The blast of water carried us off the cliff and we all hurtled toward the lake below. As we dropped toward the gound, I saw Ynec floating beside me. I stretched my hand toward him, Ynec noticed and did the same. We attempted to interlock our hands so we could fall to our deaths together. My fingers touched his but we missed. I tried again, as my middle finger intercepted his claw, it looked like we were about to connect. I suddenly felt a sharp pain on my back and the weight of whatever was on top of me caused me to fall farther than Ynec. Sepki had tucked his arms together and collided into me midair. He turned me around, placed his hand on my neck and squeezed down on my windpipe.

  "THE BOOK!" He yelled.

  I fought through the closure of my airway and gargled, "Ynec knows." He threw me =against the cliff and I rolled along them.

  “Hey!” Ynec yelled from above. Sepki stared up at Ynec stringing his bow with an arrow. He shot right at Sepki’s face but the paladin lifted his bracers and deflected the arrow as if it was a children's toy. Sepki landed in the water first. He expertly dove in, minimizing splash and friction. I fell in next, replicating Sepki’s fall but feet first. When I swam to the top, Dale plopped into the lake beside me. Sepki took out his mace and before he could hit me with it, Ynec fell on top of him. A small shadow in our center got bigger. And bigger. And bigger still. Someone had yet to join us down in the lake. Hosu, aka Dale’s ex. Still in her salamander form, she bellowed towards us, twisting through the air Her hands were out as vicious claws made of water. Dale poked up to the surface and let out a "you gotta be fucking kidding me." I, too, was exhausted as the water spirit rammed into us. I dove under but the displacement of water hit every person and creature in the nearby area and spread us apart.

  I attempted to swim toward the shore but was suddenly pulled by unnatural currents. Sepki, Dale, and I began to be thrashed around under the water. Sepki attempted to swim toward me but Hosu’s movements were unpredictable. As Sepki got close, she jerk him upward and me sideways. Sepki made useless attempts to thrash his mace around underwater but it did not good. What part of the stream was Hosu? What part was water? What part was Hosu just controlling the water?

  Either way, it provided some distance between the paladin and I. I looked for Ynec as I caught my breath, he wasn’t in the lake with us. I saw him climbing the cliffs above the water attempting to remove himself from Hosu’s control. His bow was strapped to his back and his quiver was empty.

  "Ynec!" I yelled, Ynec craned his neck back at me and I saw that he had an arrow tucked between his teeth. I gave him a thumbs up but he had no clue what that meant. I felt another pull on my leg, this time slimier than the current. I looked down and saw the seaweed that was normally Hosu’s hair wrapped around my leg. If that wasn’t enough, the current began to drag me in the same direction. Sepki was much farther than me but the pull of Hosu was bringing us together. Hosu had started a whirlpool with her mouth as the epicenter. She opened and closed her mouth, swallowing everything that the vortex sucked in. The riptide drew us closer. Her power as a vengeful water spirit was amplified by Dale giving her a new reason to be vengeful.

  I yelled at Sepki as we circled Hosu’s mouth, “Do something about this! Use your radiant damage!”

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  Instead, Sepki pointed his mace at me before splashing it on the water. “I only need one of you to find the book don't I?"

  “We're both going to die!" I told him as we swirled around Hosu, her mouth chomping constantly as water pulled us in. Sepki snap the seaweed constraining him off with his mace. Now free from the grip but unfree from the current, he swam against the current, holding himself in status as I got closer to him. His athleticism defied human physics in my previous world. He managed to stay ahead of the whirlpool and I was unable to counteract it. When it looked like right as I was about to collide with him he grabbed me and held me down his huge arms choking me as we both continued to the vortex.

  Dale fell into Hosu’s mouth and she closed it. The whirlpool subsided. I could only see that at the epicenter Dale was fighting inside of Hosu as she held him in her giant body still translucent in the water. You could see him screaming about how he would definitely be different this time if she only gave him another chance. His glowing fist banged against his transparent prison. And suddenly Sepki had me in both his hands he held me tightly and said, “I don’t need you walking. I’m going to break your neck if you don’t tell me right now.”

  I felt him squeezing me, my face turned purple as I became asphyxiated. I could hear my spinal chord creaking. Since both he was distracted with me, he did not notice the whiz of Ynec’s only arrow as it shot through the air. The arrow punctured Sepki in the cheek. He cried out in pain and reached for it, allowing me enough room to hit him in the nuts and slip out of his grasp. He screamed in the lake as I cast Stride level II and swam away as fast as I could. It reminded me of the last time I used swim in this lake, and how I was running away from an even bigger monster. The blood from his wound leaked out into the lake and silver little carnivorous fish excitedly swam in the red water attempting to catch some kind of detritus.

  I landed on the shore. Ynec was far away on the cliff but heading my direction. I was out of Stride. I wanted to run but Sepki was already swimming up to me. Without even casting Stride, he used his own natural abilities to swim to shore. Why wouldn’t he use Stride? He could have lost me. That was when it hit me.

  Sepki emerged out of the water, the arrow still stuck in his cheek. He grabbed it and pulled it out. That must have stung. He tossed it in front of me taking deep heavy breaths as he attempted to recover. "You can’t keep running from me. I’ll catch you. You and your little pet.”

  “I just figured it,” I told him, mockingly. He took a step closer and I took a step farther back. He was intrigued, “I figured out your little secret. Too much stuff didn’t add up. And now it all makes sense.”

  “Pray tell,” Sepki said, giving a slight bow mocking me while simultaneously urging me to continue, “What have you learned?”

  I smiled at him, I was losing mana but this ability didn’t draw from mana. It was…. a different category. Some kind of ability I could cast once a day. I squeezed my hands into fists. I felt the words enter my lips. Sepki could tell I was about to use some ability. Like a kind of dangersense, he knew something was coming.

  He blast toward me, he closed the gap but before he could get to me, I shouted out, “Underdog.” I felt Anubis’ magic course through my veins. I watched as short dog hairs pushed out of my skin, my muscles bulged, my senses… I could tell where he was without even looking at him. His stench gave him away. I looked up and howled as my mouth grew into a maw. When I unfurled my fists, there were claws. My eyes had been replaced with the soulful yellow eyes of a dog.

  He attacked me with his mace but it connected with my newly muscled arm. Even though this brute had destroyed a cliffside or taken out a man’s skull with one strike, I had successfully blocked his attack.

  “I know why you can’t cast spells.”