There—a flicker of blue light perhaps twenty feet below. An echo?

I swim toward it, my head feeling like it might cave in as the pressure continues to mount.

Once I'm closer, I can see it's indeed one of the marble-like echoes, nestled in a crevice between rocks. I reach for it, fingertips closing around the smooth sphere.

I sense something coming toward me.

I swirl so fast the bubble around my head nearly pops. And then I see him. Malakai is swimming toward me with a bubble around his eyes, nose, and mouth and a shifting, shimmering kind of water dagger in one hand.

Panic clutches at me, threatening to keep me stuck in place—motionless and helpless.

And then he’s on me.

I kick off the ground, dodging his first stab in what feels like slow motion. He comes again, and I see he's moving faster than he should be able to—using the water to propel himself, somehow.

I barely twist out of the way of another attack as his big body flows past, yanking me to the side with the force of his movement.

A cold reality settles over me.

Do something, or you're going to die down here.

Malakai turns, dagger in his hand as his muscular body ripples in the dark depths of the water. Something about the muffled silence of fighting for my life beneath the water—with nothing but my ragged breath echoing within my own bubble—feels wrong. Claustrophobic.

I reach into the water, struggling to even think of what I would do with my powers if I had complete command. Form a weapon of my own? Try to push him down with heavy currents? Pop his bubbles?

Before I can even start to try, he's on me again, rushing through the water like a human arrow, dagger extended toward me.

I jerk to the side, but I'm not fast enough this time. The cold bite of his weapon shocks me, pain exploding through my nerves like lightning, my screams piercing inside the solitude of my air bubble.

He stabbed me in the left shoulder. Blood so dark it almost looks black clouds out from the wound, gushing from between my clasping fingers.

Distantly, I sense something else in the water with us. Another student, maybe? Or are more of his soldiers on their way to take turns stabbing me?

No. I'm not going to die like this. Not this easily.

I don't think. I let instinct take over. My mind reaches into the water until I feel like I can make it move at my command. Using an invisible tendril of lake water, I press in on Malakai's face, watching with satisfaction as his eyes open wide and the bubbles providing him air smear and pop, scattering into thousands of tiny bubbles that rush upward.