Late in the afternoon we ran into a strange hole filled with water so clear and deep that it disappeared into turquoise shadows. Silden dipped his hands into the water and raised it to his face, sniffing and then taking a cautious sip. “It’s fresh,” he noted. Although we had no concerns about water, we lingered for a bit to dip our feet into the pool and washed up as well as we could. We were cautious to keep an eye out for our Hunter, but I hadn’t seen a sign of him at all. I wondered if Silden had really seen him or just imagined him, but didn’t vocalize that thought. When we finally moved on, we found another hole a few hours later, and another several minutes after that.

“Maybe there’s an underground cavern system?” Lyre wondered out loud, looking doubtfully at the shifting sands around us.

We didn’t spot any more until the next day, and we were a little glad to see it this time. They had become nice spots to take brief breaks, and we weren’t sure when we would see another again. “I think I’ll take a swim in this one. I kind of miss the ocean,” Larina said, dropping her pack and removing her shoes and clothes. She slipped into the water. Silden moved to join her, also stripping down.

I stayed back for a moment, half out of prudish embarrassment at the nudity but also to scan the horizon for any danger. “It’s strange that there’s no plants growing around these watering holes. You’d think there’d be something like an oasis. Or wildlife that’s drawn to them.”

I glanced over at Lyre. We had been around each other as a group so constantly that I wondered at taking this moment to ask him if I should share where I was from with Larina and Silden. I didn’t think I had a reason to hide it anymore, but I was reluctant to talk about it because it reminded me of so many things – of home, of my dog, of my parents – of why I might have been summoned to this world in the first place. But as I opened my mouth to broach the subject, the ground rumbled. There was a rushing sound of water and a massive splash as something came crashing up from the hole – I heard Larina screaming and Silden shouting.

Something huge had come rushing straight out of the hole, throwing Silden and Larina bodily from the water. It loomed in the air over them, far larger than the dunslyth. It was like a massive worm that opened on one end, displaying rows and rows of teeth. From within the cavernous tooth filled maw, tentacles reached out, tentacles covered in even more teeth. I gaped openly, watching as the tentacles closed around Silden, who was sprawled on the sand beneath it. The worm began to pull back into the hole, pulling a shouting Silden into its throat, disappearing under the water.

Screaming his name, a glow surrounded Larina as she jumped in immediately. Coming to my senses, I also began to rush forward to help, and felt myself stumble as I put too much weight on my injured leg. Lyre wrapped his arms around me. At first, I thought it was only to catch me in my fall, but then when I regained my balance and tried to push forward, I realized he was holding me back on purpose. He was trying to actively pull me further back from the hole where our friends had disappeared. “Lyre!” I shouted, but I couldn’t break free from his grip.

Lyre’s eyes were wide in shocked terror and he was shaking his head emphatically, simply saying, “No, nonono…”

I turned back toward the water, which had calmed into an eerie stillness. I dropped to my knees, mumbling their names. Everything had happened so fast. And now they were just… gone.

There was another rumbling deep within the ground. Lyre began to renew his efforts to pull me back away from the pool, but something was different this time – the water bubbled and churned, and turned red. “Oh my god,” I muttered, wondering whose blood it was. Chunks of gristly meat began to float to the surface.

And then there were hands splashing up, gripping the wet sand – Lyre immediately rushed forward to help, and I hobbled to keep up with him, and together we pulled both Larina and Silden up onto the sand and away from the water. Silden was covered in gaping wounds that instantly pooled with dark blood, so much more blood than when the Hunter had attacked him on the ship. I placed my hands on his head instantly and focused on closing the wounds. There were a lot of them, spread across his entire body. I could hear him whimpering as he regained consciousness.

Larina sat very near to me, shivering, one hand still firmly gripped to Silden’s shoulder. I realized she also had large gashes across her head and face and arms. “I had to let it swallow me,” she said through chattering teeth, “just enough to have the air to speak the spell.” Lyre rubbed her arms as though to warm her, and she leaned back against him and closed her eyes.

We moved further back from the water and decided to camp even though the day was far from over. When I was done healing Silden, I also healed Larina. This time the effort of the healing left me bone tired, almost like I had gone running, perhaps because their wounds were more extensive than anything I had healed yet. I needed to rest as well. Healing also didn’t replace the blood Silden had lost, nor remove the shock Larina felt. They sat awake for a long time, their heads pressed close together and their arms wrapped around each other until Larina had stopped shivering and muttering about the teeth. Eventually they snoozed in the warmth of the evening sun.

I wrapped the blanket around them as it started to get chillier and sat next to Lyre. I let my injured leg lay out flat on the ground. “Why didn’t you let me help them?” I finally asked, my tone a bit brusquer than I had intended. I closed my eyes to calm myself. I felt tired, which worsened the lingering anger I had over those few moments when I had thought our companions were dead.

He was silent. I opened my eyes and looked over at him. His eyes looked unfocused as he considered my question, and his expression seemed to say that he wondered why himself. Then he focused on my face, and a strange flicker of emotions crossed his features. “I thought they were dead. I couldn’t lose you too.”

I felt myself go very still, repeating his words in my head, and realized he was staring at me very intensely with those bright blue eyes that almost seemed to glow in the light of the setting sun. I turned to look back at the watering hole to avoid his gaze. “How do you think it gets the water?” I asked to change the subject. “Does it really dig that deep down?”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Lyre shift his attention back towards the bloodied pool of water as well. “Maybe it can summon water with magic?”

I thought about monsters using magic and shuddered, wondering what else we’d run across.

---

Lyre took the first watch, insisting that I sleep since I had obviously worn myself out with the healing. When I woke, the sky was beginning to lighten on the eastern horizon. “Did you stay awake all night?” I asked Lyre angrily. “You should have let me take a watch.”

He smiled and brushed off my anger. “Then you can take a watch now. I’m going to catch a quick nap.” He then fell asleep with enviable quickness. I sat, carefully watching our surroundings, mindful of the fact that we were possibly being followed.

The full night of sleep seemed to be exactly what Larina and Silden needed at least. They both woke looking better, like the color and life had come back into their faces. We ate a very quiet breakfast, and Larina made a last comment at one point of, “So many teeth,” while shuddering in revulsion at the memory. Silden patted her on the back.

Once Lyre was awake, we continued on. We did not see any more of the watering holes on our way.

We had a lovely and uneventful day of travel after that. The dunes were starting to fade into more hard packed ground. We even spotted a very normal looking oasis at one point, but still decided to loop around it, not wanting any more surprises before we reached the ravine. We could see the mountain range that the river came from far to the north. First, they appeared as indistinct blue smudges on the horizon, but before we camped for the evening they had turned into larger purple shadows, and I could see the white shading of the snow along their peaks. We were close now – perhaps another day’s travel and we’d be out of the desert.

We were sitting close around a summoned fire, taking some sustenance from our rations. I noticed that Larina and Silden had grown quite close since their shared underwater experience, and they sat comfortably leaning against each other, his arm over her shoulder. Larina chewed thoughtfully on her jerky, staring at me for a long moment, and I tilted my head and raised an eyebrow in response. “We were so focused on fixing your injury, and you were so out of it when we found you, that I never got the chance to ask – how did you get away from the owl?” she asked.

“I electrocuted it.”

“But it had you so high up…” she drifted off, then shook her head.

I wondered for a moment how much I should share. Tentatively, I said, “I learned a new spell. A spell that slows falls.” Silden raised an eyebrow this time but said nothing. Larina frowned at me. I felt overwhelmed with guilt suddenly. They had done so much to help me, and I had no reason to distrust them. They were my friends. I looked over at Lyre, who was frowning at me curiously as he studied the look on my face. “I’m… not from this world.”

For a moment his lips thinned and his frown deepened, but he said nothing. I turned to look back at Larina and Silden, who both stared at me with widened eyes. And almost everything I had been holding back from them came pouring out. “And you’ve known this entire time?” Silden asked Lyre.

He nodded silently. They stared at each other for a moment and some sort of understanding seemed to pass wordlessly between them. “Lyre was the one that told me that there are stories about outworlders amongst elves. Since I can use magic and want to find out more about why I’m here, I decided that going to the Empire was my best bet.”

“It does make sense,” Larina said slowly. “So these moments when you learn new spells… they just come to you naturally?”

I paused and swallowed for a moment. I hadn’t even told Lyre about the voices, and this was the perfect opportunity to come clear about every last bit of it. When I had started talking, I had planned to let them know everything, to explain that there was something that was teaching me these spells. Instead, I nodded in response to Larina’s question. “Yes. I just seem to understand them naturally.”

Larina stared into the fire thoughtfully. “I’ve heard tales of outworlders, but mostly just what Lyre has heard, I’m sure.” She turned her head to Silden, nudging him slightly with her shoulder. “What about you?”

“Yes… tales of outworlders sealing shadows and sorrows.” Silden shrugged. “Mostly sounds like fairy tales. But I did hear the sailors talk about how you arrived in that beam of light. They were unsettled by it.”

“I saw it,” Larina said. “I was on duty that night. It lit up the whole of the sky, was almost so bright as to be blinding, and then tapered into streams of light that pulled away back to the sky. And then later when I saw you use magic… I was so shocked to see the light of it around a human.” She paused for a moment and grinned at me sheepishly. “I suspected you were not from our world, but I didn’t want to pry. I’m glad you’ve told us.”

I smiled but averted my eyes, staring at the ground. 

We took turns at watch and the night passed without event, much to my relief. When I woke, I went through what was now becoming a natural morning ritual for me – summoning water to wash my face and rinse my mouth, to drink and clean a bit. Although we had taken a few dips in the watering holes we’d come across, I hadn’t had a chance for a full bath in what felt like ages. I couldn’t wait to get to a place where I could really soak and scrub all the dirt and sand off of my skin.  And just to be out of the desert – the extra cover Lyre had given me helped immensely, and having constant access to water had been great, but I was still peeling from the sunburns I had sustained, and my leg was still sore. I wanted to be somewhere safe, where I could rest and heal.

We reached the ravine as the sun was setting. We approached a particularly steep area to stare down into the cliffs and canyons where the river far below had cut a deep swath into the ground over the centuries. We stared in awe at the colors of the sunset and the beauty and splendor of the striated rocks and verdant foliage, the glinting of the river twisting out of sight far below. It reminded me at once of the Grand Canyon, which I had seen in college when a friend and I had decided to make a road trip to see what all the fuss was about.

“How are we ever going to cross that?” Larina said, staring at the steep rocks.

Silden gestured south. “It looks like there may be a way to hike down over there. It’s getting dark though, so we should camp and try it tomorrow. Once we’re down, we can think of how to cross the river, and find a way up on the other side.”

Larina stared across the ravine and was silent for a long moment. “That’s Empire land over there,” she said at last.

“Yes… when we get across, we’ll finally be in the Empire.” Silden placed an arm around her shoulder and she turned to smile up at him. “And we’ll be free.”