mast to the shore. The ice wasn't just in the air, it also froze the water when her magic hit the ground, as she had done to help Abigail pull Desmond out of the water and briefly trap the beast.

The crew that had fallen into the water saw that as a safe place, even though it wasn't. A path to salvation. So they immediately switched targets, from the shore to the ice bridge. Some sailors, who had been clinging desperately to what they could, their legs dangling, finally let go when they saw the bridge appear. A little hope went a long way.

Christina wasn't sure if they should have done that. But she couldn't think. She didn't want to think. Her heart was pounding like a hammer in her chest.

"We can do this. We'll survive," Amy said, trying to convince them both of that.

The mast finally broke.

There was nothing to hold on to, no point, the boat wouldn't hold much longer. They fell against the ground and through it, making it all the way to the lower decks.

——

Hot.

His arm ached as if it were on fire. The arm that had been torn off was still there, making him suffer. A phantom pain. But the rest of him was experiencing the opposite.

A coldness that enveloped him like a heavy blanket. As if death was approaching, slowly taking possession of his body. Piece by piece.

Death. He could not die. But...

He couldn't fight either. He was being completely useless against the snake. No, that was too generous a way of putting it, like he was trying something. He didn't have the power to do that in the first place.

He was simply writhing and wallowing in his suffering, while Abigail carried him in her arms and, at the same time, fought the snake.

With jets of water, so strong they could bring down the skyscrapers of the Empire in a matter of seconds.

Making the earth tremble. Rocks flying like cannonballs.

Spitting fire.

With everything she had. Everything she had and more, but nothing was enough. Abigail was at least fighting, but it couldn't be said that she was doing anything more useful than keeping the snake away from the ship and distracted. It hadn't even lost a scale. As if that fucking monster was actually invincible.

If Abigail couldn't, what chance did he have? Especially like this.

He couldn't understand why he was like this in the first place. His arm hadn't regenerated yet. He couldn't think, concentrating solely on continuing to breathe. Or maybe he didn't want to.

Maybe he just didn't want to.

He heard a loud noise, and deep down he knew what it was, even before he looked toward the ship when he had the chance.

Something giving way. Coming down.

The mast Amy and Christina had been clinging to. Heart pounding, he watched them fall not into the water, but through the floor. In a way, that was worse.

He had to do something. He had to...

"Easy. Easy, easy. Desmond, please be still. You can't do anything for them."

The worst part was that it was true.

He swallowed hard. He couldn't do shit. He couldn't even save himself, let alone his friends.

——

"Ah, shit." Christina was barely able to say that.

Because she couldn't breathe after that fall, naturally. Fuck, she was lucky she hadn't killed herself. And Amy, what was wrong with her, was she okay?

She was breathing, she noticed it at first glance. She was fine. She was fine.

What she didn't notice at first glance was that she was conscious. Christina thought she had lost consciousness in the fall, for a few moments, but she was only weak and her eyes were half closed.

They were both alive. That was what counted.

They had screwed up, ended up in a bad situation. But, at the end of the day, what counted was that they could still be saved. That they still had...

Christina's eyes went wide.

No. They had run out of time.

The wall in front of her broke, at last, and the water on the other side rushed in. Filling the lower decks. Sweeping over them.

——

Desmond should be healed and back in the fight by now, but he couldn't even move under his own power, or at least fly. Instead of healing, he was getting worse.

And he finally understood why. Inspiration struck him like a bolt of lightning.

The enemy was a snake. It was as simple as that. After it bit him, his biggest worry shouldn't have been that he'd lost an arm. He shouldn't have paid so much attention to the teeth, flashy as they were, especially bathed in his blood.

It had bitten him, and now he....

"I'm poisoned. Again."

Laughable. No, it really wasn't fucking funny.

So many twists and turns to end up the same. His life was a fucking joke.

There was a sudden jolt.

Desmond blinked. Once, twice, three times.

He had no sense that it had been a while since the jolt, but clearly the situation had changed too much for him not to have been gone, even if it had only been a few seconds.

It was clearly going from bad to worse. And that wasn't going to stop. I mean, how to get the poison out? It could be a snake, have poison. But that didn't mean it was as easy as extracting it in the first place, even if he could do it. It wasn't a normal snake"why the hell would it have normal poison?

Soon that became the least of his worries.

Abigail was knocked out of the air, like a bird, so they both fell tumbling into the waters. Completely out of control. With no chance of recovering it.

As he broke through the surface of the water, Desmond lost consciousness once again.

——

Amy woke up.

She had lost consciousness before she realized anything was wrong. Right now she was in the water. Her first instinct was naturally to hold her breath.

But it was too late to do anything, really.

The water had already had time to enter her lungs. Whatever air remained inside wasn't going to last long. She should have held her breath before the tide hit her, but she had simply stood and watched as the wall collapsed. As if gawking. She didn't know how to react in time.

More importantly, she had fallen with Christina. Where was she?

Amy was willing to look the other way when it came to the princess, but Christina was another story.

Fortunately, it didn't take long to find her.

Very close to her. Also unconscious, but showing no signs of waking up any time soon. Quite the contrary. She was bleeding profusely from a head wound, droplets floating in the water like the trail of a bad omen. She must have hit her head when she fell.

With her defenses down, unconscious, the wood had done more than enough damage. But at least she was alive. For the moment.

For the moment.

She couldn't let it die.

Amy swam to her, clutching her in her arms. Squeezing her very, very tight, she'd never let go.

I'll get you out of here, if it's the last thing I do.

If Amy died to save her, Christina would never forgive herself. Nor would she forgive her for doing that to her. But Amy knew the girl would do the same for her, if their roles had been reversed.

Besides, she couldn't imagine life without her. One way or the other. The consequences of her actions didn't scare her. They wouldn't stop her from doing whatever was necessary.

Whatever had to happen would happen.

Amy keep swimming. Crossing the ruins of the ship. Looking for a way out, looking for the surface. Even if she couldn't get her out of the water under her own power, if she could at least give her a chance... She could die peacefully.

Knowing she had done all she could.

Amy hadn't been born with talent.

Instead, she'd had to make up for it with her effort, and she'd come far. She had been proud of that, even.

Even? It was natural to be proud of the results of her effort.

But, for the first time in a long time, Amy cursed her lack of talent. She wished she had simply been born with it. Because some things definitely couldn't be compensated for.

Like this one. And it was too important.

Ice affinity was considered a disappointment. Nothing more than a weak version of water affinity, since water mages could do everything she could and more. Control not only ice, but water in all its states.

If she had an affinity for water, saving Christina would be so easy.

She could remove water from her lungs with a thought. She could create air bubbles, protecting them both from drowning. She could have done many things to make sure they survived.

But Amy had no affinity for water. And that couldn't be changed.

She'd already made a contract with Abigail, a contract that Abigail herself didn't expect her to honor, but it counted, anyway. If she'd had the chance to do it now, she knew what power she'd receive in the contract.

Too bad Abigail was nowhere to be found. And that she'd already spent that avenue, anyway.

It was impossible to stop thinking about her limitations when she saw those of others, everywhere. Normal people caught up in something extraordinary.

People who had ended up as corpses floating in the water.

Or who would soon be anyway. They were drowning and would die. She could do nothing for them, just walk by and ignore the gurgles.

It was the same fate that awaited them, if she didn't manage to do this.

A watery grave. Their corpses would be carried away by the fish, and they would decompose even faster than on land. They would be unrecognizable long before they were more than a pile of anonymous bones.

She'd seen drowning victims before. Not recent ones. She'd seen what the waters could do over time.

Skin and...

No, Amy didn't have to think about that, or it would make her want to fucking puke. Yeah, she didn't have to think about anything at all, except getting Christina out of here. Even if it was just Christina. If she couldn't save her, if he failed her...

What was the point of living?

Then Amy saw something other than dead and soon"to"be dead people. She saw an air bubble, or whatever the hell it was called. In any case, a place to stick her head out and breathe. That wouldn't last long. She had to make the most of it.

The ship was in ruins, and in constant motion as it sank. She would only have a few seconds.

Amy herself only had a few seconds.

She could feel her consciousness leaving her. She could feel the end approaching. Which would also be the end for Christina.

She went up desperately. And she gulped air more eagerly than she ever had before. She had been so close, so close to losing everything. Damn it.

The liquid running down her cheeks wasn't just the water that had been about to end her.

But... Christina. That was the important thing.

Focus. Really focus.

She turned her head towards her friend.

"Wake up. Christina, please, wake up."

She shook her, pleading, but to no avail. There was no way she was waking up. She had to remember that, even though she was getting scared.

She wouldn't wake up, but she was alive. She was fine.

"Wake up!"

For the first and last time, Amy used the power Abigail had bestowed her on Christina. And that didn't work either. Of course. She was unconscious, so she couldn't recognize any commands. But... she had hoped...

Shit.

Fucking shit.

Amy took a deep breath, and dove back in. I'm gonna make it. I'll make it.