Chaos descends as the kraken’s head bursts into flames. It shrieks and falls back, like a fiery, toppling building, hurling me under the waves.

Another hard wall slams into me from behind, forcing the air from my lungs as I’m thrust out of the water and into the sheeting rain by the thing’s massive tail. I fly through the air, gasping for breath, before hurtling back down toward the waves.

I open my eyes underwater to find a huge, wavering black shape swimming toward me. The demon-sensing rune on my abdomen begins to sting.

Panic jolting through me, I make for the surface and break through it, pulling in great gulps of air before something wraps tight around my ankle and yanks me under once more, the buzzing feel of the Wand against my calf cutting out.

Beating wildly against the water with my arms and free leg, I’m reeled in by the kraken’s tentacled grip. The desperate need for air stinging my lungs, I yank at my leg as the thing draws me toward its terrifying, water-blurred head.

It’s horrifically altered, with membranous, insectile eyes all over its bizarrely stretched-out kraken’s head, its teeth gnashing threateningly as a sharper dread strikes me.

In the center of its massive forehead is a searching, knowing eye.

A pale green eye.

Vogel.

The ferocious will to fight sizzles through me, the Wyvernfire scorching through my firelines turning incendiary. I move to retrieve the blades strapped to my forearms, but tentacles slap around my wrists and waist and I’m thrust out of the water again, coughing and spluttering.

I gulp in air, struggling wildly, a chaos of kraken and sheeting rain and screaming people all around. Our boat is now a distance away, Nym’ellia, Emberlyyn, and Tibryl watching me with looks of pure horror. The tentacles around me tighten, the Wyvernfire blazing through my lines growing into a feverish inferno, my face held just above the water as I’m sped away from the eastern shore.

“Help!” I cry as I’m relentlessly dragged west, people screaming and boats capsizing as they’re pulled under along with their hapless passengers.

The Zonor River’s western shore comes into view through the battering storm, and a horrifying realization knifes through me as I take in several rune-marked scorpios massing along its edge, their predatory focus set on me.

They’re bringing me to him.

Desperation breaks like a tide.

“Help!” I scream, struggling wildly against the Vogel-kraken’s hold as a swarm of rune ships bursts through the clouds.

They’re the size of skiffs, and incredibly...they’re flying through the air like birds, illuminated in foggy haloes of blue light from the runes whirring beneath them and against their sides. They speed toward the remaining boats.