“This is ridiculous,” Raphael spat.
Our assailants were fast and strong, but nowhere near our capabilities. We knew they were fae, as they managed to thin themselves and slip out of sight whenever we got too close. Two of them drew water from a nearby vase and launched it as us in the form of potentially painful pellets. But Eva didn’t stand for it. She bolted toward one of the remaining hostiles and tackled him like a professional football player.
Consider me impressed.
I heard his spine break.
“Stop it before you get yourselves killed!” Varga warned our attackers, but they didn’t seem to care. Their eyes were devoid of any emotion, glassy, as if they were marbles. And they were relentless in their offensive.
Taeral took another one down. The others quickly pulled back and fired poisonous arrows at us. Raphael caught them with record speed, then launched them back like darts. The hostiles weren’t alone, I noticed, as I glanced through the double doorway. More poured in from between the barracks, all of them dressed in black silk and white porcelain masks.
“That’s not creepy at all,” I muttered.
“We can take them all!” Taeral shouted, glowering at them, as the flames in his hands grew bigger and brighter, casting orange flickers against his sharp cheekbones.
“We should at least find out what they want before we do that,” Herakles suggested.
They shot another round of arrows at us. This time, however, Raphael didn’t get a chance to catch them and send them back. Taeral roared and launched a fire curtain in front of us, turning everything that tried to pass through into ashes.
Our attackers seemed to become aware of their decreased chances of success. One of them looked up for a split second—enough for me to wonder what he was thinking of doing. He threw a knife upward. The blade went straight into the bubble’s glass ceiling. It got stuck there, but cracks began to spread across. What the hell was that knife made of?!
“Oh, crap,” I heard myself say.
All the hostiles put their hands up and balled them into fists, then pulled them down. The entire bubble moaned and rumbled, and the sound of glass finally giving in sent shivers down my spine. These were all water fae, and they’d come together to damage the ceiling and force the ocean water to burst through.
“We need to get out!” Riza gasped.
The glass collapsed, breaking into uneven shards. Water gushed through, angrily crashing into absolutely everything. The attackers stood still as the water went around them. They were protected, the sneaky bastards!
Another minute and we were all going to get pickled. And the documents that Starlin was going to give us!
There was no time. I felt someone grip my wrist. Water hit me so hard, it nearly crushed my ribcage.
Then, everything vanished. Blackness surrounded me as I disintegrated, and my consciousness turned into a loose pile of atoms.
Three seconds later—which, somehow, I managed to count—I stood on a thin strip of beach overlooking the ocean, in the cool shade of a sprawling palm tree. The ocean surface rippled and bubbled in the short distance, where the underwater city of Shallimar was. I hadn’t dreamed any of this. And I was soaked, from head to toe.
I coughed and wheezed, shaking off the impression of drowning, as I realized I got myself teleported just when the raging ocean smacked into me. The rest of my crew was just as wet and confused, each of them breathing heavily as they came to.
“What the hell…” Herakles croaked.
“Riza, Taeral, thank you!” Varga exclaimed, running a hand through his even-curlier hair. Water droplets trickled down his knuckles. “Good and quick reactions.”
“They broke the entire bubble,” Raphael concluded. “They compromised the entire military unit, just to get us.”
“It wouldn’t have killed us straightaway, but it gave them one hell of an advantage,” Taeral replied. “They did it to try and take us down.”
“Talk about dedication!” Herakles mumbled, then started wringing water out from whatever part of his uniform he could. There were layers of cotton underneath the leather, and, judging by how mine felt, they’d probably gotten stuck to his skin, wet and cold.
“Who the hell were they?” Eva asked, staring at the bubbling ocean.
Riza motioned for the woods behind us. Only then did I notice the tunnel opening, about ten yards to our left. We were back where we’d come from. “Let’s speculate after we get out of here,” she said.
“Wait, but Starlin was going to help us find Cerixian soil samples!” I protested.
Raphael shot me a grin, then pulled a scroll from the inside of his leather uniform. “About that,” he quipped. “Consider it taken care of. Now, let’s vamoose before those pricks come after us. I doubt they’re done with us.”
“You’re freaking brilliant! I could kiss you!” I squealed, unable to control my excitement.
I went quiet instantly afterward. The adrenaline was still surging through me, and it had clearly broken a couple of synapses in my brain. Also, my mouth.
Riza chuckled, then put her hands out. “Come on. Shortcut.”
Three more seconds passed, as we once again disintegrated and reappeared in front of the portal, its gray mist giving me a deeper sense of tranquility. Varga gasped from the sudden teleportation, then quickly used his True Sight to scan the woods we’d just left behind.
“All clear,” he said. “I doubt they’ll come after us here.”
“Yeah, once we go through the portal, they’re screwed. They won’t follow us off Akvo,” Eva replied.
I was slightly confused. “What makes you so sure?”
“They reeked of fear,” she said, the corner of her mouth twitching. “They destroyed an entire army unit bubble to weaken us. They probably didn’t know we had one and a half jinn with us,” she added, then gave Taeral a brief smile.
“They were in over their heads,” Raphael continued.
“Besides, that was all of them,” Varga said, his brow furrowed. “They came out from behind the barracks.”
“I don’t understand why no one intervened.” Taeral sighed, his jaw tense and tightly clenched. “The soldiers, I mean. They must’ve heard the ruckus.”
