The air whisked by Wadaw as he stretched out his arms and legs to steady his fall after removing his boots with his feet. His face had already begun to morph before he’d jumped off the boat and had taken on an inhuman, aerodynamic shape not unlike a full-face helmet. Extra skin began to trail from the backs of his hands as his nanites worked overtime to perform a task that pushed their capabilities to their limit.

  “Please cover me, compatriots. It looks like some of the missiles have locked onto me,” he shared telepathically with the frantic voices that cried out into his mind.

  Srell was the first to shoot down one of the missiles before its mere proximity to Wadaw became a threat to him. Lorias, Ursun, and Leanna followed suit with their own PAWs, placing them over the edge and firing down below with the assistance of their helmets’ retractable smart-visors, all while the Here Comes the Rain rocked beneath them.

  “We might need to fly down to safety with our boot enchants.” Leanna shared with her team.

  “We wouldn’t make it. The long-range m-wave weapons would cook us before we hit the ground,” replied Lorias with his eyes still trained on the falling, shrinking Wadaw.

  "How are those same m-waves not killing Wadaw?" Srell asked as he shot down another missile.

  “No need to worry about me. My nanites diffuse the excess energy. I’m just not sure I can survive being struck by a missile, so please focus your attention on those.” Wadaw shared with a chuckle that told the others how fearless he felt.

  The trail of skin that flapped behind his hands extended like small parachutes around 20 seconds into his descent. They detached from his body once they’d slowed him down sufficiently to avoid a lethal impact with the water, allowing Wadaw to stretch his hands out before him to dive majestically into the greenish-blue water of the Vines.

  “Thank the Twins,” whispered Mela with clasped hands as Wadaw shared his successful splashdown with everyone still on the teetering boat.

  The high-speed dive sent Wadaw a dozen meters beneath the water's surface. Webbing formed between his fingers and toes to give him easier movement through the water. He glanced around using eyes with lenses modified on the fly for underwater vision as he began swimming in a circular path around the area with the grace of a merman. He caught a glimpse of a small black dot several meters away, still sinking towards the confluence's floor.

  "I see him. He's out cold, I think. I'm headed over to him now." Wadaw shared. "Hopefully the Stalwart doesn't send a torpedo our way."

  "Any sign of the plasma beast?" Ursun asked.

  "None that I can see. Prism might've neutralized it somehow even while he was unconscious," replied Wadaw. He was close enough to see Prism's face now.

  "Wouldn't that be nice? Highly unlikely, though." Lorias shared in a chiding tone.

  "He seems to be breathing...his chest is rising and falling." Wadaw shared with a bit of disbelief. He almost chuckled again when he remembered that his nanites were providing his lungs with oxygen without him needing to breath.

  "Hurry up and wake him. Our ride is finally starting to fall, albeit slowly." Ursun ordered Wadaw, who sent a pang of irritation back at the Red Wolves commander.

  Wadaw brought Prism into his arms, cradling the alien's back with his left arm while rotating Prism upright with the other arm across his lower ribs. Wadaw began swimming the two of them towards the surface with the powerful strokes of his webbed feet. Wadaw gave Prism's face a few slaps that were weakened by the water's drag that didn't seem to faze the elementeitan. "Come on, Prism. I'm sure we'll have bullets flying at us the moment we pop our heads out of the water, so please wake up before then," Wadaw shared with a mind that still seemed unaware of him.

  Wadaw jerked his torso around when he felt a strange current flow past his back. He caused a long sharp nail to extend from his right forefinger before sharing, "I'm sorry, but this is going to hurt a lot." with Prism. As Wadaw felt a mass begin to press against his torso, he jabbed the nail into Prism's right thigh. Blood began to trail out of the wound the moment Wadaw withdrew his makeshift weapon, sending a cloud of red out into the water in front of them. Prism's eyes shot open in time to see Wadaw's body being pulled away from his own.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  "What's..." Prism said faintly as he realized that he was still underwater. His disorientation was replaced with a desperate protective instinct when the realization of what was happening in front of him dawned on him at the same time the pain from his leg did. Wadaw's body was severed in two seemingly by itself. With his telepathic link to the others reestablished, everyone on the Here Comes the Rain had a POV view of the grisly scene.

  "No!" Mela screamed like her heart had been ripped out of her chest. Leanna rushed over to console her as her boat continued to fall smoothly and slowly towards the confluence.

  Prism caught a glimpse of the plasma beast's faint outline moving away from him and the two sections of Wadaw's body, taunting Prism to follow it deeper into the river. In a moment of strange repose, Prism noticed that there was no blood coming from the two halves of Wadaw that continued to drift apart under the force of the river's currents. Prism made a quick wave of his right hand to will the waters to bring the halves back in close proximity with each other. He then watched the frayed edges of the severed torso begin to reassemble themselves, no doubt due to Wadaw's nanites. Prism then shot himself forward past the self-repairing body towards the plasma beast.

  "Are you..." Ursun psychically asked Prism while the others began to shoot the other missiles out of the air before the Here Comes the Rain fell out of the cloud that protected it.

  "I'm ending this thing." Prism shared. The coldness of his response told Ursun that Prism had entered a state of pure, dogged determination. "You all have two minutes of protection in the cloud before it dissipates completely and the boat truly plummets. I'll be back up there in one."

  Prism's irises glowed a deep violet as he readied a spell so powerful that the river's currents began to reverse all around him. He called up the tracking spell he'd placed on the plasma beast, causing it to paint the beast with a green aura that only Prism could see. The beast picked up speed while it continued its angled rush towards the river's depths. Prism sent out a gravitational wave behind him that sped his own swimming up and another wave that slowed the beast. The two of them were suddenly brought together with a burst that caused the waters above to visibly bulge for a few seconds from the distortion in spacetime.

  The beast tried to swipe at Prism with a surprise backhand of its claw, but Prism's magic had slowed the machine down so much as to make the move easily telegraphed. Despite the slowing of time, the beast still moved faster than what seemed possible for a creature of its size. Prism looked up towards the surface, and in an instant he and the beast were several meters above the Vines' water. The same gravity bubble that he'd created to teleport them stopped all the weapons that immediately began to be fired at him from the militarized coasts.

  Prism dodged several tail whips, lunges, and swipes that the flying beast threw at him with the fluidity of a figure skater. Prism then crossed his arms as he floated with his legs together, dispassionate and dignified even as blood dripped down his feet. He sensed Wadaw's nearby mind rousing from what seemed like a deep slumber, but Prism kept his attention on the plasma beast.

  The beast's circular eyes flashed red as it threw a mighty haymaker at Prism's head. But for each meter that is muscular fist drew closer to Prism, it moved more and more slowly until the beast appeared to motionless. The machine quivered in mid-air with its fist mere centimeters from Prism's body. Prism closed his eyes and caused a dark field to surround the beast, a field that seemed to negate all light that tried to touch it. "Let Gravity Be Your Grave," Prism uttered in a low voice as the dark field shrunk down into a pea-sized dot that lingered in the air a few meters before him for a second before disappearing, taking the beast with it.

  "Just like in the Center..." Leanna thought to herself while witnessing the attack through Prism's shared sight.

  Prism looked up at the gray cloud above him. It had become so wispy that the boat within it was visible to casual observers outside of it. He then looked down at the water beneath him in time to see Wadaw pop his head out from it.

  “Oh, hey there, Fairy Prince,” he said. He smiled weakly up at Prism, his face morphing back to its masked, grey-haired form. “This is a bit embarrassing, but I’m about to lose all use of my limbs. If you could kindly help me out of the water,” he shared before slowly raising his hand out of the water up towards his would-be savior.

  Prism hovered down, took Wadaw’s hand, then teleported to the Here Comes the Rain’s deck without visible effect or sound. Srell jumped when he saw Prism standing in front of him with a languid Wadaw clinging to the alien’s shoulder. Srell instinctively brought the barrel of his PAW up to Prism’s face. "Fuck! I almost shot your head off!" Srell shared angrily and glared up at the alien. He looked down at Prism’s blood-soaked pants leg and softly said, “Your leg…” The short mercenary’s brow unclenched as his eyebrows raised from the worried widening of his eyes.

  Prism silently handed Wadaw over to Srell and walked to the bow of the boat as Mela ran over to check on the sorry state of her childhood friend. Prism looked like an automaton free of all emotion to everyone else, just like he often did when he was in a trance. He raised his arms up in front of himself like he'd done when he first created the fog, commanding the myriad spell circles that still maintained it. The clouds once again thickened around their boat until it was completely obscured to outsiders. The boat's descent continued, picking up speed as its fall took on a slight angle. Prism lowered his arms as the Here Comes the Rain's hull gently entered the waters of the Vines again.

  He’d run himself ragged from the monumental effort of using powerful yet precise magic while resisting the intoxicating nature of the area’s smothering mana. He heard his allies trying to speak to him through their link, but their voices were incomprehensible noise in his weary head. He placed his hands on the hip-height walls in front of him and then leaned forward as if he might fall overboard. He soon felt Ursun’s huge, gloved hands on his sides. They guided him down to the deck, where Ursun laid Prism’s back upon the leader’s lap. Prism looked up at the man with half-closed eyes that struggled to communicate gratitude. Ursun then leaned down and whispered, “rest now, kiddo,” into Prism’s ear before he began tending to Prism’s wounded thigh. Ursun withdrew a knife from a sheathe on his belt and cut away the bloody cloth from the gash that didn’t appear to be healing.

  “I can’t…sleep. I have to…stay awake.” Prism whispered.

  “You’ve done more than enough. We can handle things for an hour.” Ursun whispered into Prism’s ear again as he withdrew a tube of regenerative gel from his belt that he then squeezed into the wound.

  “No…there’s something…in my dreams…something horrible…that I can’t…remember…”

  Ursun gave Prism a queer look that communicated both his apprehension and his concern. “One crisis at a time,” said Ursun.