Page 65 of Witchshadow

A whirlpool formed, spinning faster as each moment passed. Spinning closer to Stix too.Back away. Back away.The first kicks of air reached Stix. Her body flipped and spun, and she squeezed her eyes even tighter.Back away, back away.

Then it was done. She was fully exposed; the water had parted; a column of air surrounded Stix.

She opened her eyes. Gray light beamed in, and with it came the crowd’s roars—the foxes’ too. They had been thwarted. Two howled from within the water, a piercing yip that shivered through the sand beneath her feet.

The third thrust its head into the empty column and bayed. A tragic, ferocious sound.

Stix grinned at it. Her chest heaved. She was soaked through, salt coated her tongue, and her muscles quivered with power. She couldn’t hold this column forever, but Noden, it felt good. No one was as powerful as she. And now, to reach the other side of the Ring, all she had to do was walk.

“Water Brawler, Water Brawler!”

She lifted her foot. Then her other. Right, left, right, left, a muddy slog that tried to hold her down. “I’m here,” she told the voices. “I came this way and kept coming.” She lost track of the foxes, circling around the column with predatory rage. She lost track of the crowd, screeching and stamping and clapping their glee.

“Where are you?” she asked again and again. “Talk to me, please.Showme why the hell-waters I’m here.” But the memories never came, and when Stix was halfway across the Ring, the first body fell into the pool.

Stix’s heart broke in two.

She should have seen it coming, of course—it was the one thing she had desperately prayed would not happen, so therefore Lady Fate would have to make it so: a prisoner sacrificed to the Ring.

The person was still alive when they toppled into the pool, and Stix felt the person sinking. They were weighted by stone, prey for the sea foxes. Bait to draw Stix away. And bait she was going to take because she would never leave another human to die.

With a strangled scream at Noden and his Hagfishes, Stix let her column vanish. Instantly, the water stopped pushing. Instantly, the water slung toward its siblings in a joyous reunion that tidal-waved over Stix. Crushed her, beat her, shoved her back into a swim.

The sea foxes didn’t notice. They were charging for the weighted prisoner, now struggling upon the pool’s floor. Stix loosed more water, cannonballs of power to pummel the foxes. But she was too slow and the foxes too fast. She felt their jaws snap into bone, felt blood unravel through the water, strands of heat that sang with an ended life.

“No.” The word escaped Stix’s throat on a bubble of air.No, no.Currents keened against her, thrashed by foxes writhing and twirling as they fed.No, no.

The sea foxes had almost finished their feast when two more bodiesplunked into the water behind her. She sensed the splashes and the displacement of water that spoke of two more lives sinking too fast. Stix would not fail them.

She kicked off the Ring floor, sucking power to her. She needed air—oh Noden, she needed air, but there was no time. She would have to make what little still seared in her lungs suffice.

She raced across the pond, fast as a shark. Faster even, and behind her, the foxes gave pursuit. They’d finished their meal; they were always, always hungry for more.

She reached the first person, and as she’d sensed, they were roped to a stone far too heavy for her to move. They flapped and bent and strained like a worm on a hook, and when Stix grabbed their shoulders—shoulders she could not see—they only fought harder.

I’m trying to help you!she wanted to scream, but she had no breath left and no sound beneath the waves.

She needed to cut these ropes, and she needed to do it fast.

She froze a strip of water in her right hand. An ice knife, complete with handle and edge for slicing.Sharp, sharp,she told the water.Cut, cut.In seconds, the rope snapped. The person was free—and the foxes had arrived.

Stix slung out her knife, and as it hurtled toward the nearest fox, she froze a hundred more.Freeze, freeze. Cut, cut.

The foxes screamed, a piercing burst of sound as every ice blade made contact. As Stix carried herself and the prisoner away. They sped through the water, and though the world was dark, worse shadows were creeping in. Stix needed air. She was going to have to surface. Unless…

Back away,she commanded the closest water—the water that haloed her head.Back away.

A small funnel formed, and the water parted. It sucked strength from Stix because, like before, the water did not want to separate. But Stix let it have her strength in exchange for blessed, beautiful air.

Her lungs billowed, two gulps as she escalated toward the second prisoner. Her head stopped spinning; her lungs stopped screeching. Then she was to the other person, and she let the waters crush over her face once more. Again, she produced an ice knife, and again, she carved away until the second prisoner was also free.

Now she had two people to protect, and three sea foxes pummeling this way. But the exit must be near. The stall she needed to reach to end this fight and claim victory.

Stix grabbed hold of the prisoners, her fingers digging under theirarms, then she used every piece of power that still remained inside of her to shoot for the sky. Up, up, they flew through the water until they broke the surface.

And up, up the foxes flew too. Three sets of fangs, of fur, of bloodied entrails from a prisoner lost. They were clever in their ascent. Cleverer than Stix had been, belying a sentience she hadn’t realized they possessed.

One rushed beneath her. One swam behind. And one moved between Stix and the exit.