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“Hand me your fire tube,” she said to Slobad. She could hear her own voice both in her head and reverberating through the air bubble. It was disorienting. “Take my sword back to the diver. Tell Bruenna to collapse the bubble.”

“What you do, huh?” asked Slobad.

“Get Bosh,” said Glissa as she took the invisible fire tube from Slobad. “I’ll be back.”

The elf moved off toward the quicksilver curtain. She could sense the soft spots in the muck and avoided them. She held the fire tube in front of her as she reached the edge of the air bubble. The flame burned a hole in the swirling surface and caught the eel Glissa knew to be squirming inside.

She took a breath and followed the fire tube into the quicksilver. She had to push her body into the viscous liquid. It enveloped her like water and pushed against her like a stiff wind. The sensation was far more intense than the sudden rush of air from Bruenna’s spell. Her entire body felt compressed by quicksilver. Glissa fought back an urge to gasp for air. Her ears felt as if they would pop. Her chest tightened.

She focused on the eels and the monster. The fire tube cut an ashen swath through the quicksilver in front of her, melting any eels that dared swim near. She could feel Bosh kicking and punching inside the beast but knew the golem’s attacks were having no effect on the monster. It simply stretched and reformed after each assault. The monster was just a few feet farther, but Glissa was moving in slow motion. The creature stayed just out of reach. The elf began to drift up away from the sea bottom as swirling currents pushed her body around.

She tried to swim forward, waving her arms and kicking her legs in the quicksilver, but all that did was create an intricate pattern of ash with the fire tube. The current seemed to have a mind of its own. It shifted Glissa back and forth and turned her around. She twisted back around, then concentrated on the currents between her and the monster. She could sense it ahead of her. The sea floor was close beneath.

Glissa shoved her legs out to push against the sea floor. She jetted up a few feet into a current she detected above her. The current swept her along toward the monster. She lifted the fire tube above her head and pointed her toes as she approached. The current dragged her deadly fire across the shoulder of the beast. The quicksilver quaked as the monster screamed in pain. Glissa heard the scream more inside her head than through her ears. The vibrations resounded through the sea.

The current threatened to sweep her past the monster. Glissa reached out and grabbed a silver tentacle. Glissa could sense where the sea ended and the beast began. It had a solidity of being the amorphous sea lacked. She held on and brought the fire tube back around to drive it into the monster. It howled again. Glissa’s head began to ache from the pounding echo of the monster’s wailing and the lack of oxygen.

The quicksilver monster spat out Bosh and poured quicksilver into a dozen tentacles. Arms flailed at Glissa through the sea. With her enhanced senses, Glissa saw the monster’s attack almost before it came. She swung the fire tube in a slow arc through the quicksilver and cut off three tentacles before they reached her, but she was too slow in the thick liquid to bring the fire back around, and the other tentacles wrapped around her.

She bounced off Bosh. The golem grabbed at Glissa, but she knocked his hand away. They couldn’t escape the beast, not in its element. She had to kill it. She had to do it now. She allowed herself to be drawn toward the beast’s silver body.

The monster squeezed her mercilessly, constricting her chest and forcing the air from her lungs. Bubbles escaped from Glissa’s mouth and combined around her head in a small pocket of air. The beast squeezed even tighter, making it impossible for Glissa to draw another breath, and pulled Glissa closer.

Now was her chance. Glissa fought to bring her arm up. Tentacles slid, little by little, up her body. She got her elbow free and jammed the fire tube deep into the chest of the monster. The creature screamed and tightened its grip around Glissa. The pressure in her chest mounted, while the creature’s screaming pounded in her head. The monster tried to slide its body away from the fire. Glissa pushed back. She held her hand-and the fire tube-inside the beast.

The melting fire spread through the beast’s body. Glissa watched the beast’s torso turn to black ash. The Quicksilver Sea flowed in to displace the ash. The creature’s head soon followed, which finally silenced its head-splitting wail. The fire spread into the tentacles last, which dissolved around Glissa, releasing their hold on her.

With the pressure gone from her chest, Glissa’s instincts betrayed her. She immediately tried to draw in a breath of air. Instead, she drew quicksilver into her lungs. She choked uncontrollably. Every choke ended in a gasp, forcing more liquid into her lungs. She dropped the fire tube and grabbed her neck. But there was nothing she could do. Glissa’s enhanced senses closed down around her. The world began to go black. The last thing she saw was a looming dark form above her.

CHAPTER 23

LUMENGRID

Glissa walked through the forest, basking in the warmth of bright sunshine filtering through the leaves. A squirrel skittered up a tree as she passed and shouted at her from the lowest bough. She felt free and alive. The morning dew squirted through her toes as she walked, barefoot, through the grass and moss.

Rays of light glinted off dew-moistened flowers, turning into rainbows that jumped from blossom to blossom. Her life was perfect. The forest provided everything the elves needed and protected them from the wars and ravages of men and gods. Her people existed to protect the forest. She knew that now. When had she forgotten? The forest existed to protect the elves. It was a truly symbiotic relationship. The elves would have it no other way.

A cloud drifted across the sky, blocking the sun and casting a shadow over the forest. She glanced up to watch for the warm light to return, but the cloud darkened and began to grow. Soon a charcoal mass of roiling storm clouds threatened to blot out the entire sky. Lightning played across the bottom of the turbulent cloud. The air became charged with raw power and lightning crackled across the sky. Glissa could feel the forest’s energy surge as the storm built. Was the storm feeding on the mana of the forest or bleeding off excess energy into the forest? She didn’t know.

A bolt of lightning shot down from the cloud into the forest ahead of her. The thunder deafened Glissa, and the force of the shock wave knocked her to the ground. She jumped to her feet and ran toward the impact. Lightning often brought fire to the trees. The forest must be protected. That was the law of the elves. Nothing else mattered.

She ran through the dark forest. No rain fell from the storm clouds, and the lightning seemed content to stay in the sky for now. Glissa smelled something burning ahead of her, but the odor was not wood turning to charcoal. It was more primal, more powerful. She broke into the clearing where the lighting had struck and was surprised to see a large body of elves already gathered there, as if they had all been drawn to this spot by the lightning.

In the center of the clearing, Glissa saw a black patch of grass at least twenty feet across that had been turned to ash by the lightning. A glowing sphere of energy hovered above the ash. The elves who crowded around seemed to be hypnotized by the sphere. They didn’t move closer to investigate, but neither did they make any attempt to flee from it. She wanted to look away from the sphere and knew she would be lost if she didn’t escape the clearing, but she couldn’t make her body move.