That was important, since Mircea had run through a door on that side of the room, chasing his prize, and Pritkin was now making for the same one. But that wouldn’t do them much good if they were followed by a hundred or so pissed off mages. So, let’s bar the door, I thought, and kicked in my heels.

I guess Grace felt that, because she sped up, flying and then banking right in front of the tanks. And, predictably, the spell bolts followed our path. I saw Pritkin look up as we passed overhead, his eyes wild, and couldn’t tell if he understood or not. But considering how fast he was moving, I kind of thought so.

“One more pass,” I breathed, bending low over Grace’s neck, and holding on with my arms in her mane, because my legs had just vanished along with a big part of her side.

There was no blood splatter, no trailing entrails, no anything where the bolts had hit, but I suddenly understood what she meant about feeling woozy. The attack was weakening the link between mine and Mircea’s consciousness. We didn’t have much time.

But there was a lot of smoke up this high, as well as a lot of dark, and I didn’t think the mages noticed our predicament. The light came from below the creatures in the tanks, and this far into the air, not much penetrated. That plus our speed probably explained why they thought they’d just missed, and increased the barrage.

“Almost there,” I muttered, watching cracks form in the wards behind us, which were taking the brunt of the attack. “Almost there—”

When it came, it came all at once, a rushing torrent that burst out of the sides of the now ruined tanks like a dam breaking. The mages that had been running this way were suddenly skidding to a halt, were turning around, were running the other way instead, but it was too late. Their buddies behind them were in better shape, with a decent head start—or they would have been, except that the body of the giant squid was now blocking the only door on that side of the room.

I had half a second to see them start firing off spells, trying to carve a path through the creature, and the squid predictably enough grabbing them with its fanged tentacles in retaliation. And then the tide hit, throwing them off their feet and doing something to us as well, although that didn’t make sense as it was below us. Or maybe we’d just been hit one too many times.

Either way, I felt a wave of disorientation slam into me, and the next thing I knew, I was rolling painfully down a set of hard, uncarpeted stairs at Gertie’s, screaming along with the acolyte who I was currently straddling.