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I knew the Aqua Battalion maintained approximately one hundred and fifty permanent personnel. Reading that number hadn't prepared me for what one hundred and fifty people actually looked like when added to handlers, researchers, dock workers and whoever else happened to be crossing the complex at once.

I was still taking in uniforms, equipment racks and the enormous jungle rising behind the garrison when Corian began speaking with an officer waiting beside the portal chamber. Dannian's team immediately started arguing about whether two of the sample cases should be transferred into different waterproof containers.

Alex's floating crates settled onto the stone.

Nobody needed me for approximately thirty seconds.

Perfect.

I moved closer to the open archway.

Ashter went still against my leg the second the water came into view, and a laugh caught in my throat before I could stop it. He hated water. Baths, rain, the one time Halver tried to coax him into a lake to cool off after a training run, all of it treated as a personal betrayal. An entire ocean waited on the other side of that archway now, and true to form, smoke slid up my arm a heartbeat later and vanished beneath the collar of my shirt, curling tight against my ribs.

Beyond the garrison walls, the archipelago stretched into the distance.

Water wound between islands in channels of brilliant blue and green, some wide enough for large vessels while others narrowed between walls of vegetation until they disappeared entirely beneath hanging vines. Massive trees crowded the larger islands, their trunks pale beneath layers of moss and broad leaves overlapping until the jungle looked almost solid. Flowers grew in colors I recognized from Menagerie specimens and others I'd only seen pressed inside books.

Something enormous moved through the canopy on a neighboring island.

A flock of silver-winged birds burst into the sky.

I smiled.

This was incredible.

Then I let myself feel it.

That was the mistake.

Life hit me all at once.

Not one heartbeat.

Hundreds.

Thousands.

More so much more.

My Biomancy opened across the garrison and kept going.

People first. Blood moving through bodies, muscles shifting beneath skin, lungs expanding, hearts beating at different speeds as soldiers crossed training yards and workers hauled equipment along the docks.

Behind them came the jungle.

Roots.

Insects.

Birds.

Small mammals moving beneath leaves. Fish beneath the water. Plants layered over plants until I couldn't separate one living structure from the next. Vines climbed trunks covered in moss that held tiny organisms of its own, while entire colonies of microscopic life existed in water pooled between leaves.

There was too much.

I tried to narrow it.

Usually that was simple.