But it costs me. That kind of power expenditure drains reserves I can’t afford to lose. My legs shake as I tread water. Blood loss making me light-headed. Vision tunneling at the edges.
Through the bond, I feel Zara’s power building to crescendo. Feel her determination. Feel her diving toward Caspian like a lightning bolt given form and fury.
Do it, I send. End this.
The remaining warriors sense my weakness. They circle closer, predators recognizing wounded prey. Kellan raises his hand for the killing blow?—
Lightning strikes the ritual circle.
The sound is deafening.The light is blinding. Thunder rolls across the valley with physical force that throws water in every direction.
Zara hits Caspian’s ritual like the wrath of gods made manifest.
For a heartbeat, I think it’s over. Think she’s won. Think the ritual is shattered and the dam is safe.
Then Caspian moves.
I’ve never seen hydrokinesis used like that. He doesn’t block Zara’s lightning—he redirects it. Uses the water in the air itself as conductor, channeling her massive strike away from himself and into the river. The electricity that should have dropped him dissipates harmlessly into the water system.
Zara pulls up hard, wings straining, barely avoiding crashing into the dam face. The ritual circle is disrupted—warriors scattered by her strike, concentration broken—but Caspian himself stands untouched at the center.
“You’re strong, girl,” he calls up to her, voice amplified by water magic. “But strength without experience is just noise.”
He gestures, and the river responds.
Not the ritual anymore. Not the slow, careful application of pressure meant to crack the dam’s foundation. This is something else. Something immediate and terrifying.
Water rises from the river in a massive wave—fifty feet high, a hundred feet wide, tons of liquid force gathered and directed by a master’s hand. Aimed not at the dam but past it. Down the valley. Toward the settlements below.
“If I can’t break the dam,” Caspian shouts, “I’ll drown them anyway!”
The wave crests, begins its descent. In minutes—seconds, maybe—it will crash into the valley. Will destroy the first settlement. Will kill hundreds in the initial impact. Will roll onward, gathering force, until thousands are dead.
All the power we gained, all the transformation, all the fighting—none of it matters if that wave hits.
Through the bond, I feel Zara’s horror matching mine. Feel her gathering lightning for another strike. Feel her calculating whether she can disperse a wave that size before it reaches the first buildings.
She can’t. We both know it. There’s too much mass, too much momentum. Even liquid lightning can’t stop an ocean when it’s already moving.
But maybe we don’t have to stop it.
Maybe we just have to redirect it.
The thought crystalizes in my mind and transfers through the bond in an instant. Zara seizes on it, understanding immediately what I’m suggesting. What we need to do. What it will cost.
The warriors around me have stopped fighting, staring at the wave in mixed triumph and horror. Some celebrate. Others realize what’s about to happen—that Caspian’s willing to kill indiscriminately, that this was never about saving Deep Runners, just about destroying surface-dwellers.
I ignore them. They’re not the enemy anymore. The wave is.
Zara! I send through the bond. Now!
She dives from the sky, wings tucked, lightning trailing behind her like a comet’s tail. I surge forward in the water, gathering every scrap of hydrokinesis I have left. We’re both running on empty. Both wounded. Both terrified.
But we’re not alone. And if there’s one thing this bond has taught me, it’s that what we can’t accomplish individually, we can achieve as one unit.
Two halves of a single storm.
Zara hits the water beside me in a controlled dive. I catch her, keeping her head above the surface, and our magics merge without conscious direction. Lightning and water, hydrokinesis and electrical charge, storm and sea becoming something that defies categorization.
