Metal and stubborn wood collided. Strength's strikes were not disciplined. He was the kind of fighter to swing for the fences every time. But he had a feral kind of speed.

  He fought with anger and he struck with the ferocity of a beast, the it's-you-or-me practicality of sinew and muscle forged by the raw logic of survival. He was as barbarian as anyone I'd seen, feet moving rapidly to close ground, hides swinging. He pressed the captain backward to the adjoining catwalk.

  "I have to go down with the ship," said the captain, between breaths and exertions, "to see the work--" (clang) "--done!" He struck at Strength's thigh, a red line appearing there. Strength grunted and staggered.

  Constitution, still clouded in vapor and running with blood and venom, extended her good hand. It glowed with warm light.

  "Are you kidding me?" I urged her. "Look at you. You'll die."

  "Not now," she snapped, then added, "hon." She clenched her jaw, looking like she was tring to grab something out of the air, clawing the insurmountable distance between them. "Don't!" I yelled. I knew in my core that Constitution was overextending. Based on what? Well, vibes. I didn't know if it was true, but at the same time, I couldn't conceive of a world where it wasn't. We've all had those feelings, the sense of an absolute whose premises are nonexistent ghosts.

  Now that I understood a little more about her whole deal, I was imagining the weirdly sacrificial spell she had started with before we even came through the mirror portals. She had trasnferred my existing injuries to herself. I must say that the thought of Constitution overdoing it did not rest well with me then, knowing that the first act had been to suffer in my place.

  The ship shook. Hull plates and timber creaked, held by splinters. New spouts of water appeared from the dark walls. The long semi-crate began to rock, wet flakes of rust shearing from the chains.

  What the hell did a hit point look like? How badly did Arthrem need it?

  The captain swung and twirled, reading Strength's telegraphed strikes a mile away. He gave ground, drawing the huge barbarian into his cloud of falling petals. His eyes shone black, and he grinned.

  Constitution's warm palm glow fed back with black sparks. She cried out, and stumbled back into the water, splashing like a stone.

  "No!" I shouted. What else could I do? I dove.

  The lantern fought to illuminate the hull in the dark waters. Jets of air bubbles burst open beneath, obscuring my vision. A silvery school of fish scattered and fled. I kicked hard toward the bulk of her armor, trying to outpace the effects of gravity.

  My free hand closed on frigid armor. She careened off of a bulkhead so loudly that I heard it through the rushing water, the kind of muddled bong that made me wince. I twisted and kicked, flailing. My lungs began to burn.

  There was no way I could move her. I tried anyway. What did I have at my disposal here? A lantern, a staff that had disappeared, and no healing powers. A pretty good head on my shoulders, I supposed, but nothing that could reverse gravity or change the properties of matter states.

  Her body sailed effortlessly downward, a stream of bubbles trailing out of her mouth.

  Above us--far above, now--the surface of the side cargo bay flashed with the captain's blades against Strength's cudgels before it vanished in a cloud of rapid bubbles and turbulent currents.

  You would not believe how hard it is to make a mental list while you are drowning.

  Could she have some kind of resistance to drowning? Something she could share? Surely whatever forces or nature repaired her enormous body at fast forward speed could also slow her need for oxygen? And maybe whatever magic let her take on someone else's bodily injuries could apply there too? God, this was where Teo would have dangled a water breathing potion in front of us, something in reach but requiring sacrifice, typical DM forcing an impossible choice--

  What had she stuffed into her armor when we left through the mirror? It was a vial, some little capsule of liquid with a cork stopper. Where had it gone? She'd tucked it away into some opening in the armor, right?

  With unspoken apologies, I pulled her towards me, or me towards her--the relativity of water made this hard to be certain.

  My chest burst into flame, an entirely new and greater universe of urgent heat and pain. Everything started to stop existing, fading from relevance and actuality, all except for the singular, burning suction against my own trachaea. Where was the damn thing? In the tight space between breastplate and ribs? My sense of shame and propriety seared away. I was flailing, feeling sloppy drunk as the my brain became deprived of oxygen.

  Her stunned eyes turned to me, then darkened as my lantern burned out.

  The walls shook. Chest screamed. A torrent of water boiled above. The cargo had fallen. It boomed even in the depths.

  Tendrils of light sprouted. I could hold it no longer. Light coiled around me. I burst. Coiled around her. Whatever her name had been. Dotted with suckers. No, no. I was the sucker here.

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  I gasped, let in the dark waters. But they didn't come in. They stayed right where they were. It was... a flower? Some kind of knot of seaweed made of light. It scrunched up. Great bright eyes with a nonsensically shaped iris. A squid? No, not that, the other one. The soft mushy one with too many syllables to remember right now. It flapped, or thrust, or whatever. We went with it. Water rushed over me. I wasn't breathing air, which was bad. But I wasn't breathing water, which was good.

  Vast, misshapen pieces of the Barbaric sailed down like hulking comets trailing white water and whirlwinds of dark wreckage. The white whatever it was moved us swiftly out of the way, seeing each of them long before it was too late. The current roared in my ears. It was hard to turn or move any muscles at this speed, and my arms flapped ridiculously. Occasionally I saw a dark glimpse of Constitution. Whatever was kidnapping us wasn't interseted in losing us to the shipwreck currently in progress.

  Pangs kicked and wiggled out of the surging dark, the thing's oddly cool light making their glossy eyes visible. They burst out from behind sinking swaths of hull, falling segments of the axle, damaged husks of escape dinghies. I was helpless to help us move faster, unable to tell our captor about them. I could do nothing but watch the rubber membranes peel back from their bobbing teeth, ravenous zigzags growing larger... until they fell away. The water heaved furiously, leaving them far behind in clouds of silt and swirling grit.

  That's what it turned into. I was stolen, made passive. I named what I saw, what I felt, made my mental list to focus. But it's hard to focus when you're on an underwater rollercoaster.

  Pressure squeezed my ears and nasal cavity, then released sickly fast. I realized that the tenteacle of light was around my leg, too tight, rubbing it raw. It beat being left behind to be devoured, but where was it taking us?

  The shadow of the second half of the boat rushed downward behind me, a whole weather system under the water. Soon I was looking at light. Real light, daylight. There was gravity to feel now. A tide was splashing gently over a massive seaside boulder beside me. It splashed and ran down, reavealing the shape of iron plates and a face with a lightly scarred eye.

  "Shit," I coughed. "Shit, no, shit. No." I stumbled to Constitution, shaking her by her pauldrons. "Shit, no shitshit nono shitshitshit." I let panic take over. I was going to have to do mouth to mouth on someone with the lung capacity of an empty bathtub.

  I pressed my palms onto the breastplate, tried a tentative push. Nothing happened. She was denser than a neutron star, iron and leather and muscle and body fat from here to the sandy rocks below her.

  I put my hand against her stoney cheek, angled her face upward. Her eyes focused on nothing. I leaned over her, and a geyser of saltwater power-washed my face. It was so high pressure it knocked me upwards, onto my feet. Cross "transitively barfed into a standing position" off of the strangest bucket list ever, I suppose.

  A sort of belch erupted from her body, and she began doing what looked like light crunches, spewing a powerful stream of water up. She coughed wetly, and held up a finger like people do when they've taken a sip of water that went down the wrong pipe.

  "Y-" she began, then coughed some more, and sat up, her leg armor seeping into the sand between rocks. Then she pointed toward the shore.

  Octopus. That was the word I'd been looking for.

  Its tentacles rolled out of the tide, carrying a sagging head like a water balloon with eyes. It lifted, its tentacles twisting into legs, its bag becoming a head, its eyes becoming... well, eyes, but not freakish, deep-sea eyes. Just regular human eyes framed by natty locks of hair interwoven with seaweed and shells.

  Made of light, that is. Can't stress that enough.

  The now-man's body was draped in shells and beads and scales. Waterlogged locks of hair dangled where tentacles had been. He glowed but did not shine, out here in the late evening light.

  He looked familiar. Was there a scar over one eye?

  "Did you save us?" I asked. He nodded, a seaweed lock coming free. He tucked it back behind one ear.

  "What happened to everyone else?" I asked. "Who are you?"

  He pointed back to the sea. On the horizon, we could see the smudge in the air that was the cloud of gulls and vultures, now harrying dozens of escaped lifeboats. A stain of ship debris and cabling spread beneath them like a drop of ink in a glass of water. From here, the sliceberg (bleh) looked like a dead tree.

  "Fine," I said. "But that doesn't answer my other question. You don't talk?"

  A voice from far across the waves announced itself before he opened his mouth. "Echo," he said. It wasn't synchronized properly with the movements of his mouth, as though sound forgot how to channel through the man.

  "Echo of what?" I said, irascibly. None of this had gone how I expected, and that's saying something for someone who had sorta kinda inherited the job of Wisdom earlier today.

  He pointed again, this time at me. Constitution looked between us both, her tired eyes trying to prise meaning out of paradox.

  "Me?"

  He touched spindly fingers to his forehead and bent double. Embarrassment? He shook his head, laughing silently at the mistake. Sound rushed toward him over the waters. "No. Sorry. Him."

  "Him... the other guy?" I reached for the staff, but it would not appear. If this was an "ignite your lightsaber" moment then my mine really needed calibration.

  He nodded, the lock of seaweed hair slipping out again. "Him. The Wisdom... not of light. Dark. Old Wisdom."

  "Okay?" I asked. "So? What's that mean? An echo of Dark Wisdom? So why did you save us?"

  He waved away the misunderstanding. "An echo from before. I was in the..." He glanced over his shoulder before continuing. "...neighborhood."

  "You were an octopus," I said, with a little more heat than I'd meant. "You work for him, Octopus guy?"

  Now he laughed in earnest. The sound un-echoed over the tide to us before bursting lethargically from his mouth. "No, no," he said, gasping. it was impossible to gauge the age of someone made of light, but he had what I would call "old coot energy." Big time. The kind of looney that only grandpas and weird old uncles develop over a lifetime of living without enough social interaction.

  A hermit, kinda. A monk?

  "I became before," he said, trying to point invisible words in the air. Unsatisfied, he tried again. "People are not always as they are. Some make light before they make dark. You... see?" Even he smirked, amused at his own lack of eloquence.

  "No," I looked over to Constitution, still seated in an inch of sweeping tide. She shrugged audibly. "Absolutely not, no."

  He nodded, satisfied with the exchange, and turned to go.

  "Wait," I said. "The captain. He said something... something happened to him in there. He did work for Old Wisdom. Right?"

  The seaweedy man made of light turned and nodded.

  "What happened to him back there? With the... petals? Mind control?"

  He shrugged. "Dark epiphany," he hissed, and then turned back into an octopus made of light and vanished into the waters.