Chapter Three
“I hate this,” Florian groaned, more to himself than to Rune. “It feels like I’m going to be trapped down here forever.”
“You can’t think of it like that,” she chided from where she swam several yards ahead. “You wouldn’t say you’re trapped up in the air, would you? The water’s the same. You have to change how you think about it.”
For all her abrasiveness, she was a helpful teacher, much to his chagrin. Florian grumbled, but followed. He did hate it, but the practice was necessary; his huge kraken body was only now starting to feel familiar after hours underwater. Maybe, eventually, the heavy water pressing down around him would feel like the air, too.
Staying shifted for longer than a few hours wasn’t exactly pleasant, but it wasn’t as draining as holding a shroud over himself, Florian learned. He and Rune had spent the afternoon swimming long laps around the western length of the island that made up the kraken kingdom, but they never quite venturednorth enough to enter the underwater village Rune had told him about. Florian got a few glimpses of it occasionally, but Rune seemed hesitant to bring him.
“Torsten’s usually there,” she explained after noticing him looking in its direction, his curiosity piqued at the distant, murky shapes in the water. “He’s still... grouchy about everything. Let’s wait until we have the first Arrow to visit the village. That way, he can’t be mad. Sounds good?”
“Sounds good,” he repeated, thinking about how angry Torsten had been for seemingly no reason. He definitely didn’t want to encounter the king, but still he looked curiously in the village's direction whenever they drew near enough to spot it.
They spent a few hours in the water, until all of Florian’s muscles felt like they might give out with exhaustion. Then she sent him back to rest up with the warning that they would train for even longer tomorrow. Their guest cottage was empty when he arrived, but he didn’t have the brainpower to wonder where Koji was. He flopped down in a chair in front of the fire and promptly passed out, only rousing when the door scraped open, and Koji came back in.
“Seems like she’s a tough teacher,” he chuckled, eyeing Florian. He held a bag brimming with produce and bread—clearly he’d already been making connections in the village. His eyes gleamed with mirth as Florian only nodded groggily. “I’ll make some food. Rest up.”
An hour later, Florian sat down across from him for a simple, but hearty meal—fish grilled with salt and herbs; roasted leafy greens interspersed with thin slices of leek; and boiled root vegetables that looked like small potatoes, but tasted more like turnips. There was still a lot of food in the Veil that Florian wasn’t familiar with, but this was all close enough to Earth food to feel like a real home-cooked meal—Koji was a good cook, too.
“Do you think Kade will be joining us soon?” Koji asked quietly as they ate, making Florian pause. He sighed, shrugging.
“I hope so,” he said. “I don’t know. I can’t think about it, or… He’ll get here when he’s ready, you know?”
Koji nodded. “It’ll be strange going out into the Blight without him.”
Florian’s heart squeezed—he couldn’t tell if it was fear or worry or sadness or all of it all at once.
“Yeah,” he managed. “Yeah, it will be.”
The next day it was all a little easier, though; and when Rune sent him back to the cottage to rest, he had no trouble staying shifted for four hours at a time. Florian thought that with some more training, being shifted for a full day, while daunting, did seem in the realm of possibility. Not that he would have a choice. Eventually, he wouldhaveto remain shifted that long if they had any hope of getting the second Arrow.
But first they had to get the closer Arrow—he had to stay focused. He’d have plenty of time to worry about staying shifted later.
On the third day, they set out for the Arrow as planned. Florian and Koji met for their morning meal at Rune’s cottage, where she gave each of them fishing spears.
“Just in case,” she said ominously, then chuckled. Florian laughed weakly in response, but he supposed it would be good to have a weapon that would be easier to wield in the water than a sword.
From there, they followed her out toward the northern beach where they’d first arrived. The morning air was chilly and damp, the sky gray with clouds, but Rune seemed cheerful and eageras they walked—not at all nervous like Florian always was when they were getting ready to head into the Blight. Koji was quiet beside him, and if Rune noticed their less enthusiastic moods, she ignored them and continued chatting.
“Alright,” Rune said, clapping her hands together once when they arrived at the beach. “You’re flying, I’m swimming. How do you do this shroud thing, Florian?”
“Oh, uh,” Florian stammered. “I usually set it up right before we go into the Blight.”
“I’ll lead us out to where the Blight hits, then,” Rune said, stretching her arms as she stepped out into the surf, leaving Florian and Koji watching from the sand. “Then you’ll set up your shroud, I’ll swim deeper, and we’ll head out. I should still be able to see you, even if you can’t see me. And as long as I can see you, I can communicate with you. So we shouldn’t have a problem staying together.”
“Alright,” Florian said, nodding. “Ready, Koji?”
They had decided that since Florian would need to hold the shroud, he would ride on Koji’s back rather than shift into his dragon form, since having both was taxing. Rune didn’t expect the trip to take longer than six hours; but because they had no idea what they were heading into, Florian didn’t want to have tapped all his magic by the time they got there only to find it was being protected by Blighted shifters again, or swarming with monsters.
“Ready,” Koji said, glowing with green light as he shifted. When the form of the dragon had solidified, he sank his claws into the sand and tossed his head, shaking his long mane. Florian helped him get his sun goggles on; they didn’t fit his face quite as snugly, but they would at least give him some protection from the light.
That done, Florian climbed up and settled in the spot right beneath Koji’s shoulder blades, then patted his scales and heldon to his mane. Meanwhile, Rune had stepped further into the surf, and now only part of her massive head was above the water, one impossibly huge eye peering over at them. The sheer size of her still left him unsettled when he looked too closely.
“Alright,” Florian called out. “Let’s go.”
Koji took to the air, flying only five feet or so over the surface of the water, while Rune swam close enough that they could follow the immense shadow of her beneath the water, the occasional ruddy tentacle breaking the surface now and again. Florian knew she could swim quite fast when she wanted to, but now she seemed to maintain a leisurely pace so Koji could easily keep up.
When they’d been flying for about twenty minutes, he could start to see it—the growing bright line of light beginning to glow on the horizon. At first, it looked like it might have been the sun breaking through the dark cloud cover that was nearly omnipresent in the kraken kingdom; but soon the uniformity of it betrayed its true nature. It was the same everywhere, Florian thought grimly—no matter how different the four kingdoms were, the way the Blight touched their borders was identical.
