That last complicated loop was a challenge made nearly impossible by the push and pull of the powerful currents near the Sow’s epicenter. But again I demanded from the ocean, and again she eventually acceded, although the struggle was fierce. When I finally reached the last lit-up piglet, I knew what was coming.
But that didn’t mean my heart wasn’t in my throat as I felt one final pulse of power from my left. Right in the center of the Sow herself.
What I did next was my patented combination of both the logical and absurd. I imagined myself in a powerful shield that resembled a hamster ball, and I rolled myself toward the heart of the whirlpool. It took everything I had in me to push my shields forward, the Sow dancing and swirling like a column of light before me. Turning and turning in the gyre of the Sow, all I could think of was Yeats’s “Second Coming.” Anarchy was threatening; monsters like Phaedra and Graeme had been loosed upon my world. I thought of Yeats’s warning: The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.
I might not be the best, my virtue thought, panting as I strained forward, both my physical and magical muscles pushed to their limits, but I’ll show that damned Alfar a thing or two about conviction.
And hopefully not about drowning, my libido added, just as my little hamster ball of shields butted itself up directly against the Sow. If I thought I’d faced opposition before, nothing could compare to that edge of the Sow. It felt like I’d butted up against a brick wall. I threw my magic into high gear, chanting Yeats’s first stanza to myself like a litany while imagining Phaedra’s face—so definitely the worst, with her passionate capacity for hate—as my target, smack dab in the middle of the whirlpool. After a strangled moment, in which my every nerve—both physical and magical—felt like it had gone up in flame, the wall began to give under my onslaught. Pushing harder, I forced my hamster ball forward until the wall crumbled before me. The blazing core of the Sow rose to meet me.
Reaching my hand forward, I parted my magic to touch that pulsing glow.
Magic boomed around me, so strong and fast that it took me a moment to realize my shields were dissolving despite me. I tried to throw them back up, but the Sow reached for me before I could.
Well fuckerdoodles, I thought, ridiculously calmly, considering. I am going to die.
But I didn’t die, because the Sow wasn’t trying to kill me. Instead, she pulled me in and cradled me. The water swirling just a few feet in front of me was powerful enough to rip me limb from limb. But where she held me, she was gentle. Then I felt the Sow’s primordial power push through my feet toward my head, arcing up and out of me. I couldn’t understand what she was doing, until I felt the waters part around me.
She’s using me as some kind of catalyst, I realized. I’m like a magic wand made of Jane.
Sure enough, I could feel the power pulsing out of me, pushing aside the water. The water was swirling around me again, but this time in the opposite direction, creating an inverse whirlpool. That said, I didn’t realize exactly why that was happening until I felt my feet touch the ground. I’d been floating midway up the Sow, but now I was on land. Dry land.
Well, okay, it was wet, muddy land. But it was definitely the seafloor, and the water was parting above me—up and up—until finally the sun peeped through. It was like standing in an elevator shaft made of water, one that continued to get wider.
I blinked as the sky momentarily darkened, and then Blondie crashed down next to me with a whoosh. She crouched on the ground, panting, as I watched her wings dissolve.
“Christ, Jane, could you have taken any longer?” she said and groaned, huffing like an asthmatic as she drew power from the still-supercharged air around her.
“Dude, this was hard. You try reversing the laws of physics,” I said, as I gestured toward the walls of water around us. Then I realized what I’d done.
“I totally pulled a Moses,” I marveled, inordinately proud of myself.
She stood up, windmilling her arms to stretch out shoulders undoubtedly gone tight with flying.
“Yes, well, your results are impressive,” she conceded. “But I thought I was going to die up there.”
Hi, Pot, I thought. Meet Kettle! I swam into a huge fucking whirlpool! But I kept my mouth shut.
“Yeah, well, now the last two glyphs are opened. What’s next?”
“Um, there’s gotta be something underneath here, cuz there’s nothing above us,” was her helpful response, as we both peered around, trying to discern anything in the muck of the seafloor.
We began pacing back and forth, kicking aside seaweed and other debris. We each thought we saw something a few times, shouting in excitement and then quickly apologizing. Finally, I hit the jackpot.
“There’s a hole!” I shouted. It was hard to see in the dark mud, but there it was. Big enough for a person to fit through, if they didn’t mind getting muddy.
Blondie ran over, and we both peered into the opening.
“ ’Kay,” she said, and I felt her magic pop as she apparated her climbing rope and harness. “I’ll lower you down. You tell me if it’s clear, and then I’ll apparate using your voice.”
She helped me get into the harness, and within minutes she was using her magically strengthened muscles to lower me down into the hole. When I was only a few feet in, I lit the puniest of mage lights, waiting to see if it set off any magical booby traps. Not feeling anything, I went ahead and strengthened the light till I could see the cavern.
It was another nondescript gray hole, just like the one underneath the Grays’ B & B. Only this one pulsed with an insane amount of magic.
When I was on the ground, I lit a few more mage balls. When nothing happened, I shouted up to Blondie that it was safe. I felt the rope go slack when she dropped it, and then it fell to the earth in a serpentine coil while I busied myself getting out of the harness. Meanwhile, she apparated herself next to me.
“So, what do we have here?” she asked, looking around the dark cave. She lit a few more mage lights, but it didn’t help much except to reveal that the ceiling above us was domed, with the now tiny-appearing hole at its apex.
“Can you feel that magic?” Blondie breathed, shutting her eyes as if enjoying a tune only she could hear. A shudder racked her body, and she clenched a hand over her belly.
“I can feel it,” I said, but I could also see that I wasn’t feeling it the way she was. She kinda looked like she might come in her pants. I just felt power.
But then I felt a whole different type of power altogether.
“Shit,” I swore, pulling Blondie back toward one of the cavern walls.
“Huh?” she said, woozily, as if drunk off whatever she was sensing.
“We’ve got company!” I shouted, pointing at the hole just as one dun figure darted through, to be followed swiftly by another. The harpies swirled around the hole as Phaedra appeared, lowering herself down on a column of earth magic.
Fucking Phaedra, I thought, as Blondie and I set up shields.
Once the Alfar was on the ground, one of the harpies darted back up through, only to appear again towing Graeme. Fugwat must still have been on enforced vacation in Abu Dhabi. Phaedra’s entourage fanned out behind her, the harpies together on one flank and Graeme defending Phaedra’s other flank.
“I would ask you why you were doing my job for me,” the bald little woman drawled, her face split by that wretched little moue of a smile that I’d come to loathe so much. “But, frankly, I could care less.”
“Do you really think you can take me?” Blondie asked, her question wonderfully rhetorical as she stepped forward and simultaneously lit herself up with mage fire.
Meanwhile, my eyes darted around the cave, trying to discern where there was a tunnel, or another hole, or something that would get us through to another room. Because while the cavern had suddenly gotten rather crowded, it wasn’t with anything we wanted to find.
Just evil Alfar and their sadistic cronies, I thought, as Graeme eyed me from behind Phaedra. I felt that squicky mental power of his reaching out, but this time I was able to use what I’d learned from studying Blondie work on Fugwat to shut down the incubus. It wasn’t elegant, and it wasn’t controlled, but I squished his mental power flat with a well-deserved pummeling of force. At which Graeme blinked and shook his head slightly, as if it had hurt him.
If I can use those channels to hurt him, maybe I can use them to get in his head, too? Unfortunately, Graeme was no fool. He wasn’t going to let himself be walloped again that easily, and I felt his mental probes reverse backward into the safety of his own shields.
And that’s when the fight really started. Just like last time, Blondie and Phaedra blasted at each other while the Alfar’s entourage pumped power into her shields.
Only this time, I didn’t take a back seat. Instead, I went on the offensive. The ocean was right above me, after all, pumping its power through the cavern ceiling, as well as trickling in on the rivulets of water that swirled around our feet. I was also still ridiculously revved from my time in the Sow. Unworried about getting depleted, I let rip with my own fierce barrage of mage balls. Only I ignored Phaedra completely.