Landing in the water wasn’t my most graceful landing, I’m going to own up to that straight away. I’d love to tell you that I masterfully manipulated the sparkling waters of the Lake using my mana, gliding to my ship upon a wave shaped like a herd of horses.

Instead, I plummeted down and smacked face first into the waves. It felt like I ran straight into a rock wall. Unpleasant to say the least.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Not even remotely.

I was pretty much directly underneath the gravity bomb when it terminated. Great stuff, still very pleased that I wasn't consumed whole by the void of death. Great stuff.

However, other things were consumed by the void of death. A lot of things. Well, mostly rock, but lots of it. Lots and lots. And, as we all know, the gravity bomb does what a good black hole should, sucks things inside and crushes them into one nice little ball.

So what fell out of the sky right behind me? You betcha! An extremely hot, extremely dense ball of super rock. Not long after I hit the water, I sensed the damn thing coming and started to frantically paddle with my legs, not that it got me far, and a few seconds later….

Let’s just say there was quite the splash.

When the waves settled, which took a while, the brathians were eventually able to fish me out and dump me back onto the ship, which is where I now find myself.

Basically, I’m just flopping on the deck, not moving, letting myself slowly recover from the excitement of the day. It’s almost refreshing, in a weird way, to find myself this drained. It’s been a while since I was genuinely tired, physically, mentally and emotionally. There are still ten thousand ants around, so it’ll go away eventually, even if I don't sleep, but for now, I am straight up exhausted.

[A moment of weakness!]

Which is when Odin decides to pounce at me. Claw arms extended, he leaps through the air, heading straight for my most vulnerable point, my eye. I can’t even move, I just watch him come, floating through air, almost in slow motion, blade arms extended, a twisted glee burning in his demon eyes.

Actually… it’s… it’s taking a long time for him to get me. Is he actually using some slow motion ability?

He’s still floating toward me….

I scratch my back with my antennae, then reach one out to poke him. He’s still moving forward… just… really slowly. Oh, I know what’s going on.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“I assume this is one of you, Protectant? Wrapped him up in air or something?”

“That’s right,” she says, popping into existence next to me. She glares up at the demon, who seems to have only now realised something is wrong and begun wriggling in the air. “I knew this one was up to something.”

“Ah, he’s harmless, and I think Sarah has taken a liking to him.”

I may be wrong on that front, but I’m pretty sure this wasn’t a serious attempt on me. I mean… it's ridiculous. He’s so tiny!

“I think you should take threats to your safety a little more seriously, Eldest! Especially in the light of recent events!”

Whoa. That’s a lot more passion than I normally see from the reserved little ant. Well, technically speaking, I almost never see her, but I still get Will from them flowing into the Vestibule. Clearly, she’s a bit mad about the whole ‘almost getting eaten by my own spell’ thing. Which is fair.

“For sure, I am going to be way more careful about throwing out that particular spell in future. To be fair, though, I’ve not fired it off at full strength before, so I didn’t know how bad it was going to be.”

I try to defend myself a little. I was reckless, sure, but not that reckless. Protectant doesn’t seem convinced.

“You’ve come closer to death from that spell than anything else, multiple times, since we joined you. Almost every time you use it at anything remotely close to full power, you are nearly dragged in. Might I suggest, Eldest, that you not use it in situations when you are going to nearly destroy yourself?”

“That… seems reasonable. I will definitely, maybe, think about not doing that.”

“You’re going to keep doing it, aren’t you.”

“Not on purpose! This was an emergency situation! It’s not like I’m trying to get myself flattened.”

I look up at Odin. He’s now floated over my head and is in real danger of going over the edge of the ship.

“Are you guys going to stop floating him at some point? How are you even doing that?”

“It’s a method we were working on to float you away from dangerous situations. It’s quite complicated, are you sure you want the details?”

Probably not.

“You abandoned the method because I got too heavy?”

“Yes… we… we abandoned the idea… for sure.”

“Good. Now put the silly demon down.”

It takes another hour for Eran, the ants and Isaac to get back aboard the fleet. I’m not sure exactly what went down inside, but Eran is still fuming when she gets aboard, visibly steaming.

When I try to ask her about it, she throws up her hands and storms off, growling something about lawyers. I didn’t even know they had lawyers on this planet. And people are scared of monsters? Weird.

[What’s the plan, Marzban? After all this excitement, I assume we aren’t going to stick around?]

[No. It’s time to sail away.]

[Sail away?]

[Sail away,] he confirms. [We’ve got one major and one minor stop to go.]

[Which one’s the big one?]

[Silver City,] he tells me. [I hope to goodness they aren’t as dumb as the golgari. They shouldn’t be.]

I’m not filled with confidence.

Time to sail the heck out of here.