Prism stepped past Mela and walked up to the front of the boat as she slowly turned the wheel. The magical fog that surrounded the ship was so thick that none of the soldiers or their machines could see anything on the river. Tiny flat circles began to twinkle with light bluish light in the foggy air all around them like shimmering snowflakes suspended in midair.

  “Prism here. I’ve taken the Toto Inn’s proprietress, the Royalist and his six soldiers hostage. If any attempts are made to recapture me, I will not hesitate to neutralize them.”

  Prism’s voice boomed across the riverside into the ears of every soldier in the vicinity. The Here Comes the Rain picked up speed, daring the Sguvan military to stop them.

  “They’re trying to send a message through the fog on some sort of bullhorn and via radio. It says, “Due to worsening weather conditions, we are unable to verify the presence of any hostages or of any kind of craft. Be advised that by order of the Singular, no one is allowed into Zazi during the Peace Summit. Any attempts to bypass this order will result in the use of deadly force.” I’m sensing a trap of some kind being setup a kilometer down the river from us. It’s some sort of extremely-thin wire netting that runs from coast to coast.” Prism shared with his allies.

  “The wires are made out of carbon nanotubes. Their probably thin enough and strong enough to slice through us and the boat before we'd even feel anything.” Leanna shared along with a hefty amount of concern.

  “Not a problem. I’ll begin phase two of the plan, if that’s okay.” Prism shared as his eyes began to shine a brighter and brighter blue. He could feel himself being swept into the cloying cascade of mana that made the mighty magic he wielded feel trivial to cast.

  “Proceed.” Ursun commanded through their psychic link. All but Prism needed to be quiet as to maintain the mystery of who was and wasn’t within the fog.

  The temperature within and around the fog began to drop so quickly and so severely that Srell, Wadaw, and Mela’s teeth began to chatter. Prism raised his hands to his side like a maestro preparing to conduct an epic score. His teammates started feeling a pleasant warmth surround their bodies as penny-sized red spell circles glowed on their chests. Prism's shoulders hunched and he bowed slightly before the hundreds of other tiny spell circles that floated in the air began to dance into ornate geometric formations. The blue lights, which were invisible to their enemies, caused ice crystals to rapidly form around the circles. Prism then willed the hundreds of minuscule crystals to become as sharp as diamonds.

  With a powerful wave of his hands he sent the crystals flying towards the lines of the trap that had been set for him. An unexpected surge of mana that flowed through him caused Prism to add too much power to the spell, adding a chaotic element to the crystals. The magical ice shards soon exploded when they struck the nanotube lines, causing the lines to snap with so much force that the heavy posts they ran from blasted apart. Clusters of metallic debris shot about their vicinity while the remainder of the ice crystals began bombarding the surrounding riverside. Several camouflaged soldiers near the trap were pulverized from the resulting blasts that sent forth lethal shrapnel of metal and rocks. A trio of river-skitters that were flitting back and forth around the area zipped away quickly enough to avoid the devastation.

  “What the hell!?” Ursun shouted telepathically while clenching his teeth and grabbing a nearby metal handle that hung down from the canopy above him.

  The boat rocked violently from the resulting shockwaves of the blasts ahead of them, though it only took a few seconds for Mela to steady them again. Prism waved his hands to calm the river's choppy waters before the waves threatened to capsize them.

  “Sorry guys; It won’t happen again.” Prism grimaced before broadcasting his voice to the soldiers again. “I don’t appreciate your attempt to slice and dice me and the hostages. I guess you heartless queenie lapdogs don’t value their lives all that much.” Prism turned around and nodded to Mela, who started to increase the boat’s speed even further using a touch control on the steering wheel.

  “Hang on, boys and girl!” Mela shared.

  The bow of the Here Comes the Rain began to rise out of the water due to the sudden acceleration. Prism only needed to lean over slightly to grip the guard-rails that were in front of him. Leanna held onto the canopy's rear-starboard metal post while using her smart-visor to monitor the soldiers mobilized at the river's and the forest's edges, as it too could see through the frigid fog. She saw heavy, ground-based weapons being assembled by a multitude of deft handed specialists. She saw how the golden river-skitters repeatedly attempted to fly through the fog, and how they were zigged and zagged confusedly within the disruptive haze before wobbling back out of it.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  "They're testing our defenses." Leanna shared with the others along with a summary of her visor readings that everyone could understand.

  "Any boats up ahead?" Mela asked over the link.

  "None at all. Seems like they've really cleared up the Vines already." Prism shared. His telepathic voice, suffused with excess mana, echoed through the link like the voice of a god. The hands he used to hold onto the railing began to shake from the effort it took to prevent his body from metabolizing too much of the area's wild mana. "Wait...there's something several kilometers up ahead...its floating in a big open are of the river..." Prism began to say rather dreamily with his eyes closed and his perception extended past its normal limit.

  "The Southwestern Zavigan Conflux..." Wadaw shared, giving the body of water a name to his foreign allies.

  "Yes, I can see it...there's a huge ship...definitely...military..." Prism continued sharing in his distant-sounding voice. He was soon sharing the images in his head with the rest of his allies. The dark-green ship was at least 100 meters long with a beam of 50 meters, making it a mighty presence on the water. It had several sleek, black turrets for numerous types of unknown weapons scattered about its surface, giving it the appearance of a small floating city. Mela was the first to recognize the vessel.

  "The Stalwart." She shared. “A bland name for a dangerous ship.”

  “How dangerous?” Srell asked.

  “They’re attacking us. Trying to, I mean.” Prism interjected. “Fog’s diffusing their energy weapons.” Prism raised a finger and pointed his right forefinger to his left. “And now…their missiles and bullets are being frozen in midair,” he nodded to himself.

  “You’re especially nonchalant about all this.” Wadaw shared while looking at Prism with a smirk and a head shake.

  “He’s mana-high,” shared Lorias in a similarly glib manner as he leaned against the rear-port canopy post. He wrapped his right arm around it to avoid sliding backwards on the speeding boat.

  “I’m not.” Prism replied calmly through the telepathic link. “There isn’t a mana confluence, exactly. There’s just an overall abundance of mana streaming all around us. I’m limiting its effect on me the best I ca-“

  Prism jerked his head to the left as his external sensory network of magicked fog detected several fast-moving bodies leaping from the riverside in an arc towards the Here Comes the Rain. He ran to the port side of the boat and raised his arms up above his head at an angle. Four two-meter-long icicles formed in the air two meters from his hands, keeping pace with the boat’s movement.

  “Damned androids!” He shouted before sending the icicles flying in the direction of the black-bodied machines flying towards him. When the icy missiles struck their targets, the androids became incased in large blocks of ice that immediately fell into the waters behind the moving vessel that Prism stood upon. “Concentrated cold,” he said with a gleeful laugh before shouting, “I’m going to sink that big boat of yours, too!”

  “Calm yourself, Prism,” shared Ursun. Sensing Prism teetering on the edge of sobriety, the commander cautiously kept his voice and emotions as even-tempered as he could.

  Prism looked back at Ursun and shouted “I am calm!” aloud before leaping into the air and flying above and then slightly ahead of the Here Comes the Rain.

  “Dammit!” Ursun shared with gritted teeth.

  “Here comes the trance…” Lorias shared as his light eyes followed Prism’s playful movements through the air in front of them.

  “I’m making some minor alterations to the plan, folks! No need to worry; we’ll all be completely safe. Just buckle in and enjoy the ride!”

  Ursun yelled into Prism’s mind for the elementeitan to stop whatever half-brained folly he was attempting, but Prism merely silenced the voice in his head as he flew a few meters above the waters of the Vines. More androids headed into the fog and were quickly frozen solid with minimal effort on Prism’s part. Prism stretched his arms out ahead of him and condensed the fog that flew around him and the Here Comes the Rain, causing it to become a wide, fast-moving cloud in which the boat was its nucleus.

  “Looks like we’re rising out of the water…” Leanna shared. She could see the coastline slowly descending in the distance.

  “We sure are.” Mela shared while doing her best to maintain control of her boat. She felt resistance from her steering wheel when she tried to turn it, and the motor control slider was completely unresponsive. “I don’t appreciate you yanking control of my ship away from me, Prism! You’re cute, but you aren’t that cute!” She shared, not sounding as angrily as she actually was.

  “This isn’t an airship, Prism! You’re going to get us shot out of the sky if you keep this up.” Wadaw ran up to the front of the boat and waved his hands stridently at Prism.

  Prism looked back at Wadaw, winked at the man, then snapped his fingers. Each of the disguises that his teammates wore disappeared with an audible pop like balloons burst with needles. Leanna and Ursun looked around at Srell and Lorias, all of them in a daze from the sudden loss of the memories related to their stolen identities. Prism clapped a few times to snap them all back to their senses after rolling around on his back with the gaiety of an otter. He stared down at their pissed-off faces while flying backwards through the air.

  “No need for the disguises anymore...we're skipping to phase 3 of the plan. Looks like the river-skitters are on a suicide run…these glorified dish-plates have heated themselves up enough to make my ice magic rather ineffective.” Prism shared a vision of over a dozen red-hot discs flying towards them from both upriver and downriver. “I’m gonna need y’all to shoot them out of the sky, please. I need to deal with the barrage of missiles that the Stalwart have sent our way. And don’t worry; I’m the only one of us doing any flying this morning.”

  Prism shot off into the air like a hyperactive rocket until he was out of clear view of any of those he left on the enshrouded Here Comes the Rain. Freed from the influence of Prism’s powerful flight magic, the boat skipped across the water like a pebble until it was submerged enough for its motors to keep it moving. The other members of RED-1 and Wadaw raised their guns the moment the vessel was steady again after clinging to whatever they could for the past several minutes. Wadaw's face shifted back into the form that most True Twins knew him by, white hair and all.

  "He's getting a reprimand if we survive this." Ursun said aloud before he and his team started shooting their PAWs at the white-hot river-skitters shooting through the dense fog like comets.