“Ahem,” I heard a voice call out over the sound of gently splashing water against stone—

  A female voice.

  Vekrem and I craned our necks to see her; Asema, with her flowing dark hair and tanned skin, no longer old-looking from that mushroom she’d eaten in the cellar, but well-dressed for traveling. She manned a small rowboat awkwardly; her balance precarious as she appeared to be trying to both steer and move it forward with one oar…

  To little success.

  “Who is that?” Vekrem asked, not even bothering to spare me a glance.

  He appeared mesmerized in the moment, as if time itself had frozen.

  “Asema,” I replied, quite uncertain of what was transpiring. “The woman I saved. Remember?”

  Vekrem’s mouth dangled open as he stared at her, stricken.

  “Yeah…” he mumbled. “I remember.”

  Asema threw her oar down in the boat, which generated a loud bang of wood on wood as it struck. The boat looked so decrepit that I thought it would break at any moment.

  “Are you both coming, or do you want to be caught by the Sentinels?” Asema asked. “By the true-ones, I would think you both would have more sense about you. Idiots.”

  Then, as if we both remembered our predicament at the same time, we jumped up in unison. Quickly, I shouldered my own bag along with a few of the other traveling satchels provided to us by Vhol. Despite my trepidation about returning to the water, I dove back-in hesitantly. The cold water rushed around me, and as my head breached the surface, I heard a splash behind me, and then the sounds of yelling from up above.

  I swam as hard as I could, until my arms burned with the effort, and I felt as if I would pass out from the exertion I placed on myself. Suddenly, my hand struck something hard—

  Wood.

  I heaved the heavy bags over the side. Then, with considerable effort, I tried to throw myself over as well. I didn’t make it. Struggling and struggling, I felt as if I’d be pulled back down below to the dark depths of the canal where I’d forever float in the water, remembered only as a cautionary tale told to children to scare them into behaving. A silent threat from the system not to disobey its false order.

  Firm hands suddenly grabbed me by the shirt, heaving me up and over into the boat. I hit with my back. Looking up, saw Asema’s bewildered face, the Radiant Rot scar on her cheek gleaming in the wavering sun of dusk as the night quickly devoured the land.

  Another splash, and water droplets struck me in the face, temporarily blinding me. Wiping them away, I saw Vekrem, his bags in a neat row at the front of the boat. Somehow, he’d recovered mine as well, and already he manned one of the oars.

  “Ike!” he said, forgoing his usual soft-spoken approach. “Get up and grab an oar.”

  I did as he asked, grasping at one with shaking hands.

  Before I could even settle, Vekrem commanded, “Start rowing!”

  Vekrem’s words spurred me into action as I jumped at his command, awkwardly placing the oar in the water and holding it with an unsure grip. Asema grabbed a third, placing it at the back to steer the boat. Sentinels rallied at the edges of the canal, and I could see bows and arrows being drawn from quivers into nervous, shaking hands.

  We’d officially overstayed our welcome.

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  Seeing what I did, Vekrem turned to each of us and shouted, “Row!”

  I pushed down and back into the water with all my strength… and the boat went precisely nowhere. I did it again and again, but the boat, seemingly with a mind of its own, spun in a circle.

  A goddamn circle.

  “What are you both doing?” Asema yelled from the back, and she lifted her oar in the air as if she would strike us both straight down to hell.

  Turning to her, I yelled, “I’ve never done this before!”

  Then, I heard a swishing in the air as some of the Sentinel archers unleashed a few shots from their bows down on us. Arrows whizzed gracefully through the air, and my body reacted on its own, my head moving just as one arrow passed by, grazing my hair as it plunged into the depths of the water behind me.

  Fuck, that was close.

  “Thee won’t be able to dodge them all!” Dragon roared in my mind, so loudly that I went cross-eyed for a moment.

  Recovering, I yelled back, “I know!”

  Furiously, I increased the pace of my rowing, and, as I did, we eventually moved forward. I wanted to jump for glee, but I bunkered down instead, focusing on the task. Vekrem and I, after a short time, got into a sort of rhythm, and, slowly, we built speed. The archers tried firing again, but they hadn’t the range to hit us as we sailed down the canal as gracefully as… well, something considerably less graceful than a swan… A floating shoe, perhaps.

  It appeared as if we were free until, to my horror, I saw it off in the distance—

  A blockade.

  The Sentinels had taken a few of the merchant’s boats and set them bobbing side to side in the canal to block the exit into the greater part of the river. Rodrant merchants screamed and waved their balled fists in the air from the safety of solid ground as we approached like a school of fish into a fisherman’s net. The boats, each manned with at least three Sentinels, seemed impenetrable at our current speed, and the only opening, a gap in the middle, was getting smaller and smaller by the second.

  It was hopeless.

  Vekrem suddenly stood, grabbing a bag and shuffling through some of the items inside. I stopped rowing so as not to capsize the boat, asking, “What are you doing?”

  Vekrem didn’t bother to answer me, and instead, he kept searching and searching until he came upon the item he sought.

  “Ha!” he exclaimed as he removed it from the bag, holding it as if he’d just found a lost treasure.

  It was but a small vial, with a clear-reddish liquid inside. I peered at Asema, who gazed on as curious as I was. He opened the vial and, to my astonishment, began rubbing it all over his arms.

  Turning towards Asema, he said in a demanding voice, “Move!”

  Wordlessly, she stood, moving to the side, where he soon took her previous position, and she took his.

  “Keep us steady…” he said. “And do try to hold on to something.”

  Turning, he set both his arms into the water…

  Nothing happened.

  I waited for a moment before asking, “Vekrem, what are you—”

  The boat lurched as if a mighty force suddenly propelled it forward. Looking back, fire exploded from Vekrem’s arms into the water like a jet engine, the water bubbling to the surface, transforming into a misty white foam. The boat was easily four times faster than when we rowed, and the gap that seemed impossible to cross not a few moments before was suddenly a grand exit as we sped through, the Sentinels screaming incomprehensibly towards us as we passed.

  Wind rushed through my hair, and I couldn’t help but laugh in the madness of it all, Dragon roaring its contentment as well.

  The spray of the water felt good on my skin, albeit cold, but the freedom, the knowing that we’d made it, tasted amazing.

  Asema, on the other hand, looked terrible, and after a short time, she leaned off the side of the boat, vomiting into the water. Carefully, she wiped the bile away with the back of her hand as she held the other to her stomach.

  We jettisoned down the river as if we were on a speedboat. But eventually the propulsion ceased, and Vekrem fell back into the middle of the boat, so exhausted that he appeared to fall asleep almost immediately. Leaning down, I put my hand to his neck to check for a pulse—he still lived. Looking at his arms, the fire that he’d conjured burned away the dark hair that used to coat his arm, leaving the skin beneath red and raw. Sweat beaded on his skin, far more than was usual, but it seemed to have an odd red-tint to it. I reached down to examine it closer, but at that moment, the last vestige of light faded from the world, leaving us in absolute darkness. We floated slowly down the river, pushed on by the natural flow of the water, with only the dim moonlight and the mushrooms that edged the riverbed to guide us.

  Leaning back, I stared up at the starry night sky, panting…

  I was exhausted.

  But it was a good exhaustion—we had done it… we had actually escaped—

  And then we crashed.