No, that’s wrong. It EXPLODED, loudly enough to destroy my hearing and with a blast strong enough to threaten to rip me apart, only I’d just shifted back behind the warehouse. Which… hadn’t been my best move.

I rematerialized in a world on fire, with the warehouse falling to pieces and a whirlwind of ash and smoke swirling everywhere. I couldn’t see anything but fiery smears across my vision; I couldn’t breathe at all, having sucked in some of the burning ash; and I was pretty sure I was going to die. And then flaming nuggets of coal, like blazing hail, started pelting down, and I knew I was.

But somebody took that moment to grab me, a soft hand reaching out of the hellscape, one with a surprisingly strong grip. Rhea, I thought, grabbing her back. And the next minute, I found myself kneeling in freezing water and trying to cough up my lungs.

She’d shifted me somewhere, but I had no idea where. I still couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see, and my ears—well, they weren’t even bothering to ring anymore; they’d just cut right out. Leaving me with the taste of ashes and the smell of fire as my only senses. And the feel of someone shaking my shoulders, with a grip far less gentle than Rhea’s had been, although I was too busy choking to death to protest.

Somebody started slapping me on my back, hard and repeatedly, and I didn’t have the strength to tell them that it wasn’t working. Until it did, and I coughed up a huge wad of something I couldn’t see—thankfully—but which allowed me to get my first good breath in minutes. Which I used to vomit up breakfast.

All of it.

I didn’t care about that, either. I didn’t care about anything but sucking in whatever oxygen I could get in between my stomach’s eruptions. Which finally finished, leaving me kneeling in freezing water with half-digested pie on my face and gulping in breath after cold, wonderful breath, as if my lungs couldn’t get enough.

It was the most amazing feeling in the world.

And then my ears popped, and I heard Rhea’s voice saying: “I’ll go.”

“You will not!” That was Gertie, sounding as grim as I’d ever heard her. “You wouldn’t last a moment against that thing.”

“I have to try!”

“No. I’ll do it.”

“You can’t! You’re Pythia! If you die, the timeline will be irretrievable altered—”

“And what do you think is about to happen now, hm?”

“What’s… what’s about to happen now?” I croaked, staring blindly about. “What are you… talking about?”

“Aeslinn, Lady,” Rhea breathed.

“But… I killed him. I just—didn’t I?”