This was the most thrilling thing I’d ever done, jetting through this city of dark velvety blacks and vibrant colors, passing amazed locals, open-mouthed, on rocking boats. In Newcago there had been a rule to never let me drive, just because of a few unfortunate incidents with cars and … um … walls. With the spyril, though, I could move with freedom and power. I didn’t need a car. I was a car.
As I came to another batch of tendrils, I jetted to the side, leaning into the turn like a surfer, then shot down a side road. I almost smashed right into an enormous wall of water, as tall as the rooftops on either side, rising to tower over me. It immediately began to crash downward.
In a panic I screamed and jetted sideways through a window and into one of the buildings. I hit the floor in a roll, my jets cutting off. Water smashed into the wall outside, washing into the windows and across me. Various office paraphernalia surged upward, banging against tree trunks, but the water quickly rushed out the other direction.
Wet, frantic, I scrambled deeper into the office jungle. Tendrils of water broke in through the windows at my back, snaking after me. Sparks! I instinctively scrambled deeper into the structure, farther from the water outside—and the source of Regalia’s power. But that also put me far from the source of the spyril’s power. Without it, I was just a wet guy with a handgun facing down one of the most powerful Epics who had ever lived.
I made a snap decision and continued inward, for now, shoving my way past old desks and enormous mountains of overgrown roots. Maybe I could lose her in here. Unfortunately, as I made my way inward, I heard water tendrils breaking through windows on the other side of the building. I scrambled out into a hallway and found water creeping toward me, running across the old carpet.
She was flooding the place.
She’s trying to see, I realized. She could send water in through the windows and cover the floor of the entire office. She’d be able to see into any nook. I ran the other direction, trying to find a stairwell or another way out, and burst into another large office space. Here, translucent tentacles of water wove between the trunks of trees like the prehensile stalks of some enormous, many-eyed slug.
Heart beating more quickly, I ducked back into the hallway. Light shone behind me from fruit that had been knocked by the tentacles, sending dancing shadows down the hall. A disco for the damned.
My back to the wall, I realized I was trapped. I looked at the fruit next to me.
Worth a try.
“I could use some help, Dawnslight,” I said.
Wait, was I praying now? This wasn’t the same thing at all, was it?
Nothing happened.
“Uh …,” I said. “This isn’t a dream, by the way. Some help. Please?”
The lights went out.
In an instant, the fruit just stopped glowing. I started, heart pounding. Without the glowing fruit, the place was as black as the inside of a can of black paint that had also been painted black. Despite the darkness, though, I heard the tendrils thrashing and coming close.
It looked like turning the lights out was the best Dawnslight could do for me. Desperate, I fumbled my way down the hallway in one last mad dash toward freedom.
The tendrils of water struck.
Right at the place where I’d been standing before.
I couldn’t see it, but I could feel them brush past me, converging on that location. I stumbled away, listening to the crash of water hitting wall, and fell back against one of them in the dark—a large, armlike glob of water, cold to the touch. I accidently put my hand into it, and my skin sank right through.
I pulled it out with a start and backed away, hitting another tendril. None of them stopped moving, but they didn’t come for me. I wasn’t crushed in the darkness.
She … can’t feel with them, I realized. They don’t convey a sense of touch! So if she can’t see, she can’t direct them.
Incredulous, I poked another of the tendrils in the darkness, then slapped it. Perhaps not the smartest thing I’d ever done, but it provoked no reaction. The tendrils continued thrashing about randomly.
I backed away, putting as much room between myself and those tendrils as possible. It wasn’t easy, as I kept stumbling over tree trunks. But …
Light?
A single fruit glowed up above. I chased it. It hung in front of a stairwell, and the floor here was dry. No water for Regalia to peer through.
“Thanks,” I said, stepping forward. My foot crunched something. A fortune cookie. I grabbed it and opened it.
She’s going to destroy the city, it read. You don’t have much time left. Stop her!
“Trying,” I muttered, squeezing between vines to climb into the stairwell and starting upward. Fruit glowed to light my way, then winked out behind me.