“Let’s not fight her on her turf and hope we don’t have to test it. Parian, can your snake be a bridge where the effect is most intense?”

“Yeah. I can handle that… but I’m really wondering what happens if we touch the walls or floor?” Parian asked.

“Hopefully nothing. But I’ve read reports of bad things happening when people got stuck in her shaker effect when it’s most intense.”

“Like?”

I looked back at Candy and Aroa. “I don’t want to scare you guys.”

“Our daddy gave us fear for breakfast,” Candy said. “I was so young I’m not sure I would have even been in school then—”

“You would have. Definitely,” Chastity cut in.

“Okay, but I don’t remember much from those days, and I remember getting chocolate frosted fear bombs for breakfast—”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Aroa cut in.

“Stop interrupting! Sacrament! It’s metaphor!”

“It’s dumb,” Aroa said.

“What are you saying, and is it important?” I asked.

“Daddy made me scared when he wanted me to stay out of his room, he made me as happy as a little girl getting a puppy on Christmas morning when he needed me to clean up some baby barf tout de suite…”

My skin crawled.

“…I don’t remember much, but I remember those moments. Don’t look down on me,” the girl finished. She was still jogging along the side of the column, periodically slipping where the sloped wall on either side of the water was icier or slimy. Chastity was fully in the water, and whatever contention the sisters had, Chastity was there to support her younger sister and keep her from outright falling into the damp.

“Fine. As the power saturates a place, containers will fill with her power. If containers don’t exist, they’ll appear on their own. One thing that can happen is that you touch a wall and your hand goes through it like it would go through wet paper, and there’s something living on the other side.”

“Or the floor. You said we have to watch the floor,” Parian said.

“Yeah, but there isn’t much we can do about that,” I said. “The way powers tend to prioritize things, walls will be a problem before floors are.”

“How do you know that?” Parian asked.

“Studies,” I said. “PRT research. Classes. There’s a whole mess of research into why people like Shadow Stalker from our hometown didn’t fall through the floor to the planet’s core.”

Precipice was typing on his phone while using it for light. He aimed it at the floor, nearly tripping as he kicked a bit of ice crust on the top of the water that others hadn’t already broken up. Chastity caught him.